Crazy-Quilt Districts Make Your Vote Pointless

Democrats challenged the Pennsylvania redistricting in 2001, after a Republican plan emasculated them. In the same way that liberal judges refused to act in the 1980s, their conservative counterparts have upheld mostly Republican gerrymanders this decade. The same five U.S. Supreme Court justices who sided with Bush in the 2000 presidential race upheld the Pennsylvania gerrymander.

But the high court may be switching direction. In sending back for possible trial a challenge to DeLay's Texas gerrymander, it expressed some concern for "the rights of fair and effective representation," as Justice Anthony Kennedy put it.

Forty years ago, in the landmark Reynolds vs. Sims decision on legislative districts, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote: "As long as ours is a representative form of government, the right to elect legislators in a free and unimpaired fashion is a bedrock of our political system."

That was before computers, databases and Machiavellian map-drawers drained the competition out of House elections. The courts and the people should put competition back in.