ABSTRACT
The primary election serves as the real election in the most districts, which incentivizes appealing to more extreme primary electorates and heightens polarization within the US House. The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford, a case that provides it the opportunity to confront this issue directly or to avoid wading further into the redistricting thicket. Redistricting, or the redrawing of boundaries for electoral constituencies, is often necessary due to population shifts and the subsequent addition or the loss of districts by states. Cracking, packing, and stacking are the primary means of gerrymandering against any partisan or racial group of voters. Cracking entails dividing the group among multiple districts so that their votes are outweighed in all districts. The US Supreme Court's decision in favor of population equality was probably inevitable owing to implacable resistance to eliminating enormous population disparities between districts that led to votes having much greater weight in some districts.
