Voter redistricting: US Supreme Court to hear third key case of term

For as long as the 27th Congressional District in Texas has been embroiled in litigation over whether it was racially gerrymandered, Nick Gilby has been working on Democratic Party campaigns there. Those seven years, he says, have been “like banging your head against a wall to see if you can move it.”

“He wins 60 percent of the vote or more every time, regardless of who the candidate is,” adds Mr. Gilby, referring to former Rep. Blake Farenthold, the Republican who held the seat from 2010 until he resigned earlier this month amid sexual harassment allegations and an ongoing ethics investigation.

Gilby’s frustrations are shared by William Whitford, a Democratic voter in Wisconsin, and John Benisek, a Republican voter in Maryland. There’s also Lorraine Petrosky, a Democratic voter in Pennsylvania, and Ersla Phelps, a Democratic voter in North Carolina. All four have told the United States Supreme Court this year that they feel, for various reasons, disenfranchised. Their state legislatures, they argue, redrew their district in a way that means their vote no longer matters.

In a year marked by several potentially landmark decisions, the most significant could