Other countries do this.
Whatever bureau in the US analyzes weather can do so without political interference. I presume that they record what kind of cloud they're looking at without checking with their Senator first. The US Dept of Energy can manage its nuclear waste management mandate without political interference. The highway department can design and maintain highways and plow the snow without politicians getting too much involved, other than funding I mean. Politicians don't show up at the job site and tell the guys how to paint the lane markers, I hope.
You're making excuses, I feel. If the country wanted to create a bureau whose mandate was to manage the elections process free from political party involvement, you could do so. It's done all the time in many other places for decades now. Throwing up your hands and saying nothing can work is not very helpful. One could make a good case that democracy is being sabotaged by bizarre gerrymandering. The country can find all the excuses it wants to justify doing nothing about it, but to a lot of people, most importantly your own citizens, it is beginning to look like a non-functioning democracy. Combine this with reported voter suppression and things are not looking healthy. This undermines everything. Is this really what the "founding fathers" had in mind? I hope not.
It's not so simple. Drawing lines is a political matter. It's not like a weather man deciding where to place a weather station.
For example, let's take a state with two election districts. The state has one major city. The rest of the state is rural, basically farm land. The population is evenly divided between rural and urban with a slight advantage to Democrat in the cities. Democrats run the legislature since they have more votes. So how would you draw the lines to make up the two districts?
Someone might say, let's divide the rural in half and the city in half and then combine them so each district is half urban and half rural. That sounds fair. But wait. The people in this state feels they could have better representation in Congress if they split the districts so that one is all urban and the other rural. That way, the representative for the farm area who knows the most about farming can represent 100% of the state's farming interests. He won't waste time on urban issues he knows little about. And the other representative who represents 100% of the urban area and knows the most about cities can represent the state's urban issues the best in Congress. He won;t waste time representing the state's farm interest he knows nothing about.
So now the second solution sounds fair. But wait. The urban voters are mainly Democrat and the rural area is mainly Republican. If the legislature votes the second, they'll be a Democrat and Republican in congress. If they vote the first way, there will be two Democrats in congress and no Republicans. That sounds unfair. But wait. We originally said that was a fair way to draw the lines. So now we ask the Supreme COurt to decide what's fair. How the heck do they know? Both ways really are fair even though party affiliation is different depending on the method. That's why this is a political issue that has to be decided by each state's legislature. The Supreme COurt did the right thing by getting out of the refereeing business because there is no way for it to make it "fair". As Roberts said, there are no standards to make that determination unless COngress decides to make it Certainly the courts can't do it because they can't choose between two fair methods or know how the legislature and people of any one state want to set up their representation in Congress..
