The director of a government watchdog group says he’s hopeful the U.S. Supreme Court will rule that redistricting maps drawn by Republicans are unconstitutional. The court this week agreed to hear the case in a landmark legal fight over Wisconsin’s gerrymandered political map. Common Cause in Wisconsin director Jay Heck says the lawsuit before the court uses a formula called the “efficiency gap” to calculate how many votes are “wasted” for a party when its voters are packed into a smaller number of seats diluting that party’s overall clout. Heck says the political advantage for Republicans is illustrated in the 2012 election when 52 percent of Wisconsinites voted for Democrats for the Wisconsin legislature and only 39 percent off the assembly seats were held by Democrats after the election.
