District boundaries

Gerrymandering is drawing district lines to help one party or group. The party that controls the state legislature after the census can pack the other party's voters into a few districts and spread the rest thin, so its own candidates win as many seats as possible. That is choice C.

Baker v. Carr (1962) did not ban the practice. It held that federal courts can hear challenges to how legislative seats are apportioned, which opened the door to the one person, one vote rule. The Supreme Court has never struck down a map as a partisan gerrymander, and in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) it held that federal courts cannot hear those claims.

Each choice

• A. Baker v. Carr let courts hear apportionment cases, which led to equal population districts. It did not ban gerrymandering, which is still used today.
• B. Historically, malapportioned maps protected rural power and short-changed growing cities. This choice has the direction reversed.
• C (correct). A party in charge of redistricting can draw lines that give it as many seats as possible.
• D. Gerrymanders make safe seats with little real competition, which tends to weaken voters' hold on their representatives.
• E. Either party can gerrymander when it controls redistricting, so it favors no particular ideology.