Firstly if only one party gerrymanders and the other doesn't the second party is going to be honorable losers.
Secondly obvious gerrymandering is obvious but subtle gerrymandering is not and it can be unclear if a state is being gerrymandered or ungerrymandered. Metrics like efficiency gap aren't great because you can have situations where gerrymandering actually improves those metrics. For example if the parties in a state are really well mixed but one party has an edge almost everywhere then it will have a huge efficiency gap for the minority party and gerrymandering would improve that metric. So basically I don't take accusations of gerrymandering very seriously unless the district map just looks ridiculous.
The problem is you really can't. As I said obvious gerrymandering is obvious but there's no canonically fair district map. Two reasonable looking district maps can differ by a seat or two. Who can say which is the fair map and which is the gerrymandered map. Not experts; if the last two years have taught us anything is that experts are a tool of power rather than a source of truth.
There's a couple issues I think.
Firstly if only one party gerrymanders and the other doesn't the second party is going to be honorable losers.
Secondly obvious gerrymandering is obvious but subtle gerrymandering is not and it can be unclear if a state is being gerrymandered or ungerrymandered. Metrics like efficiency gap aren't great because you can have situations where gerrymandering actually improves those metrics. For example if the parties in a state are really well mixed but one party has an edge almost everywhere then it will have a huge efficiency gap for the minority party and gerrymandering would improve that metric. So basically I don't take accusations of gerrymandering very seriously unless the district map just looks ridiculous.
Agreed. It needs to end in its entirety.
The problem is you really can't. As I said obvious gerrymandering is obvious but there's no canonically fair district map. Two reasonable looking district maps can differ by a seat or two. Who can say which is the fair map and which is the gerrymandered map. Not experts; if the last two years have taught us anything is that experts are a tool of power rather than a source of truth.