In California, voters approved a ballot measure in 2010, handing control of the redistricting process to an independent citizens’ commission. That panel spends months gathering testimony from Californians about the communities they call home, a departure from the previous map-drawing process, which focused largely on helping incumbents keep their seats.

“We never looked at voter registration data at all,” said Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College

The time has come for my leaves
Be nettle workings of thatchlings hooves

Your tremor of repetition feigns service
In servanted mouth only a glare
Not as handle or hangle
As borrow in lies