https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geometry-versus-gerrymandering/

Gerrymandering is clawing across courtrooms and headlines nationwide. The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard cases on the constitutionality of voting districts that allegedly entrenched a strong advantage for Republicans in Wisconsin and Democrats in Maryland but dodged direct rulings in both. Another partisan gerrymandering case from North Carolina is winding its way up with a boost from an emphatic lower court opinion in August. But so far it has been impossible to satisfy the justices with a legal framework for partisan gerrymandering. Part of the problem, as former justice Anthony Kennedy noted in a 2004 case, is that courts high and low have yet to settle on a “workable standard” for identifying a partisan gerrymander in the first place. That is where a growing number of mathematicians around the country think we can help.