Your primary argument is the one the Court used: the difficulty of establishing an objective standard for determining whether a map is fair.

I do so hate when people tell me what I am arguing when what I am arguing already exists in English. I made no such argument. My problem is the remedy. Just what would you have the court order? The conservative justices may have said they cannot articulate a standard, and they may or may not be right about that, not because they can never articulate standards, but because some standards are easier to game than others, and some give rise to constant litigation and some don’t. But I didn’t make that argument. I said only that I don’t want the Federal court drawing up districts. We have to learn to govern ourselves.

That said, your “ridiculously simple and obvious standard” is ridiculously simplistic. How do you know a redistricting plan is legal until after the election? Should the court mandate automatic redistricting if the number of seats allocated to parties don’t match the state-wide vote? Should the offending election be cancelled and the state go unrepresented while the matter is sorted out? Sorted out by whom? And tested how? By a new election?

One can make the argument that a state’s representatives should be elected on a winner-take-all basis, like its electoral votes. I don’t find that argument politically attractive, but it seems to me something the people in a state could agree to do, especially if the state swings back and forth between the parties and wants to have maximum clout in D.C. when the pork is being spread and the logs are being rolled.

There is only one simple rule in politics: it isn’t simple. As political commentator H.L. Mencken observed, for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. Gerrymandering is a complex problem. The only cure for bad government is good voters. In the long run, nothing else works. Give to iCivics.