But as places like Gwinnett County get more diverse, communities of color are starting to challenge for power, and that threatens the status quo, people are asking for a seat at the table, and that worries some of the people who are at the table right now.

Michael Li

It's something that people around the country are going to be wat... by Michael Li

It's something that people around the country are going to be watching.

There's a lot more sunshine on the process, it doesn't mean you'll win every time, but it means you'll have a fight.

When a single party has control of the process, the maps are less... by Michael Li

When a single party has control of the process, the maps are less fair.

It would be the equivalent of a tsunami, democrats would have to win larger than any sort of recent midterm wave — almost double what they got in 2006 — in order to win a narrow majority.

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This case could cause a nationwide upheaval in state legislatures... by Michael Li

This case could cause a nationwide upheaval in state legislatures.

But in a world where Democrats have sole control of the process, the Democrats have an incentive to vote down the commission maps.

Read MoreOn the flip side is sort of like the poster child for like the worst of all worlds.

Ohio's reforms were designed for the assumption that Read MoreOn the flip side was Read MoreOn the flip side, and Read MoreOn the flip side just isn't anymore, and now Republicans are like,' Well, we'll pass a map. It's only good for four years, and then we'll redraw the map in four years. We don't have a problem with that.'.

Sometimes you can overthink these things, and you can design things like for a world that just doesn't exist anymore, because politics change.

In California, a list is prepared of qualified people and lawmakers get a certain number of strikes, similar to jury strikes, so, the California system is very hard to game.

Republicans are in a mood where they want to throw mud at the wall.

They're doing to the suburbs now what they used to do to Austin or big cities. That tells you where Texas Republicans are -- that Texas Republicans really need to use the rural areas to neutralize the suburbs, in a lot of ways, it's a replay of the battles that have been going on for the last couple of decades, since Texas Republicans gained control of redistricting. The one variant is White voters in the suburbs.

The fact that this gerrymander is achieved at the expense of people of color is not surprising.

It's the million-dollar question, map makers tend to be nothing if not cautious and the cautious thing to do is to assume that the changes that work against you or Republican Party are permanent, while the changes that work in your favor are temporary.

( In South Florida) the problem with white Democrats is they tend to live near white Republicans, sometimes in the same house, so unless you're gerrymandering down somebody's bed... South Florida's really hard to gerrymander white Democrats when there aren't that many of them, south Florida's much more efficient because of residential segregation to target communities of color. And so you really can't politically gerrymander in South Florida without targeting communities of color, which gets you right into race based claims.

The Constitution requires counting everyone -- children, immigrants, everyone -- The Constitution doesn't have exclusions based on legal status.