American democracy itself was on trial Tuesday at the Supreme Court. At least that's what Paul M. Smith, the Washington attorney representing challengers to Wisconsin's extremely gerrymandered legislative redistricting plan, was arguing.

If the Supreme Court does not step in and act now to put a halt to extreme partisan gerrymandering like that practiced in Wisconsin (and many other states), Smith warned, there will be a "festival of copycat gerrymandering," "one party control will be guaranteed" in many states indefinitely and "the country is going to lose faith in democracy" because people will come to believe their vote doesn't matter.

Many Americans may believe this is true already, thanks in no small part to a previous Supreme Court decision – the Citizens United campaign finance case. In that 5-4 ruling, the Court majority in 2010 equated money with free political speech and refused to place any restrictions on political spending by corporations or other groups. The flood of campaign cash which has followed has dominated the political process and seriously undermined the influence of individual voters. Now the Court is being asked again to decide whether to protect the power of the individual ballot or allow politicians to effectively render many elections moot by creating such perfectly engineered and gerrymandered districts that their party cannot possibly lose and the other party cannot possibly win.

In the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump frequently used the charge of a rigged system as a rallying cry, but in fact the legislative redistricting system is most decidedly rigged against the voters. If politicians don't think they can ever lose – or if one party holds an ironclad control over government – what has happened to the fundamental democratic ideas that government should be representative and elected officials accountable to the voters on which this nation was founded?

Following the 2010 census, Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin, like those in other states who had won control of state governments, set about drawing new legislative maps which would ensure their hold on power for at least the next decade. In Wisconsin they set up a war room operation in a law firm across from the state capitol called "the map room" and used sophisticated computer modeling and voter identification to "pack" Democratic voters into a small number of districts and "crack" the remaining Democratic voters among many other districts where they would always be significantly less than a majority and Republicans would be constantly assured of victory and non-competitive races.

In the first election under the redrawn map in 2012 Republicans won just 48.6 percent of the statewide vote in Wisconsin, but 60 out of 99 seats in the state assembly. Nationwide that year Republicans won 53 percent of the vote but 72 percent of the House seats in states where they drew the district lines.

Subsequently, 12 Wisconsin voters sued state officials arguing the new legislative districts violated their First and 14th Amendment rights guaranteeing freedom of expression, association and equal protection. The Gill v. Whitford case was appealed to the Supreme Court by Wisconsin Republican lawmakers after a federal three judge panel ruled 2-1 last November that their redistricting plan was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and "demonstrated that Republicans would maintain a majority under any likely voting scenario" thanks to their legislative maps. The decision was the first from a federal court in more than 30 years to reject a voting map as partisan gerrymandering.

Based on their questions Tuesday, the justices seem fully aware of the stakes involved in this case. Chief Justice John Roberts posited that if the Court intervenes in the Wisconsin case there could be a flood of appeals to state redistricting maps, and the Court could be perceived as siding with one political party over another which could cause "very serious harm to the status and integrity of the decisions of this Court in the eyes of the country."

But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg questioned what happens if the Court does not act and politicians can stack a legislature through hyperpartisan gerrymandering so that election results are pre-ordained. "What becomes of the precious right to vote?"

Like many other major cases in recent years, this one is likely to hinge on Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court's swing vote. The conservative justices appointed by Republicans are expected to vote to uphold politicians' right to partisan gerrymander their districts and the more liberal Democratic appointees on the Court will probably favor judicial involvement to ensure legislative districts are more fairly drawn.

The attorneys challenging Wisconsin's legislative gerrymandering quoted Kennedy 41 times in their brief and those supporting the Wisconsin officials gerrymandering plan quoted him 33 times.

In 2015 Kennedy was the deciding swing vote in a case which ruled against Arizona Republican lawmakers and upheld the right of that state's voters to take the redistricting process away from the state legislature and give it to an independent commission like one created in California, Kennedy's home state. Both the California and Arizona independent redistricting commissions were created and adopted through the ballot initiative process.

Something else which reflects the degree of interest in this case is the more than 50 friend-of-the-court briefs filed on behalf of current and former members of Congress; groups like the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, the ACLU and the NAACP; groups of academic historians, political scientists and law professors and more than 30 states.

The Supreme Court has never struck down a redistricting plan on the basis of partisanship, and this could be the most important case with the most far-reaching ramifications of any the Court decides this term.

Wisconsin voters are at the mercy of the Supreme Court, since that state has no initiative petition process and voters there have no power to put a question on the ballot about whether redistricting should be taken out of the hands of politicians, as California has done so that it can be conducted more fairly.

Since only state legislators in Wisconsin can put measures on the ballot, Smith got a laugh from the courtroom when he said, "Politicians are never going to fix gerrymandering – they like it."

As Smith beseeched the Court, "You are the only institution in the United States that can solve this problem."