Engineering elections? U.S. top court examines electoral map manipulation

Cooper Hall, a student residence at North Carolina A&T University, lies just to the east of the line that divides Congressional Districts 13 and 6 on campus in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. March 14, 2019. Picture taken March 14, 2019. REUTERS/Charles Mostoller

GREENSBORO, N.C. (Reuters) - Before the Republican-led state legislature divided their city and even their college campus into two different districts in a bid to boost the party's election chances, students like recent graduate Vashti Smith could vote for the Democratic U.S. congressional candidate and know that person could win.

Thanks to partisan gerrymandering - a practice the Supreme Court will examine on Tuesday in two cases that could impact American politics for decades - that is no longer the case. A U.S. House of Representatives district that once covered heavily Democratic Greensboro was reconfigured in 2016, with the voters in the city of 290,000 people inserted into two other districts spanning rural areas with reliable Republican majorities.