Judges let NC Republicans thwart democracy once again
There are some, even among Democrats, who will describe the new North Carolina congressional district maps as “fair” or “fairer.” They are not fair in any sense. What they are is one last act of electoral larceny by Republican state lawmakers as they approach their day of reckoning in the 2020 general election.
The maps have mollified some critics because the newly drawn districts are likely to reduce the Republican advantage in North Carolina’s congressional seats from 10-3 to 8-5. But the numbers are irrelevant if the redistricting process remains — as it has — purely partisan.
The new maps were supposed to correct the previous maps’ blatantly partisan design. Those maps — redrawn in 2016 to correct illegal racial gerrymandering — still preserved the Republicans’ lopsided 10-3 advantage in the 2018 election even though Republicans won only 50 percent of the statewide popular vote. A three-judge panel found that the maps were an illegal partisan gerrymander and ordered that districts be redrawn for the 2020 election. Republican lawmakers responded with maps that are likely to give their party eight seats, and a chance at winning nine. This isn’t “fairer.” It’s just a slightly milder form of politicians picking their voters and depriving many voters of a vote that matters.
Timing’s influence
On Monday the three-judge panel approved the maps, but they were moved less by the changes than by the calendar. If the judges had ordered the maps redrawn yet again, the state likely would have had to push back the congressional primary elections, a change that would reduce voter turnout and involve added costs for local governments.
Faced with a potential election delay that could in itself undermine the democratic process, the judges — two Democrats and one Republican — unanimously decided that less bad is good enough. They said in their opinion, “The net result is the grievous and flawed 2016 map has been replaced.”
As a practical matter, the judges made the right decision, but their assessment of its impact was wrong. The net result isn’t that a bad map has been replaced. It’s that gerrymandering has prevailed.
This time Democratic lawmakers and the public were given more access to the redrawing process, but not necessarily more influence. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers weren’t trying to make the maps fair. They were weighing how to do the minimum needed to win approval by judges who were aware that more delay could affect primary elections
Legal stalling
In this case, as in other election-related cases, the Republicans ran out the clock. Since they first redrew legislative and congressional districts in 2011, Republicans have fought legal challenges to their congressional and legislative maps time and again through appeals, delays and claims that there wasn’t time to redraw maps before an election. The result is that they have benefited in four elections based on maps that courts have found to be illegal because of racial bias or excessive partisanship.
With new and more equitable maps taking effect in the 2020 legislative elections, Republicans may well lose the state House and Senate majorities that their illegal maps protected for nearly a decade. That distortion of the people’s will has come at a high price for North Carolina’s economy, its public schools and universities, its medically uninsured and its national reputation.
It should also come at a high price for North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers. For they have not only thwarted Democrats, they have thwarted democracy. Should they lose their ill-gotten legislative majority, it will be up to small “d” democrats to make North Carolina a democracy again by making the next redistricting process truly nonpartisan.
That, at long last, would be fair.
This story was originally published December 3, 2019 at 5:45 PM.