WASHINGTON — A North Carolina state court on Tuesday rejected claims by voting rights advocates that Republican gerrymanders of the state’s political maps were unconstitutional.The unanimous ruling, by a panel of two Republican judges and one Democrat, set up a final battle over the maps in the seven-member state Supreme Court, where Democratic justices hold a slim edge. Voting rights groups said they would file an appeal immediately. One, Common Cause North Carolina, said the plaintiffs had presented “overwhelming evidence” that the maps were stacked to favor Republicans.“The evidence clearly showed that Republican legislative leaders brazenly ignored legal requirements designed to protect voting rights for Black North Carolinians,” the group’s executive director, Bob Phillips, said in a statement. “If allowed to stand, these extreme gerrymanders would cause profound and lasting harm to the people of our state.”The Republican chairman of the redistricting committee in the State Senate, Warren Daniel, called the decision a sign that “the people of our state should be able to move on with the 2022 electoral process.” The state’s primary elections were pushed back from March to May to make time for legal challenges to the maps.Redistricting at a Glance
Every 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.
Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.Mr. Daniel charged that any Supreme Court reversal would be suspect because one of the Democratic justices, Anita Earls, was elected with the help of a donation from a Democratic Party redistricting group. An affiliate of that group, the National Redistricting Foundation, is funding legal action by one of the plaintiffs in the gerrymander case.In their ruling, in Wake County Superior Court in Raleigh, N.C., the three judges agreed that both the legislative and congressional maps were “a result of intentional, pro-Republican partisan redistricting.” They also alluded to the political harm that caused, citing their “disdain for having to deal with issues that potentially lead to results incompatible with democratic principles and subject our state to ridicule.”But the judges dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims that the maps violated the state Constitution, that they were deliberately created to disenfranchise Black voters and that they broke longstanding rules for drawing political districts.The case involves new political districts approved in December by the Republican-dominated State Legislature that would give Republicans an overwhelming political advantage in a state balanced almost evenly between Republican and Democratic voters.The new congressional map would give Republicans control of as many as 11 of the state’s 14 House seats, compared to the party’s current eight-to-five edge. (North Carolina gained a fourteenth district as a result of population gains in the 2020 census.) The maps would also re-establish much of the lopsided advantage that Republicans enjoyed in the House and State Senate as a result of gerrymanders approved when those maps were redrawn in 2011.Understand How U.S. Redistricting Works
Card 1 of 8What is redistricting?It’s the redrawing of the boundaries of congressional and state legislative districts. It happens every 10 years, after the census, to reflect changes in population.Why is it important this year?With an extremely slim Democratic margin in the House of Representatives, simply redrawing maps in a few key states could determine control of Congress in 2022.How does it work?The census dictates how many seats in Congress each state will get. Mapmakers then work to ensure that a state’s districts all have roughly the same number of residents, to ensure equal representation in the House.Who draws the new maps?Each state has its own process. Eleven states leave the mapmaking to an outside panel. But most — 39 states — have state lawmakers draw the new maps for Congress.If state legislators can draw their own districts, won’t they be biased?Yes. Partisan mapmakers often move district lines — subtly or egregiously — to cluster voters in a way that advances a political goal. This is called gerrymandering.What is gerrymandering?It refers to the intentional distortion of districtBy: Michael Wines
Title: Republican Gerrymander of North Carolina Maps Is Upheld in Court
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/us/politics/north-carolina-redistricting.html
Published Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2022 00:32:40 +0000
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