Charlotte Observer/McClatchy: Republicans get a win in an NC gerrymandering lawsuit, with two more cases looming

RALEIGH, N.C. — The 2022 elections are moving ahead as scheduled — so far — after a Wake County judge on Tuesday refused to grant the requests of a voting rights group that wanted to delay the March 8 primary.

The group was seeking to push the primary back to May, to give lawmakers time to redraw the maps they just passed and which will determine the political districts for North Carolina’s 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives as well as the 170 seats in the state House and Senate. It also wanted to push back candidate filing for the elections, which begins on Monday and lasts through much of December.

The lawsuit didn’t challenge the maps themselves as unconstitutional, just the process and rules Republicans used while drawing the maps. And since the maps are still law and have not been ordered to be redrawn, Superior Court Judge Graham Shirley said there was no basis to delay the elections for a redraw. …

Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause North Carolina — which successfully sued over gerrymandering in 2019 and forced the maps to be redrawn before the 2020 elections — was in court watching the proceedings since Common Cause was a part of this lawsuit too.

He said the group hasn’t decided if they’ll also join other lawsuits but he supports them, since he doesn’t want a repeat of last decade — when the 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 elections were all held using maps that were later found to be unconstitutional.

“I think that’s dreadful,” Phillips said. “I think when you have, as we saw last decade, laws and policies passed that aren’t really reflective of who we are in North Carolina, I think it contributes to the lack of trust and confidence that people have in our elections.”