Legal battles over partisan and racial gerrymandering “are as North Carolina as barbecue, tobacco fields and hot, humid summer days,” says the executive director of the state Common Cause chapter.
Washington Post: Supreme Court to consider fundamental change in elections authority
12.6.2022 / By Robert Barnes
Washington Post: Supreme Court to consider fundamental change in elections authority
Advanced by North Carolina’s Republican legislative leaders, the “independent state legislature theory” could negate a governor’s veto, end the oversight of courts enforcing the state constitution and cast doubt on citizen-implemented initiatives aimed at taking partisan politics out of map-drawing and election rules. …
It is fitting that the high-stakes battle over elections authority comes from North Carolina. It is a purple state, with a legislature controlled by Republicans, a Democratic governor and attorney general and a partisan, elected state Supreme Court that in November flipped to the GOP. Trump won 50 percent of the vote in 2020, compared with 49 percent for Joe Biden.
North Carolina Common Cause Executive Director Bob Phillips said there has not been an election since 1971 in which the state’s redistricting plans have not been challenged.
“In the decade after the 2010 redistricting cycle , every single legislative and congressional election was run on maps that the courts eventually ruled unconstitutional,” he said in a briefing for reporters. “I’m not sure there are many states, if any, that can make that claim.”
The court, which at the time had a Democratic majority, concluded the maps “are unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt under the free elections clause, the equal protection clause, the free speech clause, and the freedom of assembly clause of the North Carolina Constitution.”
Analysts said the map created by Republican legislators after the 2020 Census would have given the GOP an edge in 10 of 14 congressional districts.
Under a new map imposed just for the 2022 election, the congressional delegation is split 7 to 7.
“It’s almost unfathomable to imagine what will be imposed on North Carolina citizens if our state courts are no longer a place where a bad congressional map can be challenged,” Phillips said.