By Mildred Robertson
Well, as North Carolinians await an NC Supreme Court decision on litigation of recently gerrymandered redistricting maps they don’t know when they will get to cast their primary ballots. The Court has scheduled an expedited hearing on February 2 to hear challenges against the redrawn maps. North Carolina’s primary was already moved from March 8 to May 17 to accommodate ongoing litigation. Now Republicans want to move NC Primaries to June 7 in hopes of getting the Court’s approval to use gerrymandered maps in the 2022 mid-term elections. On January 19 the NC Senate will determine whether to schedule the Primary on June 7.
Plaintiffs presenting at the February 2 Supreme Court hearing oppose the redrawn district maps saying they are partisan gerrymandered, and therefore unconstitutional. While the trial court judges agree that the maps were drawn to give Republicans an advantage, they don’t see anything in the constitution that would prohibit it. They say partisanship is part of the political process and does not affect a person’s right to “cast” a ballot.
A major issue we face nationwide is the matter of voter nullification. It is not our desire just to have access to the ballot. We must also make sure that once a ballot is cast, it is counted. Republican legislatures across the nation have engaged in a series of efforts to not only manage who has access to the ballot box, but how each ballot is tallied once it is cast. North Carolina is among the states working to quash the voice of minorities and progressives across this nation through gerrymander voting districts.
So that is the challenge in North Carolina. Voters must wait to see whether the Court will allow their votes to be nullified by maps that don’t reflect their will. By packing and cracking minorities and progressives into several districts (either packing these voters into several large districts or separating and diluting the number of like-minded voters in a target district), Republicans can reduce the number of districts that might deliver seats to the Democratic Party. The GOP maps are expected to give North Carolina Republicans a 10-4 or 11-3 majority in House and strong majorities in the state’s 2022 election.
Republican Sen. Ralph Hise complains that the current schedule is an extremely short time frame that will cause unnecessary confusion and chaos. However, what is causing confusion and chaos is the Republican attempt to lessen the impact of minority and progressive voters. Note that Carolina Demography indicates that as July 2020 roughly 36% of North Carolinians are registered Democrats, with only 30 % registered Republican. The remainder of North Carolinians are unaffiliated or registered with another party.
The NC Court’s decision that the gerrymander districts do not impede access to the ballot box is just a clever way to ignore the fact that, while everyone may have the right to cast a ballot, the weight of each individual vote is skewed based on packing and cracking by the Republican majority that diminishes the impact of some ballots.
Let’s hope the North Carolina Supreme Court sees it differently.
