Since 2011, North Carolina has housed some of the most radically gerrymandered electoral districts in our nation. Despite being a purple state, well-split between Republican and Democratic voters, Republicans hold super-majorities in both the House and Senate. Gerrymandered house and senate seats have, then, allowed our state to elect a Democratic governor in a state-wide race where house and senate districts played no effect, but failed to elect more than a handful of Democrats in our state legislature.
Gerrymandering, the act of a political party manipulating the lines of an electoral district to favor themselves, has long been illegal if the districts are drawn in a way that discriminates against a certain race, but has been held constitutional when one party uses the 10-year, mandated redrawing of electoral constituency to specifically disenfranchise the voters of the other party. In June of this year, the US Supreme Court found that North Carolina’s district lines were drawn with racial intentions and struck them down. In all, 28 districts in our state were found by the Supreme Court to have been drawn in a way that diluted the power of black voters.
Since that ruling, our state legislature has gone back to the drawing board and released their new maps last week. While these new maps will still have to be checked by the courts for discrimination against a race, it is clear today that this new batch of maps clearly discriminate against the Democratic Party. Republicans in the state have, at times, openly admitted to drawing the lines with partisan intentions. Indeed, Republicans used past election results to draw our state’s electoral maps to dilute the Democratic Party’s vote as much as possible.
Doing so goes against the principle of “one person, one vote,” giving some voters in our state more power and more of a voice than others. However, to this day, the US Supreme Court has yet to find partisan gerrymanders unconstitutional and, so, politicians across the country, left and right and just like ours in North Carolina, are free to draw electoral districts in a way that dilutes the other party’s votes in a debilitating way.
Partisan gerrymandering has a wide range of negative results. Partisan gerrymanders indoctrinate a lack of compromise into our government, creating a government that serves only a select few voters (those who haven’t been gerrymandered against) and leading to a break-up of democracy. Voters should be able to choose their politicians, not as is the case in North Carolina and many other states across the nation, politicians choosing their voters.
And while state legislatures will never vote to end partisan gerrymandering, since gerrymandering always helps the party that is in power, the US Supreme Court needs to rule partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional. This coming fall, the Supreme Court can do just that when it hears a Wisconsin case arguing that partisan gerrymandering violates the constitutionally protected case of one person, one vote. The stakes cannot be higher.
Come October, the court can have the ability to restore political power back to the hands of the voters themselves and remove the grip hold political parties have held over Americans by way of gerrymandering. Outlawing partisan gerrymanders can return North Carolina and our government back to its right place. To a place where our politicians work for all North Carolinians, left and right, not just a select few.
