Gerrymandering by race fails a court test
Published August 15, 2016
Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, August 15, 2016.
The architects of the current maps of General Assembly districts billed them as complying with the law and the Constitution, saying they fully guaranteed that African-American candidates would be able to win seats.
They were right about that, as recent electoral experience has shown.
But what they didn't say was that the revised districts crammed way more African-American voters into those districts than was necessary for success - and thus took them out of adjoining districts, which made it easier for Republican candidates to win, and for the GOP to maintain its grip on the General Assembly.
House Districts 42 and 43 in Fayetteville - held by Democratic Reps. Marvin Lucas and Elmer Floyd - are indicative of what the judges were talking about. The judges wrote that the districts "contain 63.52 percent of the city of Fayetteville, but manage to grab 80.37 percent of Fayetteville's voting-age African-American population."
And the portion of Senate District 21 - represented by Democrat Ben Clark - that's in Cumberland County, "contains multiple appendages, which are so thin and oddly shaped that it is hard to see exactly where the district begins and ends," the ruling says. "Some portions of the district are so narrow that the district is nearly noncontiguous."
And by jamming as many of the state's black voters as possible into as few districts as possible, the General Assembly's mapmakers took gerrymandering one step over the line between what is legal and what isn't. U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the past have affirmed states' right to use redistricting for political purposes. But racial discrimination is still illegal, even if it's a byproduct of an otherwise legal political maneuver.
It's too close to the elections to order a redistricting now, so the illegal districts will be in place in November. But lawmakers will have to draw the maps again in the upcoming legislative session - unless the state appeals the decision and wins.
Either way, the fallout won't end anytime soon.
