Legislators rebuked yet again
Published August 15, 2016
Editorial by Charlotte Observer, August 14, 2016.
Shortly after Republicans took control of the General Assembly in the 2010 elections, Sen. Bob Rucho of Mecklenburg County was put in charge of redrawing legislative and congressional districts.
“My goal is to draw fair and legal districts,” he told the Observer editorial board.
Actually, their record is worse than that, when you consider the trouble so many of their other laws have run into in the courts, from redistricting to voter ID to marriage equality.
The panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it was too late to avoid using these legislative districts this November. So legislators will be elected from what turned out to be illegally racially gerrymandered districts for the third time in six years.
Democrats rigged the districts when they were in charge too. But with Republicans seemingly so concerned about the integrity of voting, is that a defense they can take pride in invoking?
Legislators should learn from their continual losses in the courts. With the Supreme Court divided 4-4, a Donald Trump presidency is probably the only way their unconstitutional work will survive judicial inspection.
August 15, 2016 at 10:48 am
Richard L Bunce says:
The USSC will have to straighten out this mess created by themselves and the Federal Appeals Court with regard to legal opinions on voting in interpreting the the 14th and 15th Amendments of the US Constitution and the CRA. It seems the measure is becoming there is a disparate impact if not enough Democratic Party candidates are elected.
The NC Legislature in redrawing the Congressional Districts earlier this year are heading down the right track... just not far enough. They eliminated race demographic data from the redistricting process. Now they should take this opportunity to eliminate all demographic data from the redistricting process except resident location by Census Block. Here is an example.
http://bdistricting.com/2010/
August 15, 2016 at 2:19 pm
Bruce Stanley says:
That sure seems logical, but the Black Caucus may lose a member, so isn't that discriminatory also and thus makes you a racist for suggesting it?
August 19, 2016 at 11:01 am
Richard L Bunce says:
There is an increasingly stringent purity test for being a non racist... interesting since in the last several decades it is biologically clear that there are no races in our species hence the sociologists creation of race as a social construct based on self identification. I self identify as African American since all homo sapiens can trace their ancestry to the first homo sapiens that evolved on what we now call the African continent and I have both a State issued and hospital issued birth certificate the per the US Constitution qualifies me to be an American. Should the Federal government include a race question on the 2020 Census I encourage every homo sapien responding to select African American and then the 2020 release of Census data where 100% of US residents are African American will quickly put an end to this nonsense.
August 15, 2016 at 10:53 am
Bruce Stanley says:
Wish the Federal Courts would define what they will accept and will not accept. Judges are basically telling legislators "We'll know it (what's fair) when we see it".
