NC Supreme Court again upholds state voting maps
Published December 19, 2015
by Matthew Burns, WRAL, December 18, 2015.
Almost a year to the day since the North Carolina Supreme Court first ruled in favor of congressional and legislative voting maps drawn by the Republican-led General Assembly in 2011, the court once again gave its blessing to the maps on Friday.
The U.S. Supreme Court in April ordered the state court to take a second look at the maps, which first passed judicial muster in the state on Dec. 19, 2014, in light of a decision on an Alabama redistricting case where the justices found lawmakers in that state relied too much on "mechanical" numerical percentages while drawing legislative districts in which blacks comprised a majority of the population.
Critics of the North Carolina maps say GOP lawmakers crammed as many black voters as possible into a few districts to make other districts easier to win for Republican candidates. They maintained that the ruling in the Alabama case mirrored issues with the boundaries drawn by the General Assembly and that two dozen legislative districts, along with the majority-black 1st and 12th congressional districts, should be struck down and the maps redrawn for the 2016 elections.
A divided North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that a special three-judge panel that reviewed the maps studied each legislative and congressional district individually and found that race was one of several factors, but not the predominant one, in drawing the maps.
"Where racial identification correlates highly with party affiliation, placing additional Democratic voters in districts that already vote Democratic is not forbidden as long as the motivation for doing so is not primarily racial," Associate Justice Paul Newby wrote for the majority. "Accordingly, we conclude that plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate improper packing or gerrymandering based upon race and that the districts are narrowly tailored to comply with section 2 (of the Voting Rights Act)."
But Associate Justice Cheri Beasley, in a dissent backed by justices Robin Hudson and Sam Ervin IV, said GOP map-makers resorted to the same mechanical techniques disallowed in Alabama by creating voting districts with a majority black voting population.
Former state Sen. Margaret Dickson, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said Friday's ruling would be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Today’s ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court reflects their continued misunderstanding of the facts in this case and the law," Dickson said in a statement. "As we have expected, the ultimate decision on these issues will have to be made by the Supreme Court of the United States."
Meanwhile, the chief architects of the redistricting plan said the appeals should end.
"We are pleased with the court’s decision, which validates these maps for a fourth time and once again makes clear the General Assembly protected the rights of voters and established voting boundaries that are fair and legal," Sen. , R-Mecklenburg, and Rep. , R-Harnett, said in a statement. "It’s time for these left-wing groups to stop wasting taxpayer money pursuing their frivolous and politically motivated appeals and finally accept the will of the voters."
December 19, 2015 at 9:33 am
Richard L Bunce says:
The never ending redistricting nonsense continues. The disparate impact argument which boils down to not enough Democratic Party candidates are elected therefore "African Americans" are disenfranchised is the slipperiest slope. Using Census "race" data which per the Federal government is a social construct based on self identification (can gender be far behind as a social construct based on self identification) is a flawed notion to begin with and to stack disparate impact based on political party representation is to double down on nonsense.
As long as humans are involved in redistricting they will use demographic data to gain political advantage. The only way out is an open source computer algorithm that uses no demographic data (other than each residents address by Census block) to create maps of the most equal numbers of voters in compact districts and possibly following existing County borders.
Here is an example without the County border constraint... http://rangevoting.org/GerryExec.html
December 19, 2015 at 9:47 am
Richard L Bunce says:
Here is another example... http://bdistricting.com/2010/NC_Congress/
December 19, 2015 at 11:41 am
Norm Kelly says:
If there's one thing that is well known, well documented, about liberals is that when their schemes are not accepted by voters, they force their schemes on residents through court action. Liberals have shown that they NEVER, EVER give up, but continue to file court cases until they can find a judge that agrees with them. Once the judge who was appointed by a liberal pol to start with decides that the liberal plaintiffs are correct, suddenly liberals decide that it's settled law. Until liberals win, it is NEVER settled law.
One other thing that liberals have proven is that they are THE ONLY arbiter of how many blacks in a district is the right number of blacks. When liberals pack blacks into a district so that a black or demon can be elected, they know EXACTLY what the right mix of blacks to non-blacks is. But if anyone who is NOT a liberal decides how many blacks is the right mix, the libs are beside themselves with hate and anger, directed at the non-lib for thinking they could do ANYTHING acceptable. Even though it was demon pols who fought tooth-and-nail to prevent the equal rights amendment from passing decades ago, suddenly libs want blacks to think that their schemes are designed to HELP blacks instead of HOLD blacks down. Seems there are some blacks who are defying the government education monopoly and are becoming educated on the deception of demon pols. Some of these educated blacks are changing their political registration to get away from demons, some of them are voting against demons, and many of them are becoming financially independent. Perhaps this could explain why lib pols fight so hard against alternatives to the government education monopoly! Two things scare the he!! out of libs & lib pols: educated citizenry especially blacks and independent voters. Even the court case that claims blacks are incapable of acquiring photo IDs to vote is based on the idea that blacks are incapable of taking care of themselves and can ONLY get through life with the support, help, aid, intrusion of lib pols in their lives! (of course, the other reason lib pols hate voter ID laws is because it could negatively impact their voter fraud methods of getting themselves elected. what else explains the district that had more votes than residents?)