New districts; same old political manipulation
Published August 24, 2017
Editorial by Wilmington Star-News, August 24, 2017.
Federal courts ruled that many of North Carolina’s legislative districts were racially gerrymandered and ordered the legislators to redraw them.
Well, the proposed maps are finally out. It’s clear, this time, that race was not a major concern on the Honorables’ minds -- incumbency protection was.
No big changes were seen in Southeastern North Carolina. Rep. Chris Millis of Pender County lost his Onslow County precincts and was handed a chunk of southern Columbus County, instead.
Otherwise, the rest of the local delegation wound up pretty much with their old districts.
In the House, only eight of the 120 legislators were “double-bunked,” i.e, plopped in a new district with another incumbent. Results in the Senate were similar.
That means that 112 House members and 42 state senators essentially have tailor-made districts.
Voting analysts watching the results say that most of these districts will lean Republican, even though North Carolina as a whole is very balanced. As of Aug. 19, of the state’s 6,777,881 registered voters, 2,640,045 are Democrats; 2,054,423 are Republicans; and 2,050,096 are unaffiliated.
If adopted, these districts all but guarantee that the GOP will continue to have veto-proof majorities in both houses of the General Assembly
But this is what happens when politicians get to draw their own districts.
The Honorables could have tried any number of plans for independent, non-partisan redistricting. The Duke University experiment -- having a bipartisan panel of retired judges draw district maps -- worked out pretty well.
Instead of being statesmen, though, the Republican majority is sticking with dirty politics. Very limited time was scheduled for public comment on these redistricting plans, and Democratic members of the General Assembly were given no input. When it comes to establishing the election districts at the very heart of our representative government, the party in control doesn’t care what the people think.
We can only hope that an appeals judge will flush this stink and force the Honorables to draw districts that are at least not so blatantly partisan. They certainly are not going to do it on their own.
