Campaign Watch: Drawing New Legislative Districts
Bam-bam-bam. Bam? In a rapid-fire series of events last week, the conflict over North Carolina’s grievously gerrymandered state legislative districts went from Supreme Court to Governor to General Assembly. And now it’s headed back to—guess who?—the courts. Here’s the scorecard on what happened, where it’s headed next, and what’s at stake for our state.
First, the U.S. Supreme Court dropped the other shoe on state legislative redistricting with a bang early last week. In a unanimous decision, the Court confirmed that our state’s legislative maps are an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and must be redrawn. (The court sent back down for further deliberation the question of whether a special election should be held prior to November 2018, and if so when.)
Armed with two U.S. Supreme Court orders in two weeks, Gov. Roy Cooper took aggressive action to force the issue. He used his state constitutional authority to call a special session of the General Assembly to draw new maps. According to Cooper, the session was to start last Thursday and run for 14 days, concurrently with the ongoing regular legislative session in progress now. This was Cooper’s way of seeking to force the General Assembly to act sooner rather than later.
The partisan leadership of the NC General Assembly reacted in predictable fashion, by challenging the legitimacy of the call to special session. Instead of going about the Court-ordered redrawing of maps in an orderly and timely fashion, Republican legislative leaders orchestrated an internal parliamentary ruling that Cooper’s call for a special session was not constitutional. In other words, the legislators are refusing to act and challenging both Cooper and the courts to make them.
Both the Governor and the citizen plaintiffs in the anti-gerrymandering lawsuits are working to oblige. Motions have already been filed in the most recent case asking the court to order new district maps drawn by June 22.
Whichever court acts first (NC Supreme Court or US District Court), the most interesting questions are these:
1) Will the courts direct another re-write by the legislature, or take that task into their own hands? (Or at least set out when and how they may find their patience exhausted and do so.)
2) What timetable for mapping and elections will be ordered? (The citizen plaintiffs are still asking for a 2017 special election.)
We hesitate to predict. In any case, we will say that the ability of concerned citizens to reassert a fair chance at winning good state policy on public health and the environment depends on the outcome. Citizens can’t effectively demand change unless we can back up that demand by changing our elected representatives when necessary. And we can’t win those electoral challenges unless we have fair and competitive districts in which to run better candidates.
It’s past time for North Carolina voters to have the chance to choose our legislators in fair and competitive district elections again.
