Campaign Watch: Full Steam Ahead
Three court decisions last week cleared up the remaining questions about North Carolina’s ballot content this fall.
First, the federal court panel which had once again found North Carolina’s congressional districts to be unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders said that elections could go ahead anyway. The court agreed with both plaintiffs and defendants, who said that it was too late to order new districts to take effect for this year’s elections. Plaintiffs were concerned that the late confusion could depress turnout, hurting the chance that even some of the gerrymandered districts could be “in play” this year.
The plaintiffs (Democrats and public interest groups) conceded that point with frustration, since the same court had come to the same conclusion earlier this year. At that point, there was enough time to redraw districts and hold an election based on a map that was not outrageously politically gerrymandered. However, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the order to do so, and by the time it sent the case back to the lower court, the primaries had been held and the general election balloting was close to beginning. This followed the pattern of frustrating back-and-forth rulings which have continued since the last census year of 2010.
While the 2018 congressional elections will be held under the existing map, there remains the possibility that a new map will be ordered in time to go into effect prior to the 2020 voting, if the U.S. Supreme Court does not overrule the lower court once again.
In the other two decisions, the N.C. Supreme Court declined two requests to block some of the proposed state constitutional amendments from the ballot. Both Gov. Roy Cooper and two public advocacy groups (Clean Air Carolina and the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP) asked the court to keep some amendments off the final ballot because of deceptively worded ballot descriptions. The citizen groups went further, arguing that the current legislature was illegally constituted, and therefore did not have the right to initiate constitutional changes.
Other citizen advocacy groups, including NCLCV, have joined in opposing the proposed amendments which would transfer power from the governor’s office to the legislature to appoint replacement judges and control the membership of the state elections board. In the view of environmental quality advocates, the legislature has proven itself far too anxious to gut environmental protections. Concentrating even more power in its hands would only remove important existing checks on those abuses.
One matter is now clear: the choices in this year’s critical election contests are now set. It’s time to hold both incumbents and new candidates accountable for their environmental stances. Early voting is scheduled to begin on October 17.
