Judicial Watch: Court Will Appoint Independent Expert to Examine Gerrymandered Legislative Maps
A neutral expert will examine North Carolina’s terribly gerrymandered state legislative election maps—and possibly draw new districts for 2018.
The three-judge federal District Court panel reviewing North Carolina’s unconstitutional state legislative maps issued a major decision last week. The panel said that a court-appointed expert — a “special master” — will be named to conduct an independent review of whether the lines as redrawn by the General Assembly itself continue to violate U.S. Constitutional anti-discrimination requirements. If the expert finds that to be the case — as essentially all the informed observers of the case expect — then the Court will issue further orders for another redrawing of district lines, potentially by the Court itself as advised by that expert.
In the words of Gov. Roy Cooper’s spokesperson Ford Porter, “Legislative leaders had an opportunity to fix their unconstitutional legislative maps. Instead they dragged their feet, held sham hearings, and passed new maps intended to rig elections in their favor. Today’s announcement that the court has appointed a Special Master who could redraw legislative districts is a positive step to ensuring fair elections in North Carolina.”
This is a big deal for conservationist impact on public policy in North Carolina. Currently, our ability to impact the General Assembly is limited by how few competitive seats are on the campaign map. No matter who they are, politically elected officials are far more likely to listen to voices beyond their personal base of support when they could face a tough re-election contest for failing to do so. And right now, we don’t have enough members of the North Carolina state legislature who consider public health and a clean environment to be critical to their base of support. With more competitive legislative districts, we can change both factors.
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