To borrow from an esteemed colleague, “We’ve lost our damned minds.”
Maps drawn every 10 years following the census to set boundaries for voting districts are the responsibility of the General Assembly. Those 170 women and men represent the people, voted in every two years. Four justices on the state Supreme Court, all Democrats, stepped in Friday to create a majority on the bench, and not only rejected the maps ready to go through 2030 but demanded their courtroom be rule-maker on whether a new set drawn by the lawmakers shall be deemed fair.
Voter suppression has never been clearer and more evident.
“Tonight,” said Amy Cooke, the chief executive officer of the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, “the Democrat justices on the North Carolina Supreme Court lived up to their nickname: ‘the usurper four.’ They sided with the discredited Marc Elias, Eric Holder, and well-funded special-interest groups against North Carolina voters. They willingly violated the sacrosanct principle of separation of powers in order to advance their party’s agenda. If you want to know what actual voter suppression looks like, these four justices are the face of it. They usurped the will of millions of North Carolina voters in order to help their friends. We can only assume they have a very high threshold for shame.”
They have no shame at all, really.
In the news industry, late in the day on a Friday is prime time for “news dumps” that avoid the glare of a microscope. They even checked that box, too.
Justices Robin Hudson, Anita Earls, Michael Morgan and Sam Ervin IV should be spotlighted now, and when their next reelection cycle arrives. That Earls is linked to White House consideration for the U.S. Supreme Court is regrettable at best, laughable at worst, and a reflection of the sanity level inside the Beltway.
Chief Justice Paul Newby, writing in dissent, quotes the constitution saying the legislative, executive and supreme judicial powers of the state government “shall be forever separate and distinct from each other.” Redistricting is committed to the General Assembly, and the limited exceptions including involvement of litigation just have not been met.
The four judges offered no guidance for their instruction of “acceptable partisanship analysis”; tells the General Assembly to explain what data they’re going to use in the redraw but offer nothing for what data or methods are acceptable; and allows other groups to submit alternate plans but doesn’t mandate the same disclosures.
The quartet of judges mandates a political-science-based approach, when in fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has already rejected that. Simply put, nobody can predict voters. The highest court in the land reasons many voters split their tickets, never register with a political party, and vote for candidates from both major parties at different points during their lifetime.
Today’s North Carolina is an excellent example. The parties of Democrats and Republicans are each losing registered voters while the unaffiliated group is trending strong in growth. Through Friday, unaffiliateds are just more than 14,000 away from being our state’s largest group.
Hudson, Earls, Morgan and Ervin, rather than allowing the trial court to manage details of remand as is customary, put the seven state Supreme Court justices in control of the process.
These four judges have crushed North Carolinians. All for the sake of the Democrat Party. The same one whose players — like Gov. Roy Cooper, and Attorney General Josh Stein — by their actions or lack thereof suppressed the will of the people on voter ID at the polls.
More than 70 lawyers are involved in this latest debacle.
Keep in mind, we’re supposed to feel like we get an honest shake when we go to vote.
Lost our damned minds, indeed.