OUR VIEW
How’s this for timing?
On Friday of last week, a lawsuit was filed blocking approval of the new redistricting maps being drawn and approved by the North Carolina General Assembly. On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, said maps got their first votes in the House and Senate. On Thursday, seven days after the lawsuit was filed, those maps were expected to be finalized as we went to press.
Only in America, you say? Perhaps. Only in North Carolina? Nah, there’s more where this came from, and the where on this one is the North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People alongside the Southern Coalition for Justice.
And folks wonder why election integrity is being discussed, why the two major political parties continue to wage petty warfare over the most minute of details and thereby drive voters to register unaffiliated, and why four decades of litigation is not enough when it comes to drawing maps.
For context, know that the NAACP and the Southern Coalition say it was necessary so early because of the candidate filing period that opens Dec. 6 for the mid-term election cycle of 2022. Primaries are in the spring.
Still, we say the cart went before the horse. And if anything, a wise judge will throw out the case based on no more simple fact than there was nothing yet to file against — only drafts and expectations.
We do, of course, expect other lawsuits behind this one.
Democratic Sen. Dan Blue even mentioned this week that the committee putting the maps into position worked on issues he brought up. Mainly, they were places where two incumbents were going into the same district — an act commonly called double-bunking. It is not uncommon for this to happen coming off the decennial census.
More appealing than that to most — though probably not the never-satisfied NAACP and Southern Coalition — is the process lawmakers went through in drawing this set of maps. It was unprecedented, and followed like an answer sheet to the past decade’s court rulings.
In other words, all those lawsuits from Democrats and their supporters set up their rival Republicans to succeed.
Maybe. Who knows when it gets to kangaroo court? (See North Carolina, voter ID.)
Consider the measures. The public could watch in real time as the map drawing process took place. In drawing the maps, the committee of senators, for example, did not use racial or election data in their criteria — though, as pointed out here earlier, using race has now become a “damned if you, damned if you don’t” card in the deck.
Equal population was a driving factor, meaning the number of people in each legislative district within plus or minus 5 percent of the ideal district population. Contiguity and county groupings was done, only splitting voting districts as deemed absolutely necessary. There’s compactness of districts and municipal boundaries.
Only 15 of 100 counties are split. Only 11 of 552 municipalities are split — less than 2 percent! That’s remarkable compared to what we saw under Democrats’ rule of the chambers for 140 years.
This isn’t an easy process. There will always be bickering.
But filing a lawsuit before the maps even come out? On top of being upset for using race, and being upset for not using race as a criteria?
With no perfect solution, offering the best process to date should get praise and respect. And its outcome should be sufficient.
Even if we know it won’t be.