Fayetteville Democrat criticizes NC Republicans for secret process to rob voters
Gerrymandering is a way for parties to win seats without anyone going through the trouble of voting.
Lucky us, we are witnessing the process play out as I speak, right here in North Carolina. The national political world is looking at us — and in a mainly negative way. It may not feel good, but it feels familiar.
More: Pitts: ‘Hey, Dad.’ Me, on NC gerrymandering, Sam on everything else
When extreme, computer-generated gerrymandering is underway here in the Old North State, one could say, it works like magic.
Example: For tens of thousands of North Carolinians, their ability to have any reasonable chance to elect the person or party they want just disappeared in a puff of smoke last Wednesday night, or will soon if the courts stand silent.
Wednesday is when the Republican majority in the state legislature began releasing maps with new districts for U.S. Congress and North Carolina House and Senate districts.
The mapmakers' goal was to draw district lines so as many Democratic lawmakers as possible are put out of their seats to be replaced with Republicans. That is especially true of the Congressional Districts.
For instance, if typical voting patterns hold in 2024, the delegation our state sends to the U.S. Congress could change from seven Republicans and seven Democrats to 11 Republicans and three Democrats.
This split would help national Republicans in their bid to keep the House but does nothing for fair representation for NC voters.
The U.S. Supreme Court's stance on gerrymandering so far has been: “Let the states handle that.” The N.C. Supreme Court, which comprises five Republicans and two Democrats, takes the stance, “Let the politicians handle that.”
So people who are pro-gerrymandering in North Carolina and several other states have taken all that as a green light to go hog wild — oblivious that politicians picking their voters vs. voters picking their politicians does not meet the strictest definition of “democracy.”
Hidden from the public
Republican legislators this time around slathered a new layer of secrecy on top of the gerry-shenanigans. They did their level best to make sure the public was neatly and completely cut out of the process. This made the GOP maps quite the big reveal on Wednesday night.
What made the secrecy possible this year points to even more problems for North Carolinians — if we believe it’s indeed problematic for our public servants to take our “right to know” and walk it to a shredder in a back room of the legislative building on West Jones Street in Raleigh.
A stinker of a provision
During intense, delayed budget negotiations, an anonymous someone late in the process — because that’s when you do such things — added a stinker of a provision that exempts state House representatives and senators from open records law. As the conservative Carolina Journal remarked, the change governing the power of “custodians” of records in section 27.9 of the 625-page budget “escaped notice by nearly everyone, except journalists.”
The change, which is now law, gives state legislators, as custodians of their records, the authority to conceal the records or even destroy them.
Some political analysts believe the provision was added, by an author unknown, to shield the gerrymandering sessions from the public.
The end result is that now, to find out what really happened during the map-making, and only after the fact, the public may have to file lawsuits which should unveil some of the backroom deals during discovery.
NC lawmakers have ‘every incentive’ to abuse the law
A worse, long-term outcome is that the provision is not only an open door to overuse and abuse but one with a flashing sign out front.
Brooks Fuller, of the N.C. Open Government Coalition, put it well in an interview with public radio station WUNC: “They have every incentive to leave you in the dark if there’s a record of something unflattering or that might not be politically advantageous to them.”
As they say on the United Methodist Church circuit: That’ll preach.
Because in practice, what Fuller says is exactly what will happen with some legislators.
State Sen. Val Applewhite and Reps. Marvin Lucas and Charles Smith, all Democrats in Cumberland County's delegation, said in separate interviews they opposed the exemption for public records. Other lawmakers in the delegation — Democratic Rep. Francis Jackson; Republican Sen. Tom McInnis and Republican Rep. Diane Wheatley — had not responded to emails sent to them and their legislative assistants, as of Wednesday.
Applewhite said on Thursday she had heard a reason for the exemption is to hide the redrawing process. But she said secrecy by Republicans, in the House in particular, goes well beyond mapmaking and has become the GOP way of doing business.
She cited Republican negotiations on casinos that held up the budget and the details of which she found out when the general public did. She also criticized Republicans for dropping the $30 billion state budget at 6 o'clock in the evening last month and setting debate the next day, with votes within two days.
Applewhite does not buy the reasons given for the public records exemption by Republican House Speaker Tim Moore, his claim that fulfilling citizens’ requests for records is too costly to taxpayers.
“I’ve never seen any proof of that, and I don’t believe it to be true,” she said.
She said the public records change is one of the reasons she joined her three fellow Cumberland Democrats in voting against the budget. The two Republicans voted for it.
Smith said: “By providing individual lawmakers with the discretion to decide what records are public and subject to disclosure upon request, we are enabling a legislative process that lacks accountability and transparency, which is concerning.”
He said he hoped the General Assembly would revisit the provision.
“If we don’t, I think that this provision will fuel greater public distrust in government," Smith said.
And it’s not like anyone has a problem these days with distrust in government.
Ha-ha, but not really
“Gerrymandering” — who would think such a goofy-sounding word could be so impactful to our state politics? A Boston newspaper in 1812 called it a "new species of monster." It is a monster in our state that keeps coming back more times than Godzilla or Jason from Friday the 13th.
Maybe it’s all kind of funny when you think about it, and if you squint real hard and dim the lights on your sense of freedom just a bit — and then laugh to keep from crying.
Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Fayetteville Democrat slams secrecy as NC GOP draws itself more power
