As GOP draws new NC district maps, hope for a ‘dummymander’ | Opinion
Republican state lawmakers are drawing new election districts with the aim of locking themselves into the majority and padding the slim GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
With the new district maps expected to be unveiled within a week, voting rights advocates are bracing for an extreme gerrymander that can’t be stopped.
Redistricting bills are not subject to the governor’s veto. The U.S. Supreme Court has punted the issue, saying it’s up to state courts to rule on partisan gerrymanders. And the North Carolina Supreme Court, which previously rejected partisan gerrymanders, switched to a Republican majority in the last election. The new Republican justices have said redistricting is a matter for legislators, not judges.
What’s made the secret map drawing even more ominous is that Republican lawmakers slipped a provision into the state budget that exempts all communications regarding redistricting from being subject to a public records request. That will make it harder for opponents to challenge the maps that emerge.
“The seat belts are off,” said Sam Wang, a professor of neuroscience at Princeton University who serves as director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. “The court is not inclined to restrain a legislature of the same party and there’s no sunshine law.” Republican mapmakers, he said, “have a lot of latitude.”
Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program at New York University’s School of Law, said fair elections are about to be further undermined in North Carolina. “The outlook seems very dark. The only question is how dark it is,” he said.
It could be quite dark for Democrats. Anderson Clayton, the North Carolina Democratic Party chair, expects the new maps to produce election results that will flip the state’s congressional delegation from a 7-7 Democratic-Republican split to a 10-4, or even 11-3 Republican advantage. Meanwhile, new legislative maps will protect the Republican majority in the state House and Senate.
Those bracing for the impact of even more blatant gerrymandering have a cause for hope. It’s what Li and others who study redistricting call a “dummymander.”
The term refers to an overly aggressive gerrymander. It happens when a majority party’s redistricting uses thin favorable margins in an effort to gain more seats. An uptick in support for the opposing party can then result in a loss of seats for the majority party.
“You can have more seats, or you can have safer seats,” Li said. “If you draw 52 percent Republican districts, you can get swamped in a wave.”
Republican map drawers are aware of the risk of getting too greedy and creating too many vulnerable districts. But there are three factors that offset that caution.
One, they are too greedy. After more than a decade in power, Republican legislative leaders keep pushing the envelope of public tolerance. Last week, they happily overrode five of Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes in one day. Don’t count on this crowd to practice moderation.
Two, North Carolina is changing rapidly. Despite computer programs that enable precise gerrymandering, people are moving into and around North Carolina at a pace that is shifting the political landscape faster than voting data can keep up.
State Demographer Michael Cline reported last week that the pattern of population growth being largely confined to major urban counties has changed. Cline said that contrary to the previous decade when 51 of 100 counties lost population, 78 counties added population between July 1, 2021 and July 1, 2022.
Three, Donald Trump. No amount of political calculation can account for the unpredictable effects of the former president. If Trump is the Republican presidential nominee, there could be a surge among voters opposed to him. An anti-Trump wave could overturn districts where the margins favoring Republicans are not particularly high.
The best hope for democracy in North Carolina may be that Republicans overreach is their effort to subvert it.
Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com
