Opinion: Gerrymandering is destroying North Carolina politics
I’m new to local politics, and just found my way into the fray this summer via an internship with North Carolina State House Rep. Caleb Rudow. He gave me the task of preparing for and predicting how the Republicans would redraw the maps in the N.C. House.
After the Republican-dominated N.C. State Supreme court ruled 5-2 that partisan gerrymandering arguments are not subject to the court of law earlier this year, Republicans had free rein to redraw and gerrymander the voting maps behind closed doors.
I had fun with my role, drawing wild, severely gerrymandered map projections that, as a 20-year-old, naive, blindly optimistic college kid, I never really expected to be put into practice. Then, Republicans surgically sliced North Carolina into 120 misshapen pieces with an audacity equal only to my own game-like attempts. I was genuinely shocked at the egregious infringement of justice from so called “civil servants.”
For the past 20 years, North Carolina has been as purple a state as any. We believed Obama’s “Yes we can!” in 2008, but also hopped on the Trump Train in 2016. We’ve had stints with both Democratic and Republican governors. In theory, the state legislature should represent the varying views of North Carolina’s constituents and swing narrowly between slight blue and red majorities. Instead, the North Carolina statehouse has a 72-48 Republican supermajority with the power to override Governor Roy Cooper’s vetoes, a supermajority that could very possibly survive the 2024 elections. The seats should, proportionally speaking, sit closer to 60-60 or 59-61. How, then, do Republicans steal enough seats to give them almost unbridled legislative power? Turns out elections are pretty easy when you make the rules.
The new statehouse map utilizes classic Republican “pack and crack” gerrymandering techniques. Take Buncombe County, a solid blue county of about 270,000 with Asheville in the center. Buncombe County previously featured three mild to moderately blue districts with the center left representatives to match. Under the new maps, district 116 is “packed” with the Democrats of Asheville and based on previous voting records, should go blue by a whopping margin of 50 to 55 percentage points. Yet just above it now stands right leaning district 114, which conveniently excludes parts of the highly blue areas of north Asheville and makes a horseshoe shape around the rural outskirts of Buncombe County. This gerrymandering is not exclusive to Buncombe County; counties and cities have been chopped up statewide, from Charlotte to Greensboro to Cumberland County.
Gerrymandering isn’t just unfair, but has real, statewide consequences. It increases polarization, creates a governing body that is unrepresentative of its constituents, and creates laws that are not supported by the majority of North Carolinians. The new statehouse map protects a Republican supermajority in the house which has overridden the Governor’s veto in order to ban abortion at 12 weeks, bully the LGBTQ+ community in their culture war, and funnel money away from our public schools. With the protection of this supermajority, the N.C. House will continue to churn out polarizing, unpopular laws. Instead of bipartisan cross-aisle governing, North Carolina will be left with a radical blue minority and a far-right Republican supermajority in the statehouse. With moderates literally drawn out of their positions, North Carolina is left with a hole in the political center that often helps get important policies passed. Compromises will falter and the extreme outskirts of each party will swell.
I am a new voter, but not a new citizen of North Carolina. I grew up proud of my state, of the skyscrapers in Charlotte and the sweet potatoes in Sampson County. I am proud that we have fierce liberal students in Durham and Raleigh next to cautiously conservative farmers in Johnston County. I am perhaps most proud that we sometimes vote red, and sometimes vote blue. It shows that North Carolina self-reflects every year before it decides who should represent its interests. Gerrymandering destroys this self-reflection. It artificially tilts the intricate balance of North Carolina’s political atmosphere, effectively robbing the power of the vote itself. Gerrymandering is antithetical to democracy, justice and equality. It polarizes a politically diverse state desperately in need of depolarization while swaying the government body and ensuing laws towards the far right, away from the will of the voters.
More: Opinion: Gerrymandering promotes extremism in elected officials in 'safe' districts
More: Opinion: Partisan gerrymandering in NC congressional maps give advantage to Republicans
Jake Bernstein is a 20 year old Yale student, a history major with a deep interest in politics, a devout Boston sports fan with a dog named Fenway, and a proud citizen of Asheville.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: NC gerrymandering is unfair and has statewide consequences
