Editorial: Latest court order signals, again, need for non-partisan redistricting process

How long will North Carolinians have to suffer the hyper-partisan excesses of the current leadership of the General Assembly? If it weren’t so aggravating it would be old and tiresome. In 2018, we can only hope, the state’s voters let them know enough is enough.

In the 2016 election, slightly less than half of the state’s voters cast ballots for Democrats in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives. You’d think that Democrats should have won at least six of the state’s 13 seats in the U.S. House. Yet, by a not-so-strange circumstance, Republicans won 10 of those seats. It doesn’t take a panel of federal judges to know that’s wrong.

Leaders of the Republican majority in the legislature were unbridled in confessing their arrogance.

When the legislature passed the plan, state Rep. David Lewis, R-Harnett, said the maps were drawn to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats because it wasn’t “possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”

Wynn, in the thorough and reasoned order, said: “That is not a choice the Constitution allows legislative map-drawers to make. Rather, ‘the core principle of our republican government is that the voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.’”

Such extreme rhetoric, and unfounded personal accusation, is inappropriate. If Woodhouse can’t stick to the issues and facts at hand, he would do his side, not to mention the rest of the debate, a favor by keeping quiet.

Rest assured, the three-judge panel’s ruling isn’t going to be the last word. This marks the first time that a federal court has overturned congressional district maps because of partisan gerrymandering. Sooner, more likely than later, it will be addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Regardless of any predictions or eventual outcomes from higher courts, the over-the-top partisan gerrymandering is a big issue and will likely – AND SHOULD – loom large during this year’s congressional and legislative elections.

This latest action vividly demonstrates the need to develop and implement a non-partisan system – a redistricting commission -- to draw legislative, congressional and judicial district election lines. It needs to be a top issue in the priorities voters make in evaluating candidates.

Every candidate for Congress and the General Assembly needs take a stand, back non-partisan redistricting, to return free and fair elections to the state. Those who don't support a non-partisan system should be rejected at the ballot box.