Editorial: Make redistricting public, fair and nonpartisan

CBC Editorial: Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023; editorial #8880

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

There is nothing that requires North Carolina’s General Assembly to draw new election district lines.

The congressional district lines used in 2022 are perfectly workable and can just be adopted for continued use. The current legislative district lines are plenty gerrymandered to give the current leadership a veto-proof majority so why wouldn’t they want to just adopt those as well?

So why are state legislative leaders in a fever to come up with new congressional and legislative districts just two years after the current ones were imposed?

They don’t say much about why. They’re taking drastic steps to make sure their motives, machinations, plans and communications are hidden from voters and all the people they represent. Stuck deep inside the 1,400 pages of the state budget legislation are provisions exempting legislators’ records from public disclosure – the same laws that apply to other state and local government agencies. Not only that, legislative leaders gave themselves new powers to search and seize documents from individuals, state agencies and private contracts.

These provisions were added without specific public notice, committee hearings or floor debate normally accompanying the consideration and passage of such substantial changes in state law. The changes have drawn near universal condemnation.

The provisions “permit the General Assembly to operate in secrecy, shielded from public view and accountability to those whom the members of the Assembly were elected to serve,” the state Broadcasters Association said in an unheeded letter to legislative leaders the day before the budget bill was passed.

The subterfuge and silence display the legislators’ motives to keep their plotting secret. House Speaker Tim Moore’s lame and disingenuous excuse is that public records requests are harassing burdens that cost the taxpayers. Moore doesn’t seem to extend the same concern to other state and local agencies that truly have become the focus of harassment via public records requests – such as state and local Boards of Elections confronting unsubstantiated election result deniers and local school boards dealing with extremist ideological book-banners.

Further, taxpayers already OWN the documents and records they’ve paid to create. They don’t belong to legislators at all and complying with requests for records is simply giving those who own them their due.

So, the current legislative session will soon unnecessarily embark on a new round of drawing congressional and legislative election districts.

The veto-proof Republican majorities in the state House and state Senate aren’t lopsided enough to their suiting. Further – probably more significantly – they are infuriated they must suffer with the current 7-Democrats and 7 Republicans split in the state’s 14-member U.S. House of Representatives delegation.

The need to redraw the districts, to give Republicans more seats and Democrats less, has become even more urgent amid the dysfunction that now grips the U.S. House (thanks, in no small part to Republican N.C. Rep. Dan Bishop). The narrow GOP majority in Washington is under great threat.

If North Carolina can rejigger its congressional districts to diminish the number of Democrats and increase the Republicans it won’t just satisfy some intramural political game in North Carolina but could be critical to desperate national GOP efforts to hold its narrow majority after the next election.

Republicans, long ago, revealed the true motives concerning the continuous efforts at drawing election district lines. It has nothing to do with assuring every voter has a voice in Washington or Raleigh – but making sure GOP voices drown out those of all other voters.

“I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats,” said former state Rep. David Lewis, R-Harnett County.

In a 2019 column in The Atlantic Magazine, Lewis and state Sen. Ralph Hise confessed their goals in drawing elections lines are all about partisan advantage, regardless of the impact on citizens including Black voters when done under the guise of partisanship.

Why would rigging election districts, under the guise of “partisanship” be necessary for Republicans?

Let the facts do the talking:

When it comes to voter registration, Republicans make up a mere 29% of the state’s 7.35 million voters. Also among the state’s 4.8 million white voters, Republicans account for 41% while Democrats, unaffiliated and other voters make up the majority – 59%.

To concoct a Republican majority out of an electorate where Republicans are a distinct minority takes creative manipulation – commonly known as gerrymandering.

So, to cover up their machinations and motives, the leaders of the legislature gave themselves the power to hide their work, their communications and unscrupulous actions from the people they represent.

Rather than spending their time cooking the election results, legislators would be more productive developing nonpartisan criteria for drawing election districts that work to keep geographic areas of common socio-political interests together. At a minimum the legislature should hold to both the word and spirit of the nonpartisan redistricting criteria it adopted in 2021.

The process and results of drawing maps – including all background information, data and consultants’ advice – should be done in public view and available as a matter of public record.

Before maps are voted upon, there should be public hearings throughout the state – at least in each of the state’s 14 congressional districts – on the proposed congressional and legislative redistricting plans.

Contrary to the behavior of North Carolina’s legislative leaders, elections aren’t the private providence of the elected. They are the way the citizens grant their legislators the privilege of representing them.

Our legislators need to make good on state Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby’s oft repeated admonition that legislators are “closest to the people and most accountable.” It is no empty platitude and if legislators fail to live up to it, when the opportunity arises we expect Newby to hold them to it.

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