“We’re pros in thwarting democracy here,” a Tar Heel writes.
I’m not certain North Carolina has become the most anti-democratic state in the union. But over the past dozen years, we’ve surely joined the hunt. Our General Assembly has enacted, according to reviewing judges, among the largest, most pervasive racial gerrymanders ever presented to a federal court. Lawmakers used “surgical precision” to deny Black Tar Heels the right to vote. They created the most bald-faced and unrepentant political gerrymanders seen in modern America.
The rulings were handed down, and timed, in a display designed to connote the announcement of sea change. A new sheriff was in town. All former pretenders should now give way. No longer would the state courts intervene to protect voting rights. No longer would they fret over the intentional distortion of the political process. No longer, even more broadly, would the justices trouble the Republican General Assembly to govern within the lines.
Next, the justices used the same unprecedented rehearing maneuver to do in the earlier state Supreme Court voter ID decision. This time, they simply cast aside trial court and prior Supreme Court factual determinations that a new law implementing a voter identification requirement was meant to handicap black voters. Only months before, the high court had concluded that the provisions of S.B. 824 “were formulated with an impermissible intent to discriminate against African Americans.
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