Sadly, some politicians who cannot get what they want through democracy look for ways to manipulate the system in their favor, carrying out shameless maneuvers overflowing with ambition but lacking in morality. This happened at the end of April when the new North Carolina Supreme Court dealt two treacherous blows to our democracy.
The recently inaugurated state Supreme Court, now with a conservative majority, made two decisions that will affect the way elections are conducted in North Carolina. In effect, it approved gerrymandering, and it upheld the requirement of presenting a photo ID when voting.
Partisan gerrymandering of electoral districts
On April 28, the state’s highest court threw out a previous ruling that had declared the gerrymandered redistricting maps illegal. To better understand this ruling, let’s look at a little history.
Electoral districts are geographic areas that an elected position covers, for example, representatives in the state General Assembly. Each district is assigned different postal addresses. This often determines the direction of voting in these districts since many tend to cluster together members of one or more communities.
In 2016, Republican legislators redrew districts to favor their party’s candidates. They used maps that defied all geographic logic and that divided urban centers (with a Democratic leaning) so that they would have less weight when electing representatives.
What is North Carolina's integrity score?
This brash partisan manipulation generated various criticisms. For example, professor Andrew Reynolds, a member of the Electoral Integrity Project, an initiative at the University of Sydney and Harvard Universities that seeks to quantify election integrity in 164 countries, noted that North Carolina’s electoral integrity score was as low as the scores from Cuba, Indonesia, and Sierra Leone.
It wasn’t long before there were lawsuits challenging the electoral maps. A court ordered the maps to be redrawn, but the new maps had the same problems. On September 3, 2019, a panel of judges ruled that the new state legislative maps were severely gerrymandered to benefit Republican candidates, in violation of the state Constitution, and that they must once again be redrawn.
The recent ruling by the new state Supreme Court cancels all the previous process and, effectively means that state legislators will have greater leeway in drawing the boundaries of General Assembly districts over the next decade.
The Return of Voter IDs
Although cases of voter fraud are extremely rare in North Carolina, many politicians try to sell the idea that thousands of people vote illegally-- of course, without presenting evidence. This motivated some legislators to propose requiring voters to present an identification document at the polls.
What is the problem with presenting identification? Historically, this type of requirement has been put in place to restrict voting access for minorities and poor people.
Today, the new court upheld the requirement to present a photo ID when voting, a measure that the previous Supreme Court had annulled on the grounds that it was based on racial prejudice.
No matter what political party you come from, when a group in power relies on manipulation and opportunism to achieve their goals, they are brazenly attacking our democracy.