Editorial: The people grant power to legislators, but is it ending in N.C.?

CBC Editorial: Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023; editorial #8883

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

It was a declaration of stark honesty rarely uttered in North Carolina political discourse.

“Electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats, said former state Rep. David Lewis, a Harnett County Republican. “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.”

Lewis’ candid confession in 2016 (before the 2020 census added another U.S. House seat for the state) remains the modus operandi for the legislative leadership habitual congressional and legislative redistricting. What used to be a once-a-decade ordeal has now become a ceaseless ordeal of gerrymandering, legislative contortions and courtroom bickering.

The latest examples were foisted on the public this week by legislative leaders who proposed new congressional, state Senate and state House districts that – regardless of how – manipulate mostly Black voters to give Republican candidates huge advantages.

While, for example, the congressional districts currently in use resulted in the election of 7 Republicans and 7 Democrats, the latest proposed maps would likely net the election of 11 Republicans and just 3 Democrats or 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats..

It takes some serious manipulation to do that in a state where Democrats account for 33% of the state’s 7.35 million voters, Republicans 30% and those who aren’t part of the two “major” political parties make up the remaining 37%.

At the polls, voters are nearly evenly split between picking Democratic and Republican candidates. In 2022, Republican Ted Budd won the U.S. Senate race with 50.5% of the vote. Two years earlier, Republican Donald Trump won the state with 50% of the vote to 49% for Democrat Joe Biden. That same election incumbent Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper was re-elected with 52% of the vote.

Senate leaders released a list of “criteria” that guided their gerrymandering efforts. Seventh on the list of eight criteria was “political considerations. They wouldn’t admit the truth -- a Republican advantage, as exaggerated as possible, was the primary objective just as was the rule Lewis declared seven years ago. “The General Assembly may consider partisan advantage. … To hold that legislators cannot take partisan interests into account when drawing district lines would essentially countermand the Framers’ decision to entrust districting to political entities.”

The founders of our Constitution didn’t declare a national census every 10 years, along with a requirement to redraw congressional districts, merely to affirm some partisan objective. To the contrary. It was to assure that as the nation grew and populations shifted the democracy they founded remained strong. The voices of the voters wouldn’t be muffled. The people would choose their leaders, not the other way around.

But North Carolina’s legislative leaders don’t see it that way. Blinded by their unquenchable thirst for power, they contend the Constitution gives them the power to pick their voters. It is a perverted notion that threatens the foundations of a truly representative government.

For voters, the proposed election maps will be a legislative dictate. There are NO plans to even give members of the public opportunities to address the specific plans when legislative committees meet on Monday to discuss and adopt them. House Redistricting Committee Chair Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, flatly declared no members of the public would speak at his committee meeting.

Voters in Wake, Cumberland, Buncombe, Guilford, Forsyth and Mecklenburg counties – who comprise more than a third of the state’s electorate -- are having their counties divided among two and three congressional districts. The splits particularly dilute the influence of minority voters and make it more difficult for the critical interests of these large counties to be addressed.

How much focus are representatives going to devote to parts of their districts that account for only a small portion of their voters.

It isn’t an exaggeration to worry that the current legislative leadership is perverting the electoral process to essentially enshrine their authority and make congressional and legislative elections hollow ordinations.

Just because there’s the partisan obedience to do something and majority to pass it -- that doesn’t make it right.

“We the people,” as the U.S. Constitution begins, isn’t a sappy sentiment. In the United States – even North Carolina -- the people don’t derive power from legislators, governors, presidents or kings.

“All political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole,” declares North Carolina’s Constitution.

There was no mention of that in criteria legislators set out to draw election districts. It should be the first and only criteria.

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