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What if I told you that during the 2012 elections in North Carolina, the majority of votes (51 percent of two-party votes) went to Democratic candidates? You might wonder why Republicans took nine of the state's 13 U.S. House seats or question how Republicans got a veto-proof majority in the state General Assembly. The answer has a funny-sounding name: gerrymandering. Its consequences for our state and our country are no laughing matter, though.
Every decade after the census is taken, our General Assembly redraws voting districts based on the census data. The requirements for this redistricting are as follows: ensure the districts represent roughly equal numbers of voters and are as geographically compact as possible, without accounting for race or political affiliation.
Gerrymandering happens when lawmakers forget those guidelines and draw districts specifically accounting for race and political affiliation, with no regard for geography, in order to ensure their party is favored in the next election.
The most common strategy is to jam voters likely to favor their opponents into a few throwaway districts where the other side will win overwhelming victories. By cramming all the opponents' supporters into a small number of districts, lawmakers can then spread their own supporters over a large number of districts.
This technique is known as "packing," and if you'd like a strong visual example of it, Google image search NC Congressional District 12, which is widely considered the most gerrymandered district in the country. It snakes along I-85 from Charlotte to Durham, dumping almost every metropolitan Democratic stronghold in the state into one district.
The Washington Post found that in addition to District 12, our state has two more congressional districts in the top 10 most gerrymandered nationally: Districts 1 and 4.
It's not just our congressional representation that's affected by corrupt redistricting. If you're wondering how in the world Republicans took control of the General Assembly again last election, despite pissing off every teacher, student and parent in the state, gerrymandering is your answer.
I remember encouraging a co-worker to vote in that election. She'd recently moved here from another state and wasn't sure which districts she lived in. She laughed hysterically when she pulled up the map and saw her state Senate district (41) ran along three borders of Mecklenburg County with no geographical rhyme or reason, putting her Matthews residence in the same district as Davidson, some 45 minutes away.
"Something is wrong with this picture," she said. No kidding.
At least she had someone to vote for. The state has been engineered so heavily to guarantee elections that in 2014, over 40 percent of state-level candidates ran unopposed in their districts.
And the worst part about this is according to state law, these districts can't be redrawn again until after the 2020 census. Even then, unless the redistricting process drastically changes or our entire state voting demographic suddenly mirrors U.S. Congressional District 12's, extremist Republicans will still be able to hold North Carolina hostage for decades to come.
There is one man with a plan, though. Jeff Jackson, Charlotte's social media-savvy superhero state senator, has released a highly sharable awareness cartoon about gerrymandering and he's circulating a petition along with it calling for independent redistricting.
He has also introduced a bill in the Senate to form an independent redistricting commission. An identical bill in the House has emerged, co-sponsored by several Republicans, including Rep. Charles Jeter of Huntersville. If passed, the law would set up an impartial nine-person commission to redraw electoral maps after the 2030 census. Of course by 2030, our state may have descended beyond hope into the dark coal ash and fracking chemical-filled waters our more extremist lawmakers keep floating it into.
I suggest you pay attention to all state lawmakers who vote against or try to kill these bills. They'll likely be the first ones to cite a mandate from N.C. voters when they pass unpopular and unjust laws, but the truth is, they'll pass whatever they want no matter how many people oppose them. Why? Because they know their job is safe as long as they can continue choosing their voters. They never want to see the day voters are given the power to choose them instead.
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