North Carolina 2020 Redistricting

[Virginiá]

https://mobile.twitter.com/macrotargeting/status/1451234304441430019

[Virginiá]

https://mobile.twitter.com/DallasWoodhouse/status/1451239387577081859

Note this isn't about redistricting  but rather the court trying to declare the state constitution unconstitutional .

Not hard to see them deploying that against Democrats for redistricting as well. I don't really think forcing the removal of two Rep. justices for potential conflicts of interest on this is worth the potential drama it would cause (or if it's justified, but that is another conversation), but if that is where the NCGOP is actually at, I could see them using it to sideline even a single justice until after 2022's elections, so any attempt to stop their gerrymander would be dead in the water unless Democrats later hold all their seats, which might not even matter if Republicans win veto-proof majorities in the legislature off of their maps and can then go hog-wild.

[Virginiá]

Technically the court can do whatever they want. The leg just has a realistic nuclear option.

Lol imagined getting impeach for using special master to draw a map.

This is where our system really starts to fail. There are no repercussions for lawmakers who do this, even though their motives and actions are brazenly corrupt.

[Virginiá]

the repercussions are elections, if voters see no fault with the legislators' actions then so be it

Which is a major reason behind gerrymandering - politicians insulating themselves from repercussions by drawing as many friendly districts as possible using their existing power as legislators.

Any system is going to rely on trust that lawmakers will do things in good faith, but how much is a variable you can adjust for with various forms of government and other checks and balances.

[Virginiá]

The Atlas Defense

[Virginiá]

I never want to hear again how the gop has a systemic bias in its favor

How is it not true for the Senate and currently the EC? It's starting to even out for the House due to changes in party coalitions and redistricting "wins," but as far as the Senate goes, it is still very much a major factor.

The systemic bias issue was never solely about gerrymandering and I'm pretty sure few if any argued as much, either.

[Virginiá]

God why do NC laws basically guarantee  the legislature can guarantee no matter what.

Because old world Democrats were afraid of a Republican winning the Governor's seat and did all they could to seal their powers. Little did they know that some day that the situation would be reversed and a Democratic Governor would be hamstrung.

tbf, while you're right about the shenanigans of the old southern democrats, I'm pretty sure this interim map requirement was actually a change by the NCGOP post-2016 when they first lost control of the state supreme court and feared their maps would get struck down. They did it to limit the power of the court for this exact reason.

The fact is, at least in North Carolina, so long as Democrats do not have even occasional control of at least one chamber of the GA, it's going to be really hard to stop Republicans from gerrymandering and transferring power around to keep themselves in control most of the time even when they lose control of the executive branch. It's plausible with control of the executive and the judicial branches, but not viable to hold those in a rigidly partisan R+3 state.

I'd love to be wrong but I think the story of North Carolina politics for the 2020s will be one that started out great from a Democratic perspective and then quickly went wayward, and right back to its regularly-scheduled Republican-controlled fiefdom after the good people of NC inevitably opt to vote in a Republican state supreme court by 50.1% - 49.9%

[Virginiá]

I know they’re trying to maximize republican seats under a lot of restrictions, but this could end up a dummymander with 14, 6, 13, 7, and even 8, 5, or 11 flipping with the way they’re trending. Imagine republicans ending up with 3 seats lol

Just going by the numbers, it's not the worst, but it's pretty clear that this map is meant to deliver Republicans as many seats as possible for 2022 (expected to be quite R-favorable), and then be redrawn after, probably back to their original gerrymander should they flip the state supreme court. Quite a lot riding on that majority.