The ghosts of elections past

by | Feb 10, 2016 | Editor's Blog, Redistricting | 8 comments

North Carolina’s redistricting predicament is nothing new. Our districts have been in turmoil for most of the past three decades and primary election cycles have been disrupted numerous times. The courts seem to have little sympathy for election schedules, regardless of when decisions are made in the cycle or the impact on primary outcomes.

The first time I was involved in such a disruption was in 1998. Congresswoman Eva Clayton, the first African-American woman elected to Congress from North Carolina, was challenged in a primary by a white legislator named Linwood Mercer. Clayton’s First Congressional District was designed to be competitive for African-American candidates and was a safe Democratic seat in a General Election. However, Mercer saw that in non-presidential years, sheriff and county commission primaries drew large numbers of white Democrats to the polls. He believed that he could tap into support among that constituency and beat Clayton in a primary. It was racial politics at its purest.

The courts, though, had a different idea. In the spring, they found the 12th Congressional District to be unconstitutional and ordered Congressional elections halted until it was fixed. At that late stage in the process, the Democratic legislature decided to separate out the Congressional races and allow all the state races and US Senate primary to proceed on schedule in May. The Congressional primaries were eventually held in September. Without the local races, Mercer had little chance and Clayton won handily.

After redistricting following the 2000 census, the courts again held up elections in North Carolina in 2002 and 2004. In the 2002 Senate race to replace retiring US Senator Jesse Helms, Democrats fielded three strong candidates. Erskine Bowles was back from serving in the Clinton White House and had a broad network of national donors. Dan Blue, Jr., was the first African-American Speaker of the North Carolina House since reconstruction. Elaine Marshall was the first woman elected to a Council of State position in state history.

Observers thought the May primary would be a competitive affair. However, the courts found the redistricting process unconstitutional and the legislature moved all of the primaries this time. By the time the primary was held in September, Blue and Marshall exhausted most of their resources trying to survive the extended primary season, while Bowles’ deep pockets and national financial support allowed him to win in a winner-take-all primary in mid-September.

The 2004 election followed a similar pattern but this time the election was scheduled for mid-July. In the middle of the summer tourist season, turnout was extremely low with few voters tuning into the election. Even lower were the runoff turnouts in August. Virginia Foxx won the GOP nomination in NC-05 with less than 25,000 votes and Patrick McHenry  won it in NC-10 with only 15,000.

The courts seem to care little about election schedules or impacts on races. They just want to make sure districts are constitutional. Since primary voting has begun, the Supreme Court may have a different take. However, if the courts require new Congressional districts this year, the legislature has numerous options. Political jockeying will play a big role in determining the primary election schedule.

Instead of just fixing the districts, the legislators should really fix the system.

8 Comments

  1. Russ Becker

    I am curious as to what the experience has been in states which have gone to a ‘nonpartisan’ board. Does anyone have anything to report? Thomas?

    • Norma Munn

      Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of the different types of re-districting Boards and/or Commissions. Some are actually independent; others far less so, but there is clear movement toward the independent model slowing gaining momentum in this country. I did notice that even the less independent ones often have rules that prevent members from running for public office for long periods of time after their service. The recent Supreme Court ruling that Arizona’s public referendum creating a non-partisan, independent re-districting commission was constitutional, despite Arizona’s legislative disapproval, has given encouraged grass roots efforts in quite a few states. As I understand it, there is actually nothing to prevent the change in any state now that the Court has rules. Of course, getting it done is another matter, but if citizens and voters wanted it, my guess is that the history of NC would make it a good target.

    • Nortley

      The link above shows how it works in Iowa.

  2. Walter Rand

    Thomas, the usually-proposed fix to the gerrymandering problem is to have an independent board draw up the district lines. Though an admirable idea, that fix is unlikely to work for two reasons. The first reason is that the board will have to be appointed by someone and that someone will have a political agenda. The board will then be made up of people who the appointing person or persons think will promote that political agenda, leading us back to where we are – dealing with illegally gerrymandered districts. The other reason is that it is unlikely any such board will come to exist since passing the law to create the board means legislators giving up some of their power. They are unlikely to do that. Think of it this way: it is easy to draw up fair, lawful, unbiased districts. We already have laws in place mandating that we do that yet we disregard those laws. If our legislature is intent on abusing their power to draw up illegally gerrymandered districts why would they let go of that power to create a board to make up the districts? They wouldn’t do it. If they were even considering doing that they would first draw up lawful districts themselves.

    Drawing up lawful districts is the sort of mathematical chore a computer program could handle with ease. Each seat must represent virtually the same number of people as each other seat. It is not difficult. For state senate and state representatives according to the NC Constitution counties must not be split in making up districts and districts comprising multiple counties must have only contiguous counties. A large county such a Wake might have, for example, 6 representatives. With staggered elections 3 seats would be up for election at a time. Every voter in the district could get 3 votes since there are 3 seats. A voter can split his/her votes or cast all 3 for the same candidate. The 3 candidates who get the most votes win the seats. Any minority who can muster up 1/3 of the votes plus 1 vote would elect a representative. This sort of common-sense voting scheme eliminates the legal problems associated with the present (gerrymandered) system. Our legislature will oppose such a scheme because the scheme will allow for minority representation and the legislature does not want minority representation. The legislature was elected under the illegal gerrymandering system. The politicians want to stay in office so they want to keep the system that got them elected. They don’t want to risk losing their jobs under a lawful voting scheme.

    If we had statesmen instead of politicians in office the drawing of districts would be done through a computer program in which the data fields would include the number of seats, total population (regardless of race or political party), population of each county, and contiguous borders of each county. Use the computer program to draw up the districts creating as many districts as possible in the most equitable fashion (same number of population per seat). Obviously perfect equality would exist only if the entire state were one big district, so we would not have perfect equality, but we would have more equality than we have now. Populations change. People are born and people die daily. People move. We could have a far better, more equitable voting district map than we have now if we had statesmen rather than politicians.

    • Lee Mortimer

      Walter, what you are proposing is something called cumulative voting. It would be a huge step forward in assuring fair representation for all voters — including racial, political and geographic minorities. Cumulative voting was first brought to national attention by Lani Guiner. She described cumulative voting as creating “districts of the mind.”

      Cumulative voting has been used in Alabama, Texas, New Mexico, South Dakota, Illinois and New York by dozens of local councils and school boards. It was used to elect the Illinois state legislature from 1870 to 1980, the South Carolina state legislature in the early years of Reconstruction, and is employed in corporate governance to give voice to minority shareholders.

      With cumulative voting, gerrymandering would go away more or less naturally because gerrymandering only works when a single representative is being chosen. We can only hope this legislature will have the integrity to “really fix the system” and not try to keep he rigged game going.

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