CASH IN THE APPLE
for 6-15-17
By Cash Michaels
THE
REDISTRICTING FARCE – So when will it end? I mean how many more Mondays do we
have to go through with the US Supreme Court nailing our Republican-led NC
legislature to the legal wall for some conniving law or plan they thought they
could go get away with?
Last week,
you’ll recall, the US High Court ruled that North Carolina’s legislative
redistricting maps were (surprise, surprise) unconstitutional because 28 voting
districts drawn by the Republicans in 2011 “stacked and packed”
African-American voters, a classic case of racial gerrymandering if ever there
was one.
The week
before that, the High Court sent a case back to the NC Supreme Court for a
third time because when the GOP had the majority on it, they apparently had no
problem with all of the racial gerrymandering their brethren in the state
legislature thought they should get away with.
The week
before that, the most high Supremes nailed North Carolina Republican lawmakers
for drawing racially gerrymandered districts in the congressional First and
Twelfth districts, effectively cramming all the black voters they could find in
both so that they could not influence the other 11 congressional races.
And
finally, the week before that, US Supreme Court didn’t even bother to review
last year’s US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling striking down North
Carolina’s wretched 2013 voter ID law.
You know,
the one that the Fourth Circuit ruled targeted the black vote in our state with
“…almost surgical precision.
What a
disgraceful record when it comes to the Republican efforts to suppress the
black vote in order to gain and maintain power in our state. And with the US
Supreme Court ruling repeatedly that all of this stems from the 2011
restricting maps drawn by Republicans, that means that every election held
since 2011, based on those maps, should be null and void, because the voting
districts were illegally drawn.
So the
Republican state lawmakers pushing all of these crazy laws down our throats,
like the most recent one where you don’t need a gun permit to carry a concealed
weapon in most places, weren’t even legally elected.
And so when
can we get new, more constitutionally drawn voting district maps in places? A
federal three-judge panel ruled last year that the maps should be redrawn last
March, with special elections held this November.
The
Republicans appealed that ruling to the High Court and a stay until that order
got top judicial review.
Well, last
week, the US Supreme Court came back agreeing with that three-judge panel, but
ordered that panel to reconsider the redrawing of the maps, and special
elections.
Democratic
Gov. Roy Cooper ordered state lawmakers into special session last week to begin
redrawing the new maps, but (surprise, surprise), Republican leaders refused to
do it, saying Cooper’s order is unconstitutional, and they’d rather wait until
that three-judge panel orders them to redraw.
But do you
see the trick here? That panel orders new maps and special elections, and the
Republicans simply appeal that to the US Supreme Court again, eating up
valuable time, and pretty much assuring that 2017 special elections can never
happen.
This isn’t
over by a longshot folks. The Republicans have vowed to pass new voter ID laws,
and there’s no telling what they’ll come up with if they redraw the maps. They’re
goal is to have death grip on political
power at any cost.
No political
party should have that. There should be a nonpartisan redistricting commission
in place to take the politics out of voting maps. But guess who doesn’t such a
creature to draw fair, unbiased voting districts for us?
Please, pay
close attention to what happens next.
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