Just over a year ago, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the congressional and legislative maps Republican state lawmakers had produced, calling them “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.” The dispute eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and was argued in December 2022.
The 2022 election cycle shifted the balance of power on the state Supreme Court, giving the right-wing judges a lopsided, 5-to-2 advantage.
Can someone from that area (maybe @ncsteve) tell me why this happened? I smell huge amounts of dark money.
It does say a lot to the meme that elections matter - I’m presuming the judges are elected here, as well? Similar to Wisconsin?
The fix is in, to state the obvious. No matter the precedent, no matter the unchanged facts, the newly empowered Republican Party N.C. Supermajority are ready to do the bidding of their party and effectively end representative government in the state legislature and amongst their representatives in the U.S. House.
At what point will the rank and file Republicans realize they are pushing things to far?
In their quest for unlimited permanent power? Never. Representative government has no meaning.
Well they are brainwashed idiots, they would vote for the guy dumping toxic waste behind their house to own the libs and stop “woke”.
Speaking as someone who has lived in various places in NC. These are the people who have factories shutdown due to republican CEOs and republican policies but of course its dems fault.
The Rethugs have already gerrymandered the districts enough so that the rural rubes carry the vote in most districts. These fauxnooz viewing, uneducated morons will only vote for someone with R beside his name. Fauxnoos has convinced them that anything or anybody else is a communist/socialist plot to come to their trailer and confiscate their guns, and turn their boys into queers.
As long as they can rely on the unwashed, uneducated, resentful bunch of morons to reliably vote for them over and over, they will continue to do totally outrageous things like they have been doing.
It’s kind of astonishing their immunity to fair play and to shame in this state. The rural/urban divide brainwashing is strong, as is the casual racism, fearmongering and victimhood. We could change the tide, at least for national and state-wide elections, if we f*cking show up to vote. On the micro level though, in 2010 the Republicans did an excellent job of screwing any sense of democratic representation. That’s going to take a lot of work to undo.
the state constitution does not protect against partisan gerrymandering
They say… It is totally legal, because the Constitution doesn’t say anything about the statistical practice of slicing up geography to produce detailed maps favoring career politicians.
We say… we the People of the United States, in Order to …promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish… YOUR TEMP JOBS.
Turn off the tv and do your homework
At least we can take comfort in the knowledge that our courts at both the state and federal level "[are] not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.” (h/t Amy Coney Barrett)
The SCOTUS case that decided that partisan gerrymandering was constitutional so long as it wasn’t explicitly race-based was decided 5-4. If Merrick Garland or any other Dem appointee had been on that court in place of Gorsuch, it would have gone the other way, and every red state that was gerrymandered to hell and back would have had to institute fair maps.
But, you know … her emails.
"the North Carolina constitution offers no protection to voters?”
If not, the 2A does.
You would have to define what “too far” means. They are trying for 100% domination to do anything they want to do. I don’t think there is any way to go beyond that.
It’s a multi-year project of the oligarch class puppets who took over the General Assembly in 2010 and gerrymandered themselves into unbreakable bunker districts. First they abolished the state’s model public election financing for judicial races and opened the door to a river of Oligarch money.
Then they required the candidate of the governor’s party to appear first on the ballots of our nonpartisan judicial races. Then, when Roy Cooper beat that grinning right wing shitstain Pat McCrory, they abolished nonpartisan races. It’s been one goddamn thing after another and finally, after 13 years, they’ve finally won.
Most distressing, however, has been how servile and partisan once-respected formerly moderate Republican judges like Newby and Deitz have rolled over and gone full-Alito, trying to out-hack the right wing hacks who were elected last cycle.
There’s always been cyclic partisan turnover on the Court. It’s changed hands several times since I started practicing. And there have been individual hard right justices. But it’s all very different now. All pretense of judicial restraint and that the law isn’t partisan has been discarded throughout the system at every level. One of the things driving me into retirement.
Thanks for responding - I knew you would have the answers.
I also knew it would probably depress the shit out of me.