The Bipartisan Effort to End Gerrymandering in North Carolina

Here’s why I just filed a bill to end gerrymandering in North Carolina, and why you should care.

Gerrymandering has become the defining feature of North Carolina politics. It’s why less than 10% of incumbents stand any real chance of losing a general election. It’s why the GOP has a hammerlock on the state legislature — with artificial supermajorities in both chambers — despite the fact that we’re a roughly 50/50 state.

Here’s why that’s messing up the state: Under our ultra-safe-incumbents map, the vast majority of us are only vulnerable in a primary. That means the current majority only needs to appeal to folks who vote in the Republican primary, which is about 10% of the state.

The other 90% of us have been rendered politically irrelevant. Not by accident — by design.

If you’ve been wondering why your state legislature seems content to keep us in the late night comedy routines and forfeit hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs over regressive social legislation, you have your answer. The 10% of the state that votes in the GOP primary has become the filter for all our legislation — to the point where they might as well be the entire electorate. It’s skewing the agenda.

If we let an independent commission draw the maps, dozens more of us would be vulnerable in general elections, forcing us to appeal to the rest of the state and not just focusing on our primary voters. Bills like HB2 would never happen, and if they did, they would certainly be repealed after becoming economic disasters.

Important note: My party gerrymandered for decades. For years, Republicans filed bills to end gerrymandering and give the power to draw maps to an independent group — and my side threw all those bills in the trash can, because we never thought we’d be out of power.

Then 2010 came along, the backlash to Obamacare kicked in, and the GOP seized majorities in both chambers in time to redraw the districts for the next decade. Then they decided to do something my party never did, which was to test the theoretical limits of how many members of their own party they could fit in the General Assembly. Hence, artificial supermajorities.

And here we are. Dramatically out of step with the rest of the state and with all of your friends in other states asking, “What’s going on in North Carolina?”

My bill is an identical copy of a bill that has been filed in the state House by a number of Republicans, so there is bipartisan support to end gerrymandering and return our elections to the voters. The political challenge will be finding support within the majority party in the state Senate.

If we end gerrymandering, it will be the most important piece of legislation passed this decade.

We absolutely need to get this done.