Oct.19

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Crematoria of Democracy?

If states are the laboratories of democracy, per Louis Brandeis, where new ideas can be tested, improved, and propagated, then surely it must also be the case that states can be places where old ideas, including some good ones, can be lit on fire, and burned to a crisp.

As a case in point, we give you the state of North Carolina, which has been moving in a decidedly dictatorial-fascist direction for a while, and which really put the pedal to the floor in the last few weeks. Among the changes wrought by the GOP-controlled legislature:

• Over the veto of Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC), it has handed over control of most election-related functions to bipartisan boards where Republicans and Democrats will have equal representation. That may sound very kumbayah, but what happens if all the Democrats feel one way and all the Republicans feel another? At best, it will lead to gridlock when it comes to election decision-making. At worst, it will pave the way for the legislature or the Republican-dominated state courts to step in and make decisions by fiat.
  
  
• The new state budget, also passed despite Cooper's objections, contains funding for a "secret" police force that would answer to the state legislature's Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations, and would be entitled to "investigate" anything with virtually no oversight. Like, say, why so many Black people are voting, and whether or not they should be doing so if they know what's good for them.
  
  
• Yesterday, as long expected, the legislature unveiled a wildly gerrymandered house district map that could well turn a 7R-7D delegation into an 11R-3D delegation. As a reminder, in the last presidential election, 49.93% of North Carolinians voted Republican and 48.59% voted Democratic, as opposed to it being 78% Republican and 22% Democratic, as the new maps would imply.

We wish we could write that there's hope that these obviously undemocratic maneuvers will be undone, but hope is pretty slim at the moment. Cooper and other Democrats have sued to block the new election-management law, but it's 50/50 at best that they will prevail. There's little that can be done about the secret police, and the U.S. Supreme Court has already given indications that a gerrymandered map is A-OK, as long as it's not a racial gerrymander. How one can tell the difference between the "non-racial" gerrymander in North Carolina (23% Black) and the "racial" gerrymander in Alabama (31% Black), we do not know. Nor does anyone else seem to know, either. (Z)