The Path from Evil is Fraught With the Darkness of Self Recognition...

polifrog



Sam Spagnola sarcastically titles a recent post Suddenly a Broken System in reference to the NC redistricting process. He is right to note that there is nothing suddenly wrong in the NC redistricting process. Unless, of course, you are a liberal in search of a cudgel.

There is no doubt that the NC redistricting process has created another gerrymander only this time under conservative rule , but there is also no doubt that the gerrymander is the product of a racially based redistricting process created by democrats, a process that conservatives must abide by.

Why?

Unfortunately the Supreme Court found that the Voting Rights Act trumps the NC Constitution's firewall against gerrymandering.

NCGA :

Under the State Constitution, Senate and House districts must consist of contiguous territory. By tradition, the contiguity requirement also has been applied to Congressional districts. Contiguity means that all parts of a district must touch. The district must not have any detached parts.

Since the 1980's democrats in the NC House and NC Senate have abused the Voting Rights Act so as to break the NC firewall against gerrymandering. In so doing they broke NC's redistricting process. The current republican NCGA is forced to abide by that broken democrat process. That the results are unpleasing to democrats I hope enlightens them to basic racism in the process they crafted, a racism they chose to ignore due to the political gains they received from the process.

But therein lies the common ground, though. The belief that racism is evil. If as a result of being at the receiving end of their own redistricting process democrats recognize that their redistricting process is evil due to its racially based roots, then it seems to me that we can all agree that the process itself needs to be changed.

Unfortunately for democrats the path from evil is fraught with the darkness of self recognition.

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