Thomas Mills | The undermining of our democracy

I’ve been trying to avoid watching too much of the redistricting debate because I know what Republicans are going to do. They will maximize their advantage to rig the elections for themselves. Democrats, who are in the minority in both houses of the legislature, are powerless to do anything about it. It’s not just depressing as a Democrat, it’s a blow to our democracy.

I’m disturbed at the dishonesty of the Republicans’ arguments defending their practice of extreme gerrymandering. They claim that Democrats did the same thing. They claim that Democrats’ clustering in urban areas makes drawing fairer districts difficult. And they claim that they win more counties than Democrats. All of it’s bullshit.

For most of the 20th century, North Carolina was largely a one-party state run by Democrats like the rest of the old Confederacy. The people they disenfranchised to hold those majorities were Black voters and they used poll taxes and literacy tests to do it. White Southerners started leaving the Democratic Party in the late 1940s over racial policies, beginning with Truman integrating the military and culminating with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts signed into law by Democrat Lyndon Johnson, ending segregation and ensuring African Americans the right to vote.

In 1971, just before the pivotal election that sent Jesse Helms to the U.S. Senate, the first Republican of the century to get elected to that body, 76% of North Carolinians were registered as Democrats and fewer than 21% Republicans. Still, Republicans held four of the state’s eleven Congressional seats, far out-representing their party registration. For the next 40 years of Democratic redistricting, Republicans held seats in Congress that roughly represented their numbers and influence in North Carolina.

So no, the Democrats did not do it first. Not until the GOP redistricting after 2010 did we such distorted Congressional delegations. While gerrymandering may have existed, Republicans took it to unprecedented extremes after they took power in 2011.

The biggest hit, though, is not the Democrats. It’s our democracy. Not since before the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act have we had so few competitive races. The party that claims competition is the best solution to everything from rising prices to education denies competition at the ballot box.

With the urbanization of the state, Republicans could easily draw districts that are highly competitive based on suburban counties. Instead, they’ve chosen to draw districts that imply that land votes. Sure they win more counties, but those counties are losing population and aging. They do not reflect the growing and changing nature of the state. Republicans’ excuses for drawing districts that distort the nature of our evenly divided state are just false. They don’t care about the people. They care about power.

The GOP’s redistricting program is a national scheme to subvert democracy. They know that they can’t win if the will of the people is reflected, so they are putting in place rules that undermine competition and electoral politics. They are passing laws that allow governmental entities elected in gerrymandered elections to oversee and overturn legitimate elections. When Democrats cry foul in the future, Republicans will claim they’re just following the laws that they’ve put in place.

Republicans are right about one thing. The last time democracy was curtailed so blatantly, Democrats did it. They stripped away the right to vote from African Americans and set up one-party states, effectively ending democracy in the South for almost 70 years. They were supported by the Supreme Court and other governmental bodies that had been gained power through rigged elections. The same strain of authoritarians running the Democratic Party in the late 19th century are now the Republicans of the mid-21st century. The gerrymandering of today serves the same purpose as the poll tax of yore–to undermine democracy.