North Carolina and its Best Friend, Gerry(mandering)

As voters go to the polls next week in North Carolina , your first thought is probably “why are people voting in September?” Your next thought will likely be, “Oh, right, that crazy story about a voided election that happened last fall. What was that?” I’m here to tell you what that was, but on a level deeper, and more personal, than most accounts.

In November of 2018, in an election for the congressional seat in NC’s ninth district, Republican Mark Harris seemed to have snagged a victory by a mere 905 votes against his Democratic opponent, Dan McCready. Soon after the votes had been tallied, the elections board—comprised of nine members; four Democrats, four Republicans, and one unaffiliated—decided in a 7-2 vote to not certify the election results and launched an inquiry into the irregular amount of mail-in absentee ballots.

Why? Because of the actions of Leslie McCrae Dowless, a GOP operative who was hired by Mark Harris and previously connected to other questionable absentee ballot elections. After a multi-day trial, which featured numerous accusations that McCrae Dowless engaged in a scheme to intercept vote-by-mail ballots to ensure Mark Harris’s victory, Harris himself took the stand and called for a special election to occur. This led to the board’s unanimous vote, in calling for a new election.

As a former North Carolinian, and an African-American, this story was just a more pungent—and potentially illegal—form of the kind of thing we started to take for granted in the state.

In 2011, after the state legislature went through a partisan shift, Republicans in control drew new congressional lines. Democrats challenged the new map, which eventually was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS). Since then, the map has been redrawn and challenged, multiple times. In a foreshadowing of our current hyper-partisan era: During a SCOTUS case where the court decided not to rule over partisan gerrymandering, a Republican state legislator who was involved in drawing the current congressional districts said, “I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.” And after the SCOTUS decided to have the states and Congress handle the issue of partisan gerrymandering, on Tuesday, September 3rd, a NC court decided that the partisan-drawn state legislative map was unlawful and struck it down. This ongoing fight in NC over gerrymandering, both racial and partisan, doesn’t seem to be losing any momentum anytime soon.

In 2013, NC legislators passed stricter voter identification (ID) laws that would add limitations to voting and registration periods. According to Judge Diana Motz, these laws would disproportionately affect primarily African-American communities and majority Democrat communities. Fortunately for the electorate in NC in 2016, the laws were struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals in the 4th Circuit.

However the victory was short-lived, as two years later voter ID laws made their way back onto the ballot for the 2018 midterm elections. But it did present itself differently this time, in the form of a legislatively-referred constitutional amendment. The amendment would require everyone to bring photo ID to the polls in a purported attempt to prevent voter fraud. This passed, and in December of the same year the state senate voted for a bill that would provide the specific types of voter ID that would be accepted, in a way to validate the approval of the voter ID amendment passed earlier. This bill was vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, shortly after its passage. Then both the state senate and state house voted on this veto nearly on party lines, with Republicans having an overwhelming majority: In the State Senate all but one of the 72 votes casted for the veto were from Republican legislators and the veto was overridden. NC’s voter ID laws will become effective at the start of 2020.

And while these laws seem simple they come with the same suppressive undertone of gerrymandering, and, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, effectively disenfranchise people of color and young voters to diminish the opposing electorate. These laws present challenges and discourage young adults, people from lower economic backgrounds, and people facing homelessness—who are disproportionately people of color—from participating in the democratic process of voting. Since taking over the state legislature in 2011, Republicans in NC have done everything in their power to retain it, including making it harder for minority groups and young people to have their voices heard.

You can have your opinions about whether that’s wrong. I think it’s wrong. What’s more troubling is how some people determine whether it’s wrong.

Through research done by Elon University in NC, stances on the decision in the ninth district have fractured along party lines. In total, half of the respondents believe election fraud is a major problem, about 41 percent believe it’s a minor problem, and very few believe it’s not an issue at all. These are pretty good numbers considering, but the highest differential and area of concern is the way individuals identified this problem along party lines. In regards to election fraud being of major concern, the drop off from Democrats to Republicans was quite large—61 percent to 44 percent. The data also revealed a discrepancy among party lines in regards to the confidence in future elections in NC and whether or not Mark Harris, who opted not to run, should run for re-election even after the recent election scandal.

Republicans were more inclined to say they were very confident in the future of elections than Democrats—26 percent to 16 percent. And 25 percent of Democrats answered “Not Confident at All,” which was 8 percent more than Republicans. Respondents were also asked, “Mark Harris is the candidate who hired the political operative at the center of the fraud investigation in the ninth district. Should Mark Harris run again in the new primary or should he stay out of the new election altogether?” And even though we saw that 88 percent of Republicans said elections fraud was either a minor or major problem, 33 percent of Republicans said he should run again and only 46 percent said he should stay out completely. On the other hand, 70 percent of Democrats thought Harris made the right decision to stay out of the race completely, where he was replaced by Dan Bishop as the GOP nominee. While it seems that many are able to draw the line and identify elections fraud a problem, it seems that line becomes blurred when it is “our” party doing so. This matches other polling across a variety of areas, including the sharp partisan divide in approval on the economy and Republican’s views on the FBI and their investigation into Donald Trump and Russia.

All over the country, oppressive acts of voter suppression are taking place. And although we agree that everyone should have the right to have their voices heard, when this fundamental right is infringed upon we differ in our opinion on these acts, typically along partisan lines by who committed the act. As long as the people we support are the ones participating in these acts, we don’t seem to have a problem with it. Whether you identify as a Republican or Democrat, we seem to turn a blind-eye when a member of our party does something questionable and persecute the opposing party even further than we normally would. As someone entering political life during this hyper-partisan age, I hope we can get to a place of a shared commitment to justice, where we decide what's wrong or right, based on whether it's wrong or right, not based on who committed the act.