Editorial: Assuring each vote is more than a mark on a ballot

The illogical notion, as the court’s minority dissent written by Chief Justice Paul Newby sought to justify, is that the courts have no check on the power of a partisan majority in the legislature to draw election districts that guarantee its eternal hold on power.

By Newby’s contorted reading of the state Constitution, a partisan majority in the legislature can concoct a congressional redistricting scheme engineered to elect all candidates from one particular political party, and that’s OK.

Newby holds the notion that the voters, if not satisfied with the way election districts are drawn, can act to change things through “two legitimate avenues for reform: a statute or a (state) constitutional amendment.”

What? Hold on here.

Our state Constitution clearly says, and surely Newby is well aware, the power to pass statutes or to amend the state Constitution is reserved ONLY to the legislature. Only it can initiate and define changes in state law or the state Constitution. Voters are left simply to ratify or reject constitutional changes offered up by the legislature.

How can North Carolinians exercise their independent authority to make change in a system that legitimizes politicians’ power to pick their voters and keep themselves in office?

Courts exist and they are organized as a co-equal branch of North Carolina government to provide a check on the powers exercised by the other branches – legislative and executive.

It is the court’s role to stand between self-serving politicians and any of their efforts to diminish the authority of ALL the voters in North Carolina. If Newby and the judges who dissented with him don’t think so, why do they think their jobs exist?

The judges found that redistricting plans are subject to the “strict scrutiny” of the court and “unconstitutional unless the General Assembly can demonstrate that the plan is ‘narrowly tailored to advance a compelling governmental interest. Achieving partisan advantage incommensurate with a political party's level of statewide voter support is neither a compelling nor a legitimate governmental interest.”

That is no wild radical concept. That is a basic right to have a vote count and mean something.

The three judges who dissented say that it’s beyond the court’s purview to make sure every vote matters. It is an absurd premise born out of desperation to defend the General Assembly’s hyper-partisan gerrymandered congressional and legislative districts.

It is nonsensical, unjustifiable desperation to defend the indefensible. It is another scheme to silence the voice of voters who may not be easily identified as predisposed to assure the entrenchment of current political power in representative branches of government.

It is wrong, as a matter of law as well as morality, to cheat and rig elections to assure a specific outcome. It doesn’t matter how it’s done – harvesting absentee ballots, making polling places inaccessible, blocking voters of certain races, genders or ethnic backgrounds – or manipulating voting districts to assure an election outcome.

It takes some real contortions of logic to come up with any justification that unfair elections are OK. While elections take strategy to win, they are not games where rules are stretched and bended to prejudice a specific outcome.

North Carolina voters should be thankful that there is a majority on our state’s highest court that sees beyond their partisan affiliations and personal bias. They should be glad there are judges who want to make sure the vote of EVERY North Carolinian means something.

With Friday’s decision, North Carolina’s highest court rightly stood with ALL of North Carolina’s voters – not just with those who adhere to a very specific affiliation or ideology. Fair elections aren’t a concept. The court said they are essential to our democracy and must be upheld.