The Associated Press reports: “A coalition of civil and voting rights groups alleges in a legal motion filed Friday that political districts approved by the majority-Republican North Carolina legislature disenfranchise black voters and asks a state court to declare the lines unconstitutional” – not for the November elections but for the future. Democracy North Carolina is one of the groups, along with the NC NAACP, League of Women Voters and NC A. Philip Randolph Institute. The motion for a summary judgment from the panel of NC Superior Court judges comes after months of depositions and research related to the redistricting plans; technically, it asks the judges to declare the plans unconstitutional on several grounds based on undisputed facts, including thousands of voters being assigned to the wrong precinct because of the complex boundary lines. We’ll see what happens. Even if the judges refuse this motion, the larger legal challenge will proceed to the next stage, with a trial-like hearing toward the end of the year.
The AP story continues: Under the GOP-drawn redistricting plan, nearly a third of registered voters live in precincts split between one or more state House and Senate districts. The review found that blacks are far more likely to live in these split precincts than whites, with neighbors on the same street or even in the same apartment block divided. . . “Before the Voting Rights Act, we called it Jim Crow,” Barber said Friday. “Jim Crow wouldn’t let you vote. Jim Crow had literacy tests. Jim Crow had poll taxes. Today in the 21st century, it’s James Crow, esquire. He puts on a suit, goes in the back room of the General Assembly, gets out a computer and uses race to split precincts in a deliberate way to try to determine a political outcome.” A video report is here and one from the News & Observer story is here.
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