Partisan Gerrymandering Is Over in North Carolina
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Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2019
⏱️ 20 minutes
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Summary
State court rulings have ended partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina on both the state and congressional levels. The rulings could lead the way for progressive activists who’ve been shut out at the Supreme Court.
This episode is a part of Slate’s Who Counts? initiative. In the run-up to the 2020 election, Slate will be investigating who counts in the voting booth, who counts as an American, whose money counts in the democratic process, and whose doesn’t. And we need your help. Your support will let us assign more stories, travel to overlooked places, commission special podcast projects, and pay for reporting we otherwise would not be able to do. To learn more about this project and how to support our work, please go to slate.com/whocounts.
Guest: Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So Mark Joseph Stern, I know you're a lawyer, but I'm going to make you do a little bit of math to start the show, okay? |
| 0:13.9 | Okay. Okay. |
| 0:29.0 | Under the current congressional maps in North Carolina, Republicans hold how many seats out of how many? |
| 0:36.3 | So Republicans hold 10 seats out of 13 in North Carolina right now. And what percentage of the state actually voted for Republicans? |
| 0:41.5 | About 50% or less in the last few election cycles. |
| 0:46.5 | That doesn't seem right. |
| 0:50.1 | No, it sure doesn't. |
| 0:52.2 | But it is in fact exactly what Republicans designed their gerrymander to do. |
| 0:58.2 | And it has succeeded swimmingly. |
| 1:03.7 | Mark Joseph Stern writes about the courts for Slate. |
| 1:06.6 | He's been covering North Carolina's gerrymander for years now. |
| 1:10.6 | He's watched as the maps that decide who can vote for whom have been challenged again and again in the courts. |
| 1:17.0 | For racial bias, for political bias. |
| 1:20.3 | Saying these maps are controversial, it's kind of an understatement. |
| 1:23.9 | My favorite detail is the Republican mapmaker who said, I just think Republicans are better. So I'm |
| 1:30.9 | drawing maps so more Republicans win. Yes, that was the guy in charge of redistricting. And he also said |
| 1:37.2 | the reason that I created 10 Republican seats and three Democratic seats is because I couldn't |
| 1:43.0 | create 11 Republican seats and two Democratic seats. because I couldn't create 11 Republican seats and two Democratic |
| 1:46.3 | seats. So these guys were not exactly subtle about what they were doing. Like the whole point |
| 1:51.9 | was to dilute Democratic votes as much as humanly and mathematically possible. |
| 1:58.1 | The last time we were talking about gerrymandering in North Carolina, the Supreme Court had just weighed in. |
| 2:04.1 | And they basically just said, we'll take a hard pass on this. |
... |
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