Pirate's Cove

This has made Democrats Very Upset, because they aren’t in charge of drawing the maps. If they were, they’d gerrymander like mad. They are also upset over requiring that voters show who they are to vote, and, remember, Democrats are so racist that they claim that black people cannot get ID

NC Supreme Court says judges can’t stop partisan gerrymandering

The Republican majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court said Friday that partisan gerrymandering is legal in the state, opening the door for the legislature’s GOP majority to draw districts that help lock in power at the statehouse and contribute to Republican power in Congress.

The state’s high court also decided two long-running voting cases Friday: One dealing with the restoration of voting rights for felons and the other one of the state’s long-running voter ID cases.

The voter ID and gerrymandering decisions reverse opinions issued just last year by the state Supreme Court. In between, North Carolina voters flipped the court’s majority from Democratic to Republican. Friday’s opinions broke on party lines.

Chief Justice Paul Newby said the state’s judiciary doesn’t have the power to weigh in on partisan gerrymandering, and even if it did, the issue relies too much on the eye of the beholder to be decided by the courts.

“Our constitution expressly assigns the redistricting authority to the General Assembly subject to explicit limitations in the text,” Newby wrote in an opinion joined by the court’s other Republican justices, including Justice Phil Berger Jr., whose father is the Senate’s top Republican, and Justice Tamara Barringer, a former state Senator.

In other words, the general assembly has the power to draw the maps per the NC Constitution. It’s their power. The districts used to be pretty gerrymandered to favor Democrats when they controlled the GA.

“Those [constitutional] limitations do not address partisan gerrymandering,” Newby wrote. “It is not within the authority of this Court to amend the constitution to create such limitations on a responsibility that is textually assigned to another branch. Furthermore, were this court to create such a limitation, there is no judicially discoverable or manageable standard for adjudicating such claims. The constitution does not require or permit a standard known only to four justices.”

Obviously, the Democrats on the court are for the court amending the NC Constitution, since they cannot be in charge of drawing the maps.

The Court also said that voter ID is constitutional

“This law is one of the least restrictive voter identification laws in the United States,” he wrote. “Even if a registered voter still somehow fails to obtain or otherwise possess an acceptable form of identification, the law permits him or her to cast a provisional ballot that will be counted so long as they do not provide false information in the reasonable impediment affidavit. Essentially, North Carolina’s photo identification statute does not require that an individual present a photo identification to vote.”

Democrats are caterwauling over this. I wonder why?

In the felon voting case, Community Success Initiative v. Moore, the court reversed a trial court’s finding that allowed convicted felons to vote once they finished their prison sentence. The Supreme Court ruled that felons must complete all aspects of their sentence, including probation and/or payment of fines or restitution, in order to register and vote. The court’s Republican said this rule is not racist, as plaintiffs alleged.

That’s what the law says. Hence the ruling.