North Carolina Republicans unveiled new congressional and legislative maps on Wednesday that would rank as some of the most extreme gerrymanders in the country. The new proposals would cost three to four House Democrats their seats in Congress and lock in GOP majorities in the legislature in this longtime swing state. And in the near term, there's little Democrats can do to stop them.
Republicans put forth a pair of congressional maps that would both upend the state's House delegation, which currently includes seven Democrats and seven Republicans thanks to a court-drawn plan. Instead, if these new maps go into effect, North Carolina would almost certainly send 10 or 11 Republicans to Washington and just three or four Democrats.
The GOP's legislative maps, meanwhile, would turbocharge their existing gerrymanders and make it effectively impossible for Democrats to secure majorities, even though they're routinely capable of winning statewide elections. (The current governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat, as is Attorney General Josh Stein, who is running to succeed Cooper next year.)
Even worse, the new proposals would likely ensure that, in all but the most Democratic of election years, Republicans would maintain the three-fifths supermajorities they'd need to override gubernatorial vetoes and to place constitutional amendments on the ballot.
The GOP's two different congressional maps aim to elect 10, if not 11, Republicans. The maps would do this by packing Democrats into three overwhelmingly blue districts while meticulously spreading out Republican voters to ensure their own seats are just red enough to be safe without wasting GOP votes. The maps’ approaches differ somewhat, even though their end goal is the same: One of the maps features 11 safely Republican seats, while the other would have 10 solidly red seats and one GOP-trending swing district.
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