In our democracy, every voice should be heard, and every vote should count equally. But in North Carolina and other states across the country, politicians are choosing their voters instead of the other way around.
Campaign Legal Center (CLC) released this video highlighting the stories of voters whose voices were silenced in North Carolina when politicians gerrymandered the state during the redistricting process.
Expressly designed to give Republicans a 10-3 district advantage, despite the fact that North Carolina is a solidly purple state, the North Carolina congressional plan is, by any measure, one of the worst partisan gerrymanders in modern American history.
On March 26, CLC’s case Rucho v. League of Women Voters will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. CLC is representing the League of Women Voters of North Carolina alongside the Southern Coalition for Social Justice as well as numerous individual voters who have challenged the state’s congressional district lines as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
In the video, Paul Smith, vice president, litigation and strategy at CLC and counsel of record in the case, discusses how the current fight against gerrymandering is a fight for a democracy where the votes of each person are counted the same and have the same input on the outcome as everybody else.
The video tells the stories of three plaintiffs in the case - all North Carolina voters. Maria Palmer, resident of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, describes how demoralizing gerrymandering has been to voters she has spoken with in her grassroots organizing over the past decade. Janet Hoy, co-president of the plaintiff group League of Women Voters of North Carolina, discusses the broader impact of gerrymandering on the state. And Mayor of Jamesville, N.C., Willis Williams, talks about how gerrymandering has silenced his voice in the political process.
Watch and share this video
In January 2019, CLC released a poll that finds strong opposition to gerrymandering among likely 2020 general election voters and broad, bipartisan support for the U.S. Supreme Court to set clear rules for when gerrymandering violates the Constitution. The poll, commissioned by CLC, was conducted by a Democratic firm, ALG Research, and a Republican firm, GS Strategy Group.
The poll also reveals that voters strongly support the creation of independent redistricting commissions and overwhelmingly prefer congressional districts with no partisan bias, even if it means fewer seats for their own party.