Like Russian efforts to hack U.S. elections, the North Carolina legislature’s attacks on our state’s democracy have been broad and brazen. The Rev. William J. Barber II, taking his moral movement beyond N.C., reminded us last week on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” that our state’s racist election tampering was more of a threat than Russian operatives. The observation was sobering. And his warning unheeded, at least by too many members of the General Assembly. Just a few days later, the N.C. legislature pushed back against the executive and judicial branches to prop up its racially gerrymandered districts. Despite three pronouncements in as many weeks from the U.S. Supreme Court that North Carolina’s legislative and congressional districts were designed to pack and crack the political power of black voters, GOP lawmakers boldly batted efforts by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s call for a special session to redraw these discriminatory districts.
Senate leader Phil Berger responded to the notion of a special session with the audacious claim that the governor’s call to fix the unconstitutionally drawn districts was “unconstitutional.”
But the political hacking hasn’t stopped there. In fact, it seems to have just started.
The GOP supermajority, crafted from these unconstitutionally racist legislative districts, have spent months threatening to revive portions of a 2013 voter-suppression law that even the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider earlier this year.
Full Article: From voter ID to gerrymandering, the political hacking of North Carolina | News & Observer.