..Reads the News & Observer headline:
North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts will remain in place and so will the Nov. 6, 2018 election, a federal three-judge panel ruled Tuesday.
The panel ruled last week that the districts are unconstitutional due to “partisan gerrymandering” designed to produce 10 Republican seats. But, with the election only two months away, the plaintiffs in the case — the North Carolina chapters of Common Cause and The League of Women Voters — argued that it was too late to change the maps despite their victory.
On Tuesday, the court agreed.
“We conclude that there is insufficient time for this Court to approve a new districting plan and for the State to conduct an election using that plan prior to the seating of the new Congress in January 2019. And we further find that imposing a new schedule for North Carolina’s congressional elections would, at this late juncture, unduly interfere with the State’s electoral machinery and likely confuse voters and depress turnout,” the court wrote in a four-page order.
So the ball is in Democrats’ hands, at least for the time being. Perhaps if they flip a couple of districts, it will show them they can win an election at the ballot box and will curb the constant desire for court challenges.
