Tag Archives: North Carolina

Latest Legal News on Gerrymandering

As readers may recall, back in June, the United States Supreme Court evaded ruling on the issue of partisan gerrymandering in three cases.  In particular, the United States Supreme Court declined to review the merits in a case out of Wisconsin based on a question of “standing” (who can bring a case), declined to review a case out of Maryland because the appeal was from a ruling on a motion for preliminary injunction rather than a final judgment, and opted to send a case from North Carolina back to the trial court to consider whether the other two rulings had any impact on the trial court’s ruling.  Earlier this week, a three-judge panel for the Middle District of North Carolina completed the reconsideration ordered by the United States Supreme Court and once again struck down the North Carolina congressional district map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

From the beginning, the outcome in North Carolina has mostly been about whether there is a way to make a partisan gerrymandering claim.  At the time that the legislature was enacting the current maps, the Republicans in North Carolina boasted that they drew the map to lock in a 10-3 advantage only because they could not find a way to draw a map that gave them an 11-2 advantage.  As detailed in the opinion, the redistricting committee only considered partisan data (after an earlier map had been struck down by the courts as a racial gerrymander, the goals of the committee expressly included drawing a 10-3 map, and the maps reflected lines that either split Democratic areas between Republican districts (cracking to avoid potential that including entire area might make a single district competitive) or put Democratic areas intact into districts that were already overwhelmingly Democrat (packing to avoid such voters having any influence in a competitive district).  Once the panel decided that  this summer’s opinions implicitly recognized that there could be a partisan gerrymandering claim, it was easy to find on multiple grounds that these maps were unconstitutional.

However, June’s decision to send this case back to the trial court created a problem with the trial court imposing a remedy.  As of Monday, when this decision came down, there were only ten weeks left until the November election.  The decision did leave open the possibility that the trial court would try to craft a remedy that could take effect in 2018 and gave the parties until Friday to make suggestions about how to proceed.   However, according to the latest reports, the plaintiffs (which include the North Carolina Democratic Party) conceded in their suggestions that there was no practical solution that could be completed in time to avoid disrupting the November elections.  (Additionally, if the trial court had tried to impose a remedy, the legislature could have asked the Supreme Court to issue a stay.  Depending on how long it took to craft a remedy, it is possible that Judge Kavanaugh would already be sitting as Justice Kavanaugh giving five votes for a stay.  Even if the confirmation process was not yet complete, there is a tradition of a “courtesy” fifth vote for a stay in cases that are divided 4-4. ) Continue Reading...

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Election Night 2016 — What to Look for (Part Two)

VotingBoothImage_0As with many other details of election law, each state gets to choose their voting hours on election day.  Thus, unlike a place like the United Kingdom where all polls close at the same time and when results are announced is a matter of how long it takes to count the vote, there is a slow progression across the country as the different states close.  A complicating factor is that some states are split down the middle by time zones.  In most of the states with multiple time zones, the polls close based on the local time (i.e. the polls in the eastern part of the state close an hour earlier than the polls in the western part of the state) rather than all polls in the state closing simultaneously.  Another complicating factor is that all states only require that you be in line to vote at the time that the polls close; so, in larger precincts, there can be a long line delaying the report of votes from that precinct.  As noted in Part One,  part of the projection process is looking at what precincts are still outstanding.  In a close state, the long lines at urban precincts (which are likely to favor Democrats) can make it hard to figure how strong the Democratic vote in a state is for an extended period.

In terms of interest, not every state is the same.   A lot of states and districts are considered “safe” for President or Senate or Governor or U.S. Representative.  Of course, if something surprising happens in those areas, it could be a sign of a wave developing, but most of the attention will be focused on the “battleground” areas that will decide a close election.  What follows in the rest of this part and the rest of this series is a review in chronological order of closing time (using Eastern Standard Time) at what to look for as the evening progresses.

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Photo ID and the Courts

Vote!In recent years, the Supreme Court has had its version of an “election rule.”  The essence of this rule is that the Supreme Court does not like last second changes to the election process.  Regardless of whether the change comes from state election authorities changing the state’s procedure or a court decision resolving a challenge to those procedures, the Supreme Court prefers to “freeze” the status quo far enough in advance of the election so that voters know the rules and can take steps to comply with those rules.  Perhaps in response to this implied vague deadline (a little less implied in the case of Texas where the Supreme Court indicated that they would consider intervening in there was not a court decision by the end of July), the last several weeks of have seen court decisions in multiple cases involving multiple states seeking to impose a requirement that voters present photographic ID to vote in-person.

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