Stealing the Redistricting Process

By Harry Taylor

Created 08/19/2011 - 2:30pm

Late last month [1], four men chosen by the Mecklenburg County Commissioners (North Carolina) to serve on a bi-partisan panel to study and recommend new voting district boundaries decided instead to undermine the process [1] of which they’d agreed to be a part.

Without notice to either the county commissioners or their fellow panel members they made a hasty trip to Raleigh to meet with the leadership of the North Carolina General Assembly. Within hours, a bill to bypass the public process already underway was brought to a vote in both houses and passed.

And just that quickly, the rights of the citizens of Mecklenburg, Buncombe, and Gilpin Counties were usurped, literally stolen from us for political gain. [2]

Whether you lean right, left or somewhere in the middle – where most of us surely are – this action was a direct attack on your democracy, promulgated for unabashed political gain and power. When questioned about the tactic a sitting commissioner responded, “It’s politics.”