If a three-judge panel hands North Carolina a victory, it could have an effect on Democratic votes in the presidential election
In all the history of American gerrymandering, it must rate as one of the purest expressions of unapologetic partisanship: “I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country,” said the North Carolina representative David Lewis, then chairman of a committee carrying out a court-ordered revision of the state’s election maps.
Lewis was only saying what his colleagues were thinking. But the quote, from 2016, caught the attention of the supreme court justice Elena Kagan, who featured it prominently in her scathing dissent last month when the high court ruled that partisan gerrymandering – the practice of manipulating the contours of voting districts to rig them for one party – “present[s] political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts”.
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