Yes, NC’s new congressional map is gerrymandered

 North Carolina Republicans redrew Don Davis’s congressional district to offer their president a new seat colored a sweet ruby red. The effort was manifestly corrupt and revealed our state’s utter submission to the whims and wills of a dysregulated autocrat. Some respected Republicans have attempted to argue that this gambit was kosher, that even a map producing Republican landslides in an evenly divided state counts as fair as long as it looks logical. The truth is that the Davis-less map Ralph Hise drew is gerrymandered to a fine and precise point. 

The most thoughtful defense of the new map came from Charlotte conservative Andrew Dunn. Dunn’s headline declared that a “map that disappoints Democrats” is not inherently “a gerrymander.” On this point I agree. As long as a map reflects the true partisanship of a state, lopsided outcomes it generates do not inherently define it as a gerrymander. For example, any map drawn in Alabama or Mississippi would overwhelmingly favor Republicans because of those states’ partisan fundamentals. 

But Dunn takes his argument a step further by claiming that North Carolina’s new map does not represent gerrymandering. He defines a gerrymandered district as one eccentrically sliced into a shape that does not make logical sense. The fairness of a map is susceptible to an “eye test,” and any map that sensibly reflects the state’s social communities is legitimate and non-gerrymandered. Taking this definition as his premise, Dunn argues that our state’s new map is fair. 

I have tremendous respect for Andrew Dunn, but his argument is wrong. Gerrymandering is not about the shape of a district. It’s about bias: Is this district drawn with the intent of providing one party an overwhelming advantage and making it impossible for the other party win? In an age when mapmakers are armed with potent mapping software, it is possible to draw districts that look logical and fair but give one party an illegitimate advantage. In fact, the NCGOP drew a map like this in in the 2010s—and it produced its intended outcome of annihilating Democrats’ electoral prospects. It was a gerrymandered map because its purpose was to lock Democrats out of power. 

By this definition, the current map is gerrymandered. Furthermore, Republicans have said this explicitly. His system as always rich with testosterone, Ralph Hise bragged that “The motivation behind this redraw is simple and singular: drawing new map that will bring an additional Republican seat to the North Carolina congressional delegation.” This district was drawn to contradict the preferences of Don Davis’s constituents by disappearing him 

and placing a Republican in the rich, red void. It was not representative government. It nullifies representative government