North Carolina Geography

Scott Mooneyham: GOP map-drawers should not ignore Stephenson ruling

RALEIGH — Anyone with kids tries to drill into them that their actions carry consequences, sometimes far into the future.

The same may apply to North Carolina legislators as they begin redrawing the legislative and congressional district lines which determine who votes for whom.

The process can be bloody, with legislative leaders and their map-drawing lieutenants “double-bunking” colleagues, drawing two incumbents into the same district.

The double-bunking is typically aimed at legislators of the minority party. Sometimes geography and shifting populations mean that majority-party legislators get hung out to dry too.

During the last round of legislative redistricting a decade ago, Democratic Sen. Tony Moore of Pitt County became a redistricting casualty. After being put into the same district as a fellow Democrat, he responded by changing his party affiliation to Republican.

It didn’t help. He still lost his legislative seat.

Moore serves as an example of how legislators don’t look at redistricting as just the business of politics. It becomes personal.

Democrats controlled the process during Moore’s tenure in the legislature.

Republicans will control the map-drawing when legislators return to Raleigh next month to approve new districts for the state House, state Senate and North Carolina’s congressional seats.

Just like in 2001, the maps aren’t expected to stand without a court challenge.

A decade ago, when Democrats drew the maps, the challenge came from Republican legislators, party officials and activists.

The legal challenge ultimately led to a significant and somewhat novel court decision, Stephenson v. Bartlett.

The state Supreme Court ruled that a map-drawing provision in the state constitution requiring that legislative districts follow county lines had not been wholly undone by the Voting Rights Act and court decisions supporting the principle of one-person, one-vote. The state’s high court ruled that the “whole county provision” should apply except in cases where it interfered with the federal law and the one-person, one-vote principle.

The ruling went on to lay out a criteria for legislators to follow in piecing together a map.

Then-Justice Bob Orr, who agreed with the larger decision, dissented regarding the criteria, saying that the state constitution reserved the nuts and bolts for legislators to determine.

Geography professor John Florin of UNC to join EXPAT this THURSDAY ...

Dr. John Florin will be one of our three guest speakers this Thursday at EXPAT , a roundtable about adventuring to new places, coming home, or just thinking about either. He is a geography professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Even though Akira and I went to NC State, and we live in Duke territory literally next door to East Campus here in Durham, we will put all local college rivalries aside and welcome John to EXPAT.

Other guest speakers are Stuart Albert , who spent time in Japan, and Tara Connolly , who did a Gap Year round the world trip. More about EXPAT is here: http://www.designkompany.com/expat

Here’s what it says about Dr. Florin on the college’s site:

My teaching and research interest focus upon U.S. historical and cultural geography , population, and medical geography. The courses I most often teach include our introductory course in global regional geography, a basic course in human geography required of all majors, an upper division course in the historical geography of the United States and population geography, and a graduate seminar in historical geography. I am also department chair (since 1987) and Executive Director of Carolina’s Office of Study Abroad (since 1994).

My recent publications include, Atlas of American Agriculture:The American Cornucopia (New York:Macmillan, 1995) with Richard Pillsbury; “Introduction” and “Regionalization of Health Care” in Thomas C. Rickets et al. (eds.), Geographic Methods of Health Services Research (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994); and Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1992, 4th edition) with Steve Birdsall.

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