Raleigh, N.C. – North Carolina is the latest battleground in a national strategy to use partisan courts to ensure Democrats win legislative and congressional majorities. In November, Democrats continued their “sue ‘til blue” actions by filing a lawsuit asking the Democratic-controlled North Carolina state courts to draw new legislative maps to favor Democrats.

This isn’t the first time that North Carolina maps drawn by Republicans in the General Assembly have faced a challenge from Democrats and liberal activist groups. Since 2011, legislative Republicans have faced a near-constant stream of legal challenges. The maps were initially approved by Eric Holder’s Justice Department and the D.C. Circuit Federal Court. Nevertheless, Democrats sued and Republicans redrew the districts to comply with a different federal court’s order. Since Democrats still didn’t win a majority under those maps, they now want a Democratic state court to draw even more favorable districts so Democrats win.

“This is just another example of the Democrats’ nationwide efforts to subvert the democratic process and use partisan judges to get favorable results when things don’t go their way,”said Sen. Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell). “They already got a court to redraw maps once, but since that didn’t give them a majority, now they’re suing again under a new strategy. They won’t stop until a liberal court draws them into power.”

Around the country, Democratic activist groups, including Eric Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), have launched a campaign to use Democratic state courts to strip small towns and rural voters of their political influence in favor of urban interests. These groups target states, like North Carolina, that have concentrated pockets of city Democrats and broad swaths of rural Republicans, and then advance a flawed proportional representation argument that a 50/50 statewide vote means that Democrats should hold 50 percent of the state legislative and congressional seats.

Under the guise of “fair maps” and ending “partisan gerrymandering,” these groups seek to have Democratic state courts effectively rewrite state Constitutions – with no public input – to include proportionality provisions and draw new maps that favor Democrats. Their logic is that party control of legislative and Congressional seats in a state should be proportional to the statewide party vote breakdown. This effectively negates the political power of small towns and rural voters, and rejects the American system of local district representation, driving all campaign activity into the largest cities and allowing concentrated urban majorities to rule. This exact tension between urban and rural voters was contemplated by America’s founders and resolved in the 18^th century.

The theory of proportionality ignores the fact that Democratic voters are concentrated in a few urban centers, whereas Republicans are spread out across suburban and rural areas. This fact causes Democrats to win major victories in those urban centers, whereas Republicans win modest victories in the rest of the districts. The total statewide vote may be close to 50/50, but on a district-by-district level, Republicans win.

Geographically diverse legislative districts have been a staple of America’s form of governance since The Great Compromise in the 18^th century. Now, Democrats seek to bludgeon 200+ years of precedent so they can win majorities, disenfranchising small towns and rural voters in the process.

This strategy was successfully employed by Democrats in Pennsylvania in 2018. After a liberal activist group filed a lawsuit against the state’s Republican-drawn Congressional maps, the majority-Democratic state Supreme Court redrew maps that resulted in Republicans going from a 13-5 congressional majority to an even 9-9 split. This theory of proportionality was already dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court as “gobbledygook,” but national Democrats now seek to rewrite state constitutions using sympathetic liberal judges.

“Just like Democrats in Pennsylvania, North Carolina Democrats don’t have a maps problem, they have a geography problem,”said Hise. “But rather than convincing more people to vote for them, they are following the blueprint from Pennsylvania and asking a liberal state court to draw new maps favorable to Democrats that overturn longstanding political precedent in the United States. This is a war on small towns and rural voters.”