With the clamor of all the rats running for the rails in Washington, a very important story got drowned out on Monday. In the newly insane state of North Carolina, a state court threw a huge pile of sand into the gears of the machinery of legalized ratfcking. From the Washington Post:



The state’s House delegation is made up of 10 Republicans and three Democrats, but many of the GOP-leaning districts rely on the same strategies the court rejected in a previous case about state legislative seats, including splitting Democratic strongholds in some parts of the state while packing as many Democratic voters as possible into other districts. Drawing new House districts could spell more difficulty for either Rep. Mark Meadows [Ed. Note: What a shame that would be.] or Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, Republicans who split voters in Asheville, a rapidly growing left-leaning city in the western region of the state. It could also shake up the districts surrounding the state’s high-growth urban regions.



This is a big win for Eric Holder's National Redistricting Foundation, as well as dozens of activists in North Carolina who've been fighting—and winning—on this front for several months now. Their successful strategy has been to demonstrate that the map as drawn violates the North Carolina state constitution. That kept the federal judiciary out of the game, which was very smart, because the Supreme Court decided back in June that partisan gerrymandering was not its concern. That case concerned exactly the map that got tossed this week.



Maybe everyone’s votes should count the same. LOGAN CYRUS Getty Images

(For you fans of historical ironies, the decision is based in part on a provision of North Carolina's revised constitution of 1868 that states, flatly, "All elections shall be free." Six sections before that one is a provision that prohibits the state from ever again seceding from the Union. Not for nothing did W.T. Sherman stop by back in the day. However, over the next few decades, as white supremacy re-established itself, that state constitution got pretty well shredded. Now, though, here we are.)



In addition, this court's decision may have slain the state's gerrymander forever. The state court is not going to stand for any temporizing or clock-bleeding from the Republicans as they attempt to concoct districts that are fairly drawn, although North Carolina Republicans are very much out of practice at doing that. The court told the Republicans that it will allow the election to be stalled and that the court will postponed the 2020 primaries if a fair map is not forthcoming. That's as big a hammer as a state court can wield.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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