Editorials - 06/06/02

Judge should not decide district lines

State Republicans learned well the lesson they were taught during the presidential election of 2000: If you can't win at the ballot box, then try to win in court.

Of course, GOP leadership is not totally to blame. They are merely taking advantage of a system that allows them to shop for a judge likely to be sympathetic to their cause. There's something wrong with a system that allows a suit of this magnitude to be filed in Smithfield, in front of a Jesse Helms lieutenant, rather than in Raleigh, the capital and seat of state government.

Why Johnston County? Why not Jackson County?

And then there's the actual redrawing of the state's congressional districts by a Superior Court judge rather than by the Legislature.

Remember that this whole suit was filed over crossing county lines. Republicans thought the first redistricting plan drawn by legislators split too many counties. North Carolina Supreme Court justices, in ruling against a Democratic appeal of Judge Knox Jenkins's initial finding, told state legislators not to cross county lines (unless they had to), to try for single-member districts but to keep all districts within 5 percent of the ideal population per district.

Not only did Jenkins not accept the General Assembly's redrawn districts, he did not offer any explanation as to why he rejected them. And his mandated districts cross many county lines in a seemingly random way.

We think it's wrong for one Superior Court judge to draw legislative districts that affect the whole state. If any individual or group is going to usurp the General Assembly's authority with regard to setting district boundaries, we feel it should be the N.C. Supreme Court, which is composed of seven justices chosen by a statewide election.

While we readily admit that Democrats are not blameless - their initial districts could have been more compact and not so obviously politically drawn - we also believe any districts established by the majority party would have been challenged in court.

And, given the partisan nature of this spring's court proceedings, we believe the result would have been the same.

While the current plan clearly favors Republicans, at least the makeup of the state's next General Assembly is not a done deal. Voters will still have their say, and we urge all Tar Heels to go to the polls in record numbers to make sure the people, and not the courts, have the final say.

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