Monday, October 24, 2016

Let's Show Judge Bob Edmunds the Way To Go Home

The dark shaded area in that map is North Carolina House District 48, which a panel of three federal judges last August singled out for special comment: "one of the most bizarre and sprawling districts" enacted by the NC General Assembly as part of their racial gerrymandering, now ruled unconstitutional. (In a bizarre twist, the three-judge panel left these gerrymandered districts in effect for the 2016 elections.)

Anyway, NC Supreme Court Justice Bob Edmunds is catching flak because he had ruled, in advance of the three-judge federal panel, that districts like this one were perfectly all right with him. The three-judge federal panel overturned him, and thereby hangs Judge Edmunds' reelection prospects.

He's being attacked in a 30-second TV ad for approving of racial gerrymandering, and Republican big-wigs in the state (GOP Exec. Dir. Dallas Woodhouse, NCGOP Chair Robin Hayes) are screaming bloody murder, that their Supreme Court Justice Edmunds is being unfairly "race-baited."

The TV ad spotlights US House District 12, not NC House District 48, but the point the ad is making seems amply justified in respect to any of the heavily gerrymandered districts enacted by the Republican General Assembly and which Republican justices on the NC Supremes find no fault with.

Edmunds needs to go. Just remember how the Republican overlords in the General Assembly attempted to jury-rig Edmunds' reelection with the "retention election" scheme, also ruled unconstitutional.


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