EDITOR’S NOTE: Today the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments North Carolina Republican went too far in drawing congressional district lines that favored the GOP and disenfranchised state voters. On Monday, N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, wrote this column for The Washington Post. The text below was distributed in a news release from Cooper’s office.
The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments over whether politicians can be trusted to draw up their own districts.
Take it from us: They can’t.
We are governors from different parties with different views on a number of issues. But on this we agree: Elections should be decided by the voters. Under the current system, politicians devise maps that make some votes count more than others. They rig the system with impunity.
Our states — Maryland and North Carolina — are among the most gerrymandered in the country. Take a look at our congressional district maps, and you will see some absurd-looking districts. This is no artistic statement; it is a scheme to concentrate one party’s voters — often using race as a proxy for party affiliation — in as few districts as possible, while spreading out another party’s voters into a larger number of districts that can still be comfortably won.
Both parties do it — and have for decades.
We have pushed to take the politics out of the process to make it fairer and more neutral. But it is clear to us that elected members of our legislatures will never give up this power without the courts — or the people — taking it from them.
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