Racist redistricting process found to target black voters and all statewide districts to hold special makeup votes

From Ballot Access News:

On November 29, a 3-judge U.S. District Court ordered North Carolina to hold special elections for all legislative seats in November 2017. The primary for such special elections will be in late August or early September 2017. Here is the court order in Covington v State.

All state legislators in North Carolina normally have two-year terms, and all districts held elections earlier this month. But the winners of this month’s election, under the terms of the court order, last only one year, not two years. The basis for the order is that the current districts, drawn up in 2011, are an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The new court order gives the legislature until March 15, 2017, to draw new districts. If the legislature does not do that, the court will draw new districts.

Excerpt from the Brennan Center report:

On December 5, the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the issue of racial gerrymandering for the second time since 2010, when it hears a pair of cases from North Carolina and Virginia that contend race played an excessive role in informing how district lines were drawn, to the disadvantage of African-American voters.

In 2015’s Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama, the Court held that the Alabama Legislature had improperly adopted targets for the percentage of African-American voters needed for each district — and radically redrew districts to meet those percentage targets — without regard for whether African Americans could have elected candidates at lower percentages.

In McCrory v. Harris, the plaintiffs contend that something similar happened in North Carolina in 2011, when the legislature there decided to increase the percentage of African Americans in two congressional districts. One of the challenged congressional districts, District 12, is known as the most gerrymandered district in America, and has been redrawn five times since 1993.