A dubious honor: Prestige from an early primary isn’t worth the potential costs

When a three-judge Superior Court panel unanimously decided Friday to deny a group of liberal-leaning challengers’ request to move North Carolina’s primary back two months, from May to July, it seemingly placed more importance on potential political prestige than on the pursuit of certain justice.

The group claims the state’s new district lines, which were created by the first Republican-led General Assembly in more than 100 years, are unfair to minority voters. The group requested the primary be delayed to give more time to challenges to the redistricting, as it doesn’t want an election held with potentially unfair districts.

According to the Charlotte Observer, the judges did not immediately decide whether to throw out all or just part of the group’s request, and there is still a chance for an appeal to the N.C. Supreme Court.

The challengers should absolutely appeal, and hopefully, they will get their delay. The state shouldn’t hold elections with districts that might disenfranchise some voters.

The decision in this case should have been easy because there is little to lose and much to gain. A delay would improve the chances of lawsuits over the new districts ending before the primary, while sticking with the status quo seems to bow to the idea that an earlier primary means more political prestige.

Some years, when primaries are more competitive, the draw of potentially deciding the next presidential nominee could be powerful. But this year the race is already down to two clear front-runners, and North Carolina’s current May 8 date would put it at the back end anyway.

This year, N.C. would be forfeiting a dubious opportunity for prestige in order to pursue a very real possibility of increasing fairness.

In fact, by not granting the delay, the justices effectively nullified the other lawsuits, as they are unlikely to end by the beginning of May but might have ended by the July 10 date the judges denied.

And despite pre-clearance from the Department of Justice for the redistricting, there is still ample room for both erroneous and purposeful disenfranchisement.

North Carolina is among a handful of states that must submit their redistricting plans to the Justice Department when they are created every 10 years because of our history of racial barriers to voting.

However, the Justice Department is only required to examine 40 of North Carolina’s 100 county’s in the scope of a section in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which requires that minorities’ voting rights not be worsened.

Furthermore, most of those 40 counties are rural, and major population centers like Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Asheville and Wilmington aren’t covered. Greensboro and Fayetteville are, but that is little consolation.

So federal approval is clearly not a complete statement on the fairness of redistricting, especially concerning minorities, many of whom live in the large population centers.

And in approving the lines, the Justice Department also noted a software glitch that left thousands of voters unassigned to districts. This is also grounds for a second look.

So if the best reason to deny the delay is the pursuit of prestige, that’s simply not good enough. Voters deserve to know for sure that their districts for at least the next ten years are fair for them.