Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and you're listening to The Takeaway. We move now from Alabama to my home base in North Carolina where the State Supreme Court turned back its redistricting maps last week. In a four-three decision, the court ruled that the GOP-drawn electoral maps violated the state's constitution because the lines minimized the influence of Democratic voters.

In a tweet, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said, "The maps violate a voter's fundamental right to vote." The maps would've given Republicans a good chance of winning 11 congressional seats compared with three for Democrats, despite voters in the state being closely divided between the two parties. Now, the North Carolina general assembly has until February 18th at 5:00 PM to submit new maps. For more on this, we're joined now by Derwin Montgomery. Derwin was a member of the North Carolina general assembly and a Democrat. Derwin, it's great to have you here.

Derwin Montgomery: Great to be here with you, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Derwin, you as a member of the general assembly and especially here in North Carolina where we don't just draw maps every 10 years, [laughs] it seems like we draw them every year, year and a half, have been part of this process. Talk to me about when Democrats and Republicans are coming together to draw the maps. What kinds of conversations are being had?

Derwin Montgomery: Conversation? I don't know if I would necessarily say that there's a ton of conversations that are with Democrats and Republicans. In 2019, when I was a part of the redistricting there that was court-ordered, the Republicans led that conversation, they led the process. They claimed it was the most transparent, we say again claim, this past year, but that process was very much one where they came forward, they set the standard on what was going to be considered, and how it was going to be considered. Democrats were allowed to put their thoughts forward, but majority of those were not considered in the process.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I think it's important context that I think oftentimes ordinary citizens feel like this process is obscured from view that they're not quite sure how it works, but to know that even when you're holding office in the general assembly, it can still feel a little bit like you're not part of the process.

Derwin Montgomery: Very much. When the maps were being drawn, in both 2019 and then this year, the claim again came to transparency, but both what came out in the court case this year and then what happened in 2019 is that there were other maps that were being used and other processes that were being used to bring forward what were the recommendations.

When meetings were going to be held, the standards that were going to be in place, whether or not you were going to try to protect incumbents, or whether you were going to try to prevent double-bunking, which is putting two of the same currently elected members in the same district, all of those standards were put forward by one party over the other.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's talk about the State Supreme Court for a bit. They did make a decision four-three to send these maps back, to tell the legislators to try again. Were you at all surprised that the court made that choice?

Derwin Montgomery: I was not surprised by that decision from the Supreme Court here in the State of North Carolina in large part because when you look at the makeup of the court, majority of the members of that court are members who made the same decision in 2019 when they struck down the maps.

If folks recall in 2019, the reason that the State Supreme Court got engaged in cases is because the US Supreme Court essentially left much of the considerations around gerrymandering from a partisan standpoint to state courts. After that decision, there was another lawsuit that challenged at the state level and the State Supreme Court made a similar decision. Even though there had been some changes in the last election cycle with members who make up, the majority of that court would've been the same court that would have made the decision in 2019.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Worth pointing out, the North Carolina State Supreme Court is elected.

Derwin Montgomery: Correct, statewide elections, partisan election.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Again, to point that out, these are folks who run statewide, and again, you have a very closely balanced court, and yet you were going to end up with districts here that we're going to be 11 to 3 in a state that is truly like, from my perspective, the definition of purple.

Derwin Montgomery: For sure. Part of the argument, and it was actually quite interesting to hear Chief Justice Paul Newby's dissent in the case when he wrote essentially that the constitution does not guarantee fair elections, they guarantee free elections, but they don't guarantee that the elections would be fair. I chuckled when I read that part of his commentary because I think that part of folks' belief in our systems is that they do believe that they should be fair, and fair is not when you have an elector that is so evenly divided in North Carolina to have such a large disparity.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes. I think that the point can sometimes get lost. We often talk about voter suppression, which is really about whether or not each individual can make it to the ballot box and register their opinions, but mapping is a little bit different. It doesn't necessarily keep individuals from casting a vote, it just changes the weight of the vote. Is that how that works?

Derwin Montgomery: I would say so because in partisan gerrymandering, you can create a district that regardless of how hard a individual runs in a race, if the district is heavily slanted and drawn for a Democrat or heavily slanted and drawn for a Republican, their opponent can spend as much money as they want and folks can go out and vote as hard as they would like and they still will not be able to elect the candidate of their choice, which is the problem with partisan gerrymandering.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, we're talking about the language here of partisan gerrymandering, something that the Supreme Court has allowed at times in the past but has always pushed back against racial gerrymandering. One of the challenges, of course, in the US south is that it can be hard to tell the difference between racial gerrymandering and partisan gerrymandering because so much of the electorate of color is in the democratic party.

Derwin Montgomery: Now, this is true. One of the things we've seen in terms of the sense of packing when Black voters are packed in or other minority voters are packed into to districts, I think it's that dilution, but then even when you look at the partisan nature though, there are ways when you look at counties in North Carolina, and I'll take Forsyth County where I am now as an example, there are ways to draw fair maps in representation in terms of the number of competitive seats in Forsyth County in North Carolina.

The fact is that has not happened because if you draw lines that are more competitive, you probably are going to end up with more democratic elected seats in that space. When you look at that partisan line drawing, even overlaying that with the racial side of it, you're going to see a skew one way or another, I think, just from the tradition of voting, as you mentioned, in the south.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Should we take the redistricting process away from elected officials and put it in the hands of a nonpartisan or bipartisan commission that isn't there trying to protect their own seat or trying to make deals with their friends? Is there a way to move this process into one that is in fact transparent?

Derwin Montgomery: I think there is. I'm unsure if it is by a nonpartisan commission, which I've supported in the past, or whether it is with very clear structure and rules to how maps should be drawn. I think that's part of the challenge is that in most of the state constitutions are not very clear standards on how the maps are to be drawn. In North Carolina, there are no guidelines outside of just some broad language on what and how the legislature is able to draw those maps.

Even giving it to a nonpartisan commission, there's still politics. There's still some politics that come into that process. I think the problem is, what are the standards? What do we want to protect? What do we want to make sure is considered and is not considered in that process, and how do we get that to be put in place at whatever level the consideration is happening?

Melissa Harris-Perry: Derwin Montgomery is a former member of the North Carolina general assembly and also former member of the Winston Salem City Council and served as a Democrat. Derwin, thanks for joining us.

Derwin Montgomery: Thank you for allowing me to be here. Great conversation.

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