Vote where it matters

Rep. Graig Meyer of North Carolina House District 50 said, “This election is really putting North Carolina in the middle of our national political debate. As the most closely divided state in the nation, there are a lot of eyes on us.”

Over the past six years, North Carolina has undergone a whirlwind of tumultuous partisan politics. With a ratio of Republicans to Democrats split more evenly than any other state in the country, it’s no surprise that intense political debate occurs. However, in 2010, with the election of a strong Republican majority, both the N.C. House and Senate became increasingly divided and increasingly unwilling to compromise. Art Pope’s and the Koch brothers’ money poured into Republican campaigns, and politics became focused upon reelection and fundraising, not upon actual results. By the 2012-2013 school year, the starting salary for a North Carolina public school teacher was $30,800. For reference, that’s almost $16,000 less than the annual salary of a General Manager at McDonald’s.

North Carolina education, predictably suffered. Not only did it suffer, it continues to suffer. We are at the bottom of the pack in teacher pay, in per pupil spending, in teacher retention and much more. But education was not the only price our citizens paid. No doubt you’ve heard of the recent House Bill 2, coined the “Bathroom Bill,” which caused hundreds of millions of dollars in capital flight from our state. Even before HB2, the legislature blocked huge reforms in policing for which many in Durham had pushed. Proposed legislation would require police body cameras and allow public access to footage, which was the culmination of months of activism and political compromise. In one swift movement, the state struck down this reform.

The public university system faced budget cuts totaling $235 million since 2008 and trap laws shutdown women’s health centers across the state. Arguably most notably, the state passed controversial voter ID laws that targeted young and minority populations.

For those not from the south, it may be difficult to understand the gravity of the race-related gerrymandering and voting restrictions in this state. “Why, Leah!” you say, “No government could possibly enforce a rule of segregation or extended Jim Crow! It’s 2016!”

And yet, this very hand was dealt unto Durham residents in particular. There are two main forms of gerrymandering: packing and cracking. Packing creates long, oddly-shaped districts in order to pack populations of political opposition into one voting district, diluting their political power. Cracking splits regions of the opposition into tiny pieces, combining them with populations in which a strong majority support the party in power, once again fragmenting the power of the opposition. By February of this year, no state had been more packed nor cracked than North Carolina. Minority populations, who historically supported the democratic ticket, had been either isolated into one long district or broken apart and incorporated into Republican districts on every congressional map drawn. Over the past six years, North Carolina has been sued by the Department of Justice so many times that I couldn’t find an exact figure giving the total. So extreme were our infractions of the Voting Rights Act that the courts were compelled to call N.C. District 12 a “serpentine district that has been dubbed the least geographically compact district in the Nation.” North Carolina residents were so perturbed by the overwhelming decline in the quality of state representation that they took to the streets in protest.

The Moral Monday movement began in April 2013. Built as a reaction to a perceived attack on social values, Moral Mondays quickly inspired millions of North Carolinians to stand up for their rights. As a young and idylistic middle schooler, I was in awe of the sea of people that I saw each week; all there to defend their teachers, their environment, their right to vote, their right to marriage. It became a cathartic experience. For every teacher that left my high school for a state with higher pay, I recruited one friend to come and raise their voice. Each year, the total grew higher.

November 2016 will be a pivotal turning point in North Carolinian history. We are gearing up for the closest presidential race in the country, and it’s anybody’s guess which way we’ll swing. If you want your vote to have the most statistical weight possible, go to YouCanVote.org and register to vote in North Carolina (your new home), so that when you cast your ballot for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, you are giving your vote a real purpose. It’s up to you—not just to decide the outcome of North Carolina’s electoral votes, but to turn the tide in the state and ensure that every legislator is truly working for the will of the people.

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