RALEIGH, N.C.  – The House has completed fixing boundaries of two legislative districts to adhere to a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The House gave final approval Tuesday to a bill that redraws districts currently represented by Reps. Sandra Spaulding Hughes of New Hanover County and Carolyn Justice of Pender County.

The vote was 113-1. Preliminary approval came Monday night. The Senate is likely to approve the House map without changes. Federal attorneys will be asked to sign off on the map for use in the 2010 elections.

The Legislature redrew districts after justices upheld a state Supreme Court ruling that called Hughes’ district unlawful. The courts determined a state isn’t required by federal law to draw districts where black residents comprise less than half the voting-age population.

A bill filed this session would establish an independent commission to draw the state’s district lines, the N&O reports.

(The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 3/17/09, Editorial)

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling on a North Carolina redistricting case might not have a huge practical impact. The “cross-over district” at issue is not common. But the case is helpful in highlighting one of the enduring divisions in American politics.

The court ruled that the Voting Rights Act does not require creating “safe” seats for minority candidates in districts where minorities make up less than half the voting populace. This, according to another newspaper, overturns a “central goal” of the Voting Rights Act — “protecting minority voting rights.”

But that is utter nonsense. Nothing in the case suggested that minorities were being deprived of the right to vote. They were not kept away from the polls, intimidated, harassed with poll taxes or literacy tests, or otherwise importuned.

The only thing the ruling might be said to do is to reduce, slightly, the odds that a minority might win a particular seat, in the same way that failing to require the political gerrymandering of a legislative district might reduce the odds that an incumbent or a member of a given party might win a particular seat.

To put it another way, the court refused to say that the Voting Rights Act requires states to guarantee political outcomes. But it did nothing to limit opportunities.

The only way the court ruling could be said to interfere with voting rights is if the right to vote is synonymous with the right to have your candidate win. Even then, the argument is predicated on the increasingly outdated notion that minorities automatically prefer candidates who share their skin color, and that white Americans will not vote for a person of ethnic origin. That would come as a surprise to, e.g., Barack Obama.