North Carolina Republicans have given Democrats our crowning issue for 2024: their cynical, corrupt, hyper-partisan gerrymandering of congressional and legislative districts.

They’ve packed and cracked and sliced and diced a 50-50 state – the most closely divided state in the country, where fairly drawn districts produced a 7-7 congressional split – in a blatant effort to engineer a 10-4 or 11-3 Republican congressional edge (photo) and a perpetual supermajority in the legislature.

It’s the most extreme and egregious gerrymandering in American political history.

This is the issue Democrats should take to the voters – all voters, in all districts and all 100 counties:

• The Republican took away your right to choose your elected representatives.
• They cheated so they can keep power and keep you from deciding.
• We’ll end gerrymandering in Raleigh – period.

They did it because what the legislature did is unpopular: ban abortions, starve public schools, protect guns over people, seize more power for themselves, protect polluters, cut taxes for the rich and raise taxes for the rest of us – much of it through a 1,400-page budget written in secret, passed in a rush and filled with special sweetheart deals for Republican cronies and contributors.

They also slipped through a law to keep all their records secret – especially the truth about their gerrymandering.

They’re betting voters will never know the truth.

But remember this maxim from Governor Jim Hunt: “Never underestimate the intelligence of people. And never overestimate the information they have.”

Next year, Democrats should go to every voter, in every district and every county, and tell this story.

Gerrymandering may win in darkness. But it loses in the light.