Port: North Dakota got railroaded in redistricting lawsuit

MINOT — A federal judge

has imposed a new legislative district map

on North Dakota, and while some partisans and pundits are carrying on as though this is some great victory for voting rights, the reality is that it will change very little in our state’s politics.

The lawsuit that precipitated Judge Peter Welte’s ruling was rooted in the idea that the map approved by lawmakers in 2021 did not sufficiently empower Native American voters. I would be surprised if the new map increased, in any appreciable way, the number of Native Americans in North Dakota’s Legislature.

Reasonable people can make their peace with the new map. It’s going to create a difficult election year for a couple very unreasonable lawmakers. Rep. Donna Henderson, a Republican in District 9B, and Sen. Judy Estenson, a Republican in District 15, are among the lawmakers impacted by the new map. Both are strident populist culture warriors and unserious policymakers, and if they aren’t re-elected, it won’t break my heart.

Also, we should remember that the map this one replaced was also drawn by state lawmakers to increase the number of Native Americans serving in Bismarck. And it worked. Two Native American women were elected to the subdistricts created by the map. Despite the narratives around this lawsuit, the Legislature was already trying to achieve the worthy goal of increasing Native American representation.

But the process that led to this new, court-ordered map? It stunk.

Let’s start with the premise the court accepted. The plaintiffs argued, and the judge agreed, that because Native Americans are not elected to the Legislature in numbers proportional to the percentage of the state population they make up, the districts were gerrymandered.

Which might come as a surprise to all the Native Americans who supported and voted or the map, not to mention those elected because of it).

It’s a crude and unnuanced metric to use, but that’s what the flawed, broken Voting Rights Act requires.

And then there was the process. Welte issued his initial opinion, finding our state’s current map to be invalid, on Nov. 17. He then set a Dec. 22 deadline for our Legislature to develop a new map, or else he’d impose one on it.

In just 35 days, some of them over the holidays, our part-time lawmakers were supposed to explore their legal options, exercise their right to appeal the ruling, develop a new map, and then call themselves into session to approve that map.

Welte himself took 158 days,

from the date trial in June,

to issue his opinion.

Even when state officials appealed, the courts refused to budge on the hurry-up timeline. As I write this, the state’s appeal is still pending before the 8th Circuit, but that doesn’t matter. The court has ordered a new map, and state officials are obliged to comply.

North Dakotans now have a new legislative district map. One drawn by plaintiffs’ lawyers, and a judge, and not their elected representatives.

This, we’re supposed to believe, was a process in pursuit of fairness. It wasn’t.