I live in North Carolina. We have 13 US Congressional districts in this state. They have been drawn in such a way that three of the districts have as many Democrats as possible packed in them, leaving Republicans as the majority party in the other ten. As a result, our state is represented in the House of Representatives by three Democrats and ten Republicans — even though North Carolina is split about half and half between the two parties. That’s right — Democrats make up about half the state, but we get less than a quarter of the representation.

Republicans know this is unfair. Heck — they designed it to be unfair. And they’re not even subtle about it. They also know that only judges bought and paid for by conservative interests will green-light these, so their strategy is to find as many legal ways to stall as possible, delaying the inevitable. Then they’ll redraw them unfairly again and start the legal process over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

We Democrats (as well as North Carolinians sick and tired of having their tax money used to pay for this nonsense) have a strategy of our own. We’re trying to oust the Republicans controlling our state legislature. Unfortunately, that’s difficult, because all the state legislative districts are gerrymandered, too. But we’re trying.