More from the cited OpEd...

... North Carolina isn't nearly as red as the Republican veto-proof supermajority in the General Assembly would suggest.

It's just that the state is among those with undemocratic gerrymandered maps. After a series of sometimes-confusing and contradictory court rulings, gerrymanders are in place in North Carolina that were deemed unconstitutional and racially discriminatory against Black voters.

The state Supreme Court struck down one discriminatory map, and a newly-constituted Republican dominant court let the map stand. In 2013, a panel of federal judges struck down a map they said N.C.

Republicans had drawn with "almost surgical precision" to target Black voters. ...