Guest Opinion: Following the Supreme Court’s gerrymandering …

On a rainy evening in rural Elizabethtown, N.C., hundreds packed the Bladen County Commission meeting this week to oppose shifts in voting districts that would diminish the power of Black voters.

One small county’s decision to show up in solidarity against discriminatory changes to elections—following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Callais decision to gut the Voting Rights Act, open the door to racial gerrymandering, and kick off “a political earthquake” across the South—signals how N.C. communities are gearing up for this generational fight.

During last month’s Bladen County Commission meeting, Board Chair Cameron McGill surprised his colleagues with a proposal to cut the commission from 9 to 5 members. The move would abandon the hard-fought districts settled upon by the county board, state legislature, and voters back in 1988 after Black residents challenged the county’s five-member, at-large elections as unlawful under the V.R.A.

Without mentioning the Supreme Court decision, Chair McGill claimed that Bladen’s districts were now “unconstitutional” and called for an immediate vote to change them. Board Member Dr. Ophelia Munn-Goins objected and commissioners agreed to delay the vote until June.

A month on, facing backlash from a room full of energized local voters, McGill tabled his proposal a few minutes into the June meeting.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” McGill told the capacity crowd.

The overflowing audience responded with applause and pointed comments that challenged commissioners to “tell other counties that if they’re thinking about making changes … we are going to do everything we can.”

That sentiment would play out on the opposite side of the state the following day.

Jackson County Board of Elections members met on June 2 to decide 2026 options for voters. Residents able to make the Tuesday morning meeting in Cullowhee, N.C., to demand good early voting sites, including a campus poll accessible to Western Carolina University, were likely surprised to hear from an apologetic board member that Republicans on the board had been pressured by state officials to cut WCU’s popular campus voting site.

“Our job is to represent the people of Jackson County, so I’m sorry … I’ve been told that if I don’t vote a particular way, they will do whatever they have to do to remove me from the Board,” G.O.P. Board Member Jay Pavey told the public.

Pavey would go on to break with the Republican board chair and vote with Democrats in favor of a compromise voting location.