Gerrymandering
Emma Camp | 10.22.2024 1:33 PM
Kate Barr has no chance of winning this election, and she knows it. Barr is running as a Democrat for North Carolina's 37th state senate district. If things go as expected, she'll get around 30 or 35 percent of the vote.
That's because Barr is running in a gerrymandered district. To have a chance of winning, Barr would need an astonishing statistical anomaly—a "99th percentile kind of blue wave," as she told Reason, to get elected. But just because Barr's campaign is doomed doesn't mean she isn't going to have fun on the way to defeat.
"I've been training to lose this Senate race for all of my life," reads the glib 'about' section on Barr's campaign website. "I voted for Al Gore in 2000, cheered for Carolina basketball during the Matt Doherty era, and watch the Carolina Panthers on Sundays (shudder)."
Barr told Reason that she was motivated to run after watching anti-gerrymandering efforts face losses at the Supreme Court and state-level courts. Last year, the North Carolina Supreme Court—following a........