State-level nullification included gerrymandering and vote suppression aimed at Black constituencies.

Evidence

But while McConnell’s hyper-obstructionist rule in the Senate is arguably the most high-profile example of the nullification strategy, it’s far from the most egregious. In state legislatures across the country, Republicans have embraced a view that holds voting majorities—as well as entire constituencies—illegitimate if they don’t support Republican candidates for office. In 2012, North Carolina Republicans won legislative and executive power for the first time in more than a century. They used it to gerrymander the electoral map and impose new restrictions on voting, specifically aimed at African Americans. One such restriction, a strict voter-identification law, was designed to target Black North Carolinians with “almost surgical precision,” according to the federal judges who struck the law down. When, in 2016, Democrats overcame these obstacles to take back the governor’s mansion, the Republican-controlled legislature successfully stripped some power from the office, to prevent Democrats from reversing their efforts to rig the game. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 655

Categorization

• QUESTION: The federal judges’ characterization of ‘almost surgical precision’ is a striking documented quote worth chasing to its source ruling for the case-study file.
• XREF: connects to: Literacy tests and poll taxes were written to let local officials disenfranchise black voters — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2063