After the polls closed on election night in N.C., politicians and supporters gathered in Raleigh to watch the results come in. Both parties had a lot to celebrate that night, as Republicans took the control in the state, while Democrats saw a second term for Barack Obama....

A snake does not follow a straight path. Neither do the district lines in North Carolina. But as Gene Nichol, director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina, said in a press conference May 29, the blame for the state’s strangely shaped voting districts spreads across party lines and branches of state government.