From plausible to insulting, election experts weigh in on NC voting district maps

So, what are the chances, in a place where statewide elections ping-pong between Republicans and Democrats, that lawmakers managed to draw state House and Senate maps that protect Republican majorities – plus a congressional map likely to elect 10, and maybe 11, Republicans out of 14 U.S. House districts – without this data to guide them?

“Very long odds indeed,” said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C.

“Do they think we’re stupid?” said Steven Greene, a political science professor at North Carolina State University

WRAL News reached out to 10 political scientists, mathematicians, attorneys and redistricting experts, inside and outside of North Carolina, attached to organizations with varied political leanings, to ask one question: Was it possible to draw these districts without election or partisan data?

Their answers fell into three basic buckets: surely not, surely they could and maybe.

Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer posited that consultants looked at political data and fed lawmakers pre-drawn maps, pulling an end-run around the prohibition. Bitzer, a long-time observer of North Carolina politics and its redistricting battles, said that’s his theory “until proven or shown otherwise, which I’m sure will come out in some kind of evidentiary hearing or deposition.”

Indeed, there will be hearings and depositions. Two lawsuits already have been filed challenging the maps. More could come.

Republican leaders say no such tactics were employed.

“Republican lawmakers did not use any consultants in drawing or preparing to draw the maps,” Pat Ryan, a spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, said in an email. “No consultants were involved in the map-drawing process, period.”

Dylan Reel, a spokesman for House Rules Chairman Destin Hall, who oversaw map drawing in the House, said the same thing: “No consultants were involved, period.”

Another theory for some: Lawmakers are so familiar with voters’ leanings that they don’t need detailed election data to gerrymander a map. They can do it from memory.

“Clearly, they go into map-drawing knowing stuff about certain areas,” said Andrew Taylor, another N.C. State political science professor.

“Obviously, you could create maps with greater precision (with that data). … But the reality is map makers have been gerrymandering for a long time,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program in New York.

Bitzer said this doesn’t explain the lopsidedness Republicans came up with.

“We can look at a map and generalize in distinct areas, but when you get down to putting this precinct here and that precinct there … maybe some refresher information might be helpful,” he said.

Minority lawmakers likely to lose out under partisan NC district maps

Several experts said it’s entirely possible to draw these Republican-favoring districts without hard data, even in a state politically divided enough to bounce between the two major parties in statewide elections.

“Not only is it possible, but it’s also probable,” said Charles Blahous, senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va.

“It is very plausible,” said David McLennan, a Meredith College professor and director of the Meredith Poll.

The way people have sorted themselves – liberals living in cities, conservatives in more rural areas – makes it simple, McLennan and others said.

This is not the same thing as saying there was no partisan intent.

“Greensboro, for example, has been trending Democratic, so cracking Greensboro voters into three different congressional districts easily dilutes Democratic chances for winning a congressional seat in that area,” said McLennan, a frequent WRAL contributor.

Andy Jackson, director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity, part of the conservative John Locke Foundation, said there are, potentially, other explanations for the ways Republican lawmakers drew the maps. Keeping cities together, for example, yields C-shaped districts in the unincorporated areas.

“You’ve got a neutral criteria (that could explain it),” Jackson said. “Anything beyond that, you’re having to get into people’s heads.”

“The set of a million alternative maps that were drawn following redistricting rules but without partisan considerations and election results yielded a distribution that shows 11-3 and 10-4 are outliers,” said Ari Goldbloom-Helzner, a computational research analyst at Princeton.

Put another way: “Nearly impossible for the congressional map in North Carolina to look the way it did via blind redistricting,” said Doug Spencer, a University of Colorado professor in election law.

Olson, at the Cato Institute, said much the same thing: “The chances that a process truly blinded to politics would have resulted in this combination of maps appears infinitesimal.”

Li, at the Brennan Center, called North Carolina’s new congressional map “breathtakingly brazen.”

“I’ve watched this around the country,” he said. “In other places, Republicans have been a little bit more modest. ... In North Carolina, Republicans have said, 'We’ll go back to the buffet. We’ll grab a little more.'”