Redistricting is about to start again in NC. Here's how the public can comment
Redistricting is beginning again in North Carolina, as state lawmakers plan to spend the coming weeks redrawing the state's voting maps for Congress, as well as for their own seats in the General Assembly.
But before the map-drawing begins, lawmakers say they want public input. Those meetings will begin Monday and continue through the week with three hearings — one in eastern North Carolina, one in western North Carolina and one in Raleigh.
All three meetings are open to any member of the public to attend. They'll also have the potential to address members of the House and Senate redistricting committees who will be in attendance. Anyone who does want to speak must sign up online ahead of time.
- Monday, Sept. 25: Elizabeth City, 4 p.m., at the College of the Albemarle's performing arts center. Speakers sign up at ncleg.gov/requesttospeak/69.
- Tuesday, Sept. 26: Hickory, 4 p.m., at The Atrium Room on Appalachian State University's Hickory Campus. Speakers sign up at ncleg.gov/requesttospeak/70.
- Wednesday, Sept. 27: Raleigh, 4 p.m., at the Legislative Office Building in room 643. Speakers sign up at ncleg.gov/requesttospeak/71.
Votes could happen as early as the week of Oct. 9, according to state Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham.
“We will have gone through the public hearings on redistricting by then, so I think we'll have some bills and hopefully take some votes that week,” Berger told reporters Friday. “We should have the capacity and things lined up in order to do so.”
Berger has also said lawmakers plan to redraw the Congressional maps first, then after a few days get to work on maps for their own districts. That could allow influential state legislators have the time to decide if they want to run for one of the new Congressional districts, or if they want to run for reelection to the state legislature instead.
Lawmakers who control the state legislature are tasked with drawing voting districts for the state. Republicans control both chambers of the legislature.
Lawmakers have been criticized in the past for not taking into account what the public has to say at hearings like these when they do draw the maps. But there's also nothing requiring them to hold the hearings. And GOP leaders say they do want public input before starting to draw the maps.
On Monday dozens of advocacy and voting rights groups including the NAACP, El Centro Hispano and Common Cause NC sent a letter to state lawmakers urging for a more transparent process, as well as for maps that accurately represent the state.
“Open and transparent redistricting is not only fundamental to a representative democracy, but it is also crucial to strengthening trust in our elected officials and government,” the letter said. “The recent actions and inactions of legislative leaders make us deeply concerned that the North Carolina General Assembly will once again fail at its responsibility to create a robust, transparent, and thoughtful process for receiving vital public input to draw new maps.”
So far the process is shaping up to be less transparent than in the past. Included in the new state budget is a legal change that makes legislative communications about redistricting no longer a public record.
That could be related to last year's gerrymandering trial: A top GOP legislator in charge of redistricting admitted that a so-called concept map that he secretly used during the redistricting process — despite lawmaker's claims of having drawn the maps from scratch during public meetings — had been destroyed and couldn't be used as evidence at trial.
Why draw new maps again?
Normally state lawmakers are only allowed to redraw the maps once a decade, after the new Census information is released. That's exactly what they did in 2021. But those maps were struck down as unconstitutional gerrymandering, leading to a court-appointed panel of experts drawing the maps used for the 2022 Congressional elections.
The experts' map resulted in an even split, with seven Democrats and seven Republicans winning election to North Carolina's 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. That matched the statewide political mood. In the U.S. Senate race also on the ballot last year, Republican Ted Budd won with 50.5% of the vote.
But state law says any court-ordered maps can only ever be used once. Then the legislature gets to start from scratch and draw new maps for the next elections — in this case, 2024 — which will also be in place for the rest of the decade, unless courts also strike the new maps down.
To the GOP's favor this time around, they also have a newly permissive state Supreme Court.
Last year's ruling striking down the maps divided the state's highest court politically. All four Democratic justices ruled against the Republican-controlled legislature, and all three Republican justices dissented, saying they would've let the GOP-drawn maps stand.
But then Republicans flipped control of the court, and now have a 5-2 majority. Almost immediately after taking power earlier this year they voted to undo the 2022 anti-gerrymandering precedent, ruling that courts have little to no authority to stop gerrymandering.
Republicans are expected to now redraw the Congressional maps to give themselves a likely 10-4 or 11-3 split in future elections for the state's 14 U.S. House seats. The state legislative maps are also likely to cement GOP supermajorities in the House and Senate, allowing lawmakers to override any vetoes by whoever is governor after the 2024 elections. Term limits prevent Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper from running again.
