Voting district maps crafted by Republican lawmakers advance

It's political tradition that the party that holds power during redistricting tends to use the process to increase its power. But voting rights advocates say technology now allows politicians to select voters with too much precision.

For example, the congressional map that cleared a key Senate committee on Monday would likely yield 10 U.S. seats for Republicans and four for Democrats, with only two competitive districts.

"There's only one way to describe it: It is cheating, plain and simple," said Sen. Wiley Nickel, D-Wake. "You are cheating and robbing the voters of any real choice at the ballot box with this map."

The state is evenly divided politically, but Nickel demonstrated how Republicans have carved up the state’s Democratic areas to reduce their voting power.

"How greedy are you going to be with these maps?" he asked. "If you pass an 11-3 or 10-4 map, I think you can guarantee action by the state Supreme Court on state constitutional grounds."

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Republicans say they didn't use any political or racial data to draw the new districts.

"The results are as they are," said Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell. "No evidence of racially polarized voting has been submitted to this committee for consideration."

Sen. Chuck Edwards, R-Henderson, said the law doesn't require proportional representation, and the rules lawmakers adopted for the redistricting process don't call for fairness, either.

"I believe that our responsibility and our definition of fair should be, did we draw these maps according to the criteria that the committee set out, not necessarily some group from Princeton or someplace else," Henderson said.

However, a three-judge state court panel ruled in 2019 that extreme partisan bias is unconstitutional because it does not allow for free and fair elections. Republicans opted not to appeal the decision to the state's supreme court, which at the time had a Democratic majority of 6-1.

The new map also may reduce minority representation, potentially violating the federal Voting Rights Act.

"The proof of what is behind drawing this map is obvious to anybody who takes a serious look at it," Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue said.

In the House, a committee started tweaking the proposed districts for the chamber's 120 members on Monday evening after hours of delays.

Rep. Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, offered up an "impressive map" that he drew himself without the assistance of any computer algorithm. He said it divided as few counties and municipalities as possible and kept districts compact and contiguous.

"I'm confident it will be upheld" in court," Hall said, noting he made as few changes as possible from the existing House map.

Several amendments to the map were proposed, and they succeeded or failed largely on whether Hall backed them or not.

The committee approved his map on a party-line vote at about 9 p.m.

The Senate's congressional map and the House's district map will be up for floor votes in their respective chambers on Tuesday.

Democrats really don't have any leverage on the issue because Gov. Roy Cooper cannot veto any redistricting legislation.