NC voters demand an end to gerrymandering at hearing on new election districts
by Lynn Bonner, NC Newsline
September 28, 2023
Voters told legislators Wednesday they are sick of gerrymandering because deeply partisan election districts erode democracy and make lawmakers unresponsive to residents’ needs and opinions.
Legislators are preparing to approve new congressional, state House, and state Senate districts for the 2024 elections.
District boundaries have a major influence in which party’s candidates win elections because legislators can use district lines to create concentrations of Democratic or Republican voters.
Speakers at the third and final redistricting public hearing lambasted Republicans for using redistricting to entrench their own power. Some traveled for hours to speak for their allotted two minutes. Dozens of people spoke at the three-hour hearing.
“I am not a public speaker nor a political activist,” said John Suddath of Raleigh. “I’m just an 87-year-old man concerned about the state of democracy — little d — in this country, and particularly North Carolina. I can’t recall a time when I felt that the right to vote, and that each vote counts, was in such jeopardy.”
Speakers also asked for greater transparency, more hearings once legislators have maps to show, and efforts to communicate with voters whose primary language is not English.
District redrawing underway, no maps shared with public during hearings
After the hearing, Sen. Ralph Hise, chairman of the Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee, said no more public hearings are planned.
Legislators have already begun drawing districts, Hise said. He is aiming to have a plan for congressional districts the week of October 9, but that timeline depends on getting majority agreement on a map.
“We’re not at that point in the process,” Hise said. “It is open to members to draw proposals and introduce bills.”
Last year, the Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court found that plans Republican legislators drew were extreme partisan gerrymanders that violated the state constitution. Congressional and legislative maps were redrawn.
Redistricting experts determined that the first congressional district map the legislature approved in 2021 would have given Republicans 10 or 11 of North Carolina’s 14 seats. Under the court-ordered plan used in the 2022 elections, Republicans won seven congressional seats and Democrats won seven seats.
Republicans won a majority on the state Supreme Court last year. The court quickly went about reversing last year’s decisions on partisan gerrymandering. The majority wrote that questions of partisanship in redistricting are not an issue for the courts.
Federal courts don’t want partisan gerrymandering cases either. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2019, in a case originating in North Carolina, determined it had no role in judging partisanship in redistricting, saying it is an issue for the states.
Republicans are expected to re-establish a GOP majority in the state’s congressional delegation.
“I strongly suspect that on the congressional seats, which are now split 7-7, that the Republicans are going to draw something to give it more like 9-5,” Rep. Abe Jones, a Raleigh Democrat and a member of the House Redistricting Committee said after the hearing.
Jones said he was moved to see so many people come to Raleigh and wait in line for their two minutes to speak to legislators, but was disappointed that so few members of the House and Senate redistricting committees were there to hear them.
It’s unclear how legislators will use public comment.
A federal court opinion issued in 2018 described how legislators ignored public comment when creating maps in 2016. Then-redistricting chairmen in the House and Senate told a GOP map-making guru to draw a Congressional map with 10 Republican seats and three Democratic seats. The work was finished before the public hearing and before the deadline for written comments.
Last year, speakers at public hearings said their comments were twisted to justify Republicans’ bad maps, NC Newsline reported.
Less information about behind-the-scenes considerations will be available to the public with this round of redistricting. Republicans included in the state budget passed last week a provision says the public is not entitled to see legislators’ draft maps and communications about redistricting. Before this year, such material was available to the public after the maps were approved.
Public demands fair maps that keep communities together
As in previous years, speakers asked legislators not to divide communities of interest among two or more districts.
Kathy Wheeler of Guilford County asked legislators to keep the Triad’s cities together.
“The maps you draw have a life-changing impact on us,” she said. “Maps should be all about the people and not about politics.”
Christopher Haywood of Cumberland County said the Sandhills should be in one congressional district.
“The Sandhills have been sliced, diced, fricasseed, and forgotten,” he said. “Make us a single district.”
Hilary Harris Klein, a senior counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, told legislators they must still comply with the federal Voting Rights Act, which she said “requires the consideration of race to protect minority voters against vote dilution.”
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Alabama’s attempt to defy a voting rights court order in creating its congressional plan. A federal court told Alabama legislators to draw two congressional districts where Black voters had the chance to elect candidates of their choice, but legislators refused to do it. A panel of three federal judges is overseeing the drawing of new district lines in Alabama.
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice represented Common Cause NC when it sued over legislative maps in 2021.
“Draw voting plans that will give all voters in the state equal voting power regardless of race, gender, age, or political viewpoint,” Klein said. “When you draw districts that preordain election results and when you draw districts that preordain who will be in control on Jones Street, you are not doing the people’s business. By entrenching your own power, you are denying us the responsive government this country was founded to guarantee.”
NC Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Rob Schofield for questions: info@ncnewsline.com. Follow NC Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.
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