NC redistricting starts with partisan split over rules

The General Assembly's Republican majority laid the groundwork Thursday for a coming redraw of the state's Congressional and legislative maps, kicking off an every-decade redistricting process by setting rules for the redraw.

Democrats, whose suggestions were largely cast aside by GOP leadership, criticized the rules as overly vague, and they questioned whether maps this legislature ultimately will draw can pass muster against legal challenges both sides expect. The state was in and out of court for most of the past decade, spending tens of millions on attorneys and drawing one set of maps after another after judges found racial and partisan gerrymanders in the state's maps.

Republican leaders said this process will be the most transparent yet, with maps drawn in an open committee room and a camera live streaming computer screens as district lines shift.

"North Carolina has been the epicenter of redistricting lawsuits for decades," Sen. Warren Daniel, who co-chairs the Senate Redistricting Committee, said in a statement. "It's time to put the last 30 years of litigation behind us and begin a new era of nonpartisan map drawing."

But not loading data into a state computer for the redraw doesn't mean race and politics won't be considered in the redraw, and Democrats pushed Thursday to at least use race data in a post-draw analysis to make sure maps protect minority voters and comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

They also pointed out the obvious: Outside groups with their own computers will have access to data on race, political leanings and past results as lawmakers draw these maps. And lawmakers themselves are often intimately familiar with their districts, knowing where voters who are likely to re-elect them live and which neighborhoods to exclude.

"Just because you say you're not looking at it doesn't mean that you're not looking at it," Senate Democratic Leader Dan Blue said.

Democrats and outside groups complain, though, that in a divided political state, with close statewide elections between Republican and Democratic candidates, Republicans hold strong majorities in the state House and Senate and an 8-5 split in its Congressional delegation. The split was 10-3 before the last court-ordered redraw.

The state expects to add a 14th Congressional seat next year, due to population gains, which will further jumble the map.

One of the criteria approved Thursday allows lawmakers to consider a lawmaker's address when drawing districts, presumably to avoid double-bunking some elected officials and forcing them to run against each other. That can also be used to force officials from the other side of the aisle to run against each other.

Some Democrats, and groups that have sued this legislative majority over maps in the past, said protecting incumbents like this bakes in past gerrymanders. It has long been part of the process though, for Republican and Democratic controlled legislatures alike.

Democrats also pushed unsuccessfully Thursday to amend redistricting criteria so the priority of each one would be clear when they conflict. That, Republicans rejected.

"We're not prioritizing our criteria," Daniel, R-Burke, said more than once. "We're harmonizing our criteria."