Redistricting process starts in N.C.

North Carolina Republicans rolled out 10 criteria Monday for the coming redraw of the state's political maps, a key step in a process that will play out in the coming weeks and have ramifications for a decade or more.

The actual election maps can't be drawn until after the latest Census figures are released later this week and processed, which will likely take legislative staffers days if not weeks. But the criteria lay the ground rules, limiting how lawmakers can draw the new lines and where those lines can fall.

Among the proposed rules: No consideration of partisan data or past election results in the draw this time out, and no consideration of race. Past maps drawn by the state's Republican majority have repeatedly been thrown out by the courts either as racial gerrymanders or overly partisan ones.

Lawmakers could take into account, under these rules, where an existing member of the legislature or U.S. Congress lives to avoid double-bunking elected officials as they rework districts.

The criteria will likely be approved Thursday in another 8:30 a.m. meeting, a committee chairman said. Senate Republican leadership described the criteria as "nearly identical" to the rules used in a court-ordered 2019 redraw and noted that Democrats praised the maps produced then as, in Senate Democratic Leader Dan Blue's words, "fair and nonpartisan."

As the process plays out this time it will be closely watched, because the way these maps are drawn could go a long way to determining which political party holds power, both in Congress and the state General Assembly, between now and the next Census. The legislature's Republican majority controls the process, and Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper can't veto maps once passed.

However, Democratic groups have sued repeatedly, and successfully, over the last decade to change North Carolina's maps.