Court Declines Stay in Redistricting; Congress Elections Off

Tom McInnis, R-Richmond, who was absent from the General Assembly’s specially called session this week due to a recent medical procedure. A sliver of the county is in the 7th District, which for a longtime included all of the county.

“Those congressional districts, they are still on there because we have already made the ballot”, said Michael Dickerson, director of the Mecklenburg Board of Elections.

Some elements of the new maps are praiseworthy.

The state House and Senate have now approved new Congressional districts, which they say comply with the law.

The Feb. 5 lower-court decision found illegal the majority black 1st and 12th Districts as drawn by Republican legislators earlier this decade because lawmakers improperly used race predominantly to determine the districts’ shape and voting populations.

Republicans have asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay, and are adopting the new map as a contingency in case they don’t get one.

Challengers had complained legislative Republicans drew the previous congressional lines to pack black voters in two districts, leaving the rest of the districts with more white voters and more favorable to GOP candidates. If they win in both primaries, they must withdraw from one within a week after the June 7 results are certified.

Holding’s options (barring retirement) are to either move to the new 13th district, whose eastern border is now completely outside the Triangle, and hope he doesn’t face a challenge from someone with an existing base there, or he could join the throng challenging Representative Renee Ellmers in the 2nd; her four primary challengers are now completely outside her district.

The North Carolina legislature votes today on new congressional district maps.

A new North Carolina election schedule approved by the state House would delay congressional elections by nearly three months should races have to go forward under district boundaries proposed this week.

The 10th District represented by Patrick McHenry will see little change and would still include parts of Asheville. “Simply put, a choice between forcing millions of North Carolinians to vote in yet another election under the unconstitutional enacted plan, and taking the administrative steps necessary to hold a constitutional election in 2016 -including delaying the congressional primary election as necessary – is no choice at all”, wrote Marc Elias, plaintiffs’ attorney.

“All of the criteria that was used to draw these maps was geared toward partisanship, ” Smith said.

“When you mess with one district, it affects every district across the state”, he said. “The fact that Republicans chose to maintain the current partisan split of seats before they began drawing these new maps demonstrates that they did not set out to ensure fair representation”.

“It’s been done this way since we had constitutional government”, the Archdale Republican said.

Pierce said Wednesday after looking at the proposed maps that the 9th District, that will include Robeson County, “looks like a good district”. The 1st District stretches from Durham to the northeastern counties. It would be joined by Iredell and Davie counties as well as parts of Rowan and Guilford counties.

Meadows enjoys “broad, bipartisan support up there”, Dobson said.

Republican Rep. David Lewis says lawmakers did not take race into account this time.