October 5, 2021
The NC House and NC Senate Redistricting Committees met separately today to discuss the process and schedule for redrawing legislative district maps, which will begin in earnest tomorrow.
Determining the county clusters for the House and Senate is the first step in the redistricting process for the state legislature. The county clustering process is used to minimize the division of counties and to ensure equal populations of legislative districts. County clusters are largely determined through an algorithmic procedure outlined by a NC Supreme Court decision in 2015, but there are often multiple options that can be considered. The state legislature is relying on Duke University’s Department of Mathematics’ “Quantifying Gerrymandering” nonpartisan research group for the county clustering process. Over the last several years, the research group created computer algorithms to optimally cluster counties according to guidelines set by the court.
Both the House and Senate reviewed the county clustering options generated by Duke researchers. For both chambers, there are portions of the maps where legislators will have choices about how to configure the counties. The House has 8 viable county cluster groupings that members can choose from and the Senate has 16 county cluster groupings. All clusters are required to have populations such that the resulting districts are within 5% of the ideal district population, and members are allowed to use any of the compliant cluster maps to redraw legislative districts. When redrawing maps, members must also adhere to the criteria approved by the committee in August.
Beginning tomorrow, the House and Senate Redistricting Committees will convene from 9am-5pm for the next two weeks to redraw legislative district maps. The committee rooms will be open during that time frame with four computer stations set up for legislators to use to simulate new district maps. Audio and video from the computer stations will be live streamed for members of the public. Only maps that are drawn on the computer stations in committee rooms will be considered by the House and Senate, meaning that maps cannot be submitted by members of the public.
Several Democratic legislators in both the House and Senate raised concerns about the district maps complying with the Voting Rights Act (VRA), as ordered by the court. The Duke University cluster groupings do not consider requirements outlined in the VRA, and legislators argued that the lack of racial and partisan data in the redistricting process would make it difficult to comply with the VRA and ensure constitutional maps. Republican Committee Chairs argued that VRA compliance would be possible with the proposed county clusters and that the maps have been upheld by courts in the past when racial data was not considered. Democratic legislators also highlighted the need for additional public hearings to be scheduled once a draft of the maps is available.
The Committee Chairs announced that the goal was to approve new legislative district maps by the end of October in order to give the NC State Board of Elections ample time to prepare for candidate filing in December. While legislators complete the district redrawing process over the next two weeks, members of the public may continue to submit comments on redistricting through the General Assembly’s online portal.