gerrymandering

The government shutdown rolls on and it is impacting North Carolina. The Senate is in session, but the House has been out for weeks. We’ll catch up on what has been happening and not happening on Capitol Hill and consider the possible impact in Washington D.C. of North Carolina’s plans to gerrymander districts for the midterms.

The survey conducted by a Republican-leaning polling firm Opinion Diagnostics, commissioned by the nonpartisan voting rights group Common Cause North Carolina, shows 84% of North Carolina voters asked said it’s never acceptable for politicians to draw districts to help their own party win more seats, no matter the circumstances.

Texas plans to redistrict to help Republicans retain control of the House in the midterm elections. That effort is being met by similar moves in Democrat-controlled states. North Carolina is no stranger to gerrymandering and we take a closer look at how our past efforts can inform the current moment.

A panel of North Carolina judges has refused to block the latest legislative and congressional maps from being used for the 2022 elections. The three judges on Friday denied preliminary injunctions in a pair of lawsuits challenging boundaries that the Republican-controlled legislature passed last month.

Stephanie Sneed challenged Carol Sawyer for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools board four years ago and lost. Sneed is concerned after the school board voted for a new political map that removes Sneed's precinct from Sawyer's district. Sawyer is responsible for drawing the map.

Another lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s latest round of redistricting has been filed. A conservation group, university mathematicians and voters involved in the suit accuse Republican mapmakers of illegal partisan and racial gerrymandering in both the state’s congressional and General Assembly districts.

North Carolina is facing a legal challenge in state court over its newly drawn maps that heavily favor Republicans heading into the upcoming 2022 midterm elections. An organization formed by prominent Democratic lawyer Marc Elias announced Friday that a group of voters who challenged the constitutionality of previous North Carolina maps will now contest the latest congressional maps.

In new North Carolina redistricting maps approved Thursday, Mecklenburg County Democratic Sen. Natasha Marcus has been placed into a more conservative district represented by Republican Vickie Sawyer of Iredell County.

The GOP-majority state legislature has adopted Republican-drawn district maps along party lines.

On a party-line vote, the full Senate voted for a GOP-drawn map for its 50 districts. Later, a Senate committee approved a map for the House's 120 legislative districts that the House voted for on Tuesday. The House Redistricting Committee also voted on the Senate map approved earlier in the day and the Senate-backed plan to draw district lines for North Carolina's 14 U.S. House seats.