Redistricting, Take Two: What New Statehouse Maps Could Mean For North Carolina Voters

Last week, federal judges struck down 30 North Carolina state legislative districts as unconstitutional because the court said were racially gerrymandered.

The decision comes on the heels of other recent decisions invalidating the state's voter restrictions and congressional districts.

All told, the series of legislative changes and court decisions could make for confusion at the ballot box, not to mention some uncertainty regarding North Carolina's political future.

WFDD's Sean Bueter talked to our colleague Paul Garber to find out more about what the latest ruling could mean for the future.

Interview Highlights

On whether the districts will change before November's election:

When you go to vote, what you're going to see is maps you've seen before. You've seen the [new] congressional maps in the primary, and we're under the same legislative maps that were in place in 2014.

On why the 2011 maps for the state House and Senate were thrown out in court:

It's not illegal to draw a map that favors your party. It's how you go about doing it that can get you in trouble. Where these maps got in trouble was, basically, along the line of race. As a lot of people know, when you look at black voters, there's a lot of loyalty to the Democratic party. And what the courts were saying was the mapmakers used race too much to make their decisions into how they drew the lines.

Predicting what new state legislative districts could look like when they're redrawn in 2017:

…If you look at the difference between the congressional maps that were thrown out and the ones they came up with for the last primary, what you see is a lot less little ribbons of districts flying out from the main section and much more block-like districts…And I think it's going to be, frankly, less black and white [racially speaking].

On the possibility of moving toward a non-partisan solution for redistricting:

We'll see. [For Republicans] there's not really that much incentive to do it. If you believe you are going to be in power, and you want to retain that power to be able to draw these maps, it's going to be a hard sell, I think.