NC Dems “Fair” Redistricting Proposal Would Give Power to Dem-Majority Organization and Permit Dem Expert Witness to Draw Maps
Dem Sen. Ben Clark’s bill takes data analysis away from nonpartisan central staff and gives it to Democratic Party-controlled State Board of Elections
Bill allows maps to be drawn by Dem Party’s expert redistricting witness from 2019 lawsuit
Raleigh, N.C. — North Carolina Democrats are pushing a redistricting bill that would take power away from the legislature’s nonpartisan central staff and give it to the State Board of Elections, which is controlled by a Democratic Party supermajority after Gov. Cooper sued to take full control.
The proposal would also allow the Board of Elections to delegate map-drawing power to the Democratic Party’s expert witness from a 2019 redistricting lawsuit.
The legislature’s nonpartisan central staff has been in charge of redistricting data analysis for decades. As part of that work, staff performs a mathematical analysis consistent with a 2003 N.C. Supreme Court decision to develop county “clusters,” which are groups of counties that, based on population, can comprise legislative districts.
Because of N.C. Supreme Court precedent, the county groupings are set in stone. They cannot be changed or altered.
Sen. Ben Clark’s (D-Hoke) proposal, which he described as “fair and transparent,” would transfer responsibility for developing county clusters to the Democrat-controlled Board of Elections.
His proposal further allows the Board to “delegate all or a portion of the responsibility of developing a cluster map set to the Department of Mathematics at Duke University.”
Who leads the Duke University math department’s redistricting work? Dr. Jonathan Mattingly, whom the N.C. Democratic Party paid as an expert witness to challenge Republican-drawn maps in 2019.
Sen. Warren Daniel (R-Burke), who co-chairs the Senate Redistricting Committee said, “The Democrats’ definition of ‘fair’ is to wrest power away from a nonpartisan body and give it to a board they control, and allow their own expert legal consultant to do all of the work. This is a stunningly brazen ploy, even for a group that gerrymandered themselves into power for more than 100 years.”
As a reminder, the Democrat-controlled Board of Elections secretly negotiated with Democratic Party super-lawyer Marc Elias last year to change state election laws with voting already underway.
