NC House bill fights gerrymandering

The U.S. Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling June 26 captivated the public, but another court decision could revamp election processes across the nation, including in North Carolina.

The court ruled that nonpartisan commissions rather than legislatures can map voting districts, which could reduce gerrymandering.

A bipartisan group of 63 N.C. representatives have sponsored a bill that would shift redistricting powers away from a House majority to the Legislative Services Office, a nonpartisan commission of legislative staffers including attorneys and economists.

The recent Supreme Court decision affirmed that such a commission would be viable.

Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake, one of the bill’s primary sponsors, said it is unlikely to pass in the N.C. Senate.

“We’ve been trying for about 26 years to get something like this done, and some things take a long time,” Stam said.

He said the Senate may resist the bill because state and federal courts are still contesting North Carolina’s 2011 redistricting, which prompted the North Carolina NAACP to file a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina over racial gerrymandering.

Rep. Grier Martin, D-Wake, a primary sponsor, said a nonpartisan commission would minimize the practice of gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is the practice in which the majority party concentrates people likely to vote for the opposing party in as few districts as possible by drawing lines with an eye for demographic data on race, class and political affiliation.

Martin said the resulting districts encourage a climate of political extremism across party lines.

“If you have more competitive districts where the representatives are at risk of losing their jobs if they don’t satisfy a broad spectrum of voters, I do think you’ll have less gridlock in both D.C. and in Raleigh,” he said.

Martin said this gridlock fails voters.

“After the redistricting that the Republicans did, my district is now a safe Democratic district. I was out knocking on front doors all the time,” he said

“To be frank, I’m not knocking on as many doors. I’m staying busy, but it’s better for democracy when you’ve got a system that incentivizes legislators to go out and meet their bosses.”

The bill prevents map-makers from using census data related to political affiliation as well as locations of legislators’ homes. It also stipulates that district shapes should not be irregular and should be compact and roughly equal in population size.

John Dinan, a political science professor at Wake Forest University, said scholars don’t necessarily believe commissions would take politics out of redistricting.

“For the most part, the view is that states with commissions have just shifted considerations of politics and partisanship to a different stage of the process and pushed it to a different forum, rather than eliminating their influence,” Dinan said.

Martin said commission appointees selected by legislative leaders could be susceptible to political influence.

“That is a realistic risk one has to be wary of,” he said. “This process that we’ve set up is not perfect. And there are some folks that oppose it for that reason.”

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