NC’s districts must be done by Friday. Here’s where legislative, congressional maps stand

State lawmakers were rushing to pass new maps for their own districts and for Congress before a court-imposed Friday deadline to replace maps enacted by Republicans in late 2021 but subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the North Carolina Supreme Court’s Democratic majority.

Here’s what happened Wednesday and Thursday.

NC House: The chamber Wednesday night overwhelmingly passed a new map for its members’ own House districts after six Democratic amendments were adopted. The vote was 115-5.

“We knew what a challenge, what a monumental task it was going to be to get these maps done in two weeks time,” Rep. Destin Hall, a Caldwell County Republican and the chairman of the redistricting committee, said before the vote. “Not only have we got them done, but we’re about to get them done, I think, with bipartisan support.”

The new districts, while expected to produce a Republican majority, would make it more difficult for the GOP to achieve a super majority or 72 seats in the House.

“I will reemphasize nobody came out of this happy,” said Rep. Robert Reives of Chatham County, the Democratic leader. “Nobody came out of this jumping for joy and figuring, ‘we won, we won.’ What we were happy about was that we came to an agreement that both of us could live with.”

Several Democrats voted against the measure based on the process.

The House map passed the Senate 34-3 on Thursday afternoon. It does not have to be signed by the governor.

Senate: On a 28-17 party-line vote, the chamber approved a new Senate map for its members. Senate Republicans voted down a series of Democratic amendments.

During Wednesday’s committee meeting, Sen. Paul Newton, a Cabarrus County Republican, defended the map as constitutional because of its scores on mathematical measures known as mean-median difference and the efficiency gap, which he said were within the allowable range as described by the Democratic-majority decision in the Supreme Court.

“I want to underscore how seriously, meticulously we followed this proposed standard in the Supreme Court’s order,” Newton said.

Sen. Dan Blue, a Wake County Democrat, argued that the changes Republicans made to the map to bring it into compliance with the two tests outlined in the Supreme Court decision did not solve the underlying partisan gerrymander of the 2021 enacted maps.

“It does not address the issue that the court said it had to address,” Blue said. “It’s still a partisan gerrymander.”

Blue argued at length against the maps during Thursday’s floor vote.

The House passed the Senate’s map Thursday evening, 67-52. It does not have to go to the governor.

U.S. House: The Senate passed a new congressional map — one that is expected to elect six Republicans, four Democrats and include four highly competitive districts — in a party-line vote on Thursday afternoon.

As expected, the state’s three most populous counties — Democratic strongholds of Wake, Mecklenburg and Guilford — are split just once, as opposed to twice each in the 2021 enacted maps struck down by the Supreme Court. The newly drawn 6th, 7th, 13th and 14th congressional districts are competitive races, according to legislative analysis based on the voting patterns across 12 statewide races in 2016 and 2020.

The House planned to take up the congressional map that passes the Senate.

The House and Senate released different congressional maps earlier in the week, but they neither was discussed in committees or voted on.

Court: The three-judge panel tasked with deciding whether to accept the legislature’s new maps, if passed, named three former judges as “special masters” in the case: Former Supreme Court Justices Bob Orr and Bob Edmunds and former superior court judge (and former UNC System president) Thomas Ross.

None of three appointees were recommended by either side in the lawsuit. Orr is a former Republican and now unaffiliated, Edmunds is a Republican and Ross is a Democrat. The trio is to assist the court in reviewing any maps submitted to the court and prepare their own report to the court.

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.

This story was originally published February 17, 2022 at 7:29 AM.