Redistricting 101

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And now here is our host of Family Policy Matters, Tracey Devette Griggs. Thanks for joining us for Family Policy Matters. Redistricting. As a result of the 2020 Census, North Carolina gained an additional seat in Congress.

Population growth and changes across the state mean that lawmakers and lawyers have been furiously working to redraw district maps. Dr. Andy Jackson is director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation, where he focuses on government compliance with the law, especially regarding election policy. Well, he joins us today to try to explain as simply as possible what's going on and what it all means for North Carolina voters who will head to the polls in a matter of weeks for primary elections.

Dr. Andy Jackson, welcome to Family Policy Matters. Thank you for having me. For those of us who are just hearing the clamoring about this redistricting, who may not really understand why it's such a big deal, talk about the process of redistricting and why does that matter so much to all of us?

I'll do the second half first there. It matters so much because it puts us in the districts where we voted determines who our representatives in the General Assembly will be, who our representative in Congress will be. And also how the maps are drawn can affect the balance of power, especially in the North Carolina General Assembly. So that depending on how you draw the maps, one party or other could greatly benefit and that could affect what kind of policies affect our everyday lives. What is the connection between the federal census that's done every 10 years in redistricting?

We're required to have, and this is from a couple of Supreme Court cases about 60 years ago, we're required to have one person, one vote in our district elections. So what that means is that every district has to be roughly the same size in population. And because of that, when we do the census every 10 years, that kind of shows where our population has changed, what areas have grown, what areas have shrunk in terms of population. And so they have to redraw the districts so that all those districts are about the same size and population.

As a practical matter, that means over the last couple of censuses, which are done every 10 years, cities, the urban areas, especially your Wake counties or Mecklenburg counties, they have grown. So they are getting more representation in the General Assembly, whereas some of your rural areas are getting less. OK, so what is the process then for redistricting the North Carolina?

How do they even get started on that? This year, of course, was a little unusual because the census data came in late because of all the government restrictions surrounding COVID. But what you're supposed to do is you get the census data, it's collected and every year that ends in a zero, generally speaking, then once the General Assembly receives that data from the Census Bureau, where they know basically where everybody lives, then they draw the districts so that they meet that one person, one vote requirement. Usually they draw the districts well in advance, but this year is a very truncated process because they didn't get the data until last September. It took them another month to process the data, so they didn't even start drawing the maps until last October, which was about six months later than they usually do.

Well, let's talk first about the congressional districts. How do these new maps affect those? Well, this was a really interesting case because this is the one, they are neither the original maps drawn by the General Assembly or what we call remedial maps drawn under court order by the General Assembly. The trial court in that case decided that they weren't going to accept the new maps written by the General Assembly under court order. Instead, the court said, well, we're going to draw our own maps.

So they acquired these three individuals, they're called special masters, and those special masters drew the map instead. And what's interesting is what the General Assembly had submitted as a remedial map was going to be what we would call a 644 map, which means that it were six Republican leaning districts, four Democratic leaning districts, and four really, really competitive districts where they could have gone either way depending on how, you know, people were voting that year. And that's an unusually large amount of competitive districts for any state, just because the where people live is generally hard to draw really competitive districts.

And so the court rejected that. And what they submitted is essentially a 761, seven Republican, six Democratic, and one swing district. And, you know, depending on how you want to interpret that it could be that they thought that having that closer divide was more balanced, or it could be a way of protecting Democrats in this next election because people are expecting this to be a Republican wave election coming up this year. So tell me about these special masters. Who are they?

And where do they come from? Special masters are appointed by courts to either draw districts or review districts. You have to remember that a judge may not be an expert or may not have enough expertise in redistricting to well judge for him or herself whether or not these districts are fine.

So they they bring in these people. This time, there were three former judges, the one whose name I remember is Bob Orr, who used to be in the North Carolina Supreme Court, there were two others. And so they were brought on specifically to ascertain whether or not these maps that the General Assembly submitted fit the criteria fit the orders given by the North Carolina Supreme Court earlier this year.

Okay, so let's talk now about the General Assembly. There are two sets of maps, one for the House and one for the Senate here. Yes, and the House map was interesting because that was kind of a kumbaya moment when they were drawing the House map because the House map originates in the House. It was very much a compromise between Republicans and Democrats. You could argue that Republicans gave away more than they needed to, but it ended up being I think only five representatives out of the 120 voted against that map. So that was a highly cooperative business there. The Senate was totally opposite.

The sides were dug in. Republicans have a majority in the Senate, so they were able to pass it, but it was a strict party line vote. And that one is probably closer, depending on what measures you use to decide if a map is legal or not, the Senate map is probably closer than the House map. But it's also more beneficial to Republicans than the House map is comparatively.

They have a stronger advantage. So despite that, both of those maps ended up getting approved by the court. So when you said that this was a kumbaya moment, is that a reflection of where we're going? Are we going to see some more cooperation or do you think this was just a fluke? I would say it's probably just a fluke because the House leadership maybe have decided that they wanted to not have this much contentiousness. One of the things that they did do, though, and this might have been the reason the Republicans were OK with something that, at least on the surface, looks like it's beneficial to Democrats, is a lot of the seats that are leaning towards the Democrats on this new map are still relatively competitive. Democrats are only up on average of, say, two or three percentage points. And that means when Republicans have a good year, they could still win a majority or even a supermajority.

And as a practical matter, Republicans really want a supermajority because they can't get policies past Governor Cooper's veto if they don't get that. You're probably in tune with how people are feeling. Are they relieved? Are they angry?

What's the sense out there? From what I have seen as far as reactions go, I think, I mean, obviously, Republicans are upset because they lost the maps that they wanted to have that they had originally passed. Some Democrats are happy. Others are thinking that this is better than what they had originally, but it still isn't really what they would call a fair map. Once again, people have different definitions of what a fair map is, but it's not certainly not as advantageous to Democrats as some of them would have liked.

I would say I think maybe they're ready to get this behind them and they're kind of relieved in that sense. But I think there's relatively few people that are satisfied with the process. Is there a way to stand back and just judge whether or not it's ever possible to have a fair map concerning this? The short answer I would say is no, because the problem is how are you going to define a fair map? Is it a map that accurately reflects the statewide vote distribution? Is it a map that actually reflects where people live and how people vote?

Because if you look at those two different criteria, you get two very different answers. North Carolina, we're not a 50-50 state. We're basically a 51-49 on average state, 51% Republican. If you're a Democrat, you would say, well, what we should have is seats that reflect that, that the average election will also be 51-49. The problem is with our political geography, Democrats tend to be more concentrated in cities where Republicans are more spread out. And so in order to achieve that, you actually have to draw districts to benefit Democrats.

You basically have to gerrymander if you're going to prevent gerrymandering, you know, in that name. So I don't think we're ever going to have a happy resolution where everybody is going to agree that this is what a fair map looks like. I think we're just going to end up having to continuously muddle through in this process. And we may come to a day where we kind of know where the bright lines are. And so the General Assembly won't be successfully sued again. But I'm not sure we've arrived at that yet. Looking at what has happened over this long process, what is your feeling of judges in courts? We've had a sense, at least in the past, that judges were supposed to be impartial. Do you feel better about that or worse about that, having seen what happened throughout this whole redistricting process?

Well, I think I'll answer that with a projection. Right now, we have two North Carolina Supreme Court seats. Both of them are held by Democrats. Both of those seats are going to be up this year. One of those, the incumbent, Sam Irving IV, is running reelection.

The other one's going to be an open seat. If Republicans win both those seats and we revisit this issue in two years, I have a feeling that we're going to get a very different result. So I think that tells us all that we need to know about this, that even in the court system, it's still quite political. And I think that it's no accident that it was the four Democrats that voted for overturning the maps and that the three Republicans voted against. So we certainly, at least on the terms that were done in this case, we certainly don't have any kind of concurrence about what is a fair map and what fits in North Carolina Constitution with regard to map drawing. So our judges are more and more important for us to consider and vote for, aren't they, these days?

Oh, indeed. So what about long-term lessons? Do we come away from this process with anything that we can take into the next time? I like to think every time, and this happens with some regularity in North Carolina, every time a court overturns a map that it's kind of a learning process that the General Assembly learns, OK, we can't do this. The most famous one is the Stevenson versus Bartlett case, which was 2002-ish. And in that one, they ruled that they had to try to keep counties whole as much as possible, because I don't know if you've seen some of the older maps that we've had in North Carolina, but they had these real squiggly lines that would cut across parts of several counties to unite other areas. I mean, that was classic gerrymandering. And then Stevenson ruling was that, well, you can't do that as much as possibly have to keep counties together. And then we had another case a couple of years later, I think about 2017-ish with regard to using racial data. So now we don't use racial data when we're redistricting. And so there are parts of this last case that probably are going to get overturned. But I think that, for example, and I won't get too wonkiness, but there are these mathematical models that show you the probabilities of the distribution of seats in a state. And I think that probably the General Assembly is going to probably have to keep that in mind when they're drawing districts in the future.

And I think that will help with regard to future court cases, no matter how the Supreme Court goes. Dr. Jackson, where can our listeners go to follow developments related to this and to follow your work? Well, I'm over at the John Locke Foundation, which is John Locke with an E at the end, johnlocke.org. And I write there regularly. My colleague Jim Sterling writes on election issues regularly, and we have a lot of interesting stuff over the page.

Dr. Andy Jackson, director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation. Thanks so much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters. You've been listening to Family Policy Matters. We hope you enjoyed the program and plan to tune in again next week to listen to the show online and to learn more about N.C. Family's work to inform, encourage and inspire families across North Carolina. Go to our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. Thanks again for listening and may God bless you and your family.