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North Carolina Congressional District Maps Thrown Out By State Court

US-POLITICS-VOTE

Voters in North Carolina will have a new congressional map to look at for next year's elections after a state court ruled Monday that North Carolina election officials cannot use the current Republican-drawn congressional maps due to their "extreme partisan gerrymandering" that runs contrary to "the fundamental right of North Carolina citizens to have elections conducted freely and honestly to ascertain, fairly and truthfully, the will of the people."

The ruling by the three-judge panel of state judges that came down on Monday prohibit state officials from using the current map that outline the state's 13 congressional districts for the coming elections, which also includes the presidential primary scheduled in March. The panel did not order the state legislature to draw up new maps, but encouraged the General Assembly to "act immediately and with all due haste to enact new congressional districts" or else risk a delay in the primaries until later in the year.

Any delays in the primary could reduce voter turnout and increase the cost of the election, the state panel added.

"Those consequences pale in comparison to voters of our state proceeding to vote, yet again, in congressional elections administered pursuant to maps drawn in violation of our North Carolina Constitution," the panel wrote in its ruling.

The Republican-led legislature designed the congressional district maps in 2016 after a court threw out the previous boundaries because of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. New maps were drawn up that ensured Republicans would retain 10 seats and Democrats would end up with 3 seats. That's at odds with the increasing number of Democrat voters in the state, which have turned North Carolina into a swing state in national elections.

Gerrymandering is named after Elbridge Gerry, a former Governor of Massachusetts that signed a bill creating a partisan district in the Boston area. Gerrymandering is often used by political parties to give them an edge in elections by either concentrating the opposing party's voters in one district in an effort to reduce their voting power in other districts or through diluting the voting power of the opposing party by retaining a thin-majority across many districts.

Photo: Getty Images


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