Elections Show Impact of Redistricting

All the states experiencing a switch in legislative control held elections under districts drawn by a court or another body outside the state legislature.

North Carolina's courts got involved in the state's redistricting when Republican legislators filed a lawsuit claiming that redistricting maps, drawn primarily by the General Assembly's Democratic majority, gave Democrats an unfair advantage and violated the state's constitution.

Ultimately, the N.C. Superior Court ruled that the General Assembly could not resolve the problem internally and Judge Knox Jenkins redrew the district lines. The N.C. Supreme Court upheld the actions of the Superior Court.

This struggle to control district lines is not unusual, said Ken Shotts, a political science professor at Northwestern University.

The demographic and ideological breakup of a district can determine a legislator's political future, he said. Legislators quickly object if redistricting could hurt them or their party.

"Basically, for every plan that's adopted, there is going to be one or many lawsuits against it," Shotts said.

Some states -- such as Iowa -- have avoided partisan battles over redistricting by using outside, nonpartisan bodies to expedite the process.

In 1971 and 1972, Iowa's Supreme Court was forced to draw district lines because partisan disputes in the legislature made compromise impossible, said Gary Rudicil, a representative of Iowa's Legislative Service Bureau. "We used to do it like every other state -- the Senate and the House just fought it out," Rudicil said.

In the early 1980s, Iowa responded by creating the Legislative Service Bureau to collaborate with its state legislature on redistricting, Rudicil said.

The bureau is a nonpartisan agency composed of hired civil servants. It prepares and presents Iowa's state legislature with new district lines in each redistricting year. The legislature can choose to either accept or reject the new lines, he said.

But if the legislature rejects the proposal, it must explain its objections to the bureau. The bureau considers the objections and creates a new proposal, he said.

The bureau has achieved its objective -- the state Supreme Court has not had to get involved in redistricting since the bureau's creation, Rudicil said.

But despite other states' successful use of outside bodies in redistricting, it is unlikely the General Assembly will reform its redistricting process, said Melissa Saunders, a UNC law professor.

"With the state legislature so closely divided, I'd be surprised if we'd ever see this kind of reform," she said. "They really want to hang on to the power to draw the lines themselves."

Reform would only be possible through an amendment to the N.C. Constitution, she said, adding that reform is not going to happen unless legislators want it to.

Saunders said that unless the voting public shows strong opposition to delays caused by internal redistricting debates, the General Assembly will have no reason to change the redistricting procedure.

But whether or not North Carolina's lawmakers will consider reform, they will have to finalize legislative redistricting when they return to Raleigh in January because the court-drawn districts could be used only during this year's election.

Experts say that without the help of an outside body and with an even closer partisan divide in both chambers, the task is likely to be as difficult this year as last. UNC political science Professor Thad Beyle said the state's "(redistricting) process is not over."

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.