Erica Hellerstein

After more than a week of tense back-and-forth among lawmakers and an angry public hearing, the legislature voted this afternoon to approve new legislative district maps. Lawmakers were ordered to redraw the maps after the Supreme Court sided with a lower court ruling that 28 of the state’s 170 legislative districts were illegally racially gerrymandered. […]

Lawmakers are moving forward with their new legislative maps as the deadline to submit them to a three-judge panel draws nearer. The House and Senate committees on redistricting approved each other’s legislative maps this afternoon after the maps passed their second and third readings in the House and Senate yesterday. The order to draw new […]

The Senate’s redistricting bill cleared its third and final reading Monday evening after the House’s redistricting plan moved forward that afternoon. Following more than an hour of debate and a long speech on the Senate floor by Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, the chamber voted 31–15 to advance the new map they were ordered to […]

The House redistricting plan passed its second and third reading this afternoon and is headed to the Senate for its third and final reading next. During this afternoon’s debate, Republican and Democratic lawmakers clashed over the decision by the Republican-led redistricting committee to exclude racial data from the criteria used to draw the new maps. […]

Lawmakers have just one week to present their new legislative maps to a three-judge panel by Sept. 1—and are moving forward with their proposals despite serious objections from the public, voting rights advocates, and members of the General Assembly. On Friday, lawmakers met to weigh in on the Senate’s proposed legislative maps, which cleared the […]

After hours of sparring with Democrats over race and gerrymandering, Senate Republicans advanced their new legislative maps Thursday evening with a few small changes. The Senate redistricting committee meeting came two days after dozens of North Carolinians sounded off on the maps in public hearings throughout the state and less than a week after the […]

Dozens of people packed into seven public hearings across the state last night to weigh in on North Carolina’s proposed maps for nearly thirty legislative districts, and they were not pleased. “When I look at the new maps I’m amazed by the contortions and variegated shapes of many areas,” said Kim Koo, a member of […]

It’s been a busy few days in the world of legislative redistricting. Stay tuned, because we’re not done yet. Over the weekend, members of the Republican-led joint commission on redistricting released their proposed maps for the state House and Senate districts, after the current ones were determined to be illegally racially gerrymandered earlier this year. […]