North Carolina congressional elections to proceed as scheduled with same maps, court rules
WASHINGTON _ North Carolina's 13 congressional districts will remain in place and so will the Nov. 6, 2018, election, a federal three-judge panel ruled Tuesday.
The panel ruled last week that the districts are unconstitutional due to "partisan gerrymandering" designed to produce 10 Republican seats. But, with the election only two months away, the plaintiffs in the case _ the North Carolina chapters of Common Cause and The League of Women Voters _ argued that it was too late to change the maps despite their victory.
On Tuesday, the court agreed.
"We conclude that there is insufficient time for this Court to approve a new districting plan and for the State to conduct an election using that plan prior to the seating of the new Congress in January 2019. And we further find that imposing a new schedule for North Carolina's congressional elections would, at this late juncture, unduly interfere with the State's electoral machinery and likely confuse voters and depress turnout," the court wrote in a four-page order.
North Carolina redrew its congressional districts for the 2016 elections after maps drawn in 2011 were declared unconstitutional due to racial gerrymandering by a panel of federal judges. Both sets of maps were drawn by Republican lawmakers in the state legislature.
The judges have ruled that the current congressional districts cannot be used after the 2018 elections.
_McClatchy Washington Bureau
