RALEIGH, N.C. — The 2022 elections are moving ahead as scheduled — so far — after a Wake County judge on Tuesday refused to grant the requests of a voting rights group that wanted to delay the March 8 primary.
The group was seeking to push the primary back to May, to give lawmakers time to redraw the maps they just passed and which will determine the political districts for North Carolina’s 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives as well as the 170 seats in the state House and Senate. It also wanted to push back candidate filing for the elections, which begins on Monday and lasts through much of December.
The lawsuit didn’t challenge the maps themselves as unconstitutional, just the process and rules Republicans used while drawing the maps. And since the maps are still law and have not been ordered to be redrawn, Superior Court Judge Graham Shirley said there was no basis to delay the elections for a redraw.
“There’s no harm to address,” he said, adding that it would be a violation of the constitutional separation of powers for him to rule otherwise.
“This case was frivolous from the start and was rightly dismissed,” House Speaker Tim Moore told The News & Observer in a written statement. “The hearing today was strictly about process and we stand by our process — the most transparent and thorough in North Carolina history. Furthermore, we stand by the maps that were the final product of this process and we look forward to candidate filing Monday without delay.”
The ruling from Shirley, a Republican, is a victory for the Republicans who drew the maps.
But it’s also not the last word. Unlike this lawsuit which challenged the redistricting process, there are two lawsuits challenging the maps themselves, which are expected to elect more GOP candidates than the current maps would.
As with all constitutional issues in North Carolina, those lawsuits over the maps themselves will be handled by a bipartisan panel of three judges instead of a single judge.
Shirley is on the three-judge panel for at least one of those lawsuits, filed earlier in November by the N.C. League of Conservation Voters.
Either that lawsuit, or the other one — backed by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee — could potentially lead to the maps being overturned as unconstitutional. If that happens quickly, it’s possible the judges could also order next year’s primary elections to be delayed to give time for new maps to be drawn.
Shirley cautioned both sides Tuesday that his ruling in this lawsuit, on the process, was based on the specific facts of this case which are not the same as those being raised in the other lawsuits. It should not be construed as showing his stance on the validity of the maps themselves, he said.
“This is a very narrow issue and is not in any way reflective of any opinion I may hold or may form,” he said.
Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause North Carolina — which successfully sued over gerrymandering in 2019 and forced the maps to be redrawn before the 2020 elections — was in court watching the proceedings since Common Cause was a part of this lawsuit too.
He said the group hasn’t decided if they’ll also join other lawsuits but he supports them, since he doesn’t want a repeat of last decade — when the 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 elections were all held using maps that were later found to be unconstitutional.
“I think that’s dreadful,” Phillips said. “I think when you have, as we saw last decade, laws and policies passed that aren’t really reflective of who we are in North Carolina, I think it contributes to the lack of trust and confidence that people have in our elections.”
