A judge in Utah has added a new wrinkle to this year’s mid-decade redistricting fight, overturning a Republican-drawn congressional map: The Utah Legislature violated voters’ rights by approving congressional boundaries…
Congressional districts should be about the communities they represent, not statewide political considerations, and not splitting counties when redistricting keeps communities whole. It is possible to use county groupings when…
One goal when drawing congressional districts is to keep political communities, including counties, together. As Jim Stirling and I noted in our report, Limiting Gerrymandering in North Carolina, “[W]hile there…
The John Locke Foundation’s Jim Stirling and Andy Jackson both spoke at a public hearing of the joint Senate Redistricting and Elections and House Redistricting committees on September 27 at…
The 2022 election was good for Republicans in North Carolina, as a red wave swept them to victories in every statewide election in the state and a supermajority in the…
With election upon us, the constant stream of campaign ads that most of us cannot seem to get away from has only steadily increased. While it is easy to tune…
To find the partisan leanings of North Carolina's new congressional districts, we used methods like those used in the Civitas Partisan Index. The congressional map drawn by court-appointed special masters…
[See an update below on the shaky constitutional ground of the special masters’ congressional map.] A three-judge panel of the Wake County Superior Court issued its ruling in a set…
The new court-ordered congressional map is highly competitive. The North Carolina House map is more friendly to Democrats than was required by the court ruling. While the North Carolina Senate…
The North Carolina Supreme Court provided little guidance to the General Assembly on how to draw maps that comply with their order. The most efficient way to draw remedial maps…
Lawsuits over North Carolina’s new congressional and state legislative maps have been fast-tracked by the courts and will be heard right after the New Year’s Holiday. The North Carolina League…
Political and racial data are appropriately banned from consideration when legislators draw district maps. Preventing "double bunking" of incumbents can prevent map drawers from following redistricting best practices such as…