Voting Rights Advocates Speak Against Racial Targeting in NC Redistricting Effort
Proposed map decreases Black representation in District 1 by 8%
A coalition of North Carolina voting rights advocates held a press conference Monday condemning the Republican-led NC redistricting effort to flip a US House seat by dismantling the historic “Black Belt” district through gerrymandering.
The NC Senate Elections Committee met Monday to hear public comment before passing a new congressional map that would increase GOP control over congress, making 11 Republicans to three Democrats, which is unrepresentative of the state’s nearly split demographics.
As this story went live on Tuesday, the NC Senate had approved the maps in a 26-20 vote with the House redistricting committee set to take up the measure Tuesday afternoon.
Congressional districts are meant to be redrawn once every 10 years following the US Census to rebalance populations in accordance with the one person, one vote principle. The only other legitimate reason to redraw a map would be a court order that challenges Congress to fix legal violations, said Melissa Price Kromm, executive director with NC For the People.
North Carolina’s congressional maps have been changed four times in the past five years.
“This is chaos,” Kromm said during Monday’s virtual press conference. “If this pattern continues, North Carolinians will live under new maps after every election cycle, punished again and again for exercising their right to vote.”
After the US Census Bureau released its 2020 Census results, the NCGA proposed a set of heavily gerrymandered maps that were ruled unconstitutional in 2022, leading to a more balanced map and an even seven-seven split between Republicans and Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.
When Republicans gained control of the NC Supreme Court in 2023, however, they overturned the 2022 ruling and approved a congressional map that tore apart communities with shared voting interests such as the Triad, Fayetteville, Wilmington and Charlotte.
“All of these horribly drawn districts remain in this new map unveiled by state legislative leaders and it is a disgrace,” Common Cause NC’s program manager Tyler Daye said. “The difference is that in this new map, legislative leaders went after the only truly competitive congressional district in North Carolina.”
Legislative leaders released newly drawn congressional maps last week that target Congressional District One (CD1) and would give Republicans nearly 80% of the state’s congressional delegation. The district currently covers much of the state’s Black Belt, a stretch of majority-Black congressional districts.
CD1 encompasses 22 rural counties in northeast NC and is represented by Democratic US Rep. Donald Davis, one of just 66 African American members of Congress out of the 535 members. The district has not elected a Republican since 1883.
Daye said the new maps would dilute the voting power of Black North Carolinians in the northeast by stretching the district lines further south. The Black population of voting age in the new CD1 would decrease by over 8% — a substantial hit given that Davis won his congressional race by less than two percentage points in 2024.
“The new map was drawn specifically to oust Representative Davis and make it easy for a Republican to win,” Daye said.
This strategy follows a call to action by Donald Trump earlier this month that urged Republican-led legislatures to “fix” their congressional maps before the 2026 midterm elections.
Trump — facing a record-low approval rating — also ordered Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to redistrict his state mid-decade to secure an additional five Republican-leaning districts in order to strengthen the GOP’s chance at maintaining control of the US House of Representatives following the midterm election.
Kat Roblez, senior voting rights counsel and litigation manager with Forward Justice, addressed map redistricting supporters’ claims that this move isn’t racial but partisan. Roblez insisted that the two are the same, as racial polarization is apparent in elections on both a state and national level.
The disparities between white voters and Black voters are larger than the disparities for any other demographic comparisons, including income, education or sex, she said.
“So please don’t buy into it when someone says that this isn’t about race, it’s about party, because those two things are intertwined,” Roblez said.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 makes it illegal to dilute the power of the Black voting bloc through redistricting, though even that landmark piece of legislation is under threat by the US Supreme Court.
“This is not the direction our state should be headed,” said Shruti Parikh, director of education and political engagement with NC Asian Americans Together. “For far too long, gerrymandering has robbed Black, brown and Asian American communities of fair representations and a real voice in our democracy.
“Redistricting is supposed to happen once every 10 years through an open and transparent process that centers community voices, not in secret meetings designed to cement partisan control,” she continued. “Elected officials shouldn’t be picking their voters. Voters should be picking their representatives.”
The coalition urged North Carolinians to call on their legislative leaders to oppose the maps. Though Gov. Josh Stein has condemned the gerrymandering, he does not have the power to veto the decision if both the Senate and House pass it.
