North Carolina: Trial on legislative districts begins; expected to last a week | The Charlotte Observer

Three federal judges shared the bench in Greensboro on Monday as a trial began over the legality of North Carolina's legislative districts. A group of 27 voters filed a lawsuit in May 2015, arguing that maps drawn in 2011 for nine state House districts (4, 5, 14, 20, 21, 28, 32, 38, 40) and 19 state Senate districts (5, 7, 12, 21, 24, 29, 31, 32, 33, 38, 42, 48, 57, 99, 102, 07) were designed to weaken the influence of black voters, who in North Carolina predominantly vote for Democrats. Republicans led the 2011 redistricting, an exercise that happens every 10 years after the Census. The panel of judges who will decide whether the maps can be used in the 2016 elections are James A. Wynn Jr., an Obama appointee to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals; Thomas D. Schroeder, a district judge appointed by George W. Bush; and Catherine Eagles, a district judge appointed by Obama.

North Carolina: Legislative map trial begins after Congress lines nixed | The Charlotte Observer

A federal court ruled two months ago Republican legislators weren't legally justified in turning two North Carolina congressional boundaries into majority-black districts and ordered new lines. Starting Monday, another panel of three federal judges convenes a weeklong trial deciding whether close to 30 of the 170 state House and Senate districts approved almost five years ago by the General Assembly also are illegal racial gerrymanders and must be redrawn. Voters in the challenged districts who sued make largely the same arguments that won out in February's separate congressional litigation. They say legislators created too many minority-majority districts when evidence shows black voters have been able to elect their preferred candidates in districts when their voting-age population was well below 50 percent. The congressional district ruling forced lawmakers to quickly redraw the map and delay the March congressional primary until June. It's unclear whether, if the legislative plaintiffs are successful, new boundaries would be ordered for this year.

North Carolina: Wake County elections board makes first voter ID decisions | WRAL

The Wake County Board of Elections on Thursday waded through 7,940 provisional ballots from the March primary, making decisions on which would be counted, partially counted or rejected. Although county boards and the State Board of Elections give results on the night of an election – Wake County reported results based on 269,664 ballots counted – thousands of ballots wait to be counted until the county canvass. Wake County had so many provisional ballots that staff needed extra time to process them and delayed the bulk of their canvass work from Tuesday until Thursday. The provisional ballots that came to the board Thursday morning were cast due to some administrative problem with the voter's registration. Among the 3,600 provisional ballots that were deemed eligible almost immediately were those cast by registered voters who hadn't reported a move within the county and voters whose names were overlooked when poll workers tried to find them in a poll book.

North Carolina: Activists: Voters faced challenges because of photo ID requirement | Winston-Salem Journal

North Carolina’s photo ID voting requirement resulted in confusion, long lines and voters not being able to cast a ballot at the polls during the March 15 primary, activists said Wednesday in a conference call. “We saw poll workers being absolutely uninformed about the requirement,” said Allison Riggs, an attorney for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “We saw voters being turned away.” Penda Hair, an attorney representing the North Carolina NAACP in its legal challenge against the photo ID requirement, said that polling places in Winston-Salem and Durham had long lines. Voters at First Alliance Church in Winston-Salem stood in line for an hour and 45 minutes. Tim Tsujii, the Forsyth County elections director, said some polling places had long lines as they were about to close at 7:30 that night. State law requires polling places to serve all voters who are in line before the closing time. Many people who were affected by the photo ID requirement were racial minorities and poor people, activists said.

North Carolina: Long lines, confusion over voter ID reported in primary | News & Observer

Long lines forced some voters in Wake and Durham counties to wait three or four hours to vote Tuesday night in the North Carolina primaries. At a precinct in Raleigh at Pullen Park, where many N.C. State students vote, the university bused students in every 15 minutes, and more than 1,700 people voted there on Tuesday. By 7 p.m., a line of hundreds of people stretched into the parking lot. Polls had been scheduled to close at 7:30 p.m. “We were voting there until around 11 o’clock last night,” said Nicole Shumaker, Wake County’s deputy elections director. “And the reason for that was the early voting period for this primary coincided exactly with North Carolina State University’s spring break. So all those students were out of town during early voting.” Democracy NC, a group that advocates for more voter participation, blamed many of the delays statewide on confusion surrounding the state’s new voter ID laws.

North Carolina: Confusing primary: why so many votes won’t count | CS Monitor

North Carolinians can vote however they want in their Super Tuesday primary election, but one thing’s fairly sure: Many of those Tar Heel votes aren’t going to count. Last month, a federal three-judge panel found that Republicans drew two of the state’s congressional districts illegally, packing more black voters into districts where they already had a plurality, thus boosting Republican odds by “bleaching” surrounding districts. The result is, pretty much everyone agrees, a mess. The congressional candidates are still on the ballot along with the presidential and local candidates. But all the congressional votes will not be counted, and a new congressional primary with the new districts is scheduled for June 7.

North Carolina: North Carolina’s Voter ID Law Could Block 218,000 Registered Voters From the Polls | The Nation

Ethelene Douglas, an 85-year-old African-American woman who grew up in the segregated South and first registered to vote in 1964, was one of them. Her struggle to obtain the necessary ID vividly illustrates the problems with the law. In September 2012, Douglas’s niece, Clara Quick, took her to the DMV in Laurinburg, North Carolina, to get a state photo ID. Douglas was told she needed a copy of her birth certificate to get an ID. So they traveled across the state line to Dillon, South Carolina, where Douglas was born, to find her birth certificate. But the government office there said she needed a photo ID to get a birth certificate, and Douglas was caught in a seemingly unresolvable catch-22. (This account comes from an affidavit Quick filed in federal court.) Her niece called the South Carolina’s Vital Records office, paid $17 for an expedited birth certificate, but still couldn’t get one. Instead, she was told to find her aunt’s marriage certificate, which was in Bennettsville, South Carolina. After getting that, they made a second trip to the North Carolina DMV, but were once again told Douglas couldn’t get a photo ID because she didn’t have a birth certificate. They were so frustrated that they gave up trying for a time. In the fall of 2013, after North Carolina passed the voter ID law, they made a third trip to the DMV. An employee told Quick to get a census report to confirm her aunt’s identify, which she purchased for $69. Quick brought her aunt’s census report, marriage certificate, Social Security card, and utility bill during a fourth trip to the DMV in September 2014 and was finally able to get her the photo ID needed to vote.

North Carolina: Voter ID law hinders some college students | News & Observer

Williams Foos, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, registered to vote in Orange County in 2012 and voted in the presidential election that year. But when he showed his Pennsylvania license at an early voting site in this year’s primary, he had to cast a provisional ballot. His vote may not count. In the state’s first use of the voter ID law, some college students’ ballots may end up filling the discard piles. As of Friday, 717 people had cast provisional ballots because they didn’t have acceptable photo identification. Four of the five counties with the highest concentrations of provisional ballots from voters without approved ID were Durham, Orange, Watauga and Wake, where those voters had home addresses on or near campuses. Robeson County was the fifth. Robeson is home of UNC Pembroke, but the county’s elections director couldn’t say why it landed in the top tier of counties with voter ID questions. Durham and Orange were the leaders, by far. Each county had more than 100 voters without acceptable photo ID.

North Carolina: Elections board rejects request to change state Supreme Court filing period | News & Observer

The state’s Board of Elections on Saturday rejected a request from lawyers representing legislative leaders to change the election schedule for one seat on the N.C. Supreme Court. The board held an emergency meeting Saturday morning after lawyers for Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore on Friday asked that the candidate filing period for a seat on the Supreme Court be delayed because a case affecting that election is going through the appeals process. During a telephone discussion that lasted little more than an hour, board members raised concerns that voters already were confused by the recent remapping of congressional districts, the new voter ID requirements and other changes brought about by recent legislative and court decisions. They said they did not want to add further confusion.

North Carolina: North Carolina Exemplifies National Battles Over Voting Laws | The New York Times

The stakes are high here and nationwide. The four lawsuits over the Republicans’ 2011 redistricting plans make their case on racial grounds. But some scholars are wondering whether the challenge to the congressional districts, and cases like it, might prompt the Supreme Court to take a new look at blatantly partisan gerrymandering. Advocacy groups and the Justice Department brought the federal lawsuit challenging Republican-backed legislation that established a voter identification provision and cut or curtailed provisions that had made it easier to register and vote. Those provisions were adopted over the last 15 years and championed by Democrats. The Justice Department argues that black and younger voters were especially likely to take advantage of them. The law included a reduction in early-voting days and ended same-day registration and preregistration that added teenagers to voting rolls on their 18th birthday. If the case is decided before November, it could have an effect on turnout in a tight presidential contest here — President Obama won North Carolina by a hair in 2008, and lost it by a hair in 2012 — as well as what is likely to be a difficult re-election fight for Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican.

North Carolina: Voters’ attorneys say new Congress map should be rejected | Associated Press

North Carolina's updated congressional districts — redrawn by legislators after federal judges ruled some lines created illegal racial gerrymanders — also are unconstitutional and should be rejected, according to the voters who originally sued to overturn them. Lawyers for David Harris and Christine Bowers — voters who challenged the previous majority black 1st and 12th District boundaries — filed in federal court their objections to boundaries drawn by the Republican-led General Assembly on Feb. 19. They also want the judges to draw new maps themselves. For the map originally drawn in 2011, the plaintiffs' attorneys argued the GOP mapmakers previously packed black voters into the two districts so as to make surrounding areas more white and Republican.

North Carolina: New congressional maps challenged in federal court | News & Observer

The voters who convinced a three-judge panel that two of North Carolina's congressional districts were racial gerrymanders contend in a court document filed late Monday that new maps drawn in February are no better. Attorneys for David Harris of Durham and Christine Bowser of Mecklenburg County asked the three-judge panel to reject the new maps drawn last month as "a blatant, unapologetic partisan gerrymander" that provides no legal remedy to the 2011 maps that were struck down Feb. 5. Many are watching the latter case as one that could test the limits of drawing districts for partisan advantage — something courts have allowed, to an extent. In their 40-page filing, the challengers contend the North Carolina districts go well beyond what previous rulings have allowed. They also argue that legislators drew maps that intentionally limit minority representation.

North Carolina: What happens now that North Carolina’s got 2 primaries? | Associated Press

A ruling by federal judges on North Carolina’s congressional districts this month has turned the primary election on its head. Now there are two primary dates — June 7 for the congressional elections and the previously scheduled March 15 for all other races. Here’s a look at how the state got to this point, what the changes mean for voters and candidates and the chances for more election complications before November. How did we get here? North Carolina held elections in 2012 and 2014 under congressional and legislative district maps the General Assembly drew in 2011. All the while four lawsuits challenging the maps meandered their way through state and federal courts. All the litigation essentially alleged Republican mapmakers created more majority black districts than legally necessary by splitting counties and precincts. Republicans said the maps were fair and legal.

North Carolina: Redistricting plaintiffs ask federal judges to act quickly | News & Observer

Critics of the congressional redistricting process that took place in 2011, and who successfully sued to overturn it on the basis of racial gerrymandering, on Monday filed a brief in federal court saying they don’t like the new map, either. The plaintiffs asked the three-judge panel of the federal court that ordered the map redrawn to establish an expedited schedule to determine if the new map, approved by the General Assembly on Friday, is valid under constitutional considerations. They ask that the court make that determination by March 18. “The map adopted by the General Assembly has been subject to considerable criticism, and plaintiffs share those deep concerns,” the brief they filed Monday says. “Their preliminary analysis of the new plan suggests that it is no more appropriate than the version struck down by the court. It is critical that the citizens of North Carolina vote in constitutional districts in the upcoming primary, now scheduled for June, and every election thereafter.”

North Carolina: Judge revises proposed court schedule in redistricting case | Greensboro News & Record

A federal judge has given the opponents of North Carolina’s congressional redistricting maps until Monday to outline their objections. U.S. District Court Judge William Osteen Jr. asked the plaintiffs to “state with specificity the factual and legal basis for each objection.” Plaintiffs David Harris and Christine Bowser had sued the state over its 2011 maps that redrew North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts. A three-judge panel ruled Feb. 5 that the maps were unconstitutional and ordered the state to come up with new ones.

North Carolina: Local elections boards await word from state | Sun Journal

Local elections officials are awaiting word from the state Board of Elections on how to proceed with a possible extra congressional primary this year.
The regular primary for all other races is still scheduled for March 15. The U.S. Supreme Court denied a state request for a stay on redistricting maps, and the state legislature redrew the U.S. House district maps late last week. House Bill 2 was approved and did away with a potential second primary and added a June 7 special congressional primary. It also added a new filing period from March 16 to 25 for U.S. House candidates. “We are just waiting,” said Meloni Wray, elections director for Craven County. “The state board has not given us any direction. What we know is according to the paper.” The areas involved for Craven County are District 1, which has no primary slated, and District 3, which has a Republican primary with incumbent Walter B. Jones and challengers Phil Law and Taylor Griffin. Pamlico and Jones counties have only the District 3 primary on their March 15 ballots.

North Carolina: McCrory wants redistricting changes, praises new maps | Citizen Times

State legislators "made the best of a bad situation" when they adopted new U.S. House districts for North Carolina last week but the argument over the districts illustrates the need for a nonpartisan redistricting process, Gov. Pat McCrory said. A three-member panel of federal judges on Feb. 5 directed the General Assembly to draw up new districts no later than Friday, saying legislators had made race too much of a factor when the districts were originally approved in 2011. Legislators approved a new district map Friday on party-line votes – Republicans in favor, Democrats against – and moved the U.S. House primary date from March 15 to June 7. "I didn't think it was an appropriate time for the federal (judges) to rule after the elections were already started ... since those maps have been around literally for 25 years with minor revisions done by both Democrats and Republicans," McCrory said Monday in a brief interview after an announcement of a new auto parts manufacturing plant coming to Mills River.

North Carolina: NAACP calls for redrawn Congressional district map to be thrown out | WNCN

Chaos over a redistricting case has only increased after a court-mandated redraw of Congressional Districts in North Carolina is causing confusion and anger. State Republicans redrew the boundaries after a federal court found two districts were gerrymandered on racial lines. But the NAACP says the new map isn’t a fair solution. “(It’s) an invalid way, an unconstitutional way, of stacking and packing black voters, and then you undermine the power of the black vote,” said Rev. William Barber, head of the North Carolina NAACP. Rev. Barber said his group is calling for judges considering the case to throw out the new map and create one themselves.

North Carolina: Legislators complete voting map redraw; congressional primaries pushed back | Associated Press

Legislators met a Friday deadline to complete a court-ordered rewrite of North Carolina's illegally gerrymandered congressional voting map, all the while looking ahead to further legal challenges. One legal decision quickly went against the Republican lawmakers, who still defend the previous boundaries as fair and legal. The U.S. Supreme Court late Friday refused the state's request to keep using district lines from the 2012 and 2014 elections while the lower-court order is appealed. The denial means the state is on track to hold congressional primaries June 7 under the new map. Had the Supreme Court sided with the state, the congressional primary would have remained March 15 as previously scheduled. The state House gave final approval to the new map dividing the state's 13 U.S. House seats after federal judges earlier this month declared the old map was illegally gerrymandered by race. Challengers had complained that legislative Republicans drew the previous congressional lines to pack black voters in two districts, leaving the rest more white and more favorable to the GOP.

North Carolina: Poll worker training highlights voter ID, many Election Day tasks | Winston-Salem Journal

Poll worker training for the March primary kicked off last week in Forsyth County, and for seasoned precinct officials, most of the information is familiar. But one element is new for everyone: voter ID. By the end of the month, more than 300 precinct officials will have attended the class, which covers everything from voting machine setup and voter check-in to provisional ballots and photo identification requirements. The class is mandatory for chief judges and judges, the precinct officials who run the polling places on Election Day. In about two and a half hours, Forsyth elections office employees hit the highlights from the State Board of Elections’ voting site guide and the county’s poll worker manual, which contains about 100 pages of instructions and forms.

North Carolina: Supreme Court Won’t Intervene in North Carolina Election Fight | The New York Times

The United States Supreme Court declined late Friday to stay a lower court ruling that has forced North Carolina’s Republican-dominated legislature to redraw its congressional electoral maps on the grounds that the original maps amounted to racial gerrymandering. As a result, the state must now follow a contingency plan, also devised by Republican lawmakers, that tries to comply with the lower court’s ruling by making significant changes to the boundaries of the some of the state’s 13 congressional districts. The changes take effect less than one month before the originally scheduled March 15 primary, which has forced the legislature to set up a second election dedicated exclusively to the congressional primaries, which will now take place June 7. The contingency plan was approved by the state legislature on Friday, hours before the Supreme Court announced that it had rejected North Carolina Republicans’ application for a stay. But the approval of the contingency plan came over the strenuous objection of Democrats, who claimed that the new congressional maps were hyperpartisan — giving Republicans 10 safe districts to the Democrats’ three — and still failed to protect black voters’ interests.

North Carolina: House sets congressional primary on June 7; Senate OKs new map | News & Observer

The drama around the state’s congressional districts got a confusing new chapter Thursday with a proposed reshuffling of the state’s primary elections. The state House voted not to proceed with the congressional primary March 15 and instead hold it June 7, effectively hitting the restart button on those campaigns. All other issues on the ballot – including races for governor and a statewide $2 billion bond issue – still would be decided March 15. But in a major change, the House proposal also said no runoff elections would be held in March or June. Currently, if no candidate gets 40 percent of the vote, a second primary is held. But if this change is enacted, the final winner would be the top vote-getter in the initial vote this year, no matter how many candidates compete.

North Carolina: Judges rule out up-or-down vote for state Supreme Court | The Charlotte Observer

A three-judge panel has decided a new option for choosing members of the North Carolina Supreme Court is unconstitutional. Lawyers were alerted Thursday to the judges' ruling striking down the 2015 law creating "retention elections." The Superior Court judges — Anna Mills Wagoner, Lisa Bell and Benjamin Alford — heard oral arguments earlier this week in a lawsuit challenging the concept. The law gives most sitting justices the option to be re-elected to additional eight-year terms without head-to-head matchups with challengers. Instead, the justice can choose to be elected in an up-or-down vote. It's supposed to be used by Associate Justice Bob Edmunds for the first time this November.

North Carolina: Republicans propose major changes to congressional districts | News & Observer

Republican legislators’ proposed changes to North Carolina’s congressional boundaries dramatically reshape two districts a panel of federal judges found unconstitutional. But the proposed map also changes each of the state’s 13 congressional districts, some of them strikingly. Two House members would no longer live in the districts they represent, although by law that isn’t necessary. The 13th District, now anchored in the Triangle, would move across the state. And the serpentine 12th District would become the most compact. But one thing would not change. According to voting statistics released for the proposed districts, three would strongly favor a Democrat, while the other 10 lean Republican. GOP lawmakers say they want to keep the existing 10-3 partisan split.

North Carolina: Lawmakers agree to redraw lines for 12th Congressional District | Associated Press

It may be Thursday or Friday before North Carolina’s Legislature releases maps of what the state’s new congressional districts could look like. Lawmakers voted Tuesday to move ahead with criteria for re-drawing the lines after a panel of judges ruled that two districts, the 1st and the 12th, which includes 250,000 people in Mecklenburg County, are unconstitutional because they were drawn along racial lines. The state Redistricting Committee voted Tuesday not to use race as a criteria in drawing the new district lines.

North Carolina: Would delaying NC’s election violate military voters’ rights? | Fayetteville Observer

A delay in this year's primary elections - for which absentee voting has begun - will disenfranchise overseas military personnel and other North Carolinians voting by absentee ballot, Jerry Reinoehl of Fayetteville said on Monday at a statewide public hearing. The state's congressional districts should not be changed, he said. The districts should be revised, said Wanda Lawrence of Fayetteville, and the March 15 primary elections delayed if needed in order to protect the constitutional rights of the people living in two districts that a panel of federal judges recently ruled are unconstitutionally unfair. Those two arguments and others were made Monday during a statewide public hearing held at Fayetteville Technical Community College and five other locations on how to revise northeast North Carolina's 1st and central North Carolina's 12th congressional districts.

North Carolina: Voices fall along partisan lines at statewide redistricting hearings | News & Observer

The prospect of quickly redrawing two of North Carolina’s congressional districts to comply with a federal court order lurched to an uncertain future on Monday. Amid a winter storm that may have hampered attendance, members of a joint legislative redistricting committee held a hearing simultaneously at six places across the state, connected by video conferencing. A seventh site in Greensboro was closed because of the weather. The committee expects to begin redrawing the 1st and 12th congressional districts Tuesday and Wednesday, and then hold a two-day special session for the full General Assembly to vote on them Thursday and Friday – unless the U.S. Supreme Court says they don’t need to. Republican legislative leaders call the process a contingency measure as they hope Chief Justice John Roberts will put on hold a federal three-judge panel’s order that gave the state two weeks to come up with new districts. Roberts has given the plaintiffs, who sued to challenge the districts as racial gerrymanders, until Tuesday afternoon to respond to the state’s motion for a stay. Meanwhile, the three-judge panel’s Friday deadline looms.

North Carolina: Scalia’s death could have quick impact on redistricting case | News & Observer

As the political battles heated up over who should replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers familiar with North Carolina’s redistricting case and other high-profile lawsuits took time on Sunday to weigh what impact the conservative jurist’s death might have on their cases. The North Carolina redistricting case, which invalidated the state’s 1st and 12th congressional districts, is one that could see a different outcome now, legal analysts speculate. Some analysts say Scalia’s death makes it much more likely that North Carolina’s March 15 primary elections will be delayed – at least in the congressional races. Until a new justice is appointed – and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised a delay for anyone President Barack Obama nominates – there could be a succession of 4-to-4 vote standoffs among the remaining justices. In such cases where there is a tie, the lower court ruling stands as if the high court had never heard the case. But as has been proven often during the two weeks since the federal court ruling describing North Carolina’s 1st and 12th districts as racial gerrymanders, there are few simple answers with a redistricting case.

North Carolina: Scalia’s death could have quick impact on redistricting case | News & Observer

As the political battles heated up over who should replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers familiar with North Carolina’s redistricting case and other high-profile lawsuits took time on Sunday to weigh what impact the conservative jurist’s death might have on their cases. The North Carolina redistricting case, which invalidated the state’s 1st and 12th congressional districts, is one that could see a different outcome now, legal analysts speculate. Some analysts say Scalia’s death makes it much more likely that North Carolina’s March 15 primary elections will be delayed – at least in the congressional races. Until a new justice is appointed – and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised a delay for anyone President Barack Obama nominates – there could be a succession of 4-to-4 vote standoffs among the remaining justices. In such cases where there is a tie, the lower court ruling stands as if the high court had never heard the case.

North Carolina: Carved-up county braces for redistricting fight | Associated Press

Mary Hodgin lives in North Carolina's 1st Congressional District. Her neighbors across the street do not. In fact, Hodgin didn't live in this district until a few years ago — even though she's been in the same Durham home for 25 years. The change came when Republican lawmakers drew the dividing line right down the mile-long stretch of Alston Avenue in front of her house. And, with the March 15 primary just weeks away, a court fight could change the boundaries again. "It's very concerning as a voter who tries to stay abreast of the issues," she said. "Worst-case scenario, it would put voters off from participating in any election." Durham County had been part of a single congressional district for more than a decade until legislative mapmakers carved out chunks and added them to other territories before the 2012 elections. A color-coded map by state legislators makes the 1st District look like a yellow fist reaching in to scoop up downtown Durham and the surrounding neighborhoods. The county is now divided among four congressional districts.