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Proposed Legislative District Maps Show Big Changes In Guilford County

This shows the proposed changes to some Guilford County districts. Picture credit: The U.S District Court For The Middle District of North Carolina court document.

An outside expert appointed by a federal court has released his proposed changes to North Carolina's statehouse districts. The changes were ordered because the previous maps were ruled unconstitutional.

Stanford University law professor Nathaniel Persily has filed his preliminary House and Senate plans.

He has requested formal responses from the Republican leaders who originally drew the boundaries and from voters who wanted them changed.

The judges have said four districts redrawn last summer by GOP legislators still appeared to preserve illegal racial bias, so Persily said he redrew more compact replacements. He also retooled several districts around Charlotte, Raleigh, and elsewhere.

Catawba College Political Science Professor Michael Bitzer says some of the biggest changes are right here in the Triad.

“Doing a little bit of tweaking may not necessarily move a whole lot of these districts, but in Guilford, particularly with the Senate District and more importantly I think with the House Districts, we could see some fundamental reshaping of who occupies those particular districts come the next election,” says Bitzer.

Currently, the GOP has a super majority in both the House and Senate. It's not immediately clear how alterations could affect the Republican legislative majorities.

“It could certainly favor Democrats to at least break the supermajority, but I would be hard pressed unless it's a tsunami kind of an election to see how Democrats truly do recapture control of both chambers,” he says.

The court has set a December 1 deadline for the map expert to complete his final proposal.

*Follow WFDD's Keri Brown on Twitter @kerib_news

Keri Brown is a multi-award winning reporter and host at 88.5 WFDD. She has been honored with two regional Edward R. Murrow awards for her stories about coal ash, and was named the 2015 radio reporter of the year by the Radio Television Digital News Association of the Carolinas (RTDNAC).Although she covers a variety of topics, her beats are environmental and education reporting.Keri comes to the Triad from West Virginia Public Broadcasting, where she served as the Chief Bureau Reporter for the Northern Panhandle. She produced stories for the state's Public Television and Radio programs and was honored by the West Virginia Associated Press Broadcasters Association for her feature and enterprise reporting.She also served as an adjunct instructor at Wheeling Jesuit University and Bethany College in West Virginia. She worked with the Center for Educational Technologies in Wheeling, WV, and other NASA centers across the country to develop several stories about the use of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts in the classroom.Keri's journalism career began at WTRF-TV 7 in Wheeling. She worked in several roles at the station, including the head assignment editor. She also was a field producer and assignment manager at WPGH-TV Fox 53 in Pittsburgh.Keri is a graduate of Ohio University. When she's not in the studio or working on a story, she enjoys watching college football with her family, cooking, and traveling.Keri is always looking for another great story idea, so please share them with her. You can follow her on Twitter @kerib_news.

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