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Public Discussion Period Underway For NC Redistricting Process

In this July 2019 file photo, a state districts map is shown as a three-judge panel of the Wake County Superior Court presides over the trial of Common Cause, et al. v. Lewis, et al, in Raleigh has often been cited as an example of political gerrymandering. Lawmakers will begin the next round of redrawing the maps this week with the anticipated release of the 2020 census data. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)

A legislative Joint Committee on Redistricting heard public comments Tuesday on how North Carolina lawmakers should redraw the state's political boundaries for the next decade.

The process of redrawing the maps hasn't yet begun. That will start when the 2020 census data is delivered to state officials Thursday. 

Right now, the discussion is about how that data will be used.

The committee this week issued their proposed criteria on a two-page document focusing on ten bullet-pointed items.

The courts variously rejected GOP maps drawn with 2010 data after determining they were gerrymandered along partisan or racial lines. The new criteria say neither racial nor partisan data will be used this time around.

Some of the criteria are short on details. For example, the guidelines suggest that voting tabulation districts — which are small polling areas such as precincts and wards — should be split only when necessary. But they don't spell out in any way why or how it would be done.   

Although a public comment meeting to get feedback on the process is over, written submissions are still being taken on the General Assembly's web page.

The committee will vote on adopting the criteria on Thursday. 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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