The new legislative district maps are out. Over the weekend, a joint legislative redistricting committee released its proposals for new state house and senate districts. So what's changed?
The short answer is not much, at least in the Charlotte area.
This round of court-ordered redistricting to fix 28 illegally racially-gerrymandered districts didn't lead to broad changes in the boundaries in and around Charlotte, even though five of the districts in question are in Mecklenburg County.
On the Senate side, the biggest proposed change is for Senate District 41, currently held by Republican Jeff Tarte. That district is centered in North Mecklenburg, including the towns of Huntersville, Davidson and Cornelius. Under the old map, it also had a leg that hugged the eastern edge of the county to include Matthews, eventually ending in part of South Charlotte.
Now that leg hugs the western side of the county, ending in South Charlotte along the state line.
On the House side, there were no dramatic changes in Mecklenburg. However, in Cabarrus and Rowan counties, two Republican representatives, Larry Pittman and Carl Ford, would now represent the same district, a process known as double-bunking.
The joint legislative committee drawing these maps said it would not use race as a criteria. That’s not a surprise since race is at the heart of this court-ordered redistricting. But the committee is using big data to help keep the Republican supermajority intact.
We won't have access to the data these maps are based on until Tuesday or later.
