South Carolina Congressional District 1 Gerrymander Case

Politics & Elections
1

A thread to discuss Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP.

Background

In 2018, Joe Cunningham was the first Democrat in 30 years to flip a district in South Carolina. Nancy Mace won back the seat for Republicans in 2020 by a razor thin margin of nearly 5,500 votes.

This was the district map in 2020:

Because of the 2020 census, the Republican-dominated state legislature had a once-in-a-decade chance to redraw the districts. They took advantage of the opportunity, and with a new district map Nancy Mace won reelection with a healthy margin of nearly 40,000 votes.

This was the district map in 2022. Pay special attention to the blue area around Charleston city that bisects the 1st District.

The 2022 map is easiest understood as moving the Republican-voting populations in Berkely, Beaufort, and parts of Dorchester counties out of the Democrat-leaning 6th District and into the 1st District. To make up for the offset, some 30,000 people in Charleston were moved out of the 1st District and into the 6th District. Compare with the 2020 Presidential election results, here shown by county.

Coincidentally (or not) the Republican-voting populations moved out of the 6th District were overwhelmingly white, and the Democratic-voting population moved out of the 1st District were overwhelmingly Black. In fact some 80% of the Black population in Charleston county is in that west/northwest part of the city that was moved into the 6th District. If you take a map of South Carolina’s racial distribution and political party leanings, you’ll note a lot of similarities.

This was pointed out immediately in 2022 and the state was sued for unlawful racial gerrymandering. The only reason South Carolina was allowed to use the 2022 map is because they successfully kept it a secret until it was too late to change it. The NAACP could not argue for unlawful political gerrymandering because the Supreme Court had ruled, in 2019, that federal law did not give federal courts jurisdiction over political gerrymandering. Normally a state is entitled to the presumption that its acts are lawful, and challengers have the heavy burden of proving otherwise. There is however Supreme Court precedent that if race is the predominant factor behind district boundaries, the map will be presumed unlawful.

Last January, the court agreed that the 2022 map was racially motivated and thus presumptively unlawful, and ordered South Carolina to redraw its maps for the 2024 election. South Carolina appealed, arguing that it was politically motivated gerrymandering and therefore not presumptively unlawful. The appeal was taken up by the Supreme Court and oral arguments were heard last October, and the parties begged the court to issue a ruling by January of this year. But the Supreme court missed that deadline and the case has not been decided yet.

Meanwhile South Carolina is months away from the primary election and weeks away from the deadline to register candidacy and mail out absentee ballots. Last month South Carolina asked and received an exemption from the year old order to draw new maps.

~Max

2

It seems impossible to draw a meaningful distinction between “political” and “racial” gerrymandering in a context where there’s such a high correlation between race and party affiliation.

3

On the politics side, I’m more concerned with this strategy of just not complying with court orders for months or years on end, then claiming “we don’t have time to fix it now”. We saw something similar in Florida. It keeps proving successful because the courts are not about to supplant the legislature and draw the maps themselves.

On the legal side, though… on the merits of the case, I’m leaning towards South Carolina.

~Max

4

There were a few other people who were concerned about that, back in 1965. That’s why they created the preclearance mechanism, which mitigated this problem until the SCOTUS struck it down in Shelby v. Holder. The really quick overview for any that don’t know is that states that were considered to have a history of voter discrimination on racial lines had to submit district maps and other major changes to election law to the federal government for approval. The changes wouldn’t occur until after approval by the feds, and if there wound up being a messy process of appeals or litigation, the old election laws could remain in place. Of course the states that had to participate were the jim crow states that essentially motivated the civil rights era voting rights amendment as well as the voting rights act, which is partly why it was struck down (there’s a lot more to that, but I’m not going to get into it right now).

We desperately need a voting rights act that is “SCOTUS-proofed” (and I believe the best way to do that would be to make the preclearance universal across all states). If we don’t have preclearance we’re setting up an election regime that invites and rewards these tactics.

5

I’m not even convinced the Shelby v. Holder case was wrong, but it’s easy to see why we don’t have and won’t get universal preclearance. It would only benefit one party. There was a piece last month, I don’t remember where, but it estimated the number of extra votes we would have had in 2020 if preclearance had persisted. Enough extra votes in to flip some 30+ states in the presidential election. That’s crazy.

~Max

6

I’m confused what you’re saying, but if I’m reading right, more people would have voted if preclearance had existed, because state voter restrictions would have been struck down enabling them to vote.

I mean it’s not surprising to me that the Republicans are against that but should still be mentioned as the reason. Unless there is another viable solution to the tactic of waiting out court rulings until it’s too close to an election.

7

You have it right. I don’t think there are any viable solutions.

~Max