BY THE STATE EDITORIAL BOARD

OCTOBER 12, 2021 4:55 PM Columbia 

 

The clock started running on Aug. 12, the day the U.S. Census Bureau released a massive amount of data states could use to draw their congressional and legislative voting districts. It’s been a function of the bureau for decades to provide the data and everyone in South Carolina’s legislature knew it was coming. Work on the state’s new redistricting maps should have, and likely did, begin that day, but two months later, to the day, the maps are not complete and now, to no one’s surprise, a lawsuit has been filed. 

 

The South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and voters, who are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, are challenging the state for its inaction. The ACLU announced the news on Twitter:  BREAKING: We’re suing South Carolina over their redistricting process, which largely avoided public input and has left electoral districts wildly out of proportion just months before election season. Voters deserve fair maps — and a fair process to get them there. 

 

The lawsuit names South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster along with Senate President Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington, along with the interim director of the State Election Commission and its board members. 

 

“Every day without new maps is a day in which interested organizations, such as the South Carolina NAACP and its volunteers, as well as candidates, cannot contact and educate the electorate in their districts,” Brenda Murphy, president of the South Carolina NAACP, said in a statement. “Every day without new maps is another day when Black voters and other voters across the state cannot appeal to and hold accountable at the next election representatives who have many issues that they need to respond to facing our communities such as the impact of COVID, educational and policing reform, landownership, and more.” 

 

Clearly, it didn’t have to be this way. 

 

The League of Women Voters, for instance, published its own redistricting maps on the group’s website in September. The site even features a video detailing how the maps should be drawn to best represent the Palmetto State’s residents at the state and federal levels. 

 

The league was among the group’s urging the state to form an independent redistricting commission. That didn’t happen. 

 

“The league is not a party to the lawsuit, but we do agree that the General Assembly can and should have moved faster,” said Lynn Teague, Vice President for Issues and Action of the league in South Carolina. Teague noted that the organization has a handful of staff or volunteers who worked on the maps and like the state the group could not begin its work until Aug. 12 when the Census Bureau released the data. 

 

“We had the same amount of time they had,” Teague said, adding the league’s maps were ready Sept. 15 and publicly presented Sept. 29. Teague said the state’s delay in producing the redistricting maps means less time for potential candidates to decide if they will run given the March primary deadline, less time for court action to challenge the maps and less time for voters to know that they are going to have proper representation. 

 

So now, South Carolina taxpayers will foot the legal bills for a lawsuit that should never have been necessary. 

 

The State Legislature has an obligation to produce redistricting maps in a timely manner for the sake of voters and the democratic process. 

 

Instead, the Legislature’s delaying tactics will cost taxpayers and further erode their trust in the process. 

 

South Carolina’s elected leaders should move swiftly to right this wrong, produce equitable and fair maps and demonstrate to voters that they do matter.

 

Read more at: https://www.thestate.com/opinion/editorials/article254957552.html#storylink=cpy