Guest Essay

Redistricting Is Racing to a Close in South Carolina

by Lynn S. Teague, VP for Issues and Action, LWVSC

South Carolina’s General Assembly is moving rapidly toward wrapping up redistricting based on the 2020 census. The current schedule indicates that both House and Senate will have final votes as early as December 6. If their plans do not change, for the next decade most voters for SC House seats and all voters for SC Congressional seats will do nothing in November elections but ratify decisions already baked in by demography or– too often – by legislators at the State House. 

First, the good news —the Senate plan for its own map isn’t perfect but is generally reasonable, at least as it was approved in subcommittee. This could change before it is final, but for now that is the good news. 

Now the bad news. Currently, Congressional District (CD) 1 has far too many people within its boundaries and CD 6 is under-populated by a comparable amount. In the League’s plan, CD 1 would encompass much of the larger Charleston area, which now includes a complex network of satellite cities and suburbs that make up a substantial and very important community of interest. In the League map this community-focused CD 1 would retain a Republican lean but would be competitive in November. This makes sense. This region shares strong economic and social bonds but is very diverse and nearly evenly divided in partisan preferences.

Instead, the Senate Subcommittee’s solution gerrymanders CD 1, making it non-competitive by slicing and dicing the Charleston area into irrational fragments. Charleston itself is split and North Charleston would continue to be put into a district with Columbia, more than a hundred miles away. James Island and Johns Island each would be split. 

The League has other concerns about the Senate Congressional plan. CD 2 should not have a finger extending out from Lexington County through Columbia, dividing the city and dissecting Black communities across the metropolitan area. Their justification? Fort Jackson needs to be in CD 2 because the incumbent in that district is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and can better protect it this way. A decade is a long time to draw a district assuming that the same incumbent will be on the same committee and furthermore that South Carolina’s Congressional representatives can protect only federal installations in their own districts. 

This brings us to the proposal for a new SC House map. In an analysis of geometric partisan bias, only 130 maps out of about a billion that were simulated by computer were more extreme than the House proposal, marking it as an extreme gerrymander. Changes made in the Judiciary Committee have now made this plan worse. This proposal drains almost all competitiveness from our November elections by drawing district boundaries to protect incumbents of both parties, while guaranteeing a supermajority for the Republican Party. The current House map provides 16 districts (out of 124) within the generous ±5% of 50% margin that is often considered competitive. The League’s proposal shows that this could be increased to 19 while preserving communities of interest. Instead, the plan that the House will vote on reduces the number to only 9. This unnecessarily deprives more than 410,000 South Carolinians of a voice in choosing their representatives.  

If these maps pass, the people of South Carolina will sacrifice a great deal so that legislators can achieve an extraordinary degree of security for themselves and for the majority party. Far too many citizens will be deprived of a meaningful vote. This is not government by and for the people, it is government by and for a self-perpetuating group of legislators. 

Find more information about the plans and their impacts at www.lwvsc.org. Immediately reach out to your legislators.  Ask them to reconsider these proposals. All South Carolinians deserve much better than this. We deserve a real voice in how we are governed.