COLUMBIA, SC — Concerned Citizens for Voting Rights wants South Carolina’s top court to tell lawmakers to change the way the state’s U.S. House districts are drawn because they are too Republican.
Three months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that South Carolina’s congressional map was valid. The court said that the state General Assembly did not use race to choose districts based on the 2020 Census.
After Democrats unexpectedly won an extra seat two years ago, these new maps made the Republicans’ 6-1 U.S. House edge even stronger.
That case’s testimony and proof are used by the League of Women Voters in their lawsuit to say that the U.S. House districts break the South Carolina constitution’s rule that elections must be free and open, and that everyone is protected by the law the same way.
Cutting up voting districts so that one party has a lot more power than it should have based on voting trends is dishonest, according to Allen Chaney, who is in charge of the lawsuit for the South Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“People in South Carolina should be able to vote with their neighbors and for their votes to count the same.” In a statement released Monday, Chaney said, “I’m hopeful that the South Carolina Supreme Court will do just that. This case is about restoring representative democracy in South Carolina.”
The suit was made against the leaders of both the state Senate and the state House, which are mostly made up of Republicans, and passed the new maps in January 2022.
“This new lawsuit is another attempt by special interests to do in court what they can’t do in the voting booth, which is to get rid of representative government.” “I am sure that these claims will be found to be just as false as other challenges to these lines,” said Republican House Speaker Murrell Smith in a statement.
The lawsuit said that South Carolina lawmakers split counties, cities, and communities to make sure that Republican votes were put in the 1st District, which covers the area from Charleston to Beaufort. This district was won by a Democrat in 2018 and then lost again by a Republican in 2020.
Then, people leaning Democratic were moved to the 6th District, which was chosen to have a lot of minority voters. Downtown Charleston and Columbia, which are more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) apart and don’t have much in common, are both in the same district.
The ACLU’s lawsuit said that in a state where former Republican President Donald Trump got 55% of the vote in 2020, none of the seven congressional districts are even that close and that the 6th District has too many Democrats.
Under the new maps, the two big parties fought in five districts in 2022. Four seats were won by Republicans with votes ranging from 56% to 65%. 62% of the vote went to Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn in his district.
“The current map of Congress doesn’t have any competitive districts, which are those where Democrats hold between 45 and 55 percent of the seats.” The ACLU said in its lawsuit, “This is even though simulations show that following traditional redistricting principles would have led mapmakers to draw a map with two competitive congressional districts.”
The civil rights group wants the state Supreme Court to take over the case instead of having lower courts hold hearings and trials.
The state constitutions of Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico all have similar language. Courts in those states have said that drawing congressional districts to give power to one political party breaks the right to equal protection and free and fair elections, the ACLU said in a statement.
