Scalia’s death adds doubt in N.C. elections

Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on order to redraw map

WASHINGTON — Primary day is less than a month away in North Carolina, home to two of this cycle’s more competitive Republican House primaries. A court order to redraw the state’s map by Friday had already thrown into question the March 15 primary, but Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death last weekend adds extra uncertainty to when the state’s congressional elections will take place.

The General Assembly’s joint legislative redistricting committee held public hearings Monday to discuss how to draw a new map, and on Tuesday, the committee agreed that race would not be considered when revising districts. The joint redistricting committee also agreed to maintain the current partisan split: Republicans control 10 congressional seats and Democrats control three.

A split decision

A map proposal isn’t expected until Wednesday, on which the full General Assembly would then vote on Thursday and Friday in a special session.

Republicans hoped that it wouldn’t come to that, though. GOP Gov. Pat McCrory and state election officials asked the Supreme Court to let them use the current congressional districts for the coming election instead since early voting is already underway. The Supreme Court was considering that request when Scalia died on Saturday.

Without Scalia’s vote on whether to grant the stay of the court order, the Supreme Court could tie 4-4 on the request if the four justices comprising the liberal wing of the court — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — vote to deny the state’s request.

Such a tie vote would leave in place the order from a three-judge panel, which found race predominated in the drawing of the state’s 1st and 12th Congressional Districts held respectively by Democrats G.K. Butterfield and Alma Adams, both African-Americans. The panel directed the state to draw new congressional districts within a two-week period, or by this Friday. The Supreme Court was expected to weigh in before that deadline.

Inconvenience to voters

Republicans, while still optimistic, are prepared to go forward with a contingency plan.

“We feel there’s a better chance than not of getting a stay. But we can’t turn around and miss a deadline by a day and let the court draw the map. We have to run this on a dual track,” one Republican in the state said Tuesday.

Time is running out for the court to step in. Last fall, North Carolina moved up all of its primaries from May to March 15. North Carolina officials, who want to appeal the lower court’s decision, told the Supreme Court that the order to draw a new map could cause “massive electoral chaos” because the election process started months ago.

“Remember, we are in the election now,” said GOP Chairman Dallas Woodhouse.

According to the North Carolina Board of Elections, more than 17,000 voters had requested absentee ballots, and as of Tuesday, 1,568 returned ballots had been accepted. Without a stay from the Supreme Court, Woodhouse predicts that all primary elections would go forward on March 15 — except the congressional primaries.

“And if you believe making things inconvenient for the voter is a form of disenfranchisement, you’re talking about a major disenfranchisement of voters who won’t be voting in the congressional primary,” Woodhouse said.