Election maps drawn late last year by the state legislature's Republican majority are such extreme, mathematical outliers that they must have been drawn to help elect Republicans, experts testified Monday as the state's latest redistricting trial got underway.
A state-selected trio of judges is hearing arguments in Wake County Superior Court through Thursday on the issue, an expedited schedule meant to leave time for the state Supreme Court to weigh in and potentially redraw maps ahead of this year's congressional, state House and state Senate races.
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Where those map lines ultimately fall will affect who gets elected, and thus how much political power the Republican and Democratic parties have in the North Carolina General Assembly, as well as Congress.
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The trial combines multiple lawsuits. Voting rights groups and other plaintiffs sued state Republican leaders, alleging that the new maps are so biased toward Republicans that they violate the right to a free and fair election. Their experts used multiple algorithms to draw tens of thousands of comparison maps, finding repeatedly that the computer rarely suggested districts like the ones passed by the General Assembly's GOP majority.
“The enacted map is an extreme outlier," Carnegie Mellon mathematician Wesley Pegden testified Monday. “Intent is the logical explanation.”
Republican defendants say they complied with map-drawing guidelines and that the process used to produce their maps was transparent, with lawmakers drawing district lines in an open committee room with computer screens streamed online as decisions were made. Their lawyers argued Monday that there are other explanations for the maps beyond partisan intent, and they drilled down on the methodologies and assumptions analysts relied upon in drawing comparison maps.
Experts for the plaintiffs included Jowei Chen, a University of Michigan professor who used a computer algorithm to draw 1,000 North Carolina congressional maps, and Chris Cooper, a Western Carolina University political scientist who broke down the congressional map as well as maps for the state House and Senate.
Both men said Republicans split urban Democratic centers in Wake, Mecklenburg and Guilford counties into multiple districts to dilute their voting power. This is called "cracking" in redistricting parlance. In other areas, they testified, Democrats were "packed" into a solid blue district to improve Republican chances in neighboring red ones.
Cooper at one point keyed on the 11th Congressional District, noting it pulls Democratic voters in Greensboro into a reliably Republican district that runs west into Watauga County.
The result of this Republican-run redraw was a map likely to elect 10 Republicans and three Democrats to the U.S. House, with the state's new 14th district—added to account for population increases picked up in the 2020 Census—potentially competitive enough to elect either.
Chen said a map like that rarely emerged when he told his computer to ignore partisan concerns and draw congressional districts using criteria the state legislature set for last year's redraw.
“The enacted plan is a partisan outlier," Chen testified. "And I found that a Republican bias in the enacted plan cannot be explained by North Carolina’s political geography."
Duke University mathematician Jonathan Mattingly drew tens of thousands of maps and called the ones Republicans produced "just astronomically atypical.” Pegden used a process that started with the Republican maps and made small changes to see how that would affect the partisan tilt. He said 99.999 percent of what he produced was more favorable to Democrats. That means the maps lawmakers enacted were "optimized" for Republicans, Pegden said.
Lawyers for GOP lawmakers will present their case later in the week. They spent much of Monday picking at the methodology being used against them. Late in the day, lawyer Kate McKnight said comparison maps only work if they themselves are fair and abide by the same criteria lawmakers used in drawing the enacted maps.
Her cross-examination of Pegden is scheduled to continue Tuesday at 9 a.m., when proceedings resume. WRAL News is streaming the trial.
The case is expected to end up in front of the state Supreme Court on appeal. The high court last month delayed North Carolina’s primary elections from March to May to make time for this process and ordered the three-judge panel to issue an initial decision by Jan. 11.
WRAL News photographer Keith Baker contributed to this report.