ASHEBORO, N.C. — North Carolina’s 2022 primary election has been caught in a legal and legislative whirlwind over the state’s congressional and legislative district maps, with the primary date shifted multiple times in recent weeks.
Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed legislation Friday that would have moved the primary to June 7, keeping the election date at May 17 for now — though that could change again as lawsuits challenging the maps proceed through the courts.
The turmoil began in September 2021 when a court ordered the state to redraw its election districts after finding the Republican-controlled General Assembly had gerrymandered the original map by “packing” Democratic voters into fewer districts and “cracking” Republican voters into more.
The order came in response to a lawsuit filed by Common Cause, a Washington-based watchdog group. Legislators later admitted they used prior election results to draw maps favoring the Republican Party — after secret files from the deceased mapmaker were turned over by his estranged daughter to Common Cause.
New maps were approved by the Republican-led House in November 2021. However, the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which grades election maps using mathematical models to measure fairness, gave the redrawn map an “F” for extreme partisan bias, calling it one of the worst in the country at the time.
The new maps would have given North Carolina Republicans 71 percent of state House seats, despite President Donald Trump winning the state with just 49.9 percent of the vote in 2020. Multiple groups filed lawsuits challenging the maps.
Timeline of recent developments
- Dec. 3, 2021: A three-judge panel refused to halt the March primary while reviewing whether lawmakers needed to redraw the maps again.
- Dec. 6, 2021: Candidate filing began on schedule for a March 8 primary.
- Dec. 8, 2021: Just two days later, the N.C. Supreme Court halted candidate filing and moved the primary to May 17, citing pending lawsuits from the NAACP and N.C. League of Conservation Voters. The court set a Jan. 11 deadline for a decision on the maps’ constitutionality.
- Jan. 19, 2022: The House and Senate passed House Bill 605 along party lines, proposing to move the primary to June 7, giving lawmakers time to redraw the maps if ordered to do so. The bill went to Cooper for his consideration.
- Jan. 28, 2022: Cooper vetoed the bill, keeping the May 17 primary date in place.
What’s next
The N.C. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on the district maps Feb. 2, with a ruling expected in the days or weeks following. If the court orders new maps, state law requires lawmakers to have 14 days to redraw them before the primary election.
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