Timing of redistricting hearings focus of concern
DEVYANI CHHETRI/GREENVILLE NEWS
SOURCE: THE HAROLD JOURNAL
SPARTANBURG, SC
Residents of South Carolina’s Upstate, where nearly 20% of the state’s citizens live, were concerned about the timing of the redistricting public hearings before the release of complete census data and the current composition of voting districts. Each speaker implored the redistricting committee meeting at Greenville Tech Monday to draw districts that will make elections more competitive.
Spartanburg resident Charles Mann, who is a redistricting fellow with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, questioned how South Carolinians would give their input after the maps were drawn since the public hearings were being organized before the release of the complete census data. The U.S. Census Bureau will release a bulk preliminary data in mid-August and will release a complete, granular dataset on Sept. 30.
The data set being considered is the 2020 data released by the Census Bureau to decide the number of congressional districts in the country. But it has none of the age, race and geographic breakdowns. “Like many, when I heard this committee was moving forward with public “South Carolina has a Black population of around 30%,” he said. “We should have more than one person of color representing us.”At present, Spartanburg’s House Representative Rosalyn Henderson-Myers is the only Black representative in the county delegation. As for Greenville, Lawson Wetli, president of Greenville’s League of Women Voters, a non-partisan advocacy group, said that the elections were so non-competitive that many state elections were considered to be “safe seats” held by a “safe party,” an example of which she said was her own District 6.
“Here’s how that looks: my current state senator and my current U.S. House Representative first had to land [party] primary elections, and remember they didn’t have competitive general elections,” she said. “So the primary victory was what counted.” Wetli explained that the state senator in her district received 3,500 votes in the party primary to win an election in a
district of over 100,000 people. The redistricting process will redraw what the U.S. House, state Senate and House districts will look like for the next 10 years. As per federal law, every district must have approximately the same number of residents. Based on the preliminary data, the population for each of the seven congressional districts should be about 731,204 and the population for each of the 46 Senate districts should be approximately 111,270.
While the Senate is in the public hearing stage, the House redistricting committee will meet to begin discussing redrawing 124 House voting districts. Devyani Chhetri is the state government watchdog reporter. You can reach her at dchhetri@gannett.com or @ChhetriDevyani on Twitter.
