South Carolina redistricting: House rigs rules to quickly advance gerrymandered map

The South Carolina House of Representatives advanced a new congressional gerrymander early Wednesday morning, paving the way for lawmakers to quickly redraw the state’s map to dismantle its lone majority-Black district days before early voting starts in the primary election.

In a 74-36 vote, the House passed a new map during a special session that was called last week by Gov. Henry McMaster (R). The vote came after a marathon 14-hour session that started early Tuesday morning. At one point, a Democratic lawmaker requested the full redistricting bill to be read on the floor — including hundreds of pages of Census data used to draw the map.

The reading took nearly four hours.

The vote was mostly split along party lines, with less than half a dozen Republicans voting against changing the state’s map. McMaster called the session after the state legislature’s regular session ended and the Senate voted against a resolution to bring lawmakers back to take on redistricting. 

The legislature also needs to approve a measure to push back the state’s June 9 primary election to August, which would set up a new timeline for candidates to file to run in the redrawn congressional districts. Lawmakers gave themselves a deadline of May 25 to finish the special session — the day before early voting kicks off. 

But nearly 12,000 absentee ballots have already been sent out to military and overseas voters — with 2,434 already returned. Those ballots are poised to be tossed out should GOP lawmakers pass a new map and delay the primary.

The House endured several grueling days of debate this week over the redistricting bill, which saw Democratic lawmakers introduce nearly 600 amendments to prolong voting on the gerrymander — in an effort to run out the clock on the special session before the self-imposed deadline. 

But after hours of debate Monday, lawmakers only managed to get through less than a dozen amendments. The House Rules Committee then voted behind closed doors to change the legislative process, allowing each member of the state House to introduce only one amendment and strictly limiting debate on each amendment. 

The scheme was slammed by pro-voting groups. 

“By ignoring open-meetings rules in their quest to rig Congressional election maps, lawmakers reveal utter and naked contempt for the voters they claim to represent,” Allen Chaney, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina, said in a statement to Democracy Docket about the rule change. “’Might makes right’ is the stuff of dictatorships, not a representative democracy.”

The ACLU and the League of Women Voters of South Carolina filed a complaint Tuesday alleging that the House Rules Committee violated a provision of the state’s Freedom of Information Act that requires lawmakers to give 24-hour public notice for changes to the legislative rules. 

A hearing is scheduled to take place Wednesday for the court to consider halting the House’s redistricting bill. In the meantime, the new map has moved along to the state Senate, where a committee is expected to vote on advancing it Wednesday evening — with the full Senate poised to vote on the new map by the end of the week.