• Press Release

NDRC Statement on South Carolina’s Congressional Gerrymander Proposal

Washington, D.C. — Today, John Bisognano, President of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), issued the following statement in response to the new congressional gerrymander proposed in the Republican-led South Carolina Legislature that dismantles the state’s lone majority-Black district and makes all of the state’s congressional districts majority-white:

“Following the Supreme Court’s shameful decision to gut the Voting Rights Act, South Carolina Republicans are now racing to be second to push through an immoral gerrymander that would demolish the lone congressional district that gives South Carolina’s Black voters a meaningful opportunity for representation in the U.S. House. 

“This gerrymander is a deliberate attempt by South Carolina Republicans to tear apart a long-standing Black-opportunity district and diminish their vote by spreading Black voters into six districts that stretch over a hundred miles in every direction. On this gerrymander, all South Carolinians would lose. South Carolinians deserve maps that respect communities of interest and protect the fundamental right to vote.”

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:

The proposed gerrymander splits the currently united, majority-Black 6th district into six separate districts that each extend hundreds of miles. It also splits the cities of Charleston and Columbia, which are now both included in the 6th district, into multiple districts. The proposed map makes all of South Carolina’s congressional districts majority-white, despite the fact that over 38% of the state’s voters are people of color.

Below are descriptions of some of the most egregious examples of the new districts:

District 3: The proposed 3rd district includes part of the city of Columbia and jaggedly winds its way hundreds of miles northwest, running along the state’s border with Georgia and up to the border with North Carolina. The district combines Columbia’s predominantly Black urban areas with several predominantly white rural counties.

District 6: The proposed sixth district separates Clarendon and Williamsburg counties as well as portions of Sumter and Berkley counties—all of which are rural areas with significant Black populations—from Columbia and Charleston, and instead lumps these rural, predominantly Black areas into a district that sprawls north to include several counties hundreds of miles away, including predominantly White communities that run along the state’s border with North Carolina.

District 7: In the proposed 7th district, the core of Charleston, including downtown and North Charleston, is now paired with Myrtle Beach. The district stretches hundreds of miles northeast from that portion of Charleston along the coast all the way up to the state’s border with North Carolina. 

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