SC lawmakers sets dates for return to wrap up once-a-decade redistricting voting map
The South Carolina House of Representatives and Senate will return to Columbia for special sessions next month to adopt new voting maps.
House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington, on Wednesday called the full 124-member chamber into session to take up redistricting during the first week of December.
Senate President Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, followed the next day by calling his chamber back during the second week of December to tackle redistricting.
The House will meet Dec. 1, 2 and 6 to finalize voting district maps, House Clerk Charles Reid wrote in a memo to House members and staff. The Senate plans to meet beginning Dec. 6. at 1 p.m.
The decision to return to Columbia to complete redistricting comes a day after the House Judiciary Committee wasted no time adopting a working plan advanced earlier in the day by the House redistricting committee.
House Judiciary made minor adjustments to the plan in an effort to reduce city and voting precinct splits, but left it largely unchanged.
The amended map was posted on the House redistricting committee’s website Wednesday afternoon.
House and Senate lawmakers have been building toward the adoption of new maps since the release of the 2020 census in late summer.
A seven-member House redistricting committee, composed of four Republicans and three Democrats, held a series of public hearings across the state in September and accepted public plan submissions through early October before releasing its own draft map Nov. 8.
The House map, which has been criticized as an extreme partisan gerrymander, is projected to give Republicans enough seats to hold a veto-proof majority in the House. Currently, the House is split 81 Republicans and 43 Democrats.
If adopted as is, the House plan would push 10 incumbents — six Democrats and four Republicans, including two Richland County lawmakers — into districts with other incumbents, meaning they would have to face off in primaries, if they choose to run again.
The Senate, which is engaged in its own redistricting process, has yet to set a date to advance its redistricting committee’s map proposal to that chamber’s Judiciary Committee.
The Senate panel last week instructed staff to craft a draft congressional map, but the final product has not been released.
Lawmakers in both chambers have said they hope to have House, Senate and congressional maps adopted by year’s end.
This story was originally published November 17, 2021 at 10:54 AM with the headline "SC lawmakers sets dates for return to wrap up once-a-decade redistricting voting map."