
After much work, legislative leadership from the House and Senate is in the final stages of negotiating a compromise on a plan for the state's seven Congressional districts. The map, which is shown to the right, was recently released to the public via the state's legislative website.
This plan (which in the interests of full disclosure, I was asked to help draw) addresses a number of concerns expressed by various parties. The most notable revisions were in the Charleston metropolitan area, exchanging several communities in Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester Counties between the First and Sixth Congressional Districts and attempting to make the map more like past Congressional maps which the court had signed off in in the Burton decision of 1992 and the Colleton decision of 2002.

Considering the issues raised in past decisions over South Carolina redistricting is of paramount importance as many observers expect the maps to end up in court, even if a Congressional map does clear the ongoing legislative impasse and is signed off on by Governor Haley. Any map signed off on by the courts would need to navigate a complex set of legal expectations and precedents.
Several issues which were problems in the plans which were passed by the House and/or Senate or raised by the advocates and critics of various plans were examined in the most recent ruling regarding South Carolina's election districts: Colleton County Council vs. McConnell, which resulted in the drawing of the current Congressional and legislative district lines in 2002. As these plans will likely be in front of a court soon, it seems logical to speculate that issues which mattered to judges before will matter to judges in the near future as well.
A number of analyses of the plans have often sought to argue the merits based upon partisan election outcomes, many of which show minor advantages in the House plan. In reviewing past rulings, overtly partisan interests are generally given little or no interest by courts. Since jugdes won't likely consider them, they won't be addressed here.
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