The South Carolina Senate quashed an effort Tuesday to redraw the state’s congressional maps to dismantle the state’s sole Democratic district, represented by longtime Rep. Jim Clyburn.
The move is a strong rebuke of President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure southern states to quickly pass gerrymandered maps ahead of the midterms, after the Supreme Court gutted key Voting Rights Act protections that had long shielded Black voting power from racial gerrymandering.
In a 29-17 vote, the Senate struck down a measure the same one the House approved last week — that would have allowed lawmakers to readjourn for a special session after the legislative calendar ends next week, to consider congressional redistricting.
“The lawmakers pushing to rig our maps are not out of tricks yet, and we urge our fellow South Carolinians to keep showing up and speaking out against gerrymandering,” Jace Woodrum, ACLU of South Carolina executive director, said in a statement to Democracy Docket. “We the people choose our elected officials, not the other way around.”
With South Carolina’s June 9 primary elections quickly approaching, the Senate decided attempting to redraw the state’s congressional map — after more than 8,000 absentee ballots had been sent out to military and overseas voters — would throw the election into chaos.
Since the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, Southern states like Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee have rushed to redraw their congressional maps, replacing them with racial gerrymanders that disenfranchise Black voters. South Carolina seemed poised to join the redistricting rush — especially after Trump personally called the state Senate leader to pressure the legislature into drawing new maps.
South Carolina’s seven congressional districts will remain as is, for now, with Rep. Jim Clyburn as the lone Democratic representative.
During debate on the redistricting resolution Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey warned that redrawing the state’s map could end up backfiring by making more districts competitive for Democrats.
“This is going to motivate Black [voter] turnout,” Massey said. “And there will be repercussions for that. There will be Republican losses because of this.”
Massey and other GOP senators also said rushing to redistrict while voting is already underway would create major problems.
More than 8,000 absentee ballots have already been sent to military and overseas voters — and more than 300 of those ballots have already been returned. The state’s primary election is set for June — with early voting starting in two weeks.
Sen. Chip Campsen (R) said the proposed timeline makes it “almost impossible for us to pull this off.”
As a remedy, the state House was considering a plan to push the state’s congressional primaries back to August, to give the legislature more time for redistricting. But lawmakers said that such a plan — which would only apply to the state’s congressional election, not the down-ballot state and local elections in June — would create chaos and confusion among voters. And it would cost the state about $2.5 million, according to testimony last week by Conway Belangia, the executive director of the South Carolina Election Commission.
Then there was the matter of the map, which lawmakers in the South Carolina House introduced last week.
The proposed map would carve up Clyburn’s district, which sits in the southern and eastern parts of the state and includes much of the majority-Black areas around the cities of Charleston and Columbia. Charleston would be divided into two districts — districts 1 and 7, the latter of which stretches more than 100 miles from Charleston. And Richland County, which contains the state’s capital city of Columbia, would be chopped up into three different districts.
It’s unclear who drew the proposed map, but it was reportedly endorsed by the White House.
“This is a map that’s had no input from South Carolina citizens,” Campsen said. “No input from the House of Representatives, no input from the South Carolina Senate. It was just handed down from above. It was drawn by people with no concept of the interests of the people of this state.”
