Raleigh, Cary and other NC cities may have to push back their 2021 elections
Raleigh, Cary and other North Carolina cities like Charlotte and Greensboro, may have to push back their 2021 local elections and keep current local leaders in office past their original terms.
Cities that elect local leaders by district must update those districts after every new U.S. Census.
On Friday the U.S. Census Bureau announced it won’t be releasing district data until Sept. 30, which is after the traditional filing date for candidates to run in this year’s elections.
“It’s pretty doubtful” that Raleigh will be able to move forward with its planned Oct. 5 election, said attorney Michael Crowell, who served as executive director of the Commission for the Future of Justice and the Courts in North Carolina.
“If the 2020 Census shows that those districts are now out of balance then they are required to redraw the districts to put them in balance before they hold their next election,” he said. “You can almost guarantee that Raleigh’s districts are out of balance considering the growth in the city since the last Census.”
No decisions have been made about the 2021 election, said Raleigh City Attorney Robin Tatum, in an email to The News & Observer.
The latest Census news was a surprise to Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin, who said the council has not discussed its next steps.
“We have not had any discussions because right now we don’t know,” she said. “We don’t know when the Census data will be released. And I don’t know if the General Assembly is looking at this. At this point, I am proceeding like there is an election that will take place in October.”
Baldwin previously told The N&O she plans to run for a second term.
All Raleigh City Council seats up
All eight seats on the Raleigh City Council are up for re-election in 2021 including the five district council seats. Those districts are redrawn based on population data usually released in March by the Census. The data this year has been delayed, in part, by the COVID-19 pandemic.
State law requires cities that use districts to correct “population imbalance” before the third day of candidate filing.
“It’s highly unlikely” that any city’s districts would not need to be updated, said Blake Esselstyn, a North Carolina redistricting expert who recently wrote about the Census delay.
“It may be minor and those adjustments may not be big, but it is exceedingly rare that districts don’t have population deviations outside the allowable plus or minus 5%,” he said. “And especially in cases like Raleigh and Cary where there are annexations, not only is their growth within city boundaries but the city boundaries have changed.”
If a local government is not able to update its districts and “determines further that the population imbalances are so significant that it would not be lawful to hold the next election using the current electoral districts, it may adopt a resolution delaying the election,” according to state law.
Under that law, elections like Raleigh’s and Cary’s would be postponed until the 2022 primary, said Gerry Cohen, a member of the Wake County Board of Elections. And local leaders in office would see their terms extended.
“So there is a whole bunch of catch-22s here because the delays are so extensive,” Cohen said. “In Raleigh and Cary, it would call for the election to be moved to the day of the primary, which is currently March 8. ... But of course, if the Census data doesn’t come out until September, I wouldn’t put any money on the primary being in March either.”
Cohen does not know how the delay in redistricting data could affect cities like Durham, where some council seats have ward, or residency, requirements but are decided on by all voters in the city, The N.C. Insider reported.
Wake County Board of Elections Director Gary Sims said it’s unclear whether the delay in redistricting data could change other races.
“What I don’t know is how this will affect congressional, House, Senate, even county commissioners or school board, all these things in time for candidate filing to start on Dec. 6,” Sims said. “Now you’re looking at not just the delay impacting municipal elections. Will it impact other jurisdictions?”
A state fix?
Sen. Warren Daniel, a Burke County Republican and co-chairman of the Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee, told the N.C. Insider that lawmakers are monitoring the Census process to see if the local election schedule needs to be changed.
“This creates a challenge,” Esselstyn said. “It’s problematic if the elections go ahead using the existing districts that will be more than 10 years old, especially in places like Cary and Raleigh, which has had so much growth. And from the observers I’ve talked to, it seems that cities may be asking the General Assembly for relief.”
North Carolina won’t be the only state trying to figure out what to do.
“New Jersey elects its legislature in odd-number years and they have already decided they are not going to do redistricting this year, that the election this year is going to be based on the 2011 districts and they will redistrict in 2023,” Cohen said. “So I am sure the legislature is going to be looking at this issue.”
If Raleigh and other cities do use their current districts for the 2021 election, it’s unclear if they would be sued for violating “one-person, one-vote” rule, Cohen said.
“I’m not sure a court would say ‘If there is a remedy that allows you to put off your election and come into compliance, why would you want to conduct an election with districts that are unconstitutional?’” Cohen said.
And while it’s unlikely that anyone in the city wants to push back the election, Crowell said, it’s “likely they’re not going to have any choice.”
“The legislature could try to do something else,” he said. “I don’t know what they could do because you have a constitutional question, a constitutional obligation to redraw the districts before the elections. And I don’t believe the legislature could excuse them from that obligation even for some short period of time.”
This article was corrected at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021, to remove a city that will likely not be affected by the U.S. Census redistricting data delay.
This story was originally published February 15, 2021 at 5:45 AM with the headline "Raleigh, Cary and other NC cities may have to push back their 2021 elections."
