Republicans in South Carolina blocked a move Tuesday to redraw voting maps in their favor, turning back a plan that would have given them a chance to win another House seat and left Rep. Jim Clyburn’s district untouched. The vote came even as some South Carolinians were already heading to the polls, with lawmakers citing election timing as the reason to halt the push.
South Carolina Republican state Sen. Richard Cash said, “Neither my conscience nor my common sense would allow me to stop an election that is already underway,” while Gov. Henry McMaster urged voters to “vote confidently in a safe and secure election.” The blocked redistricting would have targeted one Democrat’s seat, and its defeat preserved the district held by Clyburn, a long-serving Democratic power broker in the state.
The South Carolina fight landed the same day a federal district court in Alabama temporarily blocked the GOP-led legislature’s 2023 congressional map for the November midterm elections. The court said the plan was racially discriminatory and violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, ordering Alabama to keep using a race-blind map with two majority-black districts that had been in place after the 2020 census and used in the 2024 elections.
The rulings and votes are part of a wider scramble by both parties to redraw congressional lines before the midterms, which were less than six months away. Republican-dominated southern states have been moving quickly to dismantle court-mandated majority-minority districts after last month’s Supreme Court decision narrowed Voting Rights Act protections, saying the law did not require states to create districts that gave minority voters proportional opportunities to elect candidates. The court’s conservative majority said only overt racism would justify throwing out a state map.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Republicans and Donald Trump of carrying out a “desperate power grab” and said, “There will be a free and fair election in November.” The NAACP said the Alabama ruling preserved black representation, warning that “Redrawing maps to silence the voices of entire communities cannot be tolerated. It goes against the very values of democracy that our ancestors fought and died for.” For now, South Carolina Republicans have chosen not to force a map fight through an election already underway, while Alabama has been ordered back to a court-approved plan that protects two majority-black districts.
