GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF NORTH CAROLINA
                   SESSION 2005
H                                                             1
                      HOUSE/SENATE BILL ____

                              
                                
Short Title: Redistricting Reform/Constitutional. (Public)
Sponsors: 
Referred to: 
                        March __, 2005
                                
                      A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION TO REFORM LEGISLATIVE AND
  CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING.
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
       SECTION 1.  Section 3 of Article II of the North Carolina Constitution reads as rewritten:
"Sec. 3. Senate districts. 
The Senators shall be elected from districts. The North Carolina State Board of Elections, beginning as soon as practical, after the return of every decennial census of population taken by order of Congress, shall supervise the revision of the senate districts and the apportionment of Senators among those districts by the people of North Carolina, according to the process described in Section 26, subject to the requirements in that section and the following requirements: 
(1) Each Senator shall represent, a number of inhabitants which shall not differ from the ideal by more than 5%, the ideal number of inhabitants that each Senator represents being determined for this purpose by dividing the population of the State by 50; 

(2) When established, the senate districts shall remain unaltered until the return of another decennial census of population taken by order of Congress."
       SECTION 2.  Section 5 of Article II of the North Carolina Constitution reads as rewritten:
"Sec. 5. Representative districts. 
The Representatives shall be elected from districts. The North Carolina State Board of Elections, beginning as soon as practical after the return of every decennial census of population taken by order of Congress, shall supervise the revision of the representative districts and the apportionment of Representatives among those districts by the people of North Carolina, according to the process described in Section 26, subject to the requirements in that section and the following requirements: 
(1) Each Representative shall represent, a number of inhabitants which shall not differ from the ideal by more than 5%, the ideal number of inhabitants that each Representative represents being determined for this purpose by dividing the population of the State by 120; 
 
(2) When established, the representative districts shall remain unaltered until the return of another decennial census of population taken by order of Congress."
       SECTION 3.  Section 6 of Article II of the North Carolina Constitution reads as rewritten:
"Sec. 6. Qualifications for Senator. 
Each Senator, at the time of his election, shall be not less than 25 years of age, shall be a qualified voter of the State, and shall have resided in the State as a citizen for two years and in the district for which he is chosen for one year immediately preceding his election, unless the boundaries of any senate district were revised less than 15 months before the general election, in which case he shall have established his residence in the district no later than 3 months after the date the boundaries were last revised."
       SECTION 4.  Section 7 of Article II of the North Carolina Constitution reads as rewritten:
"Sec. 7. Qualifications for Representative. 
Each Representative, at the time of his election, shall be a qualified voter of the State, and shall have resided in the district for which he is chosen for one year immediately preceding his election, unless the boundaries of any representative district were revised less than 15 months before the general election, in which case he shall have established his residence in the district no later than 3 months after the date the boundaries were last revised."
       SECTION 5.  Article II of the North Carolina Constitution is amended by adding a new section to read:
"Sec. 25. Congressional Districts.
Congressmen shall be elected from districts. The North Carolina State Board of Elections, beginning as soon as practical after the return of every decennial census of population taken by order of Congress, shall supervise the revision of the congressional districts and the apportionment of congressmen among those districts by the people of North Carolina, according to the process described in Section 26, subject to the requirements in that section and the following requirements: 
(1) Each Congressman shall represent a number of inhabitants which shall not differ from the ideal by more than the lesser of 5% or the limit set by federal law, the ideal number of inhabitants that each Congressman represents being determined for this purpose by dividing the population of the State by the number of congressional seats to which North Carolina is entitled by federal law; 
 (2) When established, the congressional districts shall remain unaltered until the return of another decennial census of population taken by order of Congress."
       SECTION 6.  Article II of the North Carolina Constitution is amended by adding a new section to read:
"Sec. 26. Process of Defining Districts.
(1) Congressional and legislative districts shall be revised by the citizens of North Carolina, under the supervision of the North Carolina State Board of Elections (hereafter, “SBOE”).  The General Assembly shall not adopt any legislative or congressional district plan.
(2) Any citizen of the State of North Carolina may submit one or more proposed redistricting plans to the SBOE for any or each type of district: The North Carolina House of Representatives, North Carolina Senate, and United States House of Representatives.
(3) Each plan submitted to the SBOE shall be accompanied by a nonrefundable fee of $100, unless waived per subsection (9).
(4) The proposed redistricting plans shall be submitted to the SBOE electronically, in a manner and format to be determined by the SBOE for the mutual convenience of the citizens and the SBOE.
(5) The SBOE shall have the responsibility for evaluating each such plan according to the criteria of this Article.  Each plan shall first be evaluated for compliance with the mandatory requirements.  Plans which do not comply with the mandatory requirements shall not be scored for quality.  Plans which comply with the mandatory requirements shall be scored for quality according to the criteria of this section.
(6) The SBOE shall accept the proposed redistricting plans for a Submission Period of 90 days.  At the end of the Submission Period, the SBOE shall announce which submitted plan for each type of district had the highest total quality score.  Those plans shall be adopted to define the legislative and congressional districts until the return of another decennial census of population taken by order of Congress.
(7) Each weekday during the Submission Period, or as frequently as practical, but not less than once per week, the SBOE shall post on its web site the ten highest-scoring proposed plans received so far for each type of district, based on each plan’s total quality score.  The highest-scoring plan for each type of district shall be called the Leading Plan for that day.
(8) Each proposed plan submitted to the SBOE shall become public information.  Both the data file defining each plan and each plan’s total quality score and component scores shall be made public as quickly as practical on the SBOE web site, so that other citizens may use them when creating other proposed plans.
(9) The fee for submitting a plan shall be waived or refunded if that plan is determined by the SBOE to be the Leading Plan for the day. 
(10) The State of North Carolina shall create, place into the public domain, and make available to the public, computer software for designing and scoring redistricting plans, including the software that the SBOE uses to evaluate proposed plans.  The source code for all such software shall also be placed into the public domain, and made available to the public.  Such software may be dependent upon the use of commercially available software, but the cost of the required commercially available software shall be as small as practical, to avoid being an impediment to citizen participation in the redistricting process.
(11) The following are mandatory requirements for all proposed redistricting plans:
(a)	Each district shall consist of contiguous territory.  Point-contiguity shall not be considered contiguous.
(b)	One and only one legislator or congressman shall represent each district.
(c)	The districts shall comply with federal law.
(12) The total quality score for each proposed redistricting plan shall be computed as the sum of three component scores, each of which is chosen to achieve a particular goal.  The three goals are: Compactness, “One person one vote,” and to minimize the number of split counties, municipalities, and precincts:
(a)	The goal of Compactness is to avoid elongated and irregular districts.  The component score which quantifies this goal shall be the Reock quotient for the plan.  The Reock quotient for the plan is defined as the average of the Reock quotients for each proposed district.  The Reock quotient for a district is the area of the district divided by the area of the smallest possible enclosing circle, a number between 0 and 1.
(b)	The goal of “One person one vote” is to ensure that each voter’s vote is of equal importance.  The component score which quantifies this goal shall be computed as follows:  First, compute X, the “ideal district voting strength,” defined as the total number of votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial election divided by the number of districts in the State.  Then, for each proposed district, compute Y, the number of those voters who resided in the proposed district.  Then, for each proposed district, divide the smaller of X and Y by the larger of X and Y, resulting in a number between 0 and 1. Finally, average these quotients for all the districts in the plan.
(c)	The goal of minimizing the number of split counties,  municipalities, and precincts is quantified by calculating a component score as follows.  First, for each county, municipality, or precinct (hereafter “geographic entity”) which the plan splits, calculate the number of “excess splits,” and cube that number.  Then sum these cubed numbers, divide the sum by twice the number of districts in the State, and subtract the quotient from 1.  The result is the component score for this goal, a number less than or equal to 1.  The number of excess splits for a geographic entity is calculated as follows: First, calculate X, the ideal number of districts to represent that geographic entity.  For precincts, X is always equal to 1.  Otherwise, X is defined as 99% of the population of the county or municipality, divided by the ideal population of a district, rounded up to the next integer.  Then define Y, the number of districts into which the geographic entity is split by the proposed plan.  If Y is not greater than X, the number of excess splits is zero.  If Y is greater than X, the number of excess splits is Y minus X."
       SECTION 7.  Article II of the North Carolina Constitution is amended by adding a new section to read:
"Sec. 27. Process of Redefining Districts if Required by Courts.
If any redistricting plan adopted in accordance with the process in Section 26 is invalidated by a court decision, the State of North Carolina shall first exhaust all legal remedies in appealing that decision, to reinstate the districts.  But if the decision cannot be reversed, the citizens of North Carolina shall create revised districts under the supervision of the State Board of Elections, according to the process in Section 26, except that the Submission Period shall be shortened to 45 days."
       SECTION 8.  The amendments set out in Sections 1 through 7 of this act shall be submitted to the qualified voters of the State at the general election in November 2004, which election shall be conducted under the laws then governing elections in the State.  Ballots, voting systems, or both may be used in accordance with Chapter 163 of the General Statutes.  The question to be used in the voting systems and ballots shall be:
                   "[ ] FOR    [ ] AGAINST
       A constitutional amendment to eliminate gerrymandering by providing for the citizens of the State of North Carolina to redistrict the State for the purpose of electing members of the General Assembly and members of the United States House of Representatives, into districts designed with the goals of compactness, smallest number of split counties and cities, and one person one vote."
       SECTION 9.  If a majority of votes cast on the question are in favor of the amendments set out in Sections 1 through 7 of this act, the State Board of Elections shall certify the amendments to the Secretary of State.  The amendments become effective upon this certification.  The Secretary of State shall enroll the amendments so certified among the permanent records of that office.
       SECTION 10.  This act is effective when it becomes law.