Progress Update from the Forward Party’s

Anti-Gerrymandering Task Force

Since its formation in June of this year, the Forward Party’s Anti-Gerrymandering Task Force has been hard at work to bring awareness to the egregious practice of gerrymandering and to develop and test a better way to draw fair, non-partisan district maps.

The ultimate goal of the task force is to develop a simple, neutral, repeatable district mapping process that:

·       complies with the law

·       does not use partisan voting data, incumbent addresses, or preferred election outcomes

·       is objective enough to prevent manipulation

·       does not deliberately advantage a party, incumbent, or candidate

·       is flexible enough to address legitimate geographic concerns

·       produces fairer North Carolina districts to give people substantially equal representation, and

·       is transparent enough for the public to trust.

When mapping districts in North Carolina, the legal requirements and neutral principles the task force is applying are:

·       Each district must have equal population. Since North Carolina was allocated 14 total congressional seats and the 2020 census population was 10,439,388, each district should contain 745,671 residents. Deviation of only one voter is allowed.

·       Compliance with the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits district plans that unlawfully dilute the voting strength of racial or language minority groups. This can require careful analysis of voting patterns and demographics to ensure minority voters have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.

·       Contiguity All parts of each voting district must be completely connected in one single physical piece rather than split into separate parts (i.e.be contiguous).

·       Compactness Typically, a compact district would tend to have smooth boundaries or resemble a standard geometric shape; it might have an identifiable "center" reasonably equidistant from any of its boundaries.

Why Are Today’s Maps Unacceptable?

In October 2025, the General Assembly approved a new map for North Carolina’s 14 congressional districts (N.C. Session Law 2025-95) for use in the 2026 elections (below).

Sources:
S.L. 2025-95 Congress Map
NCSBE Voting Maps/Redistricting

This is the third time since the 2020 census that district maps have been drawn in North Carolina. When maps were drawn in 2022 as directed by court order, the result was an even split between the two major political parties (7R to 7D). But, once maps were re-drawn by the Republican controlled state legislature in 2024, the equal representation shifted dramatically to 10-4 in favor of Republicans.

House Speaker Destin Hall said Republicans intended to draw maps to capture “an additional Republican Congressional seat,” and Senate Leader Phil Berger said the effort was about protecting Republican control of Congress.

Sources:
North Carolina Republicans plan to redraw state’s congressional districts
NC Republicans release map they hope will help GOP pick up another Congressional seat
2026 North Carolina House Election Map

Sources:
NC Election Results Lookup
NC Voter Registration Statistics
Independent Voter Project, North Carolina Voter Registration

North Carolina’s political geography may naturally give Republicans some advantage in congressional maps, and many neutral-map analyses suggest something closer to an 8–6 Republican-to-Democratic split would be more consistent with the state’s geography than 11–3.

But the factual record here is clear: North Carolina went from a 7–7 congressional delegation in 2022, to 10–4 after the 2024 Republican-drawn map, and now Republicans have attempted to push it to 11–3 for 2026 in a state that is otherwise politically competitive.

Although the current example involves Republican-drawn maps, the principle must apply no matter which party controls the General Assembly: voters should choose their representatives; parties should not choose their voters.

Why Not Simply Use an Independent Commission?

The task force seriously considered independent redistricting commissions. Moving mapmaking authority away from legislators who directly benefit from the maps would be a massive leap forward over the current system.

However, an independent commission does not eliminate human discretion; it moves that discretion to a different part of the process. Who selects the commissioners? What qualifies someone as truly independent? Can commissioners be removed, by whom, and under what standard? Who selects the commission’s staff, consultants and data? Who establishes its priorities and resolves disagreements when legitimate criteria conflict?

There are also practical questions about how much time, effort and public money must be spent creating, operating, litigating and periodically rebuilding such a commission. Even a well-designed commission may become dependent on the people who appoint its members, write its rules and control its administration.

That does not mean commissions should be rejected. A properly structured commission would still be a major improvement over politicians drawing districts for their own benefit. But the task force believes the more durable solution is to reduce the amount of discretion available to any mapmaker—whether that mapmaker is a legislature, a commission, a court or a computer operator.

A commission could ultimately administer the process we are developing. The critical protection, however, would come from requiring the commission to follow published, neutral and repeatable rules—not simply asking the public to trust that the commissioners themselves are independent.

The Task Force’s Approach

The Task Force is using an iterative process where it produces maps using strategies, criteria and tools that do not engineer outcomes and takes politics out of the mapping process.

The Straight-Line Theory

The central idea behind the task force’s approach is to reduce the number of subjective decisions available to whoever draws the map. Every discretionary decision creates another opportunity for someone to manipulate the process.

Straight-Line Theory therefore begins with the simplest and most neutral geographic divisions possible rather than beginning with election results, incumbent addresses, existing districts or a desired partisan outcome. Here’s how it works:

“Straight line” does not mean that every finished district boundary will literally be ruler-straight. Census blocks, precincts, counties, municipalities, natural geography and legal requirements will inevitably create irregularities. It means that simple geometry provides the neutral baseline and that departures from that baseline are permitted only under a published hierarchy of rules.

Legal compliance and equal population come first, including the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. Districts must then be genuinely contiguous. After those requirements are satisfied, the process considers simple geography, measurable compactness and the preservation of counties, municipalities and precincts. Any community-of-interest consideration must be publicly defined, supported by evidence and applied consistently throughout the state.

Every departure from the original baseline must be tied to one of those stated rules and documented. If testing reveals that a general rule needs to change, the revised rule should be published and the affected maps regenerated from the beginning. Individual district lines should not be hand-adjusted simply because someone dislikes the political or visual result.

Straight-Line Theory is not based on the belief that a perfect algorithm can eliminate every human judgment. Its purpose is to minimize those judgments, make the remaining decisions visible and require them to be applied consistently. The ultimate test is whether different map makers using the same data, rules and priorities would produce substantially the same map.

PROPOSED MAPS ARE NOW BEING TESTED BY THE TASK FORCE

Initial drafts of maps have been developed and are being evaluated by the task force to identify where neutral rules work, where they produce unintended results, and what additional guardrails may be necessary.

Once population was apportioned to result in 14 districts with equal population, the maps are now being tested for contiguity and compactness by asking and analyzing the following:

County Lines

• How much should county lines matter?
• Should county preservation be a primary rule, a secondary preference, or a guardrail limiting how many times certain counties may be divided?

Compactness

• Can a map be mathematically neutral but still produce districts that appear elongated, irregular, or difficult for the public to understand?
• How should we balance compactness against keeping counties, municipalities, and precincts together?
• When a computer produces a technically valid but visually unusual district, should appearance trigger further review—and, if so, under what objective standard?
• Should we produce several versions—a geometry-first map, a compactness-focused map, a county-preservation map, and a precinct-preservation map—rather than presenting one map as the answer?

What We Are Learning So Far

• A computer can follow the stated rules and still generate results that deserve additional review.
• Changing one major priority at a time may make it easier to compare iterations and understand the tradeoffs.
• Keeping the original neutral baseline may help us explain what every later adjustment accomplishes.
• Objective measurements remain essential, but measurements alone may not resolve every reasonable concern about geography or public acceptance.
• We may need a consistent visual-review step, but we have not yet fully determined how to make that review objective and resistant to manipulation.
• How can we prevent a “visual review” from becoming an opportunity to reintroduce subjective or partisan judgments?

The task force realizes that clarity & transparency are vital for voters to understand the mapping process. The task force believes that clear presentation matters. District boundaries need to be easy to see while county lines remain visible.

We are considering whether each unusual boundary should be accompanied by an explanation tied to a stated rule, such as population equality, contiguity, VRA compliance, compactness, or county preservation. This includes how much of the iterative drawing process should be shown so people can see where the first divisions were made, what changed, and why.

We believe showing the work—including the baseline, iterations, measurements, and tradeoffs—may be as important as the final map itself.

What’s Next?

The task force will continue to evaluate maps and apply additional criteria to arrive at a process and maps that more fairly represent the voters of North Carolina rather than the politicians who are drawing the maps for their party’s benefit.

Below is the current breakdown of US House of Representatives for North Carolina, NC State House and NC State Senate representation by party.