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by TOM DAVIS
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Last week I voted against a resolution to call the South Carolina General Assembly back into special session to redraw our congressional map. That resolution failed, but Gov. Henry McMaster has since called us back. The S.C. House voted earlier today to approve a new map, and the State Senate will start debating it tomorrow (Thursday, May 21, 2026) at 12:00 p.m. EDT.
I still oppose the new map and will vote “no,” and I want to provide context so South Carolinians can better understand my decision.
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OUR CURRENT CONGRESSIONAL MAP IS CONSTITUTIONAL
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais does not require South Carolina to redistrict. The 2024 decision in Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP upheld the constitutionality of our current map. Far from undermining that ruling, Callais cited Alexander approvingly, holding up South Carolina’s post-2020 redistricting as an example of how to draw competitive Republican districts without crossing the constitutional line on race. The map we are being pressured to replace is one that the Supreme Court recently held up as an example for the nation.
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REDISTRICTING DONE RIGHT TAKES MORE THAN TWO WEEKS
After the 2020 census, the General Assembly held hearings across the state so communities could tell their legislators how district lines would affect their representation. That process took over two years. What is happening now bears no resemblance to that – a map drawn by a Washington DC-based operative, introduced with days’ notice, no community input, passed in two weeks. This is unprecedented, and the practical consequences are already materializing. The State Election Commission director has warned that retooling programmed voting machines would be “very costly and very problematic, prone to mistakes” and would “definitely set us up for potential failure in June.” You cannot do in two weeks what took two years and call it the same thing.
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VOIDING THE VOTES OF S.C. MILITARY FAMILIES
As of last Monday, 1,384 absentee ballots were cast by South Carolina military members deployed under the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Redrawing congressional lines now would void those ballots, providing yet another basis for courts to invalidate the new map. We are being asked to disenfranchise the very people risking their lives to protect our right to vote.
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SURRENDERING S.C. VOICES – AND SOVEREIGNTY
Redistricting never appears on a ballot, making public hearings the only moment in a decade when ordinary South Carolinians can tell their legislators: this is my community, this is why these lines matter to us. What is being proposed replaces that human process with an artificial intelligence system fed demographic databases, voting histories, and partisan performance models, reducing our communities to data points optimized for a national political strategy by people who have never set foot here.
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But this is about more than algorithms, it is about who the Constitution says should be drawing these lines in the first place. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution vests authority over congressional elections in state legislatures. Some will say the legislature is in fact doing the redistricting. But the White House directed it, the Governor called a special session, and many House members simply went along. This map was drawn in Washington and rushed to a vote before a single South Carolinian could weigh in. The constitutional design that distributes power between states and the federal government is being hollowed out.
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A RUSHED PROCESS CAN CREATE LEGALLY VULNERABLE MAPS
Courts examine not just the lines on a map but the record that produced them. Were public hearings held, did communities testify, did legislators apply traditional redistricting criteria? The NAACP’s challenge to our post-2020 map required 24 witnesses, 652 pieces of evidence, and an eight-day trial before the Supreme Court upheld it. That is what legally defensible redistricting requires. Today’s map – drawn by a DC operative, no public hearings, no community testimony, no deliberative record, passed in two weeks – has no such record. When it is struck down, the most likely outcome is simply reverting to the very map we started with.
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A MAP BUILT ON OUTDATED DATA
There is another legal vulnerability receiving almost no attention: these new lines are drawn using 2020 census data, while five years of dramatic population growth goes unaccounted for. In 2020, South Carolina had approximately 5,118,425 adults, roughly 731,000 per district. But the state has added more than 460,000 new adults since, concentrated overwhelmingly in the First, Fifth, and Seventh Districts. Current population estimates suggest the new First District could contain as many as 800,000 adults while the new Sixth contains as few as 600,000, a deviation of roughly 20 percent.
The constitutional standard of one person, one vote requires congressional districts to be as equal in population as practicable, and courts have found far smaller deviations impermissible. Drawing new lines in 2026 on 2020 data likely produces an unconstitutional one.
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THE RIGHT PATH FORWARD
Callais does not affect our congressional districts, but it does have implications for several state Senate and House districts, and the General Assembly will address those in 2027 the right way. When we undertake that work, I will support examining our congressional map as part of that same effort.
I recognize many Republicans see this differently – that if the President wants it now and there’s a chance at one more Republican seat in 2026, that’s reason enough. I have no objection to drawing maps that legally maximize Republican chances. That’s exactly what I did helping draw the current maps after the 2020 census, a carefully constructed redraw that moved the First District from a toss-up lost to a Democrat in 2018 to the strong Republican district it is today.
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RELATED | McMASTER CALLS SPECIAL SESSION
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But I am convinced that a map rushed through in two weeks will be challenged and struck down. Because the Supreme Court upheld our current maps just two years ago, the most likely outcome is simply reverting to what we have now – after spending millions of dollars, splitting our primaries, and disenfranchising those risking their lives to protect our right to vote. We will have turned South Carolina’s elections upside down and ended up right back where we started.
South Carolina deserves better than this. We deserve a map drawn by South Carolinians, not Washington operatives. We deserve a process measured in months of community input, not days of political pressure. And we deserve legislators willing to say no when Washington comes calling with a rushed scheme that will waste millions of dollars, silence our military voters, and almost certainly collapse in court, leaving us exactly where we started. I took an oath to the Constitution of South Carolina and the Constitution of the United States. This map honors neither. I will vote no.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Tom Davis represents Beaufort and Jasper counties in the South Carolina Senate.
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