jfrank@newsobserver.com

The legislature on Monday filled in the blanks of redistricting laws that left hundreds of thousands of people without state or congressional representatives.

Republicans said the bills simply corrected errors produced by a “computer glitch,” while Democrats said the GOP was piling one unconstitutional act upon another.

The laws passed in July were unconstitutional because they left out thousands of voters or put them in the wrong place, Democrats said. The legislature cannot go back and correct the redistricting laws without a court declaring them unconstitutional, Democrats argued, because the state Constitution allows state House and Senate districts to be drawn only once every 10 years.

“It’s as if calling it a curative action hides the substantive nature of the changes being made,” said Rep. Rick Glazier, a Fayetteville Democrat. “An unconstitutional bill cannot be made constitutional by a curative action.”

The new laws passed both chambers largely along party lines.

Nearly 185,000 people were left out of the state Senate plan, nearly 24,000 were omitted from the congressional plan, and more than 267,000 people don’t have a House district. The total omissions are not known because some areas may have more than one problem. For example, some people may have been left out of both the House and Senate laws.

Republicans shepherding the redistricting laws through the legislature said that the U.S. Justice Department, which was told of the technical problems in the laws, cleared the redistricting maps for use in the next election.

Partisan tensions over the redistricting plans have gone unabated since the legislature first approved the plans in July. The plans would help Republicans solidify their advantage in the legislature and pick up congressional seats.

The redistricting plans are the subject of two lawsuits, one by registered Democrats that includes several current and former lawmakers. The other was filed by civil rights and voting-rights organizations. The suits claim that the maps split too many precincts, split too many counties and pack minorities in districts.

Democrats wrapped their criticism in the complaint around the hundreds of split precincts in the redistricting maps.

Republicans were unsympathetic. Rep. John Blust, a Greensboro Republican, reminded Democrats that plans they drew in 2001, which included multimember districts and sliced through county lines, were declared unconstitutional.

“To have the temerity to lecture us … strains credulity,” Blust said. “We ought to just get on with the game and stop talking.”

Much of the debate focused on how to define the problem. Republicans sought to minimize it, calling it a computer glitch, a human error and a coding problem that needed a curative bill, gentle correction and corrective action.

Democrats, in keeping with their constitutional arguments, labeled it a travesty, no small thing and a serious problem.

“I can’t imagine how we can ever sit back here and say this is a technicality,” said Sen. Floyd McKissick, a Durham Democrat. “Twenty-three thousand, seven hundred and seventy-seven people not assigned in the congressional plan. That’s major.”