South Carolina state Rep. Nathan Ballentine speaks on the House floor Monday, May 18, 2026, during a special called legislative session. The Chapin mortgage lender is among a handful of Republicans who have voiced opposition to GOP-led congressional redistricting efforts. (Photo by Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — The redistricting spotlight turned to South Carolina Monday as legislators debated on the House floor a redrawn map of the state’s voting lines.
The Republican push seeks to lock in an all-GOP congressional delegation in the state ahead of national midterm elections.
The measure would delay primaries until Aug. 18 for the state’s seven U.S. House seats, upending the statewide election process a week before early voting opens.
If passed by the state House, the bill would still need the approval of the Senate, where its fate is less certain.
Monday’s proceedings marked day two of a more than $200,000 special session called by Gov. Henry McMaster last week. The call back came after the state Senate refused to add redistricting to a resolution setting the rules for what the Legislature can do after the regular session concludes.
Senators reject White House push to redraw SC’s voting lines
House Majority Leader Davey Hiott has said he expected a long and likely confrontational debate.
But as the back and forth stretched out over nearly 10 hours Monday, a House rules committee gathered in a hastily called meeting seeking to speed up the already fast-tracked process.
The mid-debate change to the rules governing the special session limited every member to one amendment each on the redistricting bill, essentially voiding most of the nearly 500 amendments that remained in the hopper. It also put time limits on discussions of each amendment.
The rule passed 73-33. One Republican, Rep. Tom Hartnett of Mount Pleasant, voted with Democrats against it.
“We are changing the rules in the middle of the game,” said Rep. Spencer Wetmore, D-Folly Beach.
“Whoever filed those amendments, they are literally erased, as if they mean nothing,” Rep. Leon Stavrinakis, D-Charleston, added. “We are supposed to be the people’s house, to allow the voices of the people to be heard.”
No vote was taken Monday on the map bill itself. The House will reconvene at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
In addition to the rule change, House Democrats further condemned the GOP-led redistricting effort as a “sham” and a “rush job” conducted at the behest of the White House.
They blasted the cost to taxpayers. The state will spend at least $203,000 on pay for House members during the special session, which began at 11 a.m. Friday. That’s on top of the $3.5 million in state funding to run a second set of primaries.
Democrats also pointed to more than 10,000 ballots already mailed and hundreds already cast by overseas and other absentee voters — a concern shared by several Republicans.
The effort to redraw South Carolina’s lines to create seven Republican seats followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that threw out Louisiana’s congressional map, striking down a majority-Black congressional district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
While Republicans pushing for the overhaul say that’s why South Carolina needs to redraw its map, Republicans who oppose the quick rewrite say the Louisiana ruling doesn’t apply to South Carolina.
“Is it legal? Probably. Is it constitutional? It might be. But there’s no might be about the lines that we are currently under,” said Rep. Nathan Ballentine, R-Chapin.
U.S. Supreme Court throws out SC racial gerrymandering ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that South Carolina’s map, redrawn after the 2020 census, was partisan, not racially, gerrymandered.
That has not stopped Republicans in the Palmetto State from taking up the White House-backed map, drawn by the National Republican Redistricting Trust.
Rep. Justin Bamberg said the move has angered voters across both racial and party lines. The Bamberg Democrat said people are “disappointed in the blind loyalty that has nothing to do with what’s better for America, what’s better for South Carolina, what’s better for the citizens of this state.”
McMaster had previously said redistricting was a matter for the Legislature to decide.
But after the regular session ended at 5 p.m. Thursday without a temporary law that would’ve put legislative leaders in control of off-session work — primarily, finishing the state budget — the governor ordered legislators to keep working.
The last time legislators allowed him that authority was in 2023, when the session ended without an off-session resolution due to disagreement between the House and Senate over replacing the comptroller general. That enabled McMaster to appoint the state’s next chief accountant as he ordered a special session.
McMaster’s order last Thursday represented only the second time in 25 years that the Legislature returned by order of the governor.
It referenced both the budget and redistricting. But, as he noted to reporters Friday, “I can bring them back, but I can’t tell them what to do.”
McMaster denied his decision was due to pressure from the White House.
“I have not spoken to President Trump about this at all,” he told reporters in Summerville. “At all.”
The reason he supports redrawing the lines, he said, is to help create a “functioning Congress” that can pass laws without a one- or two-vote margin.
“Congress is enormously polarized right now,” he said, noting Trump is operating in a “somewhat hostile atmosphere.
“Whatever we can do to see that we have a functioning Congress, we ought to do it.”
The governor said he also hopes to prevent Democrats from taking control of the U.S. House and bogging down the rest of Trump’s presidency with impeachment hearings, as happened in his first term.
“We’d be right back in that again with all the time being wasted, money being wasted, all over again while we’re very busy internationally,” McMaster said.
The governor acknowledged the “discomfort” a mid-decade redistricting could cause.
“But I think we’ve got to get it done,” he said. “We’re living in a dangerous time. We need to have a president who’s functioning, a Congress that’s functioning, and we here at home have to be satisfied with our representation.”
Asked if he expected a lawsuit, McMaster said he wouldn’t be surprised.
Democrats pointed to the stark difference between this redistricting process and the one the state conducted following the 2020 census. It involved more than 30 public hearings over several months across the state, compared to the three House committee hearings on the current proposal.
Republicans have set a self-imposed deadline for passing a new map of congressional districts by May 26, the start of early voting in the state, House Majority Leader Davey Hiott told reporters last week.
The redistricting frenzy is scrambling the midterm elections. Here’s where things stand now.
While delaying U.S. House contests, the House bill keeps all other primaries — including statewide offices, state House seats and the U.S. Senate — on schedule for June 9, with runoffs June 23.
If the congressional primaries are pushed to August, the candidates who have been campaigning for months will still be on June 9 ballots. Any votes for congressional candidates simply wouldn’t count.
“We’re going to have a mess on our hands with the elections,” said Ballentine. “The ballots are out. We’re having to figure out how to run two separate elections.”
Ballentine added that redistricting isn’t “just moving lines and pressing buttons. … It’s about how we want to shape the state of South Carolina. That process takes months.”
Ballentine also joined several other Republicans in voicing reservations about a plan targeting the state’s only seat held by a Democrat, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn.
“My mama raised me, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should,” Ballentine said.
The push in South Carolina follows recent debates in Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama.
In all, nine states have redrawn their maps in the past year, outside the typical revisions driven by population changes counted in the decennial census.
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Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
