Next month’s general election could leave quite a few voters scratching their heads as they move down the ballot to consider their picks for the General Assembly.
For many voters in Alamance County, the sense of perplexity may be particularly strong in the race for North Carolina’s state house – where a new set of district maps has completely rescrambled the long-standing divisions between the county’s two voting districts.
Since time immemorial, Alamance County has been effectively split between the state’s 63rd and 64th house districts. For at least a quarter of a century, the 63rd’s heartland has comprised Mebane and other communities within the interstate corridor, while the county’s southern and western reaches have been lumped into the 64th district along with a large chunk of west Burlington.
The 2022 state house map for Alamance County
The 2024 state house map for Alamance County
This traditional configuration had remained largely intact even after the 2010 election, which saw the Republican Party break more than a century of Democratic control over the General Assembly. Over the next decade or so, the legislature’s GOP majority would pick away at the edges of the two districts without radically altering the overall pattern that it had inherited – due, in part, to court challenges mounted by the Democratic opposition.
This uneasy stasis ended in 2023 when North Carolina’s state supreme court decided to give the Republican-led legislature a freer hand in the redistricting process. This move lifted the judicial halter that had previously limited the GOP’s efforts to redraw district boundaries. The result, in Alamance County at least, has been a complete shakeup of the state house districts that had been familiar to many area voters.
Among the changes wrought by these new district divisions is the redesignation of many east-lying areas from the 63rd to the 64th district. The city of Mebane, for instance, is now entirely situated within the 64th’s bounds, as are some of the more urbanized areas of Burlington and Graham that had, likewise, formed part of the 63rd’s traditional core. Meanwhile, the lion’s share of Burlington’s city limits has been moved into the 63rd district – along with the rural outpost of Union Ridge in the northern part of the county.
When compared side by side with the district map that the state used in 2022, the current district division looks almost like a photo negative of the previous layout. Yet, for all of their changes, the new districts have managed to keep some things the same. In particular, the new map hasn’t displace either of the two Republican incumbents who currently represent Alamance County in North Carolina’s state house.
All in all, only 12 precincts remain with the same state house district designation as they had in 2022. Fifteen precincts were moved from the 64th to the 63rd district, and 12 precincts were moved from the 63rd to the 64th district. There are now 20 precincts in district 63, 19 in district 64. See accompanying chart for a list of precincts, polling places, and which state house district each is now in.
[See precincts, voting places, and current (and 2022) state house districts.]
