news-record.com

GREENSBORO — The election cycle for the Guilford County Board of Commissioners will resume next week, a federal judge ruled Thursday — and no commissioners will have their terms cut short.

Instead, the constitutional problems introduced by a redistricting law passed last year will be cleared up through switching which districts will run in which year, Judge William L. Osteen Jr. said Thursday.

Commissioners from districts 4, 5, 6 and 8 will be elected this year. The election for District 7 will be delayed until 2014.

The judge made no ruling on the county’s at-large races. No filing will be allowed for those seats for the time being.

Osteen said earlier this week that he was considering ordering elections this year for all nine seats on the board — eight in single voting districts and one at-large elected by the entire county. That would have cut, from four to two years, the terms of four sitting commissioners .

Osteen stressed that his ruling Thursday is a temporary solution to the problem.

He said the redistricting law, passed by the N.C. General Assembly, may be so vaguely worded that it could be considered unconstitutional, in which case the entire law may have to be thrown out.

The General Assembly also could choose to rewrite the law.

If either happens, it’s possible a new election plan would have to be drawn.

The judge will rule in early April on whether the legislation is so vague that it violates due process.

“Well, we have clarity for at least a month,” said George Gilbert, the Guilford County director of elections.

“We can begin filing probably on Monday, but people are going to have to understand that they could end up filing for seats and then the election for those seats won’t take place,” Gilbert said. “We don’t know what might happen in April.”

Last month, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice sued the General Assembly and the Guilford County Board of Elections over a redistricting law passed last year. That law would have left nearly 43,000 Guilford County voters without an elected representative on the Board of Commissioners.

The coalition represents the Greensboro and state branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and voters from District 6, which under the new legislation would have been without a commissioner until 2014.

Gilbert said the process may have been messy so far — partisan fighting, a hastily written redistricting law, and a lawsuit that halted filing and now has reopened it.

But, he said, he is glad to see the process working the way it should.

“A lot of people will be unhappy with the outcome of this lawsuit, no matter what it is,” Gilbert said. “But it will be done in accordance with the Constitution.”

Anita Earls, founder of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, agreed.

“We’ve gotten some clarity,” Earls said.

“I don’t think we can say now exactly what is going to happen, but people should rest assured that what we’ve seen from the judge is a commitment to the principle that everyone’s vote should count and should count the same.”

“So whatever happens, it will be with that principle in mind,” Earls said.

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com