Nothing’s ever truly dead in the legislature. Jacksonville residents are learning that the hard way as a previously abandoned bill changing their city election structure returned with a vengeance this week.
House Bill 1038 would shift the city’s elections from a hybrid system with two at-large seats and four ward-based seats to an all at-large configuration.
The goal is to “even out how many people actually vote” in Jacksonville, bill sponsor Rep. Wyatt Gable, R-Onslow, told a legislative committee on June 9.
[Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.]
While Wards 2 and 3 have about 13,000 and 12,000 registered voters, respectively, Wards 1 and 4 have closer to 5,000, according to the Onslow County Board of Elections.
Bill co-sponsor Phil Shepard, R-Onslow, said that’s largely thanks to Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps military base home to many temporary residents who may be registered to vote somewhere else. The base makes up a significant portion of Wards 1 and 4.
But that’s not how US or state law requires election districts to be drawn. The law says districts must be based on the total population from the most recent Census, including people who aren’t registered or don’t vote because of age or apathy, not on the number of registered or active voters. That’s true in every district-drawing situation from the smallest school board to Congress.
But in Gable and Shepard’s view, the uneven turnout between wards has caused an issue in Jacksonville. In municipal elections, Ward 1 and 4 voter turnout is a fraction of Ward 2 and 3 turnout. The legislators say that causes some candidates to work harder to get on the same council.
For example, in the 2025 municipal election, 220 people voted in the Ward 1 City Council election, compared to 1,171 in the Ward 2 election. The 2023 election was a similar story, with Ward 3 turnout at 551 people while Ward 4 turnout was just 198 voters.
The at-large races, which include the mayor’s seat, turn out many more voters. That pattern has persisted in municipal elections since at least 2013, according to a Carolina Public Press review of election data.
This discrepancy could get more complicated, Gable said. A bill that would annex about 40,000 more acres of military base into city limits is also pending in the legislature. Redrawing ward lines after that would be difficult, he said.
Black residents are speaking out against the proposed change. The current hybrid system replaced an at-large system in 1989, following a court challenge.
The plaintiffs in the case, which included current Jacksonville city councilmember Jerome Willingham, argued that the at-large system discriminated against minority voters under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The city agreed to change the system.
Shortly after, in 1991, Fannie Coleman and Willingham were elected as the city’s first Black councilmembers. Since then, Wards 1 and 4 have been represented by many people of color.
A quarter of a decade later, that system may be reaching its final days, if lawmakers get their way.
The Calláis effect and Jacksonville
The bill was filed before the Supreme Court ruled on the viability of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Calláis.
It didn’t make it to a committee vote then, after scores of Jacksonville residents spoke out against the change during a May City Council meeting.
Jacksonville resident Lauren Saikkonen said the concern about different turnout levels was not a valid reason to eliminate the ward system. Each ward has its own unique needs and priorities, regardless of how many of those who live there are registered voters, she said.
“The ward system guarantees that residents like me have representation: a representative who lives in the same area, understands the local issues, and is accountable to the people who live there,” she said.
Onslow County Republican Party Chair Laura Deptola was one of a handful of attendees in favor of the legislation. She read aloud from a letter that the county party sent to lawmakers.
“This legislation will put all candidates on an equal footing when competing, and end the noxious practice of racially discriminatory voting wards,” she said.
A few months later, the legal calculus changed for lawmakers. In April, the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling narrowed the degree to which lawmakers could use race when drawing districts.
The city charter of Jacksonville explicitly labels Wards 1 and 4 as “minority wards.” Gable said that language opens them up to lawsuits that he’s pretty sure the city would lose.
Onslow County NAACP president M. Kenyatta Euring disagrees.
“Even if that is the case, then let us let the courts decide, which is what the courts exist for, instead of trying to just shove something down the throats of the people that live here,” he said.
The first, failed attempt
In 2022, a trio of Onslow County Republicans filed a lawsuit to change the election system for Jacksonville.
Joe McLaughlin, Lori Ready-Digiovanni and Juan Carlos Beltran argued that the votes of non-Black residents were diluted by the system, and that the size of the city’s Black population suggested that “one candidate of the African-American community’s choice would constitute proportional representation,” according to court documents.
Based on the most recent Census data, 55% of Jacksonville residents are white only, 15% are Black only, 20% are Hispanic or Latino and 17% belong to two or more races.
A U.S. District court judge dismissed the case, ruling that the plaintiffs either lived outside of the city limits and didn’t have eligibility to sue, or didn’t prove that their vote was diluted.
The judge added that apportionment doesn’t have to be directly proportional, or in other words, the proportion of Black representatives on the City Council doesn’t have to exactly match the proportion of Black residents, according to Supreme Court precedent.
Today, the council includes three Black members, three white members and a white mayor.
Ready-Digiovanni joined the suit after running for Jacksonville City Council in 2022. She noticed that there was a portion of Ward 1 in the middle of downtown, surrounded by her ward, Ward 3. The “donut hole” didn’t seem fair to her, and neither did having to knock on more doors than other candidates running to represent other wards, she told Carolina Public Press.
She also objected to the way Camp Lejeune was divided up.
“I don’t think it’s fair that we keep the base in certain wards,” she said. “To me, they all should be shared evenly, because we all know the folks on base either, one, are only going to vote during the presidential election, or two, they’re going to do the mail-in ballot from wherever they originally come from.”
Ready-Digiovanni said it’s not about race or color for her. Besides, she thinks each part of the city has a minority population.
“Historically, back in the day, maybe it was needed, but I think in the time that we live in now, it’s not,” she said. “Each ward should have equal division.”
Euring said McLaughlin is at the center of the latest attempt to change the system, too. McLaughlin did not respond to a request for comment.
He also doesn’t think dividing the base into quarters for Jacksonville city elections is a realistic solution. It would be geographically difficult, for one. He suggested a different solution: voter education.
“They just don’t know how to actively participate when their home of record is somewhere else, because most of them are 18 years old,” he said about base residents.
That’s why Euring plans to present Onslow County commissioners with a budget request in the next year or so for a civic education program for the entire county, as well as the military base.
“It’s not a ward versus at-large issue,” he said. “It’s a voter turnout issue. And that’s what we’re trying to adjust.”
In committee, House Democrats asked Gable to pause until they got written input from local leaders, like City Council members, making sure they want this change.
Gable declined.
“I don’t know what their resolution would be if they were to make one,” he said. “I would assume it would be positive in favor of this. I’m not sure, but from what I’ve understood, from what they’ve said, that would be my assumption.”
There are only a few weeks left in this year’s legislative session. To make it into law, House Bill 1038 will have to make it through a House and Senate vote, or be added to legislation that’s further along in the process.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may republish our stories for free, online or in print. Simply copy and paste the article contents from the box below. Note, some images and interactive features may not be included here.
