(RALEIGH) -- North Carolina lawmakers got plenty of feedback on proposed changes to congressional district boundaries during public hearings held throughout the state on Thursday.

State House and Senate members listened to comments Thursday on revised boundaries for 13 U.S. House seats. It’s the first time that Republicans, who won a majority in both chambers of the General Assembly, have controlled the redistricting process in more than a century.

Civil rights advocates criticized mapmakers for changes to two majority-black districts. They said voters would be resegregated in the congressional seats now held by Democrats G.K. Butterfield and Mel Watt.

“What you have done is wrong, it's regressive and it's backwards and we have seen it before when political parties tried to stack the deck for their particular ideology," said the Rev. William Barber, president of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "It is a perversion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and we will meet you in court."

Republicans defended the maps, which they say comply with federal and state voting guidelines. GOP leaders said the new districts will more evenly absorb projected population growth during the next decade.

“We can continue  over the next ten years to be ‘one person, one vote’ at the level it was supposed to be,” said Sen. Bob Rucho, chairman of the Senate Redistricting Committee.

Democrats currently have a 7-6 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation. Critics said the proposed map would allow Republicans to pickup as many as four additional seats. 

“This is a state that elects Hagan and Perdue, but also Burr and Troxler,” House Minority Leader Rep. Joe Hackney, D-Orange, said during a press conference earlier in the day. “This is a two-party state. This is not a 10-3 state.”

Other speakers criticized GOP mapmakers for using the redistricting process to gain a partisan advantage – something GOP lawmakers repeatedly accused Democrats of doing for decades.

“The shoe is on the other foot, but it’s the same shoe,” said Ralph Slaughter in Cullowhee.

However, Republicans applauded the new congressional districts. “You refused to play the game of allowing powerful incumbents to choose their precincts - their neighborhoods - ensuring that they would have little or no opposition,” said former Republican Sen. Woody White.

GOP lawmakers also balked at the suggestion that the maps were unfair. They argued that registered Democrats would outnumber registered Republicans in 10 of 13 districts. “If the Democrat election campaigns or candidates have a good message and they can team up with the unaffiliated voters, they’ve got 55 to 65 percent of the vote in that district,” said Rucho, R-Mecklenburg. “That’s called competition.”

But Democrats said Republicans were neglecting to take voter history into consideration.  Democrats pointed out that 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain would have won all but three districts under the proposed maps.

“They must be talking about increasing the competition in Republican primaries,” said Senate Minority Leader Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe. “I can assure there’s going to be more of that.”

In addition, several speakers from Western North Carolina took issue with plans to move Asheville out of the 11th Congressional District, currently held by Democrat Health Shuler. Critics said Asheville wouldn’t share the same interests with other voters in the new 10th Congressional District, which includes areas near Charlotte such as Gaston County.

“Asheville is the historic, judicial, health, shopping and entertainment center of our area,” said Haywood County Democratic Party chairwoman Janie Benson. “Sirs, you've overplayed your hand with this one.”

Republicans said multiple members of Congress would better serve the mountain city. “We’re looking at trying to give Asheville, Hickory and all of the other urban centers an opportunity to have representation to meet their diverse interests and their diverse needs,” said Rucho.

The proposed maps must still get final approval from state lawmakers, who are scheduled to hold a special session focused on redistricting later this month.