RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Republican lawmakers took verbal punches about proposed General Assembly boundaries during the final round of public hearings on political maps Monday, but they also heard from a rising chorus that backs a drawing method designed to make the process less partisan.

The idea of creating a nonpartisan redistricting process to draw proposed maps has gained steam this year at the Legislature, where a bipartisan bill passed the House by a comfortable margin and now sits in the Senate. The measure would reduce the suspicion that people have in the current mapmaking that political considerations control which districts voters end up, said Jane Pinsky with the North Carolina Coalition for Lobbying & Government Reform.

"The process has been created to be a partisan one, one that allows the party in power to continue to remain in power and choose its voters, rather than letting the voters choose their representatives," Pinsky said.

She spoke in Raleigh at one of ten sites statewide where members of the House and Senate redistricting committees received comments on proposed House and Senate maps released last week. The committees will begin debating the legislative and congressional maps Thursday in Raleigh and could start voting on them early next week in hopes of giving them final approval by the General Assembly by July 28.

The nonpartisan redistricting legislation wouldn't affect the current round of redistricting — meaning the process wouldn't be used until the 2020 census — but support for the idea has soared in the Legislature after similar bills went nowhere for several years when Democrats controlled the General Assembly. The bill got House floor votes after Republicans took charge of the Legislature in January.

Based on a method used in Iowa, the General Assembly's permanent staff would develop boundaries for state House and Senate districts and for the 13 seats in the U.S. House delegation. The maps would be based on census population numbers but could neither favor a political party nor protect the seats of incumbents. A temporary advisory commission would hold at least three public hearings to take public comment and answer questions for staff before it releases the first set of maps before April 1.

An independent group drawing the districts "cannot take out all politics but it can take out the most egregious forms of it," said House Majority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake, who voted for the bill that passed last month by a vote of 88-27. "I think it will be successful."

House and Senate members would take a flat up or down vote on each map. If a map is voted down, the staff would get two more chances to draw approved maps before the process would be turned over to legislators.

Pinsky and others urged the Senate to take up the nonpartisan process bill when they return to work next week to approve this round of maps for the next decade under the current method in which lawmakers pen the boundaries.

"It's about time that North Carolina step up to the plate and not rely on either party to fight their way through this and we give the voters the districts they need, not what the politicians want," Lucia Messina of Wilmington, representing Democracy North Carolina and speaking at a hearing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said in an interview he doesn't expect the Senate to take up the bill this year because "it would have no impact whatsoever on the current redistricting effort."

Stam suggested it could be heard when the Legislature returns next May for its primary work session for 2012, but Berger made no promises for next year, either, since it wouldn't take effect for several years. "I'm not seeing it something that would have any impact on anything that we're doing in the foreseeable future," he said.

At Monday's hearing, some speakers praised the proposed GOP-led district boundaries as creating competitive and legal districts to make up for decades of lines tilted toward Democrats. Many others blasted the maps — as they did for the congressional proposal two weeks ago — by alleging black voters have been piled into a few dozen districts to benefit Republican candidates in surrounding districts. Republicans say they're complying with legal opinions.

Litigation is likely over whether the approved maps abide by the federal Voting Rights Act, which is designed to protect the political influence of minority voters.

The nonpartisan process bill could attempt to produce better outcomes for several speakers Monday who didn't like how legislative maps divided towns between districts. Harold Broadwell, the mayor of the eastern Wake County town of Wendell, urged the redistricting committees to keep Wendell and the nearby towns of Zebulon and Knightdale in the same House district.

Rep. Frank Iler, R-Brunswick, asked his colleagues not to divide Southport and Leland. A portion of each town would be in two southeastern House districts.

The bill would require legislative staff to take municipal and county boundaries into account when drawing districts.

The proposed rules, however, wouldn't eliminate so-called "double-bunking," in which a pair of incumbents is drawn into the same district. The legislative district proposal would pair 38 of the 170 current lawmakers — 19 Democrats and Republicans apiece.