RALEIGH, N.C. — In 2011, soon after Republicans won control of the North Carolina General Assembly for the first time since Reconstruction, they set about redrawing congressional and state legislative districts to maximize their advantage, setting off legal challenges and bitter complaints from their rivals.

But there is a new frontier in the battles over how democracy should work in North Carolina. And it is local.

This session, bills introduced by Republican lawmakers would reconfigure a number of local government bodies around the state, prompting allegations that Republicans are gerrymandering and changing election rules at the city council and county commission levels.

The General Assembly last week changed the composition of the Board of Commissioners in Wake County, home to 10 percent of the state’s population, after November elections in which Democrats gained a 7-0 majority there. Other spoils are both surprisingly puny, like Trinity, N.C., population 6,600, and very significant, like the Democratic stronghold of Greensboro, the state’s third-largest city.