Abuse of Power

Common Cause executive director Catherine Turcer urged the panel to start over. She insisted there’s a strong argument the newest proposal makes “zero improvement” on the current unconstitutional map. “The manipulation of district lines is the manipulation of elections,” Turcer argued. “The manipulation of elections is the manipulation of public policy.” “So at the end of the day,” she continued, “manipulating districts to favor one political party over the other manipulates all sorts of important decisions that are made at the statehouse.”

The legislation “will leave us with county and state boards that can gridlock,” said Ann Webb, the policy director for Common Cause North Carolina, which opposes the measures. “And in this political environment of hyperpartisanship, we fully expect that they will gridlock.” Ms. Webb and other critics say their concerns might have been allayed had the legislature added language to the House bill that laid out instructions to break deadlocks. But “those suggestions have been rejected,” she said. Ms. Webb said critics’ concerns go beyond squabbles over polling places to the very basics of the election process, especially in presidential politics. Already she said, some local election officials in the state initially refused to certify the results of the 2022 midterm elections because they mistrusted election procedures. It fell to local boards to address the issue. If that becomes a partisan question in 2024, she said, “we’re going to see what will feel very much to voters like chaos, and very well could be that.”

White Republicans won all North Florida congressional districts in the November elections after the map was redrawn. Attorneys for plaintiffs such as the NAACP and Common Cause Florida argue in the federal lawsuit that the overhaul to Congressional District 5 involved "intentional discrimination" and violated the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment. The 14th Amendment ensures equal protection, while the 15th Amendment prohibits denying or abridging the right to vote based on race. The Legislature passed the plan after DeSantis vetoed a proposal that could have led to electing a Black candidate in District 5, the attorneys wrote in a pre-trial brief filed Tuesday. "Gov. DeSantis was viscerally opposed to any district in North Florida in which Black voters could elect a representative of their choice - no matter how such a district was configured," the brief said. "He vetoed the Legislature's plan, and pushed through his own, not in spite of his plan's adverse impact on Black voting power, but precisely because of it. That is unconstitutional." "The evidence will show Governor DeSantis went into the 2022 congressional redistricting with one overriding goal: eliminating (the previous configuration of) Florida's Fifth Congressional District, a district where Black voters could elect their candidate of choice," said the brief filed Tuesday by the plaintiffs' attorneys.

There is no viable alternative to ERIC. Other states have tried, but to no avail; for example, the Interstate Crosscheck System, a program started in Kansas, had a 99% error rate. It was found to eliminate about 200 registrations used to cast legitimate votes for every one duplicate voter registration. As explained by the Louisiana Illuminator, “Replicating what ERIC built would be a major technical, scientific, administrative and political challenge, even for a state committed to making it work.”

The higher vote requirement is a critical component of any redistricting change, said Jay Heck, director of Common Cause Wisconsin. The plan the Assembly is voting on was unveiled at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. There was no public hearing, and Democrats and advocates say they were not consulted in the drafting of the bill. “It’s not serious," Heck said. "This is an act of desperation to head off the Supreme Court from redrawing the maps. ... It just doesn’t pass the smell test on any level.”

“Going back to 2011, there is such a long laundry list of pretty amazing things that they’ve done,” says Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin. “And it’s almost like, what else could they do? And then they come up with something like this.” If the legislature rejects the maps drawn by the Legislative Reference Bureau, nonpartisan staff who work for the legislature, on two occasions, Republicans will have the power to draw their own partisan maps, which Heck says is “absolutely” Vos’ goal. Vos introduced the proposal Tuesday with no advance warning and the legislature plans to pass it on Thursday.  “The fact that Vos felt compelled to introduce this measure without consultation with any reform organizations like Common Cause Wisconsin and with no Democratic support and to immediately bring it to the floor of the Assembly without a public hearing or discussion is indicative of the disingenuous nature of this political stunt,” Heck wrote in email.