Gerrymandering/Redistricting

Today, Common Cause is launching a new effort to ensure voters’ right to know where presidential candidates stand on practical solutions to the challenges facing our democracy. The Our Democracy 2020 campaign will focus getting every presidential candidate in the Democratic and Republican primaries to respond to a 17-question survey and inject the high priority conversation on the need for democracy reform in the presidential campaign. 

“State courts do not need to sit idly by while people’s constitutional rights are being violated just because the U.S. Supreme Court refused to act,” Common Cause attorney Stanton Jones told a three-judge panel in Raleigh. His clients want new maps drawn for the 2020 elections.

"We have forever had a flawed process that preordains so many of our congressional and legislative elections to the party," asserted Bob Phillips of Common Cause North Carolina, whose group filed the lawsuit. "I believe what's at stake is the beginning of the end of that." Common Cause's challenge contends the legislative maps were drawn to maximize the power of the GOP and violate the state constitution's clauses guaranteeing the right to a free election, freedom of assembly and equal protection. "And what we say is that when mapmakers are putting districts together solely primarily based on how people vote, is that's a violation of all three," Phillips said.

A few dozen computer files recovered from the home of a deceased Republican redistricting consultant can be offered as evidence in next week’s partisan gerrymandering trial in North Carolina, state judges ruled on Friday. The three-judge panel presiding over the trial that starts Monday sided with the election reform group Common Cause, the North Carolina Democratic Party and registered Democratic voters who are suing Republican lawmakers and challenging state House and Senate boundaries drawn in 2017.

“It doesn’t provide everyone with an equal vote,” said Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause North Carolina. “It really is an inability of citizens to hold their elected officials accountable.”

Today, after a week of confusion and contradiction in the Trump Administration, the President announced that he will not pursue a citizenship question on the 2020 Census. To protect a fair and accurate Census, the decision to not add the citizenship question is important.  However, in issuing an executive order to government agencies to hand over citizenship data, President Trump is engaging in an abusive power grab. Attorney General Barr reinforced the Administration’s intent to collect citizenship data for the purposes of reapportionment and redistricting. Using citizenship data to erase millions of people from apportionment and redistricting violates the Constitution.