Gerrymandering/Redistricting

Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for Common Cause, wouldn't discuss what else is in the files because of ongoing litigation, but she spoke generally about the dangers of politicians drawing district lines that favor their own party."This is an American democracy, and we don't want a situation where, perhaps the best analogy is like Russia, where you have fake choices on the ballot," Feng said. "Where there is no such thing as true democracy, where your vote doesn't matter."

"We're learning what we've long suspected — North Carolina's legislative districts were drawn behind closed doors by an expert gerrymanderer, months earlier than lawmakers claimed," Common Cause North Carolina Executive Director Bob Phillips said in a release.

The advocacy group Common Cause said in court documents submitted in Raleigh on Thursday that the Hofeller files include new evidence showing how North Carolina Republicans misled a federal court to prolong the life of their map of state legislative districts, which had been ruled unconstitutional.The Republicans told the federal court hearing the map case that they would not be able to draw new legislative districts and hold public hearings on them in time for a proposed special election in late 2017 or early 2018. In fact, Common Cause said, Mr. Hofeller’s files show that almost all the work was already done: proposed new boundaries had been drawn for more than 97 percent of the state’s proposed Senate districts and 90 percent of House districts.

On Thursday, Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn said in a release that documents revealed “that the plan to add the citizenship question was hatched by the Republicans’ chief redistricting mastermind to create an electoral advantage for Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.” She said the documents contradict testimony by administration officials that they sought to add the question to benefit Latino voters.

Common Cause, which first obtained the hard drives, said the revelations on them were a wake-up call to supporters of the American system. “Now that the plan has been revealed, it’s important for all of us — the courts, leaders and the people — to stand up for a democracy that incudes every voice,” said Kathay Feng, the group’s national redistricting director.

Previously undisclosed documents obtained by Common Cause in its North Carolina partisan gerrymandering lawsuit were filed today in the federal action challenging the addition a citizenship question to the 2020 Decennial Census. The documents, which were filed by the private plaintiffs in Department of Commerce v. State of New York, reveal for the first time the secret role played by the longtime Republican redistricting expert, the late Dr. Thomas Hofeller, in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question and the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Act rationale for it. The documents further show that Dr. Hofeller concluded in a 2015 study that the citizenship question would significantly harm the political power of Latino communities and be “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.”