Gerrymandering/Redistricting

“Partisan gerrymandering is not just a Republican problem or a Democrat problem, it is a politician problem,” said Kathay Feng, national redistricting director at Common Cause, a plaintiff in the North Carolina case. “Politicians have shown time and again that they cannot resist the temptation to draw maps that protect their power and party at the expense of the American people."

“Whether it is Democrats or Republicans manipulating the election maps, gerrymanders cheat voters out of true representation,” Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of Common Cause, said in a statement. “The Supreme Court has the opportunity to set a clear standard that will restore a meaningful vote to millions of Americans disenfranchised by gerrymanders in Maryland, North Carolina and across the country.”

The Supreme Court today announced that it will hear Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek and potentially set a national precedent on how to draw fair maps for congressional candidates in time for the redistricting triggered by the 2020 census.

Were these lawyers lying in 2017? Are they lying today? Either way, the Common Cause plaintiffs rightly argue that the General Assembly should be legally prohibited from making a claim that it flatly contradicted in court one year ago.

“As a state, we were a leader in voting rights, arguably, for the decade before the 2010 shift in power,” said Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause in North Carolina, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.