Gerrymandering/Redistricting

Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, argued the redistricting proposal lacked transparency and safeguards against a majority party power grab. "Broad bipartisan support and consensus must be attained for any nonpartisan redistricting plan to work (so) that it can be assured that it will have the trust and confidence of Wisconsin voters," he said. "Please pardon the voters of Wisconsin if they don't believe that, after 12 years of attacking, resisting and blocking any attempt or discussion of redistricting reform in the state Capitol, that Assembly Republicans have all of a sudden seen the light."

“We’re frustrated, confused and deeply disappointed,” Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of voting rights group California Common Cause, said Monday. He added: “We were hopeful that this was an opportunity for California to show the rest of the nation what it looks like to put gerrymandering behind us.” Had Newsom signed the measure, California could have become the first state to mandate redistricting commissions for local jurisdictions over certain sizes, said Dan Vicuna, national director of redistricting and representation for Common Cause.

One group that has decided against litigation over this year’s redistricting process is Common Cause Ohio, a left-leaning good-government group. Catherine Turcer, Common Cause Ohio’s executive director, said last week that her organization was considering filing a lawsuit against the Ohio Redistricting Commission, primarily to assert that the closed-door negotiations held by commission members violated state open-meetings law. But on Wednesday, Turcer said Common Cause Ohio decided that it would be better for them to spend their time and money on getting Ohio voters to approve a proposed constitutional amendment in 2024 that would overhaul the state’s redistricting process entirely. “This is a hard one to let go,” she said.

"It is blatantly about race from Day 1," said Gregory Diskant, attorney for plaintiffs including the NAACP, Common Cause, Fair Districts Now and individual voters who want the congressional boundaries thrown out by the court. They charge that DeSantis violated the U.S. Constitution's equal protection and voting rights protections with the Republican-heavy map that has left no Black member of Congress from North Florida for the first time in 30 years. "Why did he care about this so much?" Diskant said, answering by claiming that "racial animus" was behind the governor's actions. "He did not want a Black performing district in North Florida," he added.

“This corrupt, undemocratic process has resulted in rigged maps that help politicians and their friends get re-elected at the expense of Ohio families and communities,” said Catherine Turcer, Executive Director of Common Cause Ohio, speaking on behalf of Fair Districts. “We are working together on an amendment to ban politicians from map drawing so that Ohio voters get the impartial districts they fundamentally deserve, and lawmakers will be responsive to the people rather than mega-donors and lobbyists.”

Kathay Feng, Common Cause vice president for programs who was on hand for the trial, contended that Kelly’s testimony showed that the DeSantis administration was struggling to explain their actions. “There’s a lot of twisting and turning, there’s a lot of fabrication, there’s a lot of denial of history,” Feng said.