Associated Press: GOP redistricting expert linked to census question, say lawyers
Associated Press: GOP redistricting expert linked to census question, say lawyers
NEW YORK — A longtime Republican redistricting expert played a key role in adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, according to court papers filed Thursday by opponents of the move.
The filing in Manhattan federal court said the discovery of new documents revealed that Thomas Hofeller contributed vital language to a letter used to justify adding the question for the first time since 1950.
Lawyers for opponents of adding the question asked a judge to issue sanctions or consider contempt remedies, saying a Justice Department official and a transition official for President Donald Trump testified falsely by hiding Hofeller’s role in asking the question. …
The Hofeller documents cited by lawyers were discovered when his estranged daughter found four external computer hard drives and 18 thumb drives in her father’s Raleigh, North Carolina, home after his death last summer.
The New York Times reported that she contacted Common Cause, which had recently sued in state court to challenge North Carolina’s legislative districts which had been drawn by Hofeller.
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.