News Clips

Attorney Allison Riggs, who is representing plaintiff Common Cause in the redistricting case, says that even though the state constitution doesn’t explicitly require fair elections, case law clearly does. “I’ve certainly studied the history,” she said, “and there is not a suggestion anywhere that the failure to put ‘fair’ in the constitution means that there's a presupposition that elections will be run unfairly.” Riggs says constitutional provisions have to be understood together in context. “In cases interpreting free elections, there's frequently also an equal protection claim associated with that that really talks about how we have to treat people equally and fairly,” Riggs said. “Sometimes you can miss the forest for the trees.”

Meanwhile, Common Cause New York Executive Director Susan Lerner called for public hearings on maps she called a “major disservice to the voters.” “The Legislature’s proposed congressional maps preserve the Voting Rights Act districts, but the rest of the lines are so heavily gerrymandered they will be non-competitive,” she said.

Kathay Feng, a redistricting expert at Common Cause, said the massive growth in communities of color over the past decade means that their representation should have grown, not shrunk. “It’s a falsehood for political pundits or operatives to say status quo is sufficient,” she said. “You can’t force your 12-year-old to continue wearing the clothes of a 2-year-old. It’s pretending like they haven’t grown.”

“I view the court process as a continuation of the redistricting process,” says Kathay Feng, the national redistricting manager of Common Cause. Unfortunately, some states don’t seem to mind being sued. North Carolina’s maps were among those struck down in the last cycle. Yet, Feng says its lawmakers again approved maps that already are being challenged in new lawsuits. “They cracked and packed Black voters, resulting in the dilution of their votes,” says Feng of North Carolina’s most recent maps, referring to practices in which communities of color are “cracked,” or split up to reduce their political power, or “packed” into the same district in greater numbers than necessary to reduce their power in surrounding districts. “They held sham hearings where locations were moved or, in one instance, the doors to the building were locked. All in all, a bad process.”

“We’re not going to give up and take our marbles and go home. We’re going to continue to fight, as we are also fighting at the state level,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of Common Cause. She said that Common Cause would work to educate voters about their rights, recruiting poll monitors, and support groups that are bringing forward litigation. “There are going to be a lot of fronts to fight this battle at the state level, but in many ways it’s going to be a whack-a-mole,” Flynn said.

It’s a now or never moment for our democracy. With an imminent vote to advance the voting rights legislation facing the U.S. Senate, there’s one truth Mr. Portman and other Republican senators can’t escape: The vote is a choice between voter protection and voter suppression. We hope they stand on the side of the voters and choose to protect and strengthen our freedom to vote in Ohio. No Senate rule like the filibuster should stand in its way.