News Clips

“Saints are those who agree with your cause and will fight for it until the bitter end,” McBride observed in her mellifluous Louisiana lilt. “Sinners are those who vehemently oppose your cause and will to the day they die. People in the first two categories will never switch their opinions. It’s the savables, those caught in the middle, we all try to sway because there’s hope for them.”

For nearly 15 years at Common Cause, one of the country's oldest and most venerated democracy reform organizations, Kathay Feng has been focused intently on efforts to end partisan gerrymandering. After taking over the group's operation in California in 2005, she was at the heart of the lobbying and organizing effort behind creation of an independent redistricting commission in the most populous state. Since 2015 she has led all Common Cause's legal, legislative and ballot initiative redistricting efforts. The Cornell and UCLA Law School graduate has also fought for civil rights and against racial discrimination in Los Angeles. Her answers have been edited for clarity and length.

“I don’t think many people who are aware of what’s going on, and are tuned into politics and government in this state, would say that it’s anything even resembling a democracy,” said Jay Heck, the executive director of the Wisconsin chapter of Common Cause, a government watchdog group. ... “They view this as an opportunity to be able to extend one-party rule in this state for another 10 years,” Heck said. “If they can do that, they can do it in a great many other states as well.”

“I absolutely think that these ads are deceptive,” said Keshia Morris Desir, the census project manager for government watchdog organization Common Cause. Morris Desir acknowledged that the ads also clearly affiliate themselves with Trump’s campaign, but said they were still misleading. “Although they also say things like ‘Help Trump Win’ — I definitely think that the fact that you name this as a census at the same time that the 2020 census bureau will be sending similar communications for folks to fill out their census form is unfortunate.”

The South is "ground zero for this fight," said Dan Vicuña, a redistricting expert at Common Cause. Vicuña said the Supreme Court's decision has put in place a "new legal playing field" for partisan gerrymandering and lawmakers can be expected to try to take advantage of that when they are drawing the House maps. "You'll see kind of more blatant partisanship," he told NBC News.

In 2008, I led efforts to fundamentally change California’s redistricting process. With an unusual coalition of left, right and center allies, we created the nation’s first independent citizens redistricting commission. The power to draw voting maps was taken from politicians and given to people like you and me. Today our redistricting process is independent and community-led with the goal of keeping communities together in the new maps. No longer behind closed doors, drawing voting lines is conducted openly and transparently.