News Clips

“The limited release of Dr. Hofeller’s files has already proven critical in exposing secret efforts to manipulate the census and redistricting,” said Kathay Feng, national redistricting director for Common Cause. “Now the truth can come out about all of Hofeller’s shocking efforts to rig elections in almost every state.”

“Litigation is a hard and painful road,” said Kathay Feng, national redistricting director for Common Cause. The group was a plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court case decided in June , which also focused on North Carolina’s congressional map. The goal, Feng said, is to “make changes where each 10 years we’re not facing that same uphill ... climb.”

But to really grasp the impact that gerrymandering has had on abortion laws, you have to look back to 2010, said Dan Vicuña, the national redistricting manager at voting rights watchdog group Common Cause. That election year, Republicans set out to win control of as many statehouses as possible, which gave them power to redraw state and congressional districts after the census. “That effort succeeded beyond their wildest dreams,” Vicuña said. “Republicans took over tons of state legislatures, and they were interested in gerrymandering.” Since then, he said, it’s no surprise that the number of abortion bans passed at the state level has exploded.

“This court gave the General Assembly an opportunity to draw remedial maps and cure their prior constitutional violations,” attorney Eddie Speas wrote for the Common Cause plaintiffs. “Although its process was not without flaws, the Senate has done so. But the House has not.”

Common Cause North Carolina, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to the redrafting, will submit a formal comment on the maps later, its deputy director, Brent Laurenz, said. “We were a little disappointed in the lack of public engagement in the process,” he said, and legislators in the House appeared to have tweaked some districts “more than needed.” “You still had politicians walking up there carving up their own districts to their advantage,” he said. “It was illuminating, I guess, to see them go up there.”

Lawyers for Common Cause, which won the recent lawsuit forcing this new redistricting session, say Senate Republicans violated a court order by ordering members of the media and the public to stay out of the area where senators and staff are drawing maps. “As a result of Sen. Hise’s order removing citizens and journalists from the map-drawing area, members of the committee were sitting at computers and amending maps without the public able to know how or why legislators were making changes to proposed districts,” Common Cause deputy director Brent Laurenz said in a press release.