Common Cause, a voting rights group, sued North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers for creating gerrymandered legislative maps in 2011. The GOP had contorted district lines to favor their party.
Common Cause won in 2011.
Now, Common Cause is suing North Carolina’s GOP party again for gerrymandering the new maps. The case is set to go to trial on July 15.
It turns out that North Carolina’s lines were drawn up by none other than Thomas Hofeller, a recently deceased and prolific GOP election rigger. Hofeller helped Trump’s efforts to rig the U.S. census as well, by spearheading the push to add the citizenship question.
It was recently discovered the Hofeller knew the citizenship question on the 2020 Census would greatly benefit “Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.”
Related Article: Census Citizenship Question Creates Advantage for ‘Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites’: Report
It turns out that Hofeller helped shape more than 90 percent of the state’s newly gerrymandered maps by June 2017. That matters because Republicans told the court in July 2017 that no new maps had been created by that time — a big fat lie.
The GOP in North Carolina was told not to use data on racial demographics to make the lines in 2011. But it turns out that Hofeller likely did use data before he died on voters’ racial demographics when creating the new lines in 2017.
“Whether it’s rigging the census for partisan gain or manipulating voting maps for the same, that’s wrong and destructive to our democracy,” Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, said in a statement.
North Carolina isn’t the only state with Republicans desperately trying to decrease the voting power of minorities. Ohio’s Republican-drawn congressional map was recently struck down and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down that state’s Republican-drawn partisan congressional gerrymander in 2018.
