Restructuring Guru Thomas Hofeller's files could mean trouble for GOP: NPR

The way Thomas Hofeller talked about redistricting – establishing political boundaries and ranking voters en bloc – you could be forgiven if you assumed he was talking about a loved one or his favorite vacation.

"Redistricting, it's like an election upside down! It's a big event," he said with a smile at an event organized by the Legislatures Conference. in 2000. "Usually voters have to choose politicians … voters!"

Cartographer and Republican strategist, he found loopholes in the democratic system that could be exploited by technology and cunning. Hofeller, who died in August 2018, found a way to turn small voting margins into supermajorities for GOP lawmakers.

Now, a mine of his data has been discovered that could undo some of the work that he has perfected for decades.

The strategy

In North Carolina, after the Republican successes in the 2010 elections, Hofeller helped draw new cards that allowed the party to win 10 of the 13 seats in Congress, while the popular vote in that state was almost equal.

Hofeller also knew that the key to success in this niche was protection against prosecution. He dedicated 10 PowerPoint slides to a presentation he gave on the 2011 cutout, which focused on legal issues and privacy.

"Treat each statement and document as if it were on the front page of your local newspaper," he implored on a slide. "Emails are the tool of the devil."

He knew that this practice was unbecoming, and if the politicians would participate, warned Hofeller, they needed good lawyers. And a way to keep secrets.

"The loose lips sink the ships," he said at the same event organized by the NCSL in 2000. "Remember, a trip to legal hell begins with just one inaccuracy."

It is all the more surprising that his own files have been prosecuted.

After the death of Hofeller, his daughter found hard drives and USB drives containing nearly 100,000 files, according to the New York Times. She entrusted them to Common Cause, a non-profit organization with voting rights.

The first clue to what they might contain came to court last week.

The census case offers a sparkle

An unpublished 2015 report, written by Hofeller, concluded that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census would generate data that would redraw political maps "beneficial to Republican and non-Hispanic whites." ".

The plaintiffs in one of the New York-based lawsuits about the issue also say that Hofeller later wrote that Ghost had written a first draft of the Trump Administration's question request. A spokesman for the Justice Ministry described the accusation as "false".

The Trump administration has said it wants to add the question to help minority representation, even though the Census Bureau's research is challenging it.

According to Ohio State Law Professor Daniel Tokaji, Hofeller's discovery is only another example of how the justification for the administration does not fit. not hold.

"It was not really, as they claimed, getting better enforcement of the voting rights law so that Latinos could be fairly represented," Tokaji said. "In fact, there was a deliberate plan, and this plan includes the dilution of Latino votes and the strengthening of the Republican voting power."

The question now is: what else is there in the recently discovered files?

The data, as some have theorized, could potentially be useful in the context of other partisan gerrymandering lawsuits that circulate in the country.

Common Cause lawyers said in classifications released Thursday that Hofeller's records revealed that Republicans in North Carolina had made false statements in a federal court to avoid special elections in 2017.

Legislators have repeatedly stated that districts declared unconstitutional can not be quickly put out of action because work on the new districts has not started yet. The new files, however, show that Hofeller had almost completely finished the new cards by the time these statements were made.

Kathay Feng, director of the national redistribution for Common Cause, would not discuss what is in the files because of ongoing litigation, but she spoke generally about the dangers of politicians drawing boundaries that favor their own party .

"It's an American democracy, and we do not want a situation where, the best analogy is perhaps that of Russia, where you have false choices on the ballot," said Feng. "Where there is no real democracy, where your vote does not matter."

The public's view of the "vote theft"

Public opinion about partisan gerrymandering is always negative. Last fall, voters from four states voted in favor of reducing the role of elected officials in the redistricting process.

A survey conducted by Campaign Legal Center early this year revealed that about two-thirds of eligible voters for 2020 believe that diverting power is unfavorable.

Tokaji says that the public who takes a closer look at the unsavory details of Hofeller's work will only fuel those feelings.

"I think it's a bit like the Wizard of Oz," he said. "This allows those of us who have not gone behind the scenes to see behind the curtain and see the true partisan program behind some of these decisions."

The more the public knows and understands this practice, the less bold politicians will be when redrawing lines in 2021.

For most of Hofeller's career, redistricting was considered an anarchic practice operating in the shadow of the political process.

"Redistricting is a very complex area, but I think it's an area that affects the Americans much more than they understand," Hofeller said in 1991. "I define carving as the only legalized form of theft. voice in the United States. "

It remains to be seen how much of his work will be canceled by the data that has just been revealed.