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Records of a deceased Republican agent who spearheaded GOP's redistribution efforts show that Republicans in North Carolina have misled a federal court in 2017 to extend the life of their map of the US Legislative District. State, according to a monitoring group filed in documents released Thursday.
The Common Cause group claims that representatives of North Carolina had declared in federal court that they would not be able to redraw the map of the state's legislative district, declared unconstitutional, in time for a special election and requiring more time to comply.
The records of the operator, Thomas Hofeller, reveal that almost all of the work of developing new districts, including the racial composition of each, was nearing completion, with new boundaries being proposed for more than 97% of the districts in the country. Senate of the State. and 90 percent of the districts in the House, according to the group's lawyers, in state court documents.
After the Federal Court issued an order terminating the special elections, the existing card was maintained, allowing Republicans to retain a majority of people vetoing the state legislature for another year. .
Hofeller was also associated with the Trump administration's controversial efforts to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census, which he said would give Republicans an edge by removing responses in immigrant communities, according to judicial records.
Hofeller wrote letters and notes saying that the question of census citizenship would create an electoral advantage for "Republican and non-Hispanic Whites", and that the Justice Department adopted its rationale and some of the current wording in a letter Explaining why she had added the issue, the American Civil Liberties Union declared court papers last week.
The Trump administration claimed that the addition of the question was intended to improve the enforcement of the voting right law. The Supreme Court is currently reviewing whether the Commerce Department, which oversees the census, has acted properly to order the addition of the question.
The existence of Hofeller's records was revealed after his daughter, Stephanie Hofeller, announced that she was looking for a lawyer for her mother and contacted the Common Cause official in North Carolina for a recommendation, according to a statement by court last month. Last October, a few months after her father's death, she found four external hard drives and 18 USB drives containing more than 75,000 files, as the New York Times reported for the first time. She referred to the passions that were given to a Common Cause staff member during a meeting and then passed them on to the group after he issued a subpoena for the record of his trial against redistricting efforts of the state, she said.
Common Cause is now attempting to reverse the efforts of the North Carolina authorities to return the documents and the documents destroyed or declared confidential.
North Carolina officials' lawyers argue that many cases are protected expert witness documents "created by Dr. Hofeller in connection with legal affairs in North Carolina." They also accuse the Common Cause lawyers of neglecting their professional responsibilities and of having breached the state's civil procedure rules. .
"Our clients are studying all the options available to them to enforce their rights," said a letter leaked in court documents: Phillip J. Strach, North Carolina lawyer.
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