hofeller gerry

=see GERRY 2=<div>===</div><div>spitfire  extensive on gerry</div><div><a href="https://spitfirelist.com/news/john-roberts-gives-bad-faith-blessing-to-hyper-partisan-gerrymandering-and-paved-the-way-for-the-kochstitution/comment-page-1/">
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</div><div><cite>...</cite>here was a recent article in Slate about a audio recording leaked

from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annual meeting

this year. The audio was of the closed-door “How to Survive

Redistricting” panel discussion, so this was a panel that’s particularly

important for understanding what the GOP has in mind for its 2021

hyper-gerrymandering schemes. The panel’s advice included helpful tips

like destroying evidence under the expectation that the district maps

they draw up are guaranteed to end up challenged in court. The evidence

they recommended attendees destroy included evidence they had attended

this panel discussion. It’s that kind of panel discussion.

<cite />
</div><div>
</div>the panel had four experts: North Carolina election lawyer Thomas

Farr, former Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (who co-chaired Project

REDMAP in 2010), Texas state Rep. Phil King, and Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation <a href="https://spitfirelist.com/news/merger-of-crooked-vote-tallyers/#comment-23194">who happens to be one of the GOP’s biggest backers of voter suppression schemes</a>.

In particular, von Spakovsky has specialized in issuing fraudulent

warnings about illegal immigrants voting in US elections and using those

scare stories as justification for voter suppression laws. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/28/resignation-texas-is-reminder-how-trumps-vote-fraud-claims-come-up-empty/" rel="nofollow">Von

Spakovsky was also on Trump’s short-lived presidential commission aimed

at uncovering proof of this alleged rampant voter fraud</a>. In keep

with this theme of whipping up fears about immigrants, von Spakovksy has

been one of the chief advocates for using only population based on

citizenship, and not the total number of people in a state, for

redistricting purposes during the 2021 redistricting process...=
nrp...SHAPIRO: OK. Explain who this Republican strategist is and who his daughter is.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">WANG: This is Thomas Hofeller, a mastermind for the Republican National Committee. He was working behind the scenes for decades before he died, using census data to draw political maps of voting districts around the country. And his name made national headlines last year. This is during the lawsuits over this citizenship question that the Trump administration tried and failed to get on the 2020 census. During those lawsuits, lawyers for the question's challengers - they uncovered an unpublished study written by Thomas Hofeller that concluded that adding a citizenship question to census forms would be, quote, "advantageous" to Republicans and non-Hispanic white people when voting districts are redrawn.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And the reason that study came to light was because of Thomas Hofeller's daughter Stephanie Hofeller. She happened to find her father's obituary in 2018. She had not spoken with him for more than four years at that point after a bitter family dispute. She reconnected with her mother after his death and found in his room four external hard drives and a clear plastic bag with 18 USB thumb drives. And Stephanie says her mother encouraged her to take them, and under a court order last year, Stephanie turned them over to attorneys involved in a redistricting lawsuit in North Carolina. But before she did, she made copies of some of those files for herself.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">SHAPIRO: OK, you've got four hard drives and 18 USB thumb drives with this man's records. What's on them?<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">WANG: A lot of stuff. Stephanie Hofeller previously gave a copy to NPR, and she says to other news organizations, I've taken a look - lots of family photos and other personal items, but also maps and spreadsheets from Thomas Hofeller's work for Republicans. And they show his reach was really wide - work in Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and Virginia, as well as counties in New York and Texas. And we should note that for the North Carolina case, Republican state lawmakers tried to keep these documents sealed. And Hofeller's former business partner Dale Oldham is arguing that some of these files contain trade secrets.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">SHAPIRO: What did Stephanie Hofeller say about why she is releasing these files?<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">WANG: One reason she told me is to preserve, she says, a historical record about her father. This is someone, she said, who has had a major influence in the political system without many people noticing. And he worked during his life to ensure that no matter how people voted, gerrymandering would ensure Republicans would win elections. Let's listen to what Stephanie Hofeller said....no lnx
Daughter of Late Redistricting Guru Reveals More of His WorkBy The Associated PressJan. 6, 2020
RALEIGH, N.C. — Thousands of formerly confidential documents and emails that influenced the outcome of a partisan gerrymandering lawsuit have been made public. A judge has yet to decide whether others should stay confidential.
The documents and emails belonging to the late Thomas Hofeller were placed on a website over the weekend by his daughter, Stephanie Hofeller. Hofeller said she first discovered them while visiting her parents' home in Raleigh shortly after her father's death in August 2018.
Stephanie Hofeller was estranged both personally and politically from her father at the time of his death and was critical of his work. Last year, she contacted lawyers for the nonprofit organization Common Cause North Carolina to tell them about the documents.
The group, along with state Democrats, subpoenaed the files for use in a lawsuit that accused Republican lawmakers of illegal racial and partisan gerrymandering in the redrawing of state legislative districts.
A very small number of the documents were used by the lawyers; a state court put the rest under a confidentiality order. A Wake County judge ruled in November that more than 100,000 of the documents were no longer subject to the order because they were Thomas Hofeller's individual work.
Attorneys, including one representing Hofeller's business partner, are still fighting over which of the remaining files should stay secret. But Stephanie Hofeller, who was not subject to the order because she isn't a party in the lawsuit, signaled weeks ago that she would be making many of the documents she obtained public.
“They belong to everybody, as they are evidence that concern The People, their right to franchise and their access to shared resources,” she wrote in a statement on the website.Thomas Hofeller had a nearly 50-year career in redistricting and had worked extensively over the past decade on North Carolina maps that helped pad and retain Republican majorities in the General Assembly. Court rulings last year struck down dozens of North Carolina General Assembly districts.The documents Stephanie Hofeller retrieved from external hard drives contain redistricting work her father did in several other states and also revealed his role in the Trump administration's efforts to include a citizenship question on 2020 census forms. Courts also blocked the citizenship question for the census.The files released on the website include statistics, tables, maps and other paperwork related to redistricting in North Carolina and other states including Arizona, Missouri, New York, Texas and Virginia.They also show extensive data collected on behalf of Republican lawyers defending a 2013 state law that narrowed voting access with provisions such as requiring a photo ID.Asked whether the documents that appear on the website are the same as those held by Common Cause, a spokeswoman for the organization declined to comment Monday. A lawyer for Stephanie Hofeller, Tom Sparks, said he was confident that the files she uploaded are authentic.State judges already have cited Hofeller's previously released files as evidence that 2017 legislative districts pushed by North Carolina Republicans were designed to maximize GOP advantage by “drawing Democratic voters into districts where their votes would be diluted, and in many cases where their votes would not matter.”
In a 2019 deposition before the partisan gerrymandering trial, Stephanie Hofeller said she was looking for family photos at her parents' house when she happened upon her father's work and told Common Cause about it.The uploaded documents contain photos, but also personal files and other sensitive material, including those related to Stephanie Hofeller. North Carolina GOP legislators had wanted a court to order the subpoenaed files destroyed, saying they were improperly obtained.Hofeller wrote in her online statement that she decided to offer it all in part to prove its authenticity: “So, when it comes to myself, I have the right to sacrifice a certain amount of my own privacy."<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/27/gerrymandering-gop-hofeller-memos/">https://theintercept.com/2019/09/27/gerrymandering-gop-hofeller-memos/</a>many docs no lnx
WORTH THIS INVESTMENT”: MEMOS REVEAL THE SCOPE AND RACIAL ANIMUS OF GOP GERRYMANDERING AMBITIONSDavid DaleySeptember 27 2019Rigging the VotePart 2Documents outline plans by top GOP strategists to exploit the creation of “majority-minority” seats and ensure redistricting dominance.
PART 3 IS COMING SOONIN COURT AND IN PUBLIC, many top Republicans have denied gerrymandering gives them any advantage at all. They’ve captured state legislatures and won an edge in Congress, some have suggested, due to superior candidates, better campaigns, and natural geographic sorting that clusters Democrats in urban areas and spreads Republicans more efficiently across the suburbs and rural America.
“The problem is not district lines; the problem is weak candidates who run poor campaigns based on bad ideas,” said Chris West, spokesperson for former Virginia Speaker of the House William Howell, in 2017.
“We have better candidates, better issues and a better understanding of what our constituents want to do,” Wisconsin state Rep. Kathleen Bernier told the Wall Street Journal in the same year.
In a trove of never before published memos and emails, however, GOP leaders come clean: Their nationwide advantage in state legislatures and Congress is built on gerrymandering. And top Republican strategists and political operatives admit to weaponizing racial data and the Voting Rights Act in order to flip the South red and tilt electoral maps in their direction.[RelatedGOP Racial Gerrymandering Mastermind Participated in Redistricting in More States Than Previously Known, Files Reveal]Those are among the revelations from over 70,000 documents, maps, and emails, obtained by The Intercept, that were culled from the hard drive backups of the late redistricting mastermind Thomas Hofeller. Though the exact purpose or destination — and sometimes even the author — of each memo is not always clear, the thinking revealed in the documents and drafts is illuminating. Some appear to be regular updates for Republican leadership, top stakeholders, and key donors.
They offer additional insights into the Republican’s 2010 Redistricting Majority Project, or REDMAP, strategy — a $30 million push to capture swing-state legislative chambers ahead of the decennial redistricting — and new evidence that the GOP viewed these maps as the firewall that allowed them to retain control of the U.S. House and multiple state legislatures despite the 2012 Democratic wave.
The title of one late 2012 memo makes it clear: “RNC Redistricting Program Underpins GOP Success in U.S. House and State Legislatures.” That memo appears to have been written by Hofeller himself. Also, in 2011, strategists boasted that the “energy and resources poured into last year’s legislative races are paying large dividends in the ongoing redistricting process,” and that “the tide of victory” helps “increase our control” over new maps.RNC Redistricting Program2 pages
Redistricting Email Language End of Year Report 1 17 20124 pagesPerhaps most importantly, some memos explicitly state the connections between race and redistricting, and say that Republican strategists working with the highest level of the national party sought to exploit the creation of “majority-minority” seats as part of a strategy to both pack black voters into a limited number of seats and equate Democrats and minorities in the minds of white voters, especially across the South.
A December 2014 memo from the redistricting firm co-founded by Hofeller, Geographic Strategies, states that “the GOP’s success in redistricting actually had its genesis in a decade-long struggle in the federal court system beginning in the 1980s.” It appears to be addressed to the leadership of the Republican National Committee. Geographic Strategies was contracted by the RNC over much of this decade for more than $22,000 a month in legal work, mapmaking, and litigation advice from Hofeller and his partner, Dale Oldham.
Republicans could benefit, the unusually candid memo maintained, through clever application of the Voting Rights Act and the creation of black and Latino districts where possible. It provides a startlingly frank discussion of the GOP’s modern Southern strategy, and the primary role played by race and redistricting, especially following the 1982 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.
Black and Latino voter representation increased under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which allowed the creation of majority-minority seats to provide minority voters with the opportunity to elect members of their own choosing, where possible. The measure was a way to make sure minority votes were not diluted. It does not state that these districts needed to pack 50 percent — or more — of the minority voters into one district in order to so. But that’s what Republican mapmakers did.
So, as black and Latino voters were packed into “majority-minority” seats, surrounding districts became whiter and more Republican. This was no accident, these memos suggest, but a conscious, decadeslong plan: “GOP attorneys and redistricting experts successfully fought three decades of court battles which culminated just this November when the GOP gained full political control of the entire South.”
As “more and more minority districts” were created, the memo maintains, “Democrats became less and less able to take advantage of strong Democratic minority areas to create districts which would elect non-minority Democrats to both state legislatures and Congress.” In other words, the GOP redistricting strategy helped turn the South red by making minorities the face of the Democratic Party throughout the region. White moderate Democrats were replaced by a small number of progressive minorities and a larger number of white conservative Republicans.Geo GOP Position12 2 145 pagesHOFELLER’S FILES INCLUDE candid updates on the state of the redistricting fight from 2011, when this decade’s mapmaking began, through 2014, as GOP-drawn maps in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, and elsewhere became enmeshed in litigation as unconstitutional partisan or racial gerrymanders. They capture the jubilation among Republican strategists after the 2010 GOP landslide, as they immediately recognized the power gained by drawing advantageous maps across swing states like Ohio, Michigan, and Florida, and celebrate the success of a California initiative establishing independent redistricting in a state ordinarily run by Democrats. They also capture the long sigh of relief after the 2012 Obama reelection, and how they, in private, credit GOP maps for allowing the party to maintain control of Congress and many state legislatures even with fewer overall votes.
The memos show that top GOP leaders recognized what they’d won in November 2010: When they gained control over state legislatures in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin, and many other states, they also gained control over redistricting. It was also a census year, meaning they’d be able to draw new districts in more than 75 percent of states gaining or losing a member of Congress due to population shifts in the decennial reapportionment. Democrats, one memo noted, would “take the hit.”
The boasting began early: “The Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania congressional maps offered strong victories for Republicans so far in the redistricting process,” Hofeller wrote in a 2011 end of year status update to Republican stakeholders. “Georgia’s one seat gain in reapportionment benefits the GOP as the legislature is fully controlled by Republicans. They used this opportunity to draw a new GOP congressional seat and tighten control of other districts.”
Indeed, REDMAP, a program the Republican State Leadership Committee funded with $30 million contributed from top GOP donors including Reynolds American, Altria, and Walmart, would prove even more effective that Republicans imagined. Even in 2018 — four election cycles into these maps, and long past the time when most gerrymanders remain effective — Republicans won towering majorities in Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin legislative chambers with fewer total Republican votes.
But what these memos and internal documents demonstrate is that this was a far-reaching strategy designed to make minority rule part of the American electoral landscape. A November 8, 2010, memo from then-RNC Chair Michael Steele to national committee members described the party’s electoral victories the week before as “not just dramatic, they were historic” and the “best showing by the Republican party in generations.”
More importantly, Steele observed, the 2010 victories set the party up for a decade of dominance. “Viewed in the context of redistricting, the Republican legislative gains are even more impressive,” he wrote.Steele also noted that California voters passed an initiative establishing an independent redistricting commission for congressional districts, “reducing the number of Congressional seats in which Democrats control the redistricting process nationally by more than a third.”Steele Post Election Memoradum to Committee Members6 pagesAs maps began to emerge across the country, many drawn by Hofeller and others under his tutelage, the gerrymandering mastermind understood just how advantageous these new congressional lines would be for his side.
Hofeller surveyed the nation in a memo drafted for the RNC, called “Redistricting Narrative State-by-State 2011.” He liked what he saw. Hofeller looked especially excited about North Carolina, where, the memo details, a congressional map he thought favored Democrats during the 2000s was “a problem we should be able to remedy. … Look for large GOP gains in congressional seats in State as well as out being able to shore up our legislative chambers majorities.” (The maps in North Carolina were struck down recently for partisan gerrymandering, in part based on files from Hofeller’s backups showing calculations by race.)Redistricting Narrative State by State 20116 pagesIn February 2012, more than eight months before a vote would be cast in any of these districts, he provided the Republican State Leadership Committee with a state-by-state roadmap. In Pennsylvania, he observed, “The GOP congressional remap was very aggressive, with the Democrats taking the hit on the lost seat and the GOP strengthening its margins in many of its present seats.” He had similar news from Ohio, Michigan, and Georgia, where, he wrote, the “GOP is fully in control and used the opportunity to draw a new GOP congressional seat and tighten control of other districts.”
In Florida, Hofeller noted the passage of a constitutional amendment with “vague language” forbidding any effort to draw districts that favor or disfavor either side, “which, of course, happens in any redistricting map.” And he smiled upon California, describing a 2001 compromise between Democrats and Republicans as an incumbent-friendly “‘sweetheart’ deal … entirely designed to eliminate competition.” The new maps, he reported, would lead to a “somewhat increased level of partisan competitiveness.”RSLC Article 2 14 128 pagesIn Texas, meanwhile, Hofeller and his firm warned that legislative Republicans were overreaching in their plans, and jeopardizing GOP gains, by diluting the vote of Latinos.Hofeller’s firm rang the alarm in early June 2011 after analyzing the legislature’s latest map. “There is no new Latino district in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — with all the Latino and African populations not contained in Congresswoman Johnson’s District (30-D) being fractured between GOP districts in the area,” he noted, in a memo marked confidential and addressed simply to “the RNC chief counsel.”“The Democrats will have no trouble pointing to the fact that the GOP is well aware of ALL the possibilities available to fix these deficiencies, with many of them already on our record,” Hofeller writes. “In addition, MALDEF [the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund] has already submitted its own maps into the record. Proving [discriminatory] intent will be no problem for them.” Indeed, the 2011 maps would be struck down for their discriminatory intent; slightly reworked maps were also the subject of contentious litigation, and ultimately upheld 5-4 by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018.
The Texas attorney general, Hofeller said, understood the risks the legislature could be taking but appeared unable to steer the chambers into a legal “safe harbor,” which would only end up helping the Democrats. “The other side,” he adds, “only needs one good mistake on our part to stall us and decrease our possible seat gains by forcing the remap into the Texas federal court.”TEXAS MEMO JUNE 9TH3 pagesAS EARLY AS OCTOBER 2011, Hofeller and Oldham recognized that while Republicans had the electoral edge and had achieved important victories in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and elsewhere, but Democrats appeared better funded to litigate maps and unwind the GOP success. In Colorado, Minnesota, Maryland, Nevada, and elsewhere, a memo called “Redistricting Hot Spots” that includes revisions by both partners warned that the GOP needed to invest in the legal fight or risk watching their edge evaporate. Illinois, he wrote in the 2011 wrapup, “is the only state in this round of redistricting where the Democrats have control and were able to inflict major damage on the GOP.”Hofeller was less sanguine about the Arizona redistricting commission, which he claimed Democrats were “successful in subverting” through the selection of an independent chairwoman who was “somewhat less than forthcoming about her ties to the Democrats.” Hofeller fretted that it could cost the GOP two seats in Congress and weaken its hold on the legislature, “all a result of Arizona’s GOP stakeholders being ‘asleep at the switch’ during part of the process selecting the members of the commission.”And in Nevada, they write, “The ability to gain control of the state senate, better numbers in the Assembly including sustaining vetos, and one and a half GOP congressional seat are at stake. This case is chronically underfunded on the GOP side.” Divided political control in Minnesota created a deadlock over maps which landed in the courts, and the memo warns that “newly-won legislative majorities are at stake and the Democrats have sent in their ‘A Team.’” A spreadsheet called “Redistricting Legal A” lays out a more than $9 million litigation budget for 2011, including fees for Hofeller and Oldham. It breaks down the needs state by state and offers a narrative that includes insights into GOP strategies.While Republicans have described the Democratic litigation this decade as “sue until blue,” this document shows that the GOP also considered litigation over what they saw as unfriendly maps in Kentucky and Illinois. In Illinois, “Section 2 litigation may be only hope of challenging Dem plans if they eliminate or reduce minority districts to strengthen white D seats,” the memo notes. In Georgia, “litigation would result in better state house map if deviations in D produced house map are as bad as 2000 cycle.”REDISTRICTING HOT SPOTS 10 21 1110 pagesRedistricting Legal A1 pageBy July 2013, Hofeller already had his eyes on the 2021 cycle and cautioned party leaders not to repeat mistakes of previous decades. In a memo addressed to to RNC counsel John Phillippe, Hofeller urged Republicans to begin collecting voter data and continue training mapmakers for the next round of redistricting.
A redistricting database, Hofeller reminded Phillippe, must be more detailed than the voter files candidates use to target potential supporters. “Redistricting data must be more comprehensive and accurate so that statistics derived from the data can hold up in court,” he wrote. “All the registration and election data must also be geographically matched to census geographic units — usually at the census block level. Once again, this is a more exacting standard than typically required for campaign use.”Redistricting Ops July Dec 20135 pagesThe December 2014 memo that linked GOP redistricting and the Voting Rights Act also envisioned the Democratic response and the racial gerrymandering litigation that is still playing out in federal courts.
Democrats, according to the memo, would litigate against these maps by arguing that minority candidates could win without representing 50 percent of a district’s population, and instead would argue that minority voters could win a congressional seat with as little as 30 or 40 percent of the population in many states:
Subsequently, Democrats have turned to state and federal courts in an attempt to claw back their lost districts by trying to convince courts that majority-minority districts are not required by the Voting Rights Act.  Democrats are seeking to establish new law which will mandate minority voters the right to maximize their votes, as DEMOCRATS, by substituting “influence”, “crossover” and “coalition” districts with minority percentages in the 30s and 40s for majority-minority districts in excess of 50% minority populations.
In Alabama, the Democrats are even attempting to convince the United States Supreme Court that minority districts should be deliberately underpopulated to allow Democrat-rich minority voters to be spread out into neighboring districts to aid in the election of more white Democrat legislators and members of Congress.He suggested that would be the next — and expensive — battleground.“We must win or hold our own in this redistricting legal battle or the maps drawn in the next cycle (2021) will be considerable less favorable to the GOP. Like it or not the 2010 redistricting process is far from complete, and the Democrats would gleefully celebrate our abandonment of the battle field just as Obama abandoned our military gains in Iraq.”“Redistricting is one of the most profitable and business like investments that the GOP can make. Even if it results in only the gain or preservation of one or two additional congressional seats for 10 years, it is more that worth this investment.”<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/files-expose-republican-strategists-massive-racial-gerrymandering-scheme-report/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/files-expose-republican-strategists-massive-racial-gerrymandering-scheme-report/</a><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/23/gerrymandering-gop-west-virginia-florida-alabama/">https://theintercept.com/2019/09/23/gerrymandering-gop-west-virginia-florida-alabama/</a>
np lnx maps docs
The REACH OF late Republican gerrymandering mastermind Thomas Hofeller may be longer than previously known, according to a review of thousands of documents and emails culled from his hard drives, obtained by The Intercept. While Hofeller was known for drawing maps to give Republicans an advantage and to limit the impact of voters of color in North Carolina, Texas, Missouri, and Virginia, the new documents reveal he also participated in the 2010 redistricting cycle in Alabama, Florida, and West Virginia.And, in those three states, it appears Hofeller and other Republican mapmakers experimented with using race as the primary factor in drawing districts in these states — a tactic ruled unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, which requires that people in similar circumstances be treated the same under the law. Among the trove of over 70,000 documents are draft maps with voter data broken down by race, spreadsheets that include the home addresses of members of Congress, travel plans, and legislation marked up by Hofeller himself.
Hofeller’s files reveal the sophisticated racial data that drove GOP mapmaking in several states, potentially opening new avenues for litigation.These new documents shed additional light on the coordinated national strategy behind maps that locked in a GOP advantage in Congress and in state legislatures nationwide. They reveal the sophisticated racial data that drove GOP mapmaking in several states, potentially opening new avenues for litigation challenging these plans as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders — including one Alabama case that will be heard in a U.S. district court in seven weeks — or as violations of state constitutional protections of free and fair elections. And they show that Hofeller intentionally failed to disclose his involvement in Florida redistricting in an affidavit filed with a court.
Taken together, these revelations provide a powerful wake-up call ahead of the next round of redistricting, which will begin in 2021, about how determined and effective strategists, armed with voluminous voter data, can tilt the political playing field for a decade.
AlabamaIn Alabama, meanwhile, files from backups of Hofeller’s hard drives reveal that he was involved in the 2010 redistricting cycle from the very beginning, long before the first district was drawn.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Alabama state legislative maps as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in 2015, finding that Republican legislators — in a signature Hofeller move — intentionally packed minority voters into as few districts as possible, creating a handful of overwhelmingly black districts and strengthening Republican prospects elsewhere. Hofeller’s involvement, however, was unknown.
Meanwhile, a potential racial gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts is still being litigated: A federal district court will hear arguments in Chestnut v. Jones beginning November 4.
Hofeller edited and advised on a document called the “Reapportionment Committee Guidelines for Legislative, State Board of Education, and Congressional Redistricting State of Alabama,” the legislature’s starting point for the 2011 redistricting.
According to Hofeller’s email, he met with and shared these edits with the chair of the Alabama state House redistricting commission, Rep. Jim McClendon. McClendon wrote and received these emails at his personal account and not an official legislative address. A document saved as “Guidelines with Tom’s further comments” includes his line-by-line edits and changes. Additional emails referencing these guidelines copied Hofeller’s partner, Dale Oldham, and another copied then-RNC general counsel and national committee member John Ryder.
A folder with the name “Alabama” includes a five-year estimate of citizen voting-age population, along with a document titled “Minority Districts in 2012 Alabama Legislative Redistricting.” Hofeller’s files also include a spreadsheet with information on Alabama citizenship estimates, broken down by race, as well as a link to census information saved in a Microsoft Word document with the name “Alabama 18 and older race link.”
The upcoming litigation, brought by eight Alabama voters, asserts that Republicans packed black voters into one congressional district, the 7th, and then effectively scattered the state’s remaining black voters in such small concentrations as to dilute their voting power. Hofeller’s involvement with McClendon, the racial data he collected — and his history of drawing maps in Virginia and North Carolina later found to be racial gerrymanders with precisely this pattern — could be relevant to ongoing questions and litigation about racially motivated gerrymandering.Guidelines With Tom's Further Comments11 pagesThe relevant documents are available here:
Guidelines with Tom’s further commentsAlabama 18 and Older Race LinkMeet442011AGInside Hofeller’s folder labeled “Alabama”:
Minority Districts in 2012 Alabama Legislative RedistrictingAL STATE CVAP 5-YEAR ESTIMATES 2010-12ACS Proportions 2010-2012Alabama House Districts (104)
FloridaIn Florida, the documents raise questions about whether Hofeller intentionally failed to disclose his involvement with GOP redistricting operatives in a 2013 affidavit in which he attested he had no contact with GOP legislators or staff who drew that state’s maps.
Hofeller died in August 2018. But his willingness to avoid disclosing highly relevant information in this affidavit could affect the discovery process in other states where litigation is still pending, and where Hofeller may have been involved. And it creates the opportunity for legal teams in previous cases to petition courts to reopen discovery if the full extent of Hofeller’s participation was discoverable but not revealed.
That litigation, brought by the state’s League of Women Voters, alleged that Republican strategists drew partisan maps behind closed doors, then smuggled them into the public process, in violation of two state constitutional amendments mandating nonpartisan redistricting.
Hofeller’s affidavit, dated March 8, 2013, swears that, “To the best of my recollection, I have not been in contact, or exchanged data or maps, with any Florida legislators or members of their staffs, concerning Florida redistricting since the release of the Census Bureau’s 2010 Decennial Redistricting File in early 2011.”According to an email chain between Hofeller and two top Florida GOP strategists, Hofeller flew to Tallahassee for meetings on October 10 and 11, 2011. The emails include Hofeller and Sunshine State operatives Frank Terraferma and Rich Heffley, and were sent to Hofeller at an address named “Tom Hofeller – redistricting.” Terraferma sent this email from his official Republican Party of Florida account, as the three strategists finalized travel details. Hofeller may not have been communicating directly with legislators, but he was meeting with the party officials who were actually drawing the maps and helping funnel them into the legislative process.
Hofeller may not have been communicating directly with legislators, but he was meeting with the party officials who were actually drawing the maps.Evidence produced during the Florida trial showed that, in the same month, the two Republican consultants traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with veteran GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsberg, and days later, shared nearly completed state Senate maps. And during the last week of October, the consultants finalized the congressional maps, and then completed work on the state Senate maps by mid-November. Emails that came to light during the trial showed the operatives’ determination to use racial data to pack as many minority voters as they could into as few districts as possible.
And, in a newly surfaced email in May 2012, Terraferma sent Heffley, Hofeller, and others an email saying, “We got pre-cleared today BTW,” and linking to a Miami Herald article approving pre-clearance of redistricting maps. At the time, pre-clearance was required under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, where there was a history of voter discrimination. “This is very good news,” Hofeller wrote, forwarding the message on to other redistricting specialists at the RNC.
Hofeller’s files, meanwhile, include mapping software programmed with the addresses of Florida incumbents — as well as a spreadsheet from July 2011 named “Florida Minority Senate Data.” While the rows are not labeled, they appear to show minority voting strength across a dozen state Senate districts.
The final maps adopted by the legislature included several districts identical to ones drawn by Terraferma (that surfaced during the Florida trial), but submitted under the name of a former Republican Party intern, who later denied any knowledge of the maps. (Terraferma and Heffley did not respond to a request for comment but during testimony asserted they drew these maps as a “hobby.”) In 2014, a Florida circuit judge invalidated many of these districts, ruling that overwhelming circumstantial evidence demonstrated that GOP operatives had conducted a secret, shadow redistricting process in violation of the state constitution.

FL Hofeller Affidavit 3 8 2013 Redacted4 pagesThe relevant documents are available here:
FL Hofeller Affidavit 3 8 2013FLORIDA MINORITY SENATE DATAFLORIDA INCUMBENTS
West VirginiaHofeller also possessed maps of the Charleston, West Virginia, metro area color-coded by race. One map shows the percentage of voting-age black citizens block by block. There has never been any previous indication that Hofeller was involved in drawing West Virginia maps.
“This would be beyond the pale,” said Rick Martin, president of the NAACP’s Charleston branch. “This is all a strategy designed to weaken and in many instances negate the vote of African Americans and also poor people.”WV Charleston Area1 pageThe relevant documents are available here:
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Secret files reveal how North Carolina GOP operative helped systematically stopped black people and students from voting
Written by Igor Derysh / Salon September 11, 2019Secret files found on a longtime Republican operative’s computer after his death revealed that he compiled racial data to help his party draw new political maps and impose voter ID laws.
Thomas Hofeller, who is considered the master of modern gerrymandering, left behind at least 70,000 files that were found by his estranged daughter after his death in August 2018. Some of those files have already been used to successfully challenge North Carolina’s gerrymander and the Trump administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the census, which Hofeller argued would help “Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.”
More files, obtained by former Salon editor David Daley at The New Yorker, show that Hofeller and his race research played a key role in Republican gerrymandering efforts in North Carolina and other states, as well as other efforts intended to make it harder for African-Americans and college students to vote.
Though North Carolina Republicans have argued that their maps discriminate based on partisanship and not race, Hofeller’s files show that he compiled maps with overlays of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that racial data was a key part of the gerrymander, which is at the center of a years-long legal battle.
The files contradict claims Republicans have long used to defend their maps in court. Republicans had long denied that a congressional-district line that cuts right down the middle of the largest historically black college in the United States, North Carolina A&T State University, was intentionally drawn to dilute the black vote, even though it effectively guaranteed two Republican districts. But Hofeller’s files show that the effort clearly focused on the race of students.
Hofeller created “giant databases that detailed the racial makeup, voting patterns, and residence halls of more than a thousand North Carolina A&T students,” Daley reported. “He also collected similar data that tracked the race, voting patterns, and addresses of tens of thousands of other North Carolina college students. Some spreadsheets have more than fifty different fields with precise racial, gender, and geographic details on thousands of college voters.”
A spreadsheet found on Hofeller’s computer shows that the operative sorted students by the residence halls they lived in along with racial data and voting status information.
Hofeller also had dozens of “intensely detailed studies” of the racial makeup of North Carolina college students that was cross-referenced with driver’s license files to determine whether these students likely had a proper ID to vote, according to the report.
Emails on his computer also show that Hofeller billed North Carolina Republicans tens of thousands of dollars for his work. Federal Election Commission filings also show that the national Republican Party paid Hofeller more than $2 million for his work.
Other files show that Hofeller, a key player in the Trump administration’s push to add a citizenship question to the census, compiled data on the citizen voting-age population in North Carolina, Texas, Arizona and other states going back to 2011. In memos, Hofeller argued that drawing maps based on the number of citizens rather than the population would “clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and help “non-Hispanic whites.”
Hofeller also submitted memos to the Trump administration urging them to justify the census question with the dubious argument that it was necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act. The New Yorker report shows that he also worked for a Massachusetts Republican who wanted to use the Voting Rights Act to turn Boston into a single district, so Republicans could contend for suburban Massachusetts congressional seats. Though Hofeller’s efforts were unsuccessful in Massachusetts, the files show he also compiled data on states like Virginia, Mississippi and Alabama.
Emails found on Hofeller’s computer also show that he advised top Republicans in Florida on gerrymandering effort, despite a state constitutional amendment that bars partisan gerrymandering. Florida officials have denied that Hofeller played any official role in the effort but a state judge later ruled that the Republicans “conducted a stealth redistricting operation that snuck partisan maps into the public process and made a ‘mockery’ of the state’s constitutional amendments,” The New Yorker reported.
The files show that Hofeller also traveled around the country to educate Republicans about redistricting and urged them to push for prison gerrymandering, which allows inmates to be counted as residents of the area where the prison is located, often helping Republican lawmakers.
Hofeller’s emails also show that he grew concerned that his maps would be undone by the anti-Trump wave that followed his election.
“Meanwhile the GOP continues to bury its collective heads in the sand or in other higher places. Trump is only a product to this stupidity,” he wrote to a Republican consultant in 2016. “Do not worry about us in North Carolina in terms of redistricting. Even in the coming political bloodbath we should still maintain majority control of the General Assembly. The Governor cannot veto a redistricting map, so the Democrats hope is that the Obamista judiciary will come to their rescue.”
Last week, a North Carolina court struck down the state’s legislative maps that Hofeller helped create, ruling that they violated the Constitution. The new map had been drawn after the Supreme Court struck down North Carolina’s previous map as a racial gerrymander.
The court ruled that Hofeller’s maps “deliberately minimized the effectiveness of the votes of citizens with whom they disagree,” arguing that the map amounted to “viewpoint discrimination” against Democrats and an effort to “retaliate against voters” for voting for Democrats.
The court said that the files on Hofeller’s computer showed evidence of “predominant focus on maximizing Republican partisan advantage in creating the 2017 Plans.”
“The evidence establishes that Dr. Hofeller drew the 2017 Plans very precisely to create as many ‘safe’ Republican districts as possible, so that Republicans would maintain their supermajorities, or at least majorities even in a strong election year for Democrats,” the court said. “Hofeller drew the maps with an intent to preserve Republicans’ control of the House and Senate.”
The court gave state lawmakers two weeks to draw nonpartisan maps. Republicans have sued to try to get a court to seal or destroy the files, arguing that they should remain confidential because they were obtained from his daughter and not from him.
The files could be a treasure trove for voting rights groups as they seek to challenge years of Republican efforts to gerrymander districts in order to gain an unfair advantage, as well as to impose voter ID laws to make it harder for certain populations to vote.
“We’ve already seen that these files have been instrumental in exposing lies around the effort to add a citizenship question to the census and around subverting a court’s order to redraw gerrymandered lines,” Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director of Common Cause, told The New York Times. “The Hofeller files are important because they’re the only thing that will allow the American people to know the truth behind the efforts to rig redistricting and elections.”
The files show only a fraction of the work Hofeller did, which stretches back to the 1980s. Files obtained by The New Yorker show that Hofeller continued to work to help Republicans even after he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
“I still have time to bedevil the Democrats with more redistricting plans before I exit,” he wrote to a friend. “Look my name up on the Internet and you can follow the damage.”REDMAPNorth CarolinaRSLC spent heavily in North Carolina state elections in the 2010 cycle through a non-profit, Real Jobs for NC, that attacked Democratic candidates, likely contributing to the Republican party taking control of North Carolina's Assembly for the first time in a hundred years.<a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Republican_State_Leadership_Committee#cite_note-how_dark_money-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a>RSLC's influence over the redistricting process was not limited to helping elect Republicans to the Assembly. As ProPublica notes, the process of creating new district maps is complex, time-consuming, and expensive. Tax filings show that RSLC's nonprofit arm, the State Government Leadership Foundation, "paid $166,000 to hire the GOP's pre-eminent redistricting experts," including Tom Hofeller, who has previously been the redistricting director for the Republican National Committee. Hofeller traveled to Raleigh 10 times in 2011.<a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Republican_State_Leadership_Committee#cite_note-how_dark_money-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Republican_State_Leadership_Committee#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[7]</a> Communications from RSLC and its foundation to state legislators reveal the organization offering its "assistance" and claiming to have influence maps in other states:<dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><dd style="margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">"Our team would be happy to assist in drawing proposed maps, interpreting data, or providing advice," wrote Chris Jankowski, the head of both the RSLC and State Government Leadership Foundation, in a letter of introduction to North Carolina legislators...</dd></dl><dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><dd style="margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">"We are engaged in a number of states and believe we are playing a meaningful role in helping draw fair and legal lines that will allow us to run competitive elections in 2012 and in future cycles," Jankowski added.</dd></dl><dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><dd style="margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">The same letter emphasized that the Republican redistricting push was being funded through its dark money nonprofit: "The entirety of this effort will be paid for using non-federal dollars through our 501c(4) organization."<a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Republican_State_Leadership_Committee#cite_note-how_dark_money-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a></dd></dl>ProPublica's investigation revealed "two parallel redistricting processes" in the state: a series of public meetings that purported to gather input on districts, and the secret process undertaken by Hofeller's team. "Hofeller did not attend or read transcripts of any of the public meetings, according to his deposition" in a North Carolina court case.<a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Republican_State_Leadership_Committee#cite_note-how_dark_money-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a> The mapmaking process also involved a mysterious nonprofit called Fair and Legal Redistricting for North Carolina, and consultation from influential right-wing donor <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Art_Pope" title="Art Pope" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Art Pope</a>.<a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Republican_State_Leadership_Committee#cite_note-how_dark_money-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a>Two of the new North Carolina districts were ruled to be unconstitutional racial gerrymanders in February 2016. (See <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Republican_State_Leadership_Committee#North_Carolina_Voting_Districts_RSLC_Helped_Create_Ruled_Unconstitutional" title="Republican State Leadership Committee" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">below</a>.)Wisconsin