Editorial: It’s time for NC to help ditch the Electoral College, Resolution to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene signed by dozens of House Democrats, Weekend humor from Celia Rivenbark: Time for QAnon to get the, ahem, “royal” treatment, CDC says it’s OK for students to sit three feet apart in classrooms, Tweets from https://twitter.com/NCPolicyWatch/lists/nc-policy-watch-updates. [1] He once said, "Redistricting is like an election in reverse. [13], Hofeller's daughter, Stephanie, several weeks after announcing her intentions on Twitter,[14] published copies of her father's files on January 5, 2020.[15]. The formula "%18_ap_blk" shows the number of African American citizens of voting age in each district. Nevertheless, the plan to distribute the files was successful. After Lizon mailed the documents to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, they sent them immediately to a third-party vendor for processing, according to court documents. It also requested information from Hofeller about what dates North Carolina maps were created and or modified, in addition to other electronically stored data. But after he died last summer, his estranged daughter discovered hard drives in her father’s home that revealed something else: Mr. Hofeller had played a crucial role in the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. It's a great event. The woman, Stephanie Hofeller, 49, discovered four external hard drives and 18 thumb drives last year after her father, a well-known GOP gerrymandering expert, Thomas Hofeller, died. “What we know from redistricting cases in general, people do say a lot of things in email that is quite revealing,” he said. The 2015 Hofeller study was found on a hard drive after his death and released by his estranged daughter. "[5] On Sept. 3, 2019, in the case of Common Cause v. Lewis, a North Carolina court struck down the state's legislative maps as a partisan gerrymander in violation of the state constitution. Click here to learn more. ... few people knew Thomas Hofeller’s name. Stephanie told me that she’s still haunted by the memory of her father. “Third, with respect to the documents that were identified by the keyword search, we will provide Ms. Lizon with the option of having them returned to her,” Theodore states in the email proposal. On July 5, 2019, Judge George J. Hazel of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, which is part of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, approved the commencement of discovery into the Hofeller files. More than a year after his death, a cache of computer files saved on the hard drives of Thomas Hofeller, a prominent Republican redistricting strategist, Deceased GOP Strategist's Daughter Makes Files Public That Republicans Wanted Sealed | KLCC The claims are the latest fallout from an extraordinary cache of documents discovered by the daughter of Thomas Hofeller, the architect of GOP gerrymandering efforts, after his August death. GOP strategist Thomas Hofeller, who died in 2018 at the age of 75, was a mastermind of gerrymandering. Hofeller died last summer. They had a daughter, Stephanie. Hofeller is responsible for drawing the gerrymandered North Carolina maps in 2011 and redrawing them in 2017 after top Republicans re-hired him. Their love story is where the tale of complicated family dynamics really begins. In redistricting, the politicians get to pick the voters. It asks for fair maps for the 2020 elections next year. After his death, Hofeller's daughter made available computer hard drives that had been in her father's possession. “No matter how the U.S. Supreme Court resolves longstanding questions about partisan gerrymandering under the federal constitution, North Carolina’s Constitution independently secures the rights of North Carolina citizens,” the initial lawsuit filing states. The two rationales for not naming her, provided in edit descriptions, are "We don't include the names of children unless they are also notable" and "we don't name the children of subjects unless the children are separately notable". "There’s no paper trail against which we can evaluate your description of the instructions?" [1] According to The New York Times, Hofeller's views on skewed maps appeared to be motivated by a desire to strengthen Republican power; during the 1980s, Hofeller opposed Democratic maps that were skewed in favor of Democrats, but later became an advocate for similar maps skewed to favor Republicans. There are a number of further emails between all of the parties, but the plaintiffs ultimately filed a motion for clarification pursuant to Rule 45, which means they asked the court to decide whether sensitive information should be filtered out before everything is disseminated. “We are capable of protecting the confidentiality of the materials. What’s not clear from court documents is how much information is contained in the electronic data Lizon turned over or what type of information is now in the plaintiffs’ possession. The New Yorker was the first media outlet to obtain at least seventy thousand files and several years of emails that were saved by Hofeller. The files they contained proved decisive in court cases concerning contested electoral districts in North Carolina and the Trump administration’s failed plan to add a citizenship question to the U.S. Census. She happened to find her father's obituary in 2018. It is considering two North Carolina sibling cases involving Republican partisan gerrymandering and a Maryland case involving a Democratic gerrymander. But after he … Hofeller, who died in August of last year, helped propel Republican Party mapmaking in North Carolina, but also in state legislatures across the nation and the U.S. House of Representatives. Hofeller had conducted a study in 2015 which found that adding such a question would make it possible to draw district boundaries that "would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites." Hofeller died in 2018 in his Raleigh, North Carolina home at the age of 75. When Thomas Hofeller died in August 2018, his daughter hadn't spoken to him in four years. "There were no instructions given to you in writing?" ... his daughter found thousands of his documents. Mr. Hofeller was survived by a daughter, Stephanie Hofeller, from whom he had been estranged since 2014. There has long been speculation that the 2017 maps were finalized before the public redistricting process. How Tom Hofeller shifted the balance of power by taking gerrymandering to the extreme. North Carolina lawmakers also have several redistricting reform bills before them during the current legislative session (many with bipartisan support): five bills that focus solely on redistricting and two broader measures to “fix democracy.” None have been heard in a committee yet. Hofeller died in 2018 in his Raleigh, North Carolina home at the age of 75. He cited an email example in Michigan that talked about cramming “Dem garbage” into districts and another in Texas that discussed making districts look Latino as possible but still having them perform for Republicans. After Thomas Hofeller, a Republican gerrymandering strategist, died in 2018, his estranged anarchist daughter found nearly a dozen of his USB and hard drives. Usually the voters get to pick the politicians. [7], After his death, Hofeller's daughter, Stephanie Hofeller, made available computer hard drives that had been in her father's possession. [11], In November 2019, a court ruled that Hofeller's files were no longer considered confidential as they address political activities in other states, affecting redistricting and the national census, and could be used in other suspected cases of gerrymandering. Thomas Brooks Hofeller (April 14, 1943 – August 16, 2018)[1] was a Republican political strategist primarily known for his involvement in gerrymandering electoral district maps favorable for Republicans. [2] The federal government, in response, said that the Hofeller study "played no role in the department's December 2017 request" for a citizenship question on the Census. 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