News and Observer: “a top Republican redistricting leader said on the witness stand that he had used secret maps, drawn by someone else, to guide his work.”
Yesterday, Republican Rules Chairman Rep. Destin Hall was caught lying and cheating after admitting to using “secret maps” to draw new districts, according to reporting from WRAL.
Catch up:
- November 2021: Democratic Rep. Marcia Morey asked Hall what he was doing when he left the public map-making room during the drawing process and if there were “any materials that you referred to or consulted with to make changes when you came back into the room to keep drawing the maps?” Hall responded: “No.”
- January 2022: Hall admits that he and key staffers would leave the room where audio and video was being live-streamed for “strategy sessions” where he would “study these concept maps in the private room, and then rely on them to draw district lines.”
What do these secret maps that contributed to the future of our state contain? According to Hall they have been “lost and no longer exist.”
In Rep. Hall’s own words, “the map you draw has got to be the one that you do in here [the live-streamed room] and nowhere else and that it’s up to the members and their integrity.” Now, despite Republican leaders’ many promises (here, here, here, etc.) that they are taking “unprecedented” steps to facilitate the “most transparent redistricting process in state history,” they have once again lied and cheated in attempts to stack the deck in their favor. Integrity.
Read more:
WRAL: Secret maps, now gone, were used to draw parts of NC election map
News and Observer: Top GOP lawmaker relied on secret maps, later destroyed, NC gerrymandering trial reveals
###