Scheming to help GOP win election

A Republican gerrymandering guru urged the Trump administration to include a citizenship question on next year’s census, contending its addition would create a clear election year advantage for the GOP, according to court documents.

Longtime redistricting specialist Thomas Hofeller “played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question … to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, ‘Republicans and NonHispanic Whites,’” read a four-page letter from lawyers opposing the measure.

The missive to Manhattan Federal Judge Jesse Furman charged that Department of Justice official John Gore and Trump transition team adviser Mark Neuman both “concealed Dr. Hofeller’s role in crafting the October 2017 draft letter and the (Voting Rights Act) enforcement rationale it advances.

“Based on this new evidence, it appears that both Neuman and Gore falsely testified about the genesis of DOJ’s request (for the citizenship question) in ways that obscured the pretextual character of the request.”

The administration claimed the citizenship query was designed to enforce the Voting Rights Act and maximize representation for the Latino population. But Hofeller, commissioned by a conservative website in 2015 to examine redistricting, actually determined the citizenship question “would clearly be a disadvantage for the Democrats,” the letter alleged.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the issue by the end of June.

The New York Times reported that Hofeller’s estranged daughter Stephanie came across her father’s writings on the topic among some 75,000 files stored on four external hard drives and 18 thumb drives used to back up information on his laptop. She discovered the documents after his death last August.