Final arguments wrapped up Friday afternoon in Harris (et. al.) v Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. Commission Chair Colleen Mathis watched as the attorneys made their final presentation of closing arguments and answered questions posed by the Judges Wake, Silver, and Clifton.
The panel of three federal judges heard compelling testimony from IRC commissioners and expert witnesses on the matter of commissioner collusion and vote dilution. They listened while evidence was presented that demonstrated deliberate efforts to create an advantage to Democrat Party candidates.
Attorney Steve Muratore, of the Arizona Egalitarian, wrote of Friday’s proceedings, “the judges noted that they consider the partisan advantage alleged by plaintiffs to be real, secondary and possibly incidental even if not unlawfully intentional. So what they will ultimately say is whether the provisions Arizona voters codified into the state constitution with the passage of Prop 106 in 2000 are a lawful state interest.”
On Thursday, IRC Chairwoman, Colleen Mathis, admitted to collusion by calling the commissioners and telling them that she wanted consensus on selecting a mapping firm. IRC attorneys argue that the commissioners were only following bad advice.
Mathis claimed that the state procurement office director, Jean Clark, gave her “clear guidelines” on procurements. Mathis claimed that Clark advised her that bids could only be awarded after a unanimous vote by the Commission. As a result, Mathis asserted that unanimous votes required consensus, which required conversations outside of meetings with other commissioners.
Mathis’s testimony served to make Commissioner Jose Herrera’s earlier testimony that he “had to” give Strategic Telemetry a perfect score, per discussions among commissioners.
Mathis blamed Clark for the now infamous vote sheet shredding incident. Mathis claimed that when the commission met to discuss their first round of scores for the mapping consultant, she was told by Clark’s office that those sheets were not part of the official procurement file, and could be disposed of. Mathis claimed that she offered to commissioners the option to put their first round of scores in a pile. She then instructed Bladine put them in a bin to be shredded.
Plaintiffs argued that the destruction of the sheets was a direction violation of the state’s public records law.
Mathis also blamed Clark for Mathis’s refusal to allow the republican commissioners to have a lawyer and the democrat commissioners to have their own. Instead she nominated Osborne Maledon and Ballard Spahr, and with Mathis joining the democrats scoring that firm conveniently received the highest scores when all commissioners’ scores were aggregated.
Mathis told the Court, “We voted in a three-two decision on the attorneys, so they weren’t very pleased with that result,” meaning Clark.
The two Republican commissioners protested, saying they should be allowed to select their attorney, but Mathis refused saying she was just trying to follow Clark’s instructions.
IRC executive director Ray Bladine, who sat with Mathis during the Friday hearing, backed up Mathis’ testimony.
Attorneys for the IRC defendants repeatedly advised the panel that the commissioners were simply following poor legal advice. Plaintiffs’ attorney repeatedly advised the panel that simply following poor legal advice is not a defense for unethical or illegal behavior.
In his closing arguments, plaintiff’s attorney Cantelme said that Commissioner Rick Stertz said that he “knew they were packing districts, but the lawyer told them it was okay so he went along with it.
Cantelme also advised the judges that the IRC did not dispute the testimony of Dr. Thomas Hofeller. Hofeller testified on Wednesday that the “high number of deviations from neutral criteria for creating districts and the magnitude of the deviations lead to only one logical conclusion: that the IRC intentionally gerrymandered the political maps.”
Hofeller testified that the Commission intentionally diluted the Hispanic vote. Hofeller said that this was achieved by placing Latino voters into non-Latino heavily Democrat district, which then strengthened the Democrat presence in those districts.
The court now must determine whether the IRC complied with the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. Closing briefs are due on April 9.
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