RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – Republicans in the legislature asked a panel of judges in Wake County on Monday to disqualify two assistants hired to help advise in the gerrymandering case, as the judges involved are weighing whether to approve the revised electoral district maps.
The assistants, Sam Wang and Tyler Jarvis, are among four who were appointed by the three Special Masters in the case. Those Special Masters have been tasked with helping the judges assess the altered maps and potentially help the court in choosing maps different from what the General Assembly submitted last week.
In the filing, Republicans include emails Wang and Jarvis sent in the last few days to some of the experts who had been hired by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Plaintiffs’ attorneys disclosed that information.
The Special Masters are not supposed to have communication with parties involved in the case.
“The communications disclosed by the Harper plaintiffs’ counsel already show that the process is tainted and that the Special Master’s assistants intend to rely on plaintiffs’ experts for privately conveyed information as opposed to public filings that are available to the parties and the public,” writes attorney Phil Strach, who is representing Republicans in the legislature in the case.
Strach requested: the pair be removed from the case, requiring any work product they produced to be destroyed, prohibiting the Special Masters from considering information or materials the two obtained; and that they produce any other communication that may exist with third parties.
Wang and Jarvis have not replied to requests for comment.
Wang is a professor at Princeton University and director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which has been grading various redistricting maps states have produced based on criteria such as competitiveness. The project gave the maps Republicans originally produced in the fall a grade of F. The state Supreme Court later threw them out as unconstitutionally gerrymandered.
Jarvis is a math professor at Brigham Young University.
Among the emails included in the court filing was an exchange between Wang and Dr. Jonathan Mattingly, a professor at Duke University and an expert who the plaintiffs called to testify at the trial over the old maps in January.
Mattingly responded to a request Wang made for some of the data he relied on. Mattingly later followed up saying the court order “forbids” him from communicating with anyone working with the Special Masters.
The trial court in Wake County has until noon Wednesday to issue a ruling on the maps, which will play a key role in helping determine how likely it is each party will win the state’s 14 U.S. House seats and win control of the General Assembly.
A decision by the lower court could still be appealed to the state Supreme Court.