SUBMITTED RELEASE FROM NEVADA REPUBLICAN SENATE CAUCUS
With clear disregard for the law, Democrats in the Nevada Legislature on Saturday passed out of committee a redistricting plan that would deny Nevada’s Hispanic community the chance to elect its own candidate to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Instead of giving Hispanics a district in which they constitute a majority and are able to elect their own candidates, the Democrat Congressional plan divides Hispanics into four districts where the majority of the population is white. In fact, white voters outnumber Hispanic voters more than 2 to 1 in every single Congressional district proposed by Democrats.
The reason is simple: by splitting up the Hispanic community, Democrats are able to craft a plan that will guarantee them a decade of electoral dominance in three of Nevada’s four Congressional districts.
Nevadans have elected two Republicans and one Democrat to represent them in Congress, yet the Democrats have put forward a partisan plan that favors them 3 to 1. They have even gone so far as to draw Nevada’s only returning U.S. Representative, Joe Heck, a Republican, into a Democrat district.
“The only way Democrats can draw a map that is this partisan is by breaking the law. They have rejected the will of Nevada’s voters, they’ve clearly put their partisan interests ahead of what is morally right for the Hispanic community and they’ve violated Federal law in the process,” said Senator Barbara Cegavske, ranking member on the Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is the federal law that prevents politicians from using the redistricting process to subvert minority groups and stop them from electing the candidates of their choice. In other words, the law prohibits what the Democrats have tried to do: dilute minority votes for partisan gain.
