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beholden to the North Carolina Supreme Court's explicit ruling in Stephenson v. Bartlett that VRA districts must be drawn first, the spirit of Stephenson's VRA prioritization should permeate the Board's districting decisions. To the extent that the Board is redrawing these districts with a partisan intent, the Board cannot avoid the racial issues described above by relying on purportedly partisan justifications for the changes in Plan F, especially where partisan manipulation or partisan gerrymandering can mask the underlying racially discriminatory intent in a proposed district map. It has been reported that members of the Board tried to draw maps that gave a partisan advantage on the Board, but you advised them not to in a September 13, 2021 memo.' In North Carolina, race and political affiliation are often correlated,but as the court in Common Cause v. Lewis stated, "[e]lections are not free when partisan actors have tainted future elections by specifically and systematically designing the contours of the election districts for partisan purposes and a desire to preserve power."2019 N.C. Super. LEXIS 56, *344(September 3,2019).Thus,to the extent that the Board seeks to consolidate power within one party by undermining the power of the Black vote and their candidate of choice in District 1,the Board will likely run afoul of North Carolina's Free Election Clause. See N.C. Const. Art. I, § 10. Non-Transparent Process in Proposing Plan F The Board has developed Plan F behind closed doors in a process that lacked the transparency necessary to instill public confidence in the redistricting process and legitimacy of the district map if Plan F is adopted. Plan F was never submitted for public comment, and it was only proposed after a public hearing on two other maps(Plans A and E).5 It is clear that in proposing Plan F,the Board was not vigilant in protecting Black voters in Lee County. Plan F makes significant changes to District 1 and has done so with no transparency in how the map was drawn, including whether partisan data was utilized. The Board also did not publicly release the voting age population statistics that are necessary to determine how substantially the voting power of the Black community will be diminished under Plan F. Because there has been no public hearing on Plan F,there is no way to interrogate the Board members about Plan F and thus, there are limited ways to hold the Board accountable before it votes on the adoption of Plan F. The residents of Lee County should choose their representatives in a fair and equitable way. For too long, elected officials in North Carolina have been choosing who they want to represent,whether on partisan or racial grounds.In creating a separate map that has not been vetted by the public,the Board has allowed transparency to take a back seat and the Board is now seeking to choose the voters it wants to represent,flipping our democratic process on its head.Plan F harms Black voters by significantly diluting their voting power within District 1. Local races are decided a Attorney Parrish Memo to Board of County Commissioners,available at https://rantnc.com/wp- content/uploads/2021/09/Memorandum-9.13.21.2-converted.pdf(last visited October 17,2021).See also Smith Seeks `Political Breakdown"of Redistricting Proposals(September 17,2012), https://rantnc.com/2021/09/17/smith-seeks-political-breakdown-of-redistricting-proposals/ 5 Richard Sullins,Commissioners Propose,Approve Last Minute Redistricting Proposal (October 6,2021), (https://rantnc.com/2021/10/06/commissionerspropose-approve-last-minute-redistricting-proposal/. ' , 3 ``