Transcripts For CSPAN2 Nick Seabrook One Person One Vote 202

Anybody else. We only have we have only minutes so we can off a little early. Thank you so very much. Coming. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for reading and and for your obvious support for these families. Nick seabrook book wrote this book. One person, one vote, which is a history of and im going to get this right, gary meandering is the first time ive ever said that and gotten it right hard. G everybody just so you know, nicks going to teach us much than just how to pronounce the word he is looked into something that affects us all in so many more ways than we ever thought possible. It is something that has affected us for and hundreds of years and think that all of us standing are sitting in this room, have expressly here in wisconsin over the past couple of years. These are the types of events that make me just like so proud to be able to go a microphone over to somebody and im going to hand it over to nick seabrook. Ladies and gentlemen. Well, thank you, everybody. The warm wisconsin welcome this is actually my first time. Both madison and in the state of wisconsin. And given that the state is famous for two of my favorite things in the world beer and cheese. I have a that im going to enjoy my time here the beer and cheese after the speaking engagements its very important to get those in the correct order. Unfortunately, however, wisconsin is also famous, or perhaps i should say, infamous for Something Else and. That is the topic of. My new book, one person one vote a surprising history of gerrymandering or to give it its original all historical pronunciation gerrymandering in america whenever i talk about the topic of gerrymandering, one of the most frequent questions that i get asked by and interviewers is which the most gerrymandered state in, america and today, for the first time i can say while standing in that state for the last 12 or 12 years or so the the answer to that question has been the state of wisconsin, my home state, florida certainly gets an honorable particularly under the recent leadership of ron desantis. You can also point to of blue states weve seen particularly bad gerrymandering in recent years, states like new york and illinois are examples of something that, i think is a broad, important theme. The book, which is that gerrymandering, the manipulation often of election districts, political gain is a republican problem or a democratic problem. Its an american problem, and its quintessentially american. Its a problem that. Democracys the world over. Have experienced and for the most part have solved. And so there are two things that i want to highlight from the book in my talk today. The first of those is the gerrymanders origin story. And i think for those of you who may believe that you know where gerrymandering comes from, if you read the book and hopefully i explain this today as well, i think youll most likely find that you are wrong, that the origins, gerrymandering are, both older and more interesting than the legend that gets generally told in most of the history books. The second thing that i want to talk about is the continuing effects that gerrymandering has on our elections in. States like wisconsin, in states like florida and all over the nation. And the major problem with gerrymandering as see it. And i was speaking with a gentleman on this theme prior to my talk tonight. The fundament and most basic functioning of a Representative Democracy depends on at least a level of electoral responsiveness and by electoral responsiveness. What mean is that the people at the very least need to the option when they are unhappy with the things their representatives in government are doing to throw the bums and replace them with a set of representatives who presume a bully will do Something Different and the major harm of gerrymandering is that severs that link between representatives and the communities whose interests they supposed to be fulfilling in government. It undermines the basic responsiveness of the electoral system in a way that prevents voters, from Holding Politicians Accountable for the things that they do while they are in office. And you probably need me to tell you that when politics dont have to worry about when the party that holds the majority doesnt have to worry about enacting popular policies when they know that their seats are safe, when they know that their majority is safe, they dont have to keep their fingers on the pulse of public opinion. They are free to use their power and authority to pursue whatever selfinterested or partizan that they would like to do, but are often constrained from doing because those will be unpopular with the electorate. And so in addition to the history of gerrymandering, this is also a book about the present of gerrymandering and for reasons that i talk about, the book, my goal in writing this was to kind of sound the alarm bells to send out a warning to the American People that their democracy is not safe. And this is the kind of warning that a lot of are sending out right now for a variety of different reasons. But i gerrymandering at its core is much more threatening to democratic than any of the other problems that are routinely and commonly identified in our system. I want to begin with the origin story of gerrymandering. Every good villain needs an origin story and preferably that mythology should be shrouded in mystery. And when i began researching this book, i. Thought that i knew quite a bit about the history of gerrymandering, but it turned out that there was a much richer and history going back just to the founding era. And the framers, the constitution, but going back even before then to the colonial period and even further into british antiquity. And so i want to touch a little bit to begin with on that origin and where it was that gerrymandering came from. On wednesday i was participating in an event at the Sandra Day Oconnor institute for american democracy in phenix and i had the the pleasure to kind of lavish praise on the state of arizona for being among the best in the nation and for how they conduct reading acting and unfortunately as i have already hinted at, i do not have good news on that front tonight about the state of wisconsin nor the news particularly good about my home state of florida either. But part of the issue with gerrymandering is while it has always been whether in American History the politicians today have a fundamentally different set tools by which they manipulate the outcomes. Our elections tools were simply not available. Even 25, 30 years ago. And the effects of that, as ill talk about a little bit later, can be seen in the results of elections in states like wisconsin, which are fundamentally unrepresentative of way that people actually vote and that the harm of gerrymandering, in a nutshell, the most basic level of a functioning democracy as said, is a of responsiveness and gerrymandering. It has always been with us threatens to undermine that responsiveness and that accountability. T today in a way that it has never previously in u. S. History history. Most accounts of the origin of gerrymandering trace back to an individual who had a very long and impressive and storied career in american politics. Guy by the name of Elbridge Gerry and. The pronunciation of Elbridge Garys last name, of course, lends us the term gerrymandering, or, as it was pronounced around about the first 50 years that the term was in use gerrymandering. And when i was the book, i was actually able uncover the first historic reference to gerrymandering being pronounced with a soft g as gerrymander ring as opposed to the hard g and this is difficult to do because obviously when you go back that far in history we dont have recordings of people actually anything. So i set out to look for the possible historical reference to how the word was actually pronounced. And i found that in transcripts of the Constitutional Convention of, the state of indiana in the mid 19th century, and one of the delegates whose name was john pettit, which coincidentally is actually the name of one of my ancestor ers, who was a british Navy Lieutenant and privates here i think privateer is, the more politically correct way to say what he engaged in during his career and back in the 1700s. But this delegate. Pettit, made comments during a debate over a proposed clause in the state that would have the by then you equities practice of of gerrymandering and he was quoted as saying during the debates criticizing his opponents for constantly gerrymandering the state and maintaining this was the way that the word be pronounced with the soft. One of the things that i found most surprised when researching the history this topic was that not only gerrymandering, not with Elbridge Gerry, who famously was the governor of massachusetts. In 1812, he had been finally elected to that office after running five times without success and after finally being elected governor of massachusetts, he found himself frustrated by divided government in, particular the majority, his political opponents, the federalists held in the state senate at the time, gary was democratic, republican he had aligned himself with the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and then also James Madison. But during his first term in office, he found himself frustrated by divided government and he had been elected with all of these grandiose policy ideas. He was going to usher in a democratic republican agenda, a state that had previously dominated by his federalist opponents, and the myth of the origin of gerrymandering is that concocted a scheme to rig the results of 1812 massachusetts elections, and he did so by the state Senate Districts in such a way that even if federalists were to win the popular vote, the democratic republican would nevertheless capture a majority of the available seats kind of similar to happened in a number of recent elections here in wisconsin. And so gary set about drawing the districts and one district in particular, a state Senate District in essex outside of boston was particularly mish shaped and it was this kind of serpentine district which snaked its way around borders of the county packing together as many federalist voters as possible. And the idea was that if you put all of the federalists in this one district, then democratic republicans can pick up all of the other seats in the county. And that, in fact, what happened in subsequent election, more citizens in county voted for the Federalist Party than did the democratic republicans. But because of this gary mander, the republicans were nevertheless to pick up a majority of the seats, the origin of the term gary mander stemmed from an article that was in a newspaper called the boston gazette and it probably would not have taken on historical momentum that did were it not for famous cartoon that accompanied that newspaper article and youve probably seen cartoon if you google word gerrymander its much the first image thats always going to come up and think i have a version of it. We click back a second on the cover of. My book that is the gerrymander cartoon of the state sene district in essex county, massachusetts. But what often gets left out of this story is that not only was gerrymandering happening long before Elbridge Gary created this original gerrymander in essex county, but gary himself was even responsible for the plan that led to his ever lasting historical infamy that, led to his most Lasting Legacy being the portmanteau of gary and salamander which the district was said to resemble that, became attached to this kind of unseemly practice of manipulating districts for political gain. Gary had, if you believe his biographer, most of the contemporary Gary Historical accounts that i uncovered or suggested that gary himself was not especially keen on the plan he thought that it was overly partizan. He thought that it was untoward and nefarious. But he kind of went along it because more than that wanted to get the stuff done that he had been elected to do and. Getting that done meant controlling state legislature. So while the original gerrymander was created by the massachusetts state legislature, it was garys name that became to it. So if theres one thing that i hope this book does, its that editor, at least to some extent, vindicates the historical legacy of. Elbridge gary, who is remembered chiefly for this even though he went on to serve. As Vice President of the United States, James Madison, even he was one of the massacre sits delegates to the constitution final convention in philadelphia and was extremely influential in the creation of the bill of rights. Gary, i think would have made a great president ial candidate as well if he were a younger man and his age was pretty. The only thing that prevented him from being remembered as James Madisons successor as president , rather than for this unseemly practice, very unfortunate in italy, passed away while he was serving Vice President under madison and the rest of course, is history. And so once i realized that everything we thought we about the origins of was pretty much wrong, i tried find out what was the earliest historical example of gerrymandering occurring on. The american continent. And that took me back almost a century from 1812 massachusetts. Its to the 1730 is in the colony North Carolina and it turns out that the inventor of american gerrymandering was even an american himself like me and if youve detected the hint of an accent, i was in fact born in great britain. I emigrated to the United States to study for my ph. D. In American Government and actually this year i became, a fully naturalized u. S. Citizen. So having torts and researched american elections for almost two decades now, this will be the first time that i actually have an opportunity to vote in one last election i voted in was actually the 2016 brexit referendum and. As if youve checked in with uk politics recently, that one didnt go terribly well for us us. The individual who i make the case in the book should remembered as the creator of american gerrymandering is a British Colonial governor by the name of George Barrington or barrington to give his name the standard british pronunciation. Unfortunately, there are no known likenesses. George barrington that survives to the present day, which is why he is represented by the social media account avatar that i have on the screen here. But barrington was a truly fascinating character. He was an individual who was not born an aristocrat but always strived to run in the same social circles as the british upper class. And i think this is in some way responsible for the enormous chip that he on his shoulder throughout his political career. In the book, i go into some of the many colorful and sometimes violent stories marred the history. George barringtons political but the thing that he is actually in not remembered for is the creation of american gerrymandering and. Ironically he was responsible for doing exactly what Elbridge Gerry is accused of. And yet i have tried vain. But i think its probably too late at this point to introduce term the remainder into the american political lexicon. But im going to keep trying because this is the guy who this practice should in fact be after. So barrington was the British Colonial governor of North Carolina in the thirties, and by the time he got around to in the practice of gerrymandering, he was actually on his second stint in that particular position. There. Theres a very interesting story how he ended up losing and then regaining his job. But at the of spoiling it, it involved him threatening to murder the chief justice of the North Carolina colony and assault the attorney general with a chair. More on that story. The book. But like gary he had been by the opposition his rule that he was receiving from the legislature and the Colonial Legislature in North Carolina consisted of two houses, an opera house that was made up of appointments. The governor himself and that represented the British Crown and a lower house that elected by the colonists and represented their interests. It was that lower house that barrington found himself particularly frustrated with and in a fairly outrageous piece of parliamentary maneuvering, he forced a bill through the upper house, gerrymandering, the boundaries, the lower house to ensure that his cronies would control majority and that the colonists would no longer be able to obstruct his agenda moving. There are even examples of gerrymandering occurring after, but before the of the term in 1812, massachusetts in particular in the first few elections in the state, new york and some of early elections in south carolina. And in another famous example that i talk about in the book as well, an attempt, Patrick Henry, to prevent his arch nemesis, James Madison, from being elected to the First Congress that story ended up in the only time in us history that future president s have faced off a single seat in congress the candidates were James Madison and james monroe and spoiler alert madison up winning the election despite. Patrick henrys gerrymander and went on to introduce the of rights before the First Congress. One can only imagine how differently u. S. History might have gone had Patrick Henry been successful at jeremy James Madison out of Something Else<\/a> and. That is the topic of. My new book, one person one vote a surprising history of gerrymandering or to give it its original all historical pronunciation gerrymandering in america whenever i talk about the topic of gerrymandering, one of the most frequent questions that i get asked by and interviewers is which the most gerrymandered state in, america and today, for the first time i can say while standing in that state for the last 12 or 12 years or so the the answer to that question has been the state of wisconsin, my home state, florida certainly gets an honorable particularly under the recent leadership of ron desantis. You can also point to of blue states weve seen particularly bad gerrymandering in recent years, states like new york and illinois are examples of something that, i think is a broad, important theme. The book, which is that gerrymandering, the manipulation often of election districts, political gain is a republican problem or a democratic problem. Its an american problem, and its quintessentially american. Its a problem that. Democracys the world over. Have experienced and for the most part have solved. And so there are two things that i want to highlight from the book in my talk today. The first of those is the gerrymanders origin story. And i think for those of you who may believe that you know where gerrymandering comes from, if you read the book and hopefully i explain this today as well, i think youll most likely find that you are wrong, that the origins, gerrymandering are, both older and more interesting than the legend that gets generally told in most of the history books. The second thing that i want to talk about is the continuing effects that gerrymandering has on our elections in. States like wisconsin, in states like florida and all over the nation. And the major problem with gerrymandering as see it. And i was speaking with a gentleman on this theme prior to my talk tonight. The fundament and most basic functioning of a Representative Democracy<\/a> depends on at least a level of electoral responsiveness and by electoral responsiveness. What mean is that the people at the very least need to the option when they are unhappy with the things their representatives in government are doing to throw the bums and replace them with a set of representatives who presume a bully will do Something Different<\/a> and the major harm of gerrymandering is that severs that link between representatives and the communities whose interests they supposed to be fulfilling in government. It undermines the basic responsiveness of the electoral system in a way that prevents voters, from Holding Politicians Accountable<\/a> for the things that they do while they are in office. And you probably need me to tell you that when politics dont have to worry about when the party that holds the majority doesnt have to worry about enacting popular policies when they know that their seats are safe, when they know that their majority is safe, they dont have to keep their fingers on the pulse of public opinion. They are free to use their power and authority to pursue whatever selfinterested or partizan that they would like to do, but are often constrained from doing because those will be unpopular with the electorate. And so in addition to the history of gerrymandering, this is also a book about the present of gerrymandering and for reasons that i talk about, the book, my goal in writing this was to kind of sound the alarm bells to send out a warning to the American People<\/a> that their democracy is not safe. And this is the kind of warning that a lot of are sending out right now for a variety of different reasons. But i gerrymandering at its core is much more threatening to democratic than any of the other problems that are routinely and commonly identified in our system. I want to begin with the origin story of gerrymandering. Every good villain needs an origin story and preferably that mythology should be shrouded in mystery. And when i began researching this book, i. Thought that i knew quite a bit about the history of gerrymandering, but it turned out that there was a much richer and history going back just to the founding era. And the framers, the constitution, but going back even before then to the colonial period and even further into british antiquity. And so i want to touch a little bit to begin with on that origin and where it was that gerrymandering came from. On wednesday i was participating in an event at the Sandra Day Oconnor<\/a> institute for american democracy in phenix and i had the the pleasure to kind of lavish praise on the state of arizona for being among the best in the nation and for how they conduct reading acting and unfortunately as i have already hinted at, i do not have good news on that front tonight about the state of wisconsin nor the news particularly good about my home state of florida either. But part of the issue with gerrymandering is while it has always been whether in American History<\/a> the politicians today have a fundamentally different set tools by which they manipulate the outcomes. Our elections tools were simply not available. Even 25, 30 years ago. And the effects of that, as ill talk about a little bit later, can be seen in the results of elections in states like wisconsin, which are fundamentally unrepresentative of way that people actually vote and that the harm of gerrymandering, in a nutshell, the most basic level of a functioning democracy as said, is a of responsiveness and gerrymandering. It has always been with us threatens to undermine that responsiveness and that accountability. T today in a way that it has never previously in u. S. History history. Most accounts of the origin of gerrymandering trace back to an individual who had a very long and impressive and storied career in american politics. Guy by the name of Elbridge Gerry<\/a> and. The pronunciation of Elbridge Gary<\/a>s last name, of course, lends us the term gerrymandering, or, as it was pronounced around about the first 50 years that the term was in use gerrymandering. And when i was the book, i was actually able uncover the first historic reference to gerrymandering being pronounced with a soft g as gerrymander ring as opposed to the hard g and this is difficult to do because obviously when you go back that far in history we dont have recordings of people actually anything. So i set out to look for the possible historical reference to how the word was actually pronounced. And i found that in transcripts of the Constitutional Convention<\/a> of, the state of indiana in the mid 19th century, and one of the delegates whose name was john pettit, which coincidentally is actually the name of one of my ancestor ers, who was a british Navy Lieutenant<\/a> and privates here i think privateer is, the more politically correct way to say what he engaged in during his career and back in the 1700s. But this delegate. Pettit, made comments during a debate over a proposed clause in the state that would have the by then you equities practice of of gerrymandering and he was quoted as saying during the debates criticizing his opponents for constantly gerrymandering the state and maintaining this was the way that the word be pronounced with the soft. One of the things that i found most surprised when researching the history this topic was that not only gerrymandering, not with Elbridge Gerry<\/a>, who famously was the governor of massachusetts. In 1812, he had been finally elected to that office after running five times without success and after finally being elected governor of massachusetts, he found himself frustrated by divided government in, particular the majority, his political opponents, the federalists held in the state senate at the time, gary was democratic, republican he had aligned himself with the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson<\/a> and then also James Madison<\/a>. But during his first term in office, he found himself frustrated by divided government and he had been elected with all of these grandiose policy ideas. He was going to usher in a democratic republican agenda, a state that had previously dominated by his federalist opponents, and the myth of the origin of gerrymandering is that concocted a scheme to rig the results of 1812 massachusetts elections, and he did so by the state Senate Districts<\/a> in such a way that even if federalists were to win the popular vote, the democratic republican would nevertheless capture a majority of the available seats kind of similar to happened in a number of recent elections here in wisconsin. And so gary set about drawing the districts and one district in particular, a state Senate District<\/a> in essex outside of boston was particularly mish shaped and it was this kind of serpentine district which snaked its way around borders of the county packing together as many federalist voters as possible. And the idea was that if you put all of the federalists in this one district, then democratic republicans can pick up all of the other seats in the county. And that, in fact, what happened in subsequent election, more citizens in county voted for the Federalist Party<\/a> than did the democratic republicans. But because of this gary mander, the republicans were nevertheless to pick up a majority of the seats, the origin of the term gary mander stemmed from an article that was in a newspaper called the boston gazette and it probably would not have taken on historical momentum that did were it not for famous cartoon that accompanied that newspaper article and youve probably seen cartoon if you google word gerrymander its much the first image thats always going to come up and think i have a version of it. We click back a second on the cover of. My book that is the gerrymander cartoon of the state sene district in essex county, massachusetts. But what often gets left out of this story is that not only was gerrymandering happening long before Elbridge Gary<\/a> created this original gerrymander in essex county, but gary himself was even responsible for the plan that led to his ever lasting historical infamy that, led to his most Lasting Legacy<\/a> being the portmanteau of gary and salamander which the district was said to resemble that, became attached to this kind of unseemly practice of manipulating districts for political gain. Gary had, if you believe his biographer, most of the contemporary Gary Historical<\/a> accounts that i uncovered or suggested that gary himself was not especially keen on the plan he thought that it was overly partizan. He thought that it was untoward and nefarious. But he kind of went along it because more than that wanted to get the stuff done that he had been elected to do and. Getting that done meant controlling state legislature. So while the original gerrymander was created by the massachusetts state legislature, it was garys name that became to it. So if theres one thing that i hope this book does, its that editor, at least to some extent, vindicates the historical legacy of. Elbridge gary, who is remembered chiefly for this even though he went on to serve. As Vice President<\/a> of the United States<\/a>, James Madison<\/a>, even he was one of the massacre sits delegates to the constitution final convention in philadelphia and was extremely influential in the creation of the bill of rights. Gary, i think would have made a great president ial candidate as well if he were a younger man and his age was pretty. The only thing that prevented him from being remembered as James Madisons<\/a> successor as president , rather than for this unseemly practice, very unfortunate in italy, passed away while he was serving Vice President<\/a> under madison and the rest of course, is history. And so once i realized that everything we thought we about the origins of was pretty much wrong, i tried find out what was the earliest historical example of gerrymandering occurring on. The american continent. And that took me back almost a century from 1812 massachusetts. Its to the 1730 is in the colony North Carolina<\/a> and it turns out that the inventor of american gerrymandering was even an american himself like me and if youve detected the hint of an accent, i was in fact born in great britain. I emigrated to the United States<\/a> to study for my ph. D. In American Government<\/a> and actually this year i became, a fully naturalized u. S. Citizen. So having torts and researched american elections for almost two decades now, this will be the first time that i actually have an opportunity to vote in one last election i voted in was actually the 2016 brexit referendum and. As if youve checked in with uk politics recently, that one didnt go terribly well for us us. The individual who i make the case in the book should remembered as the creator of american gerrymandering is a British Colonial<\/a> governor by the name of George Barrington<\/a> or barrington to give his name the standard british pronunciation. Unfortunately, there are no known likenesses. George barrington that survives to the present day, which is why he is represented by the social media account avatar that i have on the screen here. But barrington was a truly fascinating character. He was an individual who was not born an aristocrat but always strived to run in the same social circles as the british upper class. And i think this is in some way responsible for the enormous chip that he on his shoulder throughout his political career. In the book, i go into some of the many colorful and sometimes violent stories marred the history. George barringtons political but the thing that he is actually in not remembered for is the creation of american gerrymandering and. Ironically he was responsible for doing exactly what Elbridge Gerry<\/a> is accused of. And yet i have tried vain. But i think its probably too late at this point to introduce term the remainder into the american political lexicon. But im going to keep trying because this is the guy who this practice should in fact be after. So barrington was the British Colonial<\/a> governor of North Carolina<\/a> in the thirties, and by the time he got around to in the practice of gerrymandering, he was actually on his second stint in that particular position. There. Theres a very interesting story how he ended up losing and then regaining his job. But at the of spoiling it, it involved him threatening to murder the chief justice of the North Carolina<\/a> colony and assault the attorney general with a chair. More on that story. The book. But like gary he had been by the opposition his rule that he was receiving from the legislature and the Colonial Legislature<\/a> in North Carolina<\/a> consisted of two houses, an opera house that was made up of appointments. The governor himself and that represented the British Crown<\/a> and a lower house that elected by the colonists and represented their interests. It was that lower house that barrington found himself particularly frustrated with and in a fairly outrageous piece of parliamentary maneuvering, he forced a bill through the upper house, gerrymandering, the boundaries, the lower house to ensure that his cronies would control majority and that the colonists would no longer be able to obstruct his agenda moving. There are even examples of gerrymandering occurring after, but before the of the term in 1812, massachusetts in particular in the first few elections in the state, new york and some of early elections in south carolina. And in another famous example that i talk about in the book as well, an attempt, Patrick Henry<\/a>, to prevent his arch nemesis, James Madison<\/a>, from being elected to the First Congress<\/a> that story ended up in the only time in us history that future president s have faced off a single seat in congress the candidates were James Madison<\/a> and james monroe and spoiler alert madison up winning the election despite. Patrick henrys gerrymander and went on to introduce the of rights before the First Congress<\/a>. One can only imagine how differently u. S. History might have gone had Patrick Henry<\/a> been successful at jeremy James Madison<\/a> out of First Congress<\/a>. So thats most of what i have to say about the history gerrymandering. But a large part of the book spent on relating some of the most interesting stories of jeremiah and hearing that occurred throughout the 18, 19th and 20th century, and in particular highlighting how this practice has intersected with an some of the major events u. S. History, including the civil, the career of president S Abraham Lincoln<\/a> and andrew johnson, and even the Civil Rights Movement<\/a> as well. But what id like to focus on for my remaining time here today is gerrymandering as it exists in the 21st century, because there has been a sea change in the technology, the data, the software, the Computing Power<\/a> that can be deployed in service of the manipur location of election districts for political purposes. You go back early periods and redistricting was done by poring over reams of census and often drawing lines on a map using pencils and erasers around about the seventies, the very first Computer Software<\/a> began to be used for. The redrawing of district boundaries. But even then, those programs were not especially sophisticated. They would allow you to analyze what had happened the last couple of elections for districts based on your best guess about what might happen moving forward. And often while gerrymandering have effects on our elections and i certainly dont mean suggest that gerrymander was never effective until the present day but it would have effects perhaps for one election or a couple of elections but it was very hard using data and the tools that they had available the time to make any kind accurate prediction about might happen down the road. The line drawers of 21st Century America<\/a> under no such constraints. And this is why i think somewhat under the gerrymandering has become the greatest threat to american Representative Democracy<\/a> the way that the lines are drawn today involves not just the of information on individual. And as we know, our data is being collected. You can find kinds of information about people that you can use to learn their preferences and how they might vote in elections. But the major thing that sets the gerrymandering the 21st century apart from eras in u. S. History is the software and the Computing Power<\/a> and, particularly the ability to run thousands of simulations on a hypothetical boundaries and, predict how those districts will, under a wide variety of hypothetical future electoral conditions. So instead of drawing districts that give you an advantage and then finding that that advantage a couple of elections the road maybe because some incumbents retire and, you have open seats maybe because you get a particularly popular president ial candidate from the opposition and they end up winning a significant majority of the popular vote. These are the kinds of unforeseen developments that often led to the collapse of the gerrymander of yesteryear, but now not only can you produce thousands potential sets of district using algorithms and scrutinize them and find the ones that are most likely to lead to your side winning as many elections possible. But you can also simulate future election results. Tinker with the variables and see whats likely to happen if incumbents retire. You can see whats likely happen if your party loses the popular vote by a certain amount and you can build a redo restricting plan that will remain robust in the face. All of these plausible future scenarios and this is exactly what has been done in states like wisconsin. And so what concerns me now is that gerrymandering is something that can have effect from multiple decades at a time. You can districts as the districts drawn here in wisconsin in 2010 so that one Political Party<\/a> controls a majority of the legislative seats throughout the entire no matter how the vote. Then of course that party gets to draw the districts again when have a new census they get to tinker with the boundaries incorporate. All of the new information theyve accumulated over that decade and then roll back again. Relatively new phenomenon and, the kind of gerrymandering that we have, places like wisconsin is i think unprecedented in u. S. History. What i want to do now is illustrate some of the states that i think do redistricting while and some of the states that do redistricting badly and the state, michigan is a state has been in both categories recent decades. Ten years ago, michigan was of the most gerrymandered states in. America, just like wisconsin in the republican party, had control of the levers of power in after the 2010 census and had used that control to draw the districts. So they remained in the majority in both houses of the Michigan Legislature<\/a> throughout the decade they also drew the us house of representatives district so that the results of those would give them an edge when it came to control of congress. And then happened, the people michigan passed a Ballot Initiative<\/a> that the state constitution. This amendment the michigan citizens redistricting commission. It took control of the drawing of districts in michigan away from the state legislature and gave it to an independent commission made up of ordinary. Three citizens, four republicans, four democrats, five independent s, all registered voters selected at random from the pool of all of the who applied. Now, michigan was the first state to experiment with this model. In fact, it had been done previously in california. Well and its now also done in the state of colorado. But this fundamental tool and simple change simply removes politicians from the equation was night and day in terms of the fairness of michigan elections. The map that you can see on the screen here is the us house map that was produced, the michigan citizens redistricting commission. Five safe republican seats for safe democratic seats and four highly competitive seats that could go either democrat or republican, depending on how the popular vote out in the state. You can see that on the slide. I have metric called the efficiency gap. The efficiency gap is measure that social scientist states have developed to capture. Severity of gerrymandering in a state. The closer it is to zero, the fairer the map is, the more impartial the districts are, the less of a bias have built into them. Towards one side or the other. This is an example, an extremely fair map, and importantly, you have a Critical Mass<\/a> of competitive seats, which means that you have responsiveness you have accountability you have the ability of, the citizenry, to effect the composition of the legislature or in instance, the us house delegation delegation. Another example, a state that does things well. I mentioned this previously is the state of arizona. Arizona not coincidentally also has an independent commission. It was also created by the people through a initiative in the 2000 election. And this illustrates a broader theme of the book, i think, which is that getting rid of gerrymandering is that is popular across the political spectrum. What weve seen in recent years is that redistricting reform have passed in blue states like california and new york. Theyve passed in swing states like florida and michigan, and theyve passed in states like utah. All of those states when an opportunity to vote on the question, the people decided they wanted to reduce the influence of politicians on the drawing of districts arizona. Ana as you can see has a nice of red districts blue districts and competitive districts. This what you want to see in a redistricting map a slight bias towards democrats. But i think when you see the next map you will see that things can get a whole lot worse in terms of the level of bias that you can find in a redistricting map. This is my home of florida and. We have, of course, been in the news a lot recently or. Some of the various components of Governor Desantis<\/a> policy agenda, which has been not without some controversy, but Governor Desantis<\/a> also controversial. He vetoed the redistricting that the Republican State Legislature<\/a> had drawn. And this is one of the very only in u. S. History where a governor has vetoed a redistricting plan that was created by, a legislature controlled by his Political Party<\/a>. The problem that Governor Desantis<\/a> had was that while the gop legislatures map had a bias towards republicans in it that bias was not large enough for his liking. So he took control of the process and what came out of was this map that was by the Governors Office<\/a> in consultation with various republican redistrict operatives. The exact details of that are the subject of in the state of florida. But here you can see how gerrymandering works. You as much as possible. Number of competitive seats that are on the electoral field and you create as many safe seats for your own Political Party<\/a> as you can and as few safe seats for opponents. The result is that in the of florida by pretty much any metric by a swing state although a state that partially because of gerrymandering has been in control by the republican party, going all the way. To 2000. But florida and its 28 house districts has 18 safe republican seats, eight safe democratic seats, and only two competitive seats. So fewer than either michigan or arizona, even though florida more than twice as many districts as either of those states. You can also by the efficiency gap metric that this map is ten times as biased towards as the arizona was towards democrats. An efficiency gap, 20. 2 towards republicans is just about the most biased congressional map. I have seen in all of my research on topic. But that not to say that democrats wont engage in these kinds of shenanigans given the opportunity opportunity in new york, despite a a Ballot Initiative<\/a> in, new york that created every district in commission, the legislature nevertheless, we assumed control of the process. This, i think, illustrates a crucial lesson lesson when it comes to redistricting reform and when you take power from the legislature to do, you have to be very, very that they are not able to reassume it in new york redistricting commissions role was an one and the law allowed the legislature to it in exceptional circumstance voices of course everything these days is an exceptional circumstance democrats in new york. Draw a map that is almost as bad as the one that republicans drew in florida to safe democratic seats for safe republican seats and to competitive seats. An efficiency gap of plus 8. 6. So not the worst in the world but still a pretty heavily biased set of districts. And then something happened. The new york courts overturn, the map that the legislature had in place, and instead they replaced it with this one. And this kind of illustrates how you can make a gerrymander go away. What you do is you draw more competitive. The map that the court put in place while still tilted towards, nevertheless added five competitive districts to the new york landscape and removed five safe democratic seats moving the bias closer towards parity. This is an example of how the courts can play a role in scrutinizing what do the problem is that youre relying on the justices or judges to read the state constitution to prohibit types of practices and. There are plenty of other states where. Similar lawsuits have been filed which did not lead to kind of result. Which brings us back inevitably to wisconsin. A lot. The focus when it comes to gerrymander tends to be on federal elections. If you followed any of the political news over the last six months or so, almost all of the coverage of this topic seems to be about what gerrymandering will do for democrats so republicans chances of winning control of the house and thats certainly a valid concern but. The point i have been repeatedly attempting to hammer home is that the really severe effects of jeremy entering are happening at the state level. Theyre happening in state legislatures and theyre happening in places like wisconsin and the the thought may be a little bit too small for you to read on the screen there. But basically in the 2008 election, the democrats won about 1. 5 million votes in wisconsin state house and republicans sorry, democrats won 1. 5. Republicans won about 1. 2. Democrat then won a slight majority of the overall seats seats in 2010. You a republican wave and. Not surprisingly, the gop took control of the state legislature, and this, of course, gave Governor Scott<\/a> walker. The opportunity to control the redistricting. In 2012 under the new republic and boundaries. The result of the popular vote was remarkably similar to what it was in 2008 that democrats won a slight majority of the popular vote, 1. 4 million votes to around about 1. 2. But the result was different instead of the slight democratic majority of 52 to 46 that you got in 2008, in 2012. Democrats, despite winning the popular vote won 39 seats to the republicans, 60. And that alignment has been pretty much glued in place since in all of the elections that have been held here in wisconsin since the 2010 redistricting. And that creates the situation i was cautioning against at the beginning the republicans who control the Wisconsin State Legislature<\/a> know that their majority is safe. The individual politicians who have been drawn into these safe seats, know that their seats are safe, and that all they have to do to win reelection is win over their electorate. And so the Wisconsin State Legislature<\/a> no longer responsive to. Changes in popular sentiment. You can have an election. Republicans win a majority, an election where democrats win a majority. And you basically have the exact result. There is no meaningful change in the percentage of seats that are held by one party or the other. So what can we conclude from this . And i tried to avoid this being kind of a doom and gloom, all pessimism all the time, kind of book, but fortunately, i think there is an easy and straightforward solution to this problem. It creates not a perfect set of redistricting procedures, but one that at the very least prevents from overtly meddling in the process. And that is the independ redistricting commission. Weve seen this work in michigan. Weve seen it work in arizona. Weve seen it work, other states as well. But most importantly, weve seen it work. Just about every nation that uses districts for its legislative elections, beginning with new zealand in the late 19th century, that then spread to the rest of the british commonwealth. But every other nation pretty, much has reached the conclusion that the way to solve gerrymandering is simply to remove politicians from the equation entirely, to have some kind of independent entity. Now that independent process will not always produce perfect results no redistricting map is ever 100 fair, but at the very least, it prevents the kind of pernicious and severe gerrymander that has been ubiquitous now in so much of the United States<\/a>. Second, its very important that a Critical Mass<\/a> of the districts in a legislature here are at least competitive, that there is a meaningful opportunity for them to change hands. Yes, of course, is the key mechanism of democratic accountability and electoral responsiveness. When people are unhappy with the politicians in power, theyre going to vote against that political. And if enough districts are competitive, that Political Party<\/a> is going to lose its majority. It forces them to pay attention, at least to some extent to public opinion. This forces them, least to some extent, to attempt to enact policies that are reasonable, popular with the electorate in their state, whether its being done by democrats or by republicans and i document examples of, both kinds of gerrymandering in the book republicans have been more successful at gerrymandering in the last of decades. But in the 1970s and the 1980s, the boot was on the other foot and it was democrats that were successfully gerrymander in places like california california. Id say that if theres one kind of pithy phrase that you should take away from the book that encapsulates the message that im trying to sell, its that voters should choose their politicians, politicians should not choose their voters and that everything that i have in terms of my talk. But i am happy to answer questions that people might have. Sir. Hi there. Im Richard Russell<\/a> from madison. Im active in three different Good Government<\/a> groups, fair maps, wisconsin coalition, which addresses the very problem youve been speaking about here. Wisconsin, the united to amend, which is looking for constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United<\/a> and get a constitutional amendment that says only, actually, human beings are people, corporations, etc. Dont count. And free spending is not the same as free speech and. Voters. First, wisconsin, which is looking replace partizan primaries with final five voting, which is designed to eliminate the divisiveness and, the polarization that results from only the partizan activists being involved in determining who the final two candidates are for the final election. All three of these Good Government<\/a> operations phase, two major obstacles. First of all, is it all procedural changes . They change way we do business. Theyre not like things like abortion or immigration or inflation or guns or crime or any of those things that that are gut issues people can viscerally relate to and theyre sort of abstract in that regard. But the second and major problem that we have in getting any of these things through is that all of them require the people who are currently in charge of the system, who are the beneficiaries of the system to want to change the current system, which is basically saying vote against your own selfinterest. And this is a huge obstacle to overcome. And i was hoping you had some helpful for us. Well, thank you for that. And i certainly appreciative of of the work that youre doing. I agree. This is kind of the central of trying to fix gerrymandering, which is that the who have the strongest incentives to fix it are the people who are benefiting the most from the status quo and theres a reason why the states that have been successful, at least so far, have tended be states where its to amend the state constitu tution using a ballot. So places like and michigan and colorado, its possible to collect signatures to get an initiative put on the ballot for the people to vote on. And if it passes, that then amends the state constitution, which unfortunately is not an option. Thats in a number of states. Wisconsin. But i did actually think this ahead of time because. I figured that there might be a question about what can be done. Wisconsin. So heres my kind of five step plan for how you might go about fixing it, because the central problem right now, of course, that there is no way that the state legislature is ever going to vote to do anything about gerrymandering means that we have to on a more democratic, which ironically, is the wisconsin supreme and your state Supreme Court<\/a> shouldnt be more democratically accountable, your legislature. But thats kind of the unfortunate solution that that we find ourselves in. So i the most important thing to do right now in wisconsin is to elect justices to the state supreme who are going to be more inclined to scrutinize gerrymandering by the legislature and at some point hopefully, if you can tee up a legal case and have the state Supreme Court<\/a> strike down the gerrymandered. You can then get a fairer electoral that makes it more likely that we can elect a majority that might be inclined to propose as an amendment to the state constitution. And so i believe the here are that to amend the constitution it has to pass both of the legislature in successive sessions. So they have to pass it once. Then you have to have an election and then the new legislature has to then pass the amendment as well. And then it goes to the people for a popular vote. So. Step one is to get the state supreme packed with justices who are going to scrutinize gerrymandering. Step two is to elect a majority to the legislature who want to do something about problem and then step three, do that twice a row and then get it put on the ballot. I appreciate that this is a pretty enormous task. But when youre in a state where you dont have that option for the people to amend the constitution directly, that thats really the kind of thing that that you have to do. So i appreciate that thats kind of a big ask, but at least based on my analysis, i think thats really the way that you could possibly about fixing this problem in in wisconsin. I said i was going to try and avoid pessimism. Thats about the closest can get to to optimism on front. Oh thank you i think your looks like a significant contrary action to those of us that are interested in this issue. I initially came up with the to ask a question as to how you got interested in the topic of gerrymander because it seems like youre relatively came to this country and i if there might be a story there on the question of the wisconsin supreme. I just throw this out there. The wisconsin constitution has a provision that parallels the declaration of independence, which talks about the purpose of government being to secure the consent of the governed, and that the legislature, the institution to do that and the gerrymandering case where they said going to uphold the new gerrymander for the next ten years is sentence in that that says thats got nothing to do theres nothing in that wisconsin and version of the declaration of independence that says anything about redistricting and so its a problem to try to get court to do anything as long as it has the current composition. Well, one of the things that ive observed looking at state Supreme Court<\/a> decisions on, this question across the nation is that when the justices the will to try and promote, they will find provisions in the state constitution that can be read in that way. Whether its kind of thing that youre talking about and i dont know this off the top of my head, but a lot of states have some variation on free elections clause. Im sure if thats an option here in wisconsin, but at the very least, theres probable language in the state constitu option which requires the state to be of a basic and functional democracy in many ways, it kind of isnt right now. And state Supreme Court<\/a>s confronted with this question and when the when the justices are of the opinion that that this is something that needs fixing have found ways to do it. To answer your other question, i became in gerrymandering about 15 years ago, and theres really not an interesting story behind it. I was in grad school and i needed a topic to write a paper on and one of my professors suggested that so okay. Thank you. Hi. Thanks for this talk. Was very interesting. I guess this is just a way im trying to think, you know, how could we make a difference as were waiting for the upcoming Supreme Court<\/a> election next . You know, thats obviously one big thing we can do here in wisconsin. But im curious if youve ever like, i dont know, talked or had people ask about people from gerrymandered districts who have mobility actually, like moving to other districts, especially with the rise of teleworking in the last of years. I think more people have that capability. I know it would require probably a lot of people to do that. But im just curious your take on that idea. I think its an interesting and this is solution that youve heard come up. I think in other contexts moving to a particular state in order to try and say perhaps balance out the the some of bias in the electoral college. And ive yet to to see it be done successfully because you have that kind of collective action problem, you need to get everyone to follow through on it and to the same place. Its probably to right. And then the issue then becomes at the end the decade you get a new census and, you the opportunity to to gerrymander things again and i, i like the idea in theory im just a little skeptical that it could be executed on a large enough scale to really have a meaningful effect. So my question is, you and many others who want to you know, who propose the independent commission as the solution to all of this and we showed some examples of where thats produced better maps. But we also have certainly cases independent commissions have produced maps that had some flaws in them that got rejected multiple times, maybe didnt meet the Voting Rights<\/a> act requirements in places so the you the redistricting commissions are not when theyre independent not always flawless. And i think also because so many states go overboard in making sure that the people who serve on those commissions are so removed from the political process that they often dont have, i think, enough knowledge to completely undo some of whats historically been done and. You know, you saw that your maps or the maps that you showed, you all got that that margin down in terms of the bias, but it didnt get rid of it either. And i think some of thats the sophisticated. Of the people there. Have you done any looking at about 12 or 13 years ago, the redistricting lawyer sam hirsh proposed a solution that actually involves an independent commission, but has the Political Parties<\/a> very involved as being map proposers, who then have to have maps, you know, evaluated by commission until they they kind of narrow down to best map possible from each side issue in competing ones. And you could even go a step further allowing the public to actually have it be part of a process and you know with all of the technology now, you know, present hundreds of maps until you have kind of the best map, both the largest you know, both the parties as well as public have put forward. No, i think thats were still kind of in the early stages. I think about figuring out what model is is going to be best for doing this but absolutely i think having a process that allows for as many submissions as possible as much information as possible providing to commissions. I certainly dont want to suggest that that theyre a panacea. But at the very least they tend to produce on average results that are significantly better, at least in terms of bias. But i also think that its important to be clear exactly what what criteria you want those commissions to take into account and that ultimately is a policy judgment and could see different states going different ways. But for me, at the first step is to get politicians out of being with this process and. Once weve done that, we can try and figure out the best model is for redistricting through a commission. This kind of 21st century environment, with all the technology and all of that kind of stuff. So. Okay, thank","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia601500.us.archive.org\/19\/items\/CSPAN2_20221113_215000_Nick_Seabrook_One_Person_One_Vote\/CSPAN2_20221113_215000_Nick_Seabrook_One_Person_One_Vote.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20221113_215000_Nick_Seabrook_One_Person_One_Vote_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240619T12:35:10+00:00"}