Came out two weeks ago latinos and the Voting Rights act the search for racial purpose. Both of these deal with the same phenomenon. The rapidly growing latino population of the United States and the way the population impacted politics. According to census figures in 2000 the latino population, in 2010, it is 16. 3 and projections that it will be 25 by 2015. Matchbook looks at the impact of the growing population and through polling determines what latinos at thinking about politics and why people are voting and what theyre not voting. Henrys book looks at the response to this phenomenon, the efforts, to dilute and suppress the effects of the latinos surge through redistricting, voter id laws and challenges to the Voting Rights act in 1965. We had democrats in texas and elsewhere saying the time is on the Democratic Partys id, and joy on the other hand republicans saying latinos are socially conservative and the famous Ronald Reagan line latinos are republicans, they just dont know it yet. In your polling what have you determined when it comes to that kind of question . Thank you for that and the opportunity to be here to talk about this work. Henry flores has been one of my long time mentors and trusted colleagues in political science. A number of us latino political scientists and in texas, when is the transformation, the long game, we lay out some of that data in the book talking about the future of texas and what will that transformation look like . We saw some effort, slowly start to change the demographics of the electorate. The electorate have not changed nearly as quickly for a lot of reasons henry has talked about for voter suppression. There has not been an investment a Real Investment in reaching out and talking to and understanding the perspective of the Latino Community in the state of texas, we have found there are 2 million citizen adult latinos eligible to vote who are not registered, not on voter rolls. 2 million. That would dramatically change the politics of this state so some sort of effort needs to happen. Why arent they registered . Why arent they participating . In surveys we conducted we found a sense of distrust of the political system. When we call people for political surveys often they say no one has ever called and asked my opinion about politics. No politician has ever come and asked me to vote or get involved. I think theres a real desire for people to get involved but they have to think the political system is responsive and wants them and as that happens we see both parties begin to make an investment or play for the latino vote. Latinos told some positions that are socially conservative or would look to be more conservative than their voting trends suggest but what we found again is these issues, these conservative issues tend to be private, personal at the family level and not projected into politics republicans have not made a strong connections so far. Is that a surprise to you looking at that. We talked to people over the years. The social conservatism that comes from catholicism and latin america is in grain, part of the Latino Community but as i said not something directly connected and projected into politics or voting and people are able to identify someone whos very conservative but they vote more for the Democratic Party because why are you voting . What are the issues bringing you to the election . More bread and butter issues, jobs, economy, good schools and more and more today in the debate over immigration so those in things that matter on to things like abortion rights or samesex marriage and so those are less overtly political. What are your thoughts on that issue for the democratic destiny or the democrats or hispanics or republicans, where do you see that . I want to thank the organizers of the book fair for having this panel and having our work, thank you for coming this morning. Mack and gary have done something that has been very much needed as far as study of latino politics is concerned. We never had very good polling data or survey data the targets the Latino Community until these two guys came along. Now they are getting good information out there for the first time ever. Thank you very much for that service. I said that very i want folks to hear it. I agree with what matt has to say and interestingly enough, and have discovered, what led to my writing the book is the Republican Party the folks behind it have been quite aware that for decades, have been planning a whole series of sorts of tactics, longterm strategy to maintain their position of power by insuring that they get to the polls or the voters will support what they do end voters that dont support their particular positions on various policy issues are suppressed or diluted by using various mechanisms. What i discovered in my book, it came to i started doing this as matt said, my first case was in 1986 against the School District in the hole country and my last two cases where the Congressional Redistricting lawsuit waiting right now at the fifth circuit for its current edition. This section 5 challenge on the voter id case was heard at the Westchester Court in washington d. C. That will against the state of texas but shall be decision came down and immediately and Lieutenant Governor at said we will put the voter id law in now because that is the way it is and so what i discovered was through a series of redistricting lawsuits it came out in a series of emails so we were able to extract from the texas legislature, surrounding the planning for the redistricting process and in there was a very specific email that said this is what we are going to do with hispanic voters, were going to create these metrics and put these metrics in to play as we draw these district lines, that we can are arranged districts. One email exchange between attorneys representing the speaker of the house talk about this technique which was new to me and i was fascinated by this optimal hispanic republican voting strength and as you could explain what that is, it is a really thought out technique for diluting the impact of latino voters. If i may for a second, i was showing this email to mack before we started and he went well. I have the email in my book. It included the collection of several datasets including total hispanic population, ratio of spanish surname for a stew citizenship voting age population and it goes on and on and on. If we put these data together and create this metric, what we can do is create Congressional Districts that appear, hispanic majority Congressional Districts that they dont perform as hispanic majority Congressional District because the precincts we are going to include are the ones with low hispanic turnout but high hispanic population numbers and the First District that they did this to was district 23 which is a big swing district. They went along the entire border and i did it too, i followed their trail along the border, wind the entire district 23 from maverick county on the south of to here to el paso and looked all the little neighborhood a slice out. We have technology to magnify these things to literally you can move peoples homes around and i notice how they were excluding and including certain precincts all on the border and i mapped out those precincts to see exactly what characteristics were causing them to be included or excluded in the district and that is when i realized how they were doing this, this metric came out. I said there they are. Putting it away, excluding hispanic voters because the new hispanic voters dont support their particular policy position on a lot of issues. It worked. We hear a lot about the beginning when you talk about the unregistered latino voters in the state and wheat here a lot about the latino voter bloc, a Sleeping Giant in american politics and tends to turn up and be smaller than the other groups, what is your sense the polling you have done and assessing this issue what do you think is causing that . What factors . We are finding strong evidence when we do focus groups or surveys or in depth interviews with those people who are not participating very strong sense of distrust of the political system. The political system doesnt represent them. One of the things henry talks about in his book is the idea of representation and why is important to have these districts that are performing well you can elect mexicanamericans to office because theres a higher level of trust from the public when they see people like them embodied in Public Office and pushing issues that they care about and so when we talk to folks they have this very strong sense that the political system is not for them. No one is contacting them the extent they hear about politics is very negative. We need to change that. If we dont change that will be difficult, we could have the same discussion that theres a lot of potential it could be a swing state, things could change but if you dont get that group of folks into the political system and the beating that their vote counts they are going to always be on the outside and on the edges and theres very little rate of contact. One thing we found in our analysis of the 20082012 elections were that latinos were twice as unlikely whites and blacks were twice as likely, latinos were only have to be contacted by campaign. Registered voters. Where do you think they went . They are looking at, and people voted in the last election creates a selffulfilling prophecy. The cycle where not many people voted last year so i am not going to dispatch people to knock on doors or send my mail verbage i will send it to more suburban districts where there are a lot of voters i can count on but if you dont invite somebody to the election of make until integrated they are going to continue to feel isolated and alienated from the system so theres a very low level of contacts. One of the things we know is once you get contacted and a candidate visit you and talk steel and makes you feel the rate of latino voting is equal to all other groups if you get contacted. A big problem is campaigns are not doing the out reach or investing to send bilingual by cultural people who look like as into the community and as a result we have low turnout. Typically you say what is wrong with hispanics why arent they voting . We try to flipped a script on that and say why arent people engaging us in order to cultivate that . In texas we have seen the emergence of a group called battleground texas which came into texas and consciously tried to do what you point out has not been done which is to reach out to people who dont have a history of voting or registered to vote. In 2014, results were not necessarily very favorable for battleground taxes but i wonder if you can looking at shortterm and longterm impact. There needs to be i hope they are not discouraged because it is a long thing, not something theyre going to turn the entire state in one way of especially in a gubernatorial wave which has lower turnout. You need to make multiple years of investment and historically what has happened is someone might invest and save these people dont care so they pull all the money and resources and go somewhere else. Is a multiple year process by which voters you are serious you want their vote. When battleground texas came here one of the things they found was it was much more difficult for them to do their work in texas, to register people, event in any other state and one of the issues is those folks, those volunteers the recruit to go doortodoor or go to tears and festivals and sign people up to register those people have to be from the same county in which they are registering people land in order to do that they have to have to update you can a elaborate, they have to pass the county exam or training session. Those training sessions are only available once, and at 2 00 p. M. On wednesday and in other states you can get volunteers and College Students and other people to help to push them out and the forms have to be authenticated and Everything Else but here there is a very extensive set of rules about who can do the registration and what their credentials ought to be and it makes it very difficult to it is not entirely saying they did not bad job. There were a lot of hurdles. I dont know if you have seen the same thing. That made it difficult for them to implement their work. They said in some counties the couldnt find someone from the county had enough time to devote to give to their group who could attend so they couldnt register any more. I dont know about that but speaking of a couple points or a couple points of which you were saying earlier, in those areas where you have latino communities have a long history of political activity and action such as bonds the south side, a very rich history of activity elected officials in a Cohesive Community but they did the redistricting process dividing the community into a three part putting the 31 Congressional Districts and other in another Congressional District in a third Congressional District and literally split of the latino vote so if you know they are not going to support you just spread them around a little bit. The second issue is what you were speaking about, the long term prospects. My work in this book is based upon the two case studies of the recent Congressional Redistricting and the id case but it began in 1991 when i worked for the Republican National committee in the 91 redistricting realm and the reason i did was because in 1991, a Single Member district for the first time were going to be applied and the legislature and house and senate and the Republican Party was the Latino Community trying to champion minority Congressional Districts and the reason was ever going to follow a strategy of packing into more districts so they could be elected and what they would do would create more intense suburban districts to life republicans and run out the democrats from the state legislature and senate. What you are seeing is representational system we have in austin in the house and senate. The decades have gone along, i see this Long Range Planning coin. If you want to get hispanic voters out it takes a long range strategy to do this but the republicans have been implementing a longrange strategy for decades now and they have a couple other initiatives out there that are astonishing to a lot of folks. I was speaking to a congressman this morning about one of the man he said that is very interesting. They think ahead of time because in the long run the Republican Party realizes demographically speaking, they are on the verge of not being a National Political party and they will lose the ability to elect a president in that White House Well into the future and frankly i think if redistricting were restructured they would lose the house band and next time around they may have trouble with the senate. You were talking earlier to the 2013 Shelby CountyCase Supreme Court case, which has really weakened the Voting Rights act and will have some longterm implications for american politics. Could you go into an explanation of what the Supreme Court did and the Practical Impact you think it will have . The Shelby County case was interesting. I put it in the book because from not theoretical point of view, this will be interesting to political theory guys more than the public but i saw the showShelby County case as what i call racial shield. Was a decision or pronouncement that on the surface appears nonracial but really is deeply racial and has deep racial implications for the electorate. The Shelby County case was a travesty of justice. In my book i said constitutional scholars dont even call it bad law. I put it on the same level as the dread scott decision or plessey versus ferguson because of what it did essentially what they did was engaged negated the entire requirement that plaintiffs need to meet to force jurisdiction to be covered under section 5 of the Voting Rights act. They did it by saying look. The data you used in the congressional hearings to off a rise this was old data. All data is old. Particularly census data. It gets old 24 hours a day. People are born, they die, American Society is extremely mobile. You could use that argument all time, and frankly that is just part of the shield for me. The second part was the whole issue of the tenth amendment which i will save for a little later because the tenth amendment is one of my favorite amendments. That and the second amendment. I really love this week to because there figments of peoples imagination. Shelby county was interesting. Shelby county was recruited to sue under the Voting Rights act by an organization that goes around the United States with its sole purpose of trying to challenge the Voting Rights act, affirmativeaction, and other sorts of civil rights laws that have been passed historically. They recruited by the way amy fisher, the young woman who sued the office on affirmativeaction, the s