Sam Wang: Alright. Hi everybody, welcome back. Welcome to fixing bugs and democracy. This is a new series co sponsored by the Princeton gerrymandering project.
Sam Wang: And the pacesetter Pacific engagement. Both of those are entities here at Princeton University. I am one of your hosts. My name is Sam Wong and I'm a professor of neuroscience and director of the Princeton gerrymandering project.
Sam Wang: Tonight we are also doing an episode of politics and poles. That's the podcast of Princeton University and the Woodrow Wilson School. And as I said, I'm one host Sam long and my co host right here in the corner is Julian cells are
Julian Zelizer : Excited to be part of this again and excited for tonight's conversation.
Sam Wang: Yeah, it's a it's our new experiment in the tentacles of media where we do like, you know, live video on zoom and YouTube and everything.
Sam Wang: Um, so let's see. So our guest tonight is Dave daily and Dave Delhi is a veteran journalist who is known for many things he's got a pretty long career as a journalist editor. I'm going to say right before I forget that at one point I believe he wrote the liner notes for an REM album.
Julian Zelizer : Oh,
Sam Wang: Yeah, this is like, yeah, there's, there's all kinds of stuff going on here. And so he he's in the political domain, our domain tonight. He's best known for his book.
Sam Wang: I, I just can't. I'm such a blue nose rat. I can't do it right after the true story behind the secret plan to steal Americans democracy and the movement that inspired to reform redistricting nationwide.
Sam Wang: I personally as someone who works on redistricting and gerrymandering, I consider Dave's reportage to be the indispensable resource.
Sam Wang: He's got a new book out and we're going to be talking about that and about what went into reporting it his new book is unreal how Americans are battling back to save democracy. That's the sequel to the first book.
Sam Wang: And it's a book on how citizens are rising up to restore and strengthen democracy.
Sam Wang: I would personally regard Dave as the Hunter S. Thompson of democracy reform, which is a phrase that I never thought I would say until meeting, Dave.
Sam Wang: He's a longtime friend and inspiration to the Princeton gerrymandering project. He spent a lot of time on the road reporting unranked in red states like Idaho, Utah, North Dakota purple states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. So Dave daily. Thank you for coming on with us tonight.
David Daley : Such a pleasure. Hi, Sam. Hi, Julia.
Sam Wang: Let's
Sam Wang: Let's get into it. So let's see. So you I'm
Sam Wang: Your background is in newspaper editing and you are a reporter and editor, the Hartford Courant, and then you somehow fell into this
Sam Wang: What I think must have seemed like a niche subject to the time gerrymandering, so I want to hear about that transition from general news I guess is the current also salon magazine, how you went from that into this topic that has kind of blown up on after this
David Daley : Yeah, that's a great question. Um, thank you. And hello everybody. Um, I never imagined that I would be called the Hunter S. Thompson.
David Daley : Where that anybody would be called the Hunter S. Thompson of gerrymandering, um, I came to this, I think, say, I'm going to really similar way that you did.
David Daley : Um, I got up one day and asked a really simple question, which was, why didn't Democrats take back the house in 2012 when
David Daley : Obama's reelected and democrats hold on to the Senate. Um, I, I didn't. I was the editor in chief of salon. I was I was running our politics coverage.
David Daley : So it's folks like Steve Carnegie and joe walsh and you know we were running a brilliant people every day and sort of working
David Daley : With them, and what we were covering every day out of the US House were 50 different votes to repeal Obamacare, most of which seemed like they were absolute stunts.
David Daley : We were covering, you know, government shutdowns, um, I grew up in Connecticut. And I was not naive about gun control, but I thought that after
David Daley : kindergarteners and first graders were massacred at Sandy Hook up there might be a chance for a national conversation about this and
David Daley : None of it happened. Um, and so, I simply asked that question. What happened in 2012 and when I went back and looked, I said, wait a second. How does Pennsylvania have a state that at that point in time, had elected.
David Daley : givens electoral college votes to a democrat every year since 1988
David Daley : Have 13 republicans and five Democrats. How does Ohio send 12 Republicans for democrats I've gone to grad school in North Carolina to purple state, but it was not a 10 republican three democrats state.
David Daley : You know, Michigan was nine, five and I kind of think what happened here and and I came across roadmap and this was the redistricting majority project. It was a project of the Republican State Leadership committee and it was in many ways their response to the 2008 election that um
David Daley : First elected Obama and going to give democrats a supermajority and in Washington and led to all this talk about how the Democratic Party would be a majority party in the nation for a generation to come and Republicans
David Daley : Had a path back to power, and it was through state legislators and that was what a roadmap was and they enacted that in 2010
David Daley : And we can talk about it, but
David Daley : The effect of that was that those state legislators had drawn these lines in 2012 that helped to hold back.
David Daley : A democratic wave, and it wasn't me saying this I stumbled across just in researching this a
David Daley : Primitive looking webpage for roadmap in which the Republican operatives were taking credit for what they had done. And again, I was running salon. I was, you know, I was headed. Hey Joe and and Steve and all of these people every day and
David Daley : This was not something anybody was talking about. And I thought, well, there's a story here.
Sam Wang: And you
Sam Wang: And the way you paint it is that the democrats were caught unawares. I mean, let's see, Obama had run want to reasonably big and convincing electoral victory by modern standards in 2008
Sam Wang: then along comes redistricting 2010 BY THE WAY, WE'RE COMING UP ON ANOTHER redistricting cycle at the end of this year.
Sam Wang: So the maps get redrawn um so you make it I you've made it seem as if the democrats were kind of caught with their pants down, but surely they had an interest in drawing a map to their advantage. So what was different.
David Daley : Another great question. Um, and in the new book, I spend a lot of time with Eric Holder, who was Obama's Attorney General at the time, and was
David Daley : Is currently running the democrats redistricting gerrymandering arm and what holder said to me is that two weeks after the 2012 election he and Obama
David Daley : Are in the White House. And they're looking at the numbers, and they can't figure out what happened there, like we thought we had a really good night. What happened to us in North Carolina. What happened to us in Ohio.
Sam Wang: Wait, so he didn't know until after the 2012 election.
David Daley : They didn't understand what had happened to them and
Sam Wang: So like I didn't know. But that's just because I'm a goober and I like and I wasn't paying attention.
David Daley : For rock obama
Sam Wang: People at the party.
David Daley : Folder. Didn't know they hadn't heard of roadmap. They didn't know what had gone on.
David Daley : They knew that 2010. It was a redistricting year on some level, but I mean I think what's important to understand here. And I think that this is why the story got lost in some ways, and I think this is why
David Daley : It was easy for Republicans to sort of get away with it, gentlemen are has been with us for as long as we've had politicians, right, I mean you can trace it back to
David Daley : Patrick Henry trying to keep the James Madison out of the very first Congress, you know, it gets its name from a port Eldridge Gary and 1812 drawing those States Senate districts around around Boston in such a way as to try to keep the Federalists out of the the Chamber.
David Daley : And it's been with us for forever and both sides had done it.
David Daley : But gerrymandering from 1793 2000 is almost the minor leagues of gerrymandering, and what happens in 2010 is it sort of catapult itself straight into it. Steroids Pura
David Daley : Um, and it's it's that the Republican strategy to go after state legislators is so specific and sophisticated, but it also matches up with the year in which the technology becomes so precise the computer software becomes so exacting and the data on so many Americans.
David Daley : And suddenly available to go up and down the streets were so polarized and you're able to draw these lines in such a way that mapmakers had not been able to
David Daley : In the past I talked to a lot of these people who talked about how even in 1990 and 2000
David Daley : The computers were so slow that they were not able to do more than three or four versions of these maps in 2010 these guys in Wisconsin are able to do 50 6070 draft maps. Each one becoming ever more perfect
Sam Wang: Bye guys can do a billion in a day.
David Daley : Yeah, and that's the difference between 2010 and 2020 and that's why we ought to be really careful about what we're getting into next
Julian Zelizer : Is jump in. So I love to refer to your book when I give talks all the time when I talk about polarization and
Julian Zelizer : Different ways that it works. So the major change though. People always say gerrymandering is always around in California democrats were notorious with the burdens.
Julian Zelizer : For doing this with precision. So the major change for you is the technology that's what makes 2010 today different than everything came that came before.
David Daley : I would say that is 95% of it is that the technology, you know, I mean, feel Burton's drawing these maps on a napkin at a bar, Mom.
David Daley : These goddess in the bag.
Sam Wang: That's the 1980s cycle.
David Daley : Yes. I mean, Phil Burton and California is the is a democratic politician who is a master of the US and he refers to his district says his contributions to modern art. Um, but
David Daley : In a way I would also say this, I would say that
David Daley : I would say that gerrymandering in previous decades has almost been more of an incumbent protection game.
David Daley : Run by a run by both sides and in 2010 it moves into a seat maximization game. I mean, in 2000 in Florida, you have Karl Rove and Nancy Pelosi essentially striking a deal with each other to at Carmel CALIFORNIA DISTRICTS in such a way that a both sides get that and then
Sam Wang: This gets back to the precision thing where if you can make your win 55% or 57% or 70% you can get beyond single seat protection and just
Sam Wang: Your team.
Sam Wang: Bigger just have more wins for your gods.
David Daley : And I think in the way that the gerrymandering has often been thought about was people said, well, if, if, if, if these districts move closer towards
David Daley : Than their volume vulnerable in a wave. And I think what's different about our politics right now is that a 5455 56 district with this level of polarization and that level of specificity in the in the data is not as vulnerable a seat as it used to be, you know, when I talked to Bob. He's
David Daley : I won't mention his, his name, although I think I caught him in the book.
David Daley : But on that you could draw a 5149 district. Now that looks super competitive. But in reality, it wouldn't be competitive at all because of the levels of polarization and the
David Daley : And the data and technology that you can use to draw these lines.
Julian Zelizer : And then this is a question I remember when I read your first book, whatever we're calling it on the show. I will follow Sams rules.
Julian Zelizer : What's striking is what you said to Sam that the democrats didn't see this that here's this massive operation on an element of politics that is familiar and knowable
Julian Zelizer : And paint this democratic party that
Julian Zelizer : Kind of missed the boat your new book is really interesting. And it's almost like the party or or activists are awake unwrecked awakening to this as a political issue.
Julian Zelizer : But the question I always I don't have an answer to. And it relates to other elements of politics, like the way you use the filibuster, why are Republicans so
Julian Zelizer : Ahead on things like gerrymandering and redistributing Why are democrats so far behind when they obviously have sophisticated advisors and consultants. Why does a party miss this. Why they miss it in 2010
David Daley : Republicans were more desperate. Um, I think if you think about it this way.
David Daley : This is a story of two elections.
David Daley : You get the nation's first black president, you have a democratic supermajority in the US Senate and a big renewed majority in the House and
David Daley : If you go back and you will look at the cable news coverage that night or the newspapers from the next day people
David Daley : From both sides were talking about how the Democratic Party was going to ride this kind of demographic change to become a majority party in the nation for another generation.
David Daley : But it doesn't exactly turn out that way it does it on and it's because republicans needed to try to figure out a way around that demographic challenge.
David Daley : And what they hit on was the awareness that 2010 is a redistricting here. Um, and I think that in some ways both parties in the past had thought about redistricting as you get yours. I'll get mine and what Republicans realized it was, was that it didn't have to be that way. They reinvented
David Daley : The oldest political trick in the book that year and they did so out of political necessity.
David Daley : And it was a lot easier. You know, I mean, in
David Daley : I mean after Romney's loss in 2012 you get the big republican autopsy and what they say is, we've stopped talking to
David Daley : A black voters and Hispanic voters and young voters, we've got to find a new way of reaching out to these people on if they had hit on that strategy after 2008
David Daley : Maybe the nation's politics look very different for the last decade up instead the strategy was to try to read district, the States and to hold back those demographic trends in the book, I talk with Christian kaletsky who was the Republican mastermind behind this plan and what he says.
David Daley : Is that they thought they could buy themselves a decade. I think they thought that if they
David Daley : drew these lines, they could hold back the demographic waves for a few years, while the party then worked to increase its appeal amongst women and young voters and minorities.
David Daley : And he talks about some of the other programs. He was launching in 2010 2011 that would have tried to have done some of that outreach.
David Daley : What backfired on them, I think. And what created the kind of Frankenstein's monster that many of them were not expecting is that drawing districts in
David Daley : In this way, in this polarized era, put the base in charge in such a way as to make that kind of outreach that they would have liked to have done impossible.
Sam Wang: Right, the fundamental
Sam Wang: The fundamental offense in some sense it's not giving more seats to one party or the other, although that's obviously a distortion, there's this
Sam Wang: Offense underlying that which is to make representatives unresponsive to their voters, where they don't have to answer to voters, I would characterize what you're saying. As part of this.
Sam Wang: Large demographic picture in which
Sam Wang: As a party of nationalists as a party of anti immigrant in
Sam Wang: largely white and oncol shoulders. That's a base that's getting smaller and smaller, and as the rise waters are rising up, it takes more and more extreme measures to make sure you keep your head above water.
Sam Wang: And so I would regard the whole thing as a rearguard action to take whatever your way of life was for 50 years and to take yours, you're shrinking base.
Sam Wang: And just do whatever you can like Mark touched it calls it a constitutional hardball playing hardball within the rules of the game. Do whatever it takes to keep your head above water. And so at some level from a tech point of view, it's sort of
Sam Wang: It's sweet and clever and really interesting way to, to, like, you know, to fiddle with the knobs of democracy and to find a way to squeeze out just a few seats. So in some sense,
Sam Wang: As a tech nerd. I'm having some admiration of the craftsmanship.
David Daley : I think that's what happened. I think they think they recognize that their base was shrinking and it was in specific places and they hit upon a way to ensure that that bass could still produce big majorities simply by drawing lines and really really clever ways, but it's had
David Daley : ripple effects and consequences for a generation democrats missed it. Republicans didn't hide what they were doing mean Karl Rove lays it out in an op ed in March 2010 and the Wall Street Journal and, I mean, I read about it.
Sam Wang: Public because it gets
David Daley : A it is if you got your newspaper that day, you know, I mean, rose
David Daley : Lays out the whole plan. He says, This is what we're going to do. This is what the effects will be for a generation.
David Daley : And this is where we're going to do it. And he lays out those specific small towns and in Texas and Pennsylvania where they're going to go that the democrats miss this is political in competence of the highest order and it has had long lasting consequences.
Sam Wang: We're here with Dave daily who's an expert on democracy reform and we've been talking so far about redistricting and his first book.
Sam Wang: raft. And so I just wanted to interject here that we're now going to get to the new book, but I want to interject here that if anybody wants to ask questions in the live version of this.
Sam Wang: Event. You can tweet using the hashtag fixing bugs in democracy. So you do hashtag. Sorry. Pound sign fixing bugs and democracy. That's one way to ask questions.
Sam Wang: If you're following us on zoom you can do another Q AMP. A I already see a few questions there, which we'll get to this good, you got some questions or you can text us
Sam Wang: At 929-242-9349 that's nine to 92429349 so Twitter zoom and text message always to ask those questions in about 1015 minutes we'll go to some of those questions.
Sam Wang: Dave, I wonder if we can now go to your book your current book your new book on rigged and talk about something I think it seems more hopeful. Yes.
Sam Wang: We have, we all have to do this right, okay. So yes, there's the book The Julian's as a PDF. I think so, yes, you can see you can hold up your noble you're using your laptops. He can't hold up the video. Here it is. I
Sam Wang: Think the scope
Sam Wang: So let's talk about the new book unreal where you followed up on your first book where you chronicled the depredations all these things that are done to distort democracy, I'm
Sam Wang: Your new book on rig is more hopeful, it seems, and you traveled all across the country you met grassroots organizers. Tell us a little bit about, I don't know how many miles you traveled and exactly what you're trying to do there.
David Daley : Um, what a blast. It was let me tell you, I mean, I started to feel like I had a dark rain cloud over my head as I was talking about gerrymandering
David Daley : And everything and all the degradations of democracy.
David Daley : And I didn't I be giving these talks to wonderful groups after 2016 that we're trying to get active and involved and sometimes I feel like I just suck all the air out of that room. All right. Um, and I needed for my own sake, for the sake of
David Daley : It trying to give people some hope and some optimism. I wanted to tell stories about the fight back and and as I looked around the country you started to see that.
David Daley : You had Katie. Katie on last week. I mean, Katie Fahy story is a remarkable you know 27 years old and running a recycling nonprofit and
David Daley : in Grand Rapids, and you know, two days after the election goes on Facebook and says, I want to start
David Daley : Doing something about the gerrymandering and Michigan and it starts a revolution there, you know, a Facebook post on and she's not the only one.
David Daley : On there were these amazing examples of citizens that sort of stood up and push back against these big structural inequities that all the experts thought were way too hard to do something about.
David Daley : And people whether out of not knowing how hard they to take on a or just determination to grab their democracy back
David Daley : Took hold and started doing the work. And it was everyday citizens.
Sam Wang: These are in states where they they could get something on the ballot.
David Daley : So there's
Sam Wang: The Colorado.
David Daley : There's lots of different stories here and it was amazing for me. I mean, I'm you know that those were a dark and complicated times in our politics and
David Daley : So to go out and be able to travel around the country with these groups that sort of logged off of Twitter and turn off cable news and and got to work was just absolutely inspiring.
David Daley : I mean, still out in Idaho. I joined that this amazing organization called reclaim Idaho and that was working to
David Daley : expand Medicaid. I'm in, you know, a red state is, you know,
David Daley : Ruby Red is Taylor Swift's lipstick. Right. I mean, it's a one party state and they buy an RV and they just start driving it around the state collecting signatures and talking to their neighbors.
Sam Wang: And you're any road in that RV. Did you do that.
David Daley : I did. I went out to Idaho and spent a few days with them and it was absent, you know. We slept in the
David Daley : In the RV and I
Sam Wang: Have a network of falls.
David Daley : And it was unbelievable. You go out and knock on doors. I mean, my favorite door. I think we walk up this driveway.
David Daley : In in Idaho Falls and there's a bumper sticker on the car that says, Vietnam, we were winning when I left.
David Daley : And I'm thinking, you know, how about if we go to the house over there. This guy was winning the war in Vietnam. Um, and we go up and knock on his door and they're they're fearless and they just start the conversation, they just start the process of political persuasion.
Sam Wang: About Medicaid, like they're just
Sam Wang: They're just chatting with
David Daley : Like, oh yeah, my mom.
David Daley : falls into that get fell into that gap. I know it well. Um, and, you know, I'll sign that notebook for it and they won in Idaho, with more than 60% of the vote.
David Daley : You know, I mean, down in Florida. We're down and, you know, spend time with doesn't mean who runs this amazing mighty moral coalition that unites left and right, black and white churchgoers and and former convicts and they
David Daley : Win a constitutional amendment in Florida that wins it over 64% of the vote to restore voting rights to former felons their 1.4 million people. Um, and there's the story.
David Daley : Around it
Sam Wang: So these are not gerrymandering stories. This is all kinds of democracy reform. This is now Medicaid expansion. This is now getting voting voting rights back for one and a half million Floridians so you you covered a lot of stories.
David Daley : Here, um, I was out in Florida talking, you know I'm saying, so I was down in Florida. You know, I was in
David Daley : In Utah and and cover the, the, the, the events in North Dakota on Native American voting rights went around the country on on student voting rights.
David Daley : The position that was unleashed in this country that I think we saw, especially in the
David Daley : Election was this citizen movement that was nonpartisan, it was uniting Democrats, Republicans, independents. You don't win.
David Daley : Medicaid expansion in Idaho with 60% of the vote if you're counting on Democrats, I think democrats are about 14% of the vote in Idaho. You can't win a constitutional amendment in Florida on
David Daley : On felon voting rights at 64% of the vote in a year, and with Rhonda sentence and Rick Scott or like to sit statewide unless if you are doing the work of persuading people who
David Daley : Maybe aren't automatically underside. So I went out looking for hope and optimism in our politics and I found it in these really unlikely places people doing the hard work of rebuilding
David Daley : These
David Daley : These structural the problems that had gotten bugs put in
Julian Zelizer : Can you talk a little more. I'm curious what you found in terms of what motivates these people and i mean
Julian Zelizer : A, one of the things that's interesting about your books is you find ways to make this interest interesting and accessible.
Julian Zelizer : And you kind of unpack why gerrymandering or different parts of our electoral system are in fact incredibly relevant to the way politics works last week.
Julian Zelizer : With Fahy, we discussed a little that back in the 60s, the one man, one vote issue was another time. This became relevant, but it was tied to the civil rights struggle very clearly.
Julian Zelizer : In all the different people you traveled with and and encountered what's motivating them to get out of their house and and to talk about structural reform as opposed to other kinds of high profile issues.
David Daley : It's a great question. But, um, and I think it goes back to something that struck me working on the first book to I'm structural
David Daley : I think that there's more awareness among regular Americans than folks. Imagine about the connection between structural reform and the broken dysfunction of our politics.
David Daley : And and Congressman serving said this to me when we were talking about HR one which he helped right he said that Democrats in 2016 2018 would be out having town halls and they be giving these like their their their presentations and
David Daley : They could feel that the room wasn't with them when they talked about how they're going to fix health care and increase the minimum wage and all of these, you know, literally a policy proposals.
David Daley : And in the questions that came out that people didn't think that it could get done because of the brokenness and the gridlock and gerrymandering and
David Daley : Sort of all of the structural problems. And he said, once they started talking about the structural problems. The room started nodding along. People started bobbing their heads and they realized
David Daley : Okay, people sort of get this in a really profound way I'm 59 million Americans right now live in a state in which one or both chambers of their state legislature is controlled by the party that one fewer votes.
In
David Daley : That's one in five of us. So if you live in Michigan. If you live in Pennsylvania, Ohio.
David Daley : Wisconsin on you understand the impact of gerrymandering firsthand. You've lived with it for the last, a decade, you've seen how it drives policy to the extremes.
David Daley : You've seen how it means that your votes don't count the way that they perhaps used to. You don't have competitive elections, all the way down to your state legislature.
David Daley : And I think people have sort of come to really understand that this is a huge problem and that it was incumbent on them to do something about it. The courts slam the door, um,
David Daley : And the politicians were not going to fix the process that kept them in office, it was up to the people to do this.
David Daley : And it was up to them to fix gerrymandering, but it was also up to them to expand Medicaid in Idaho, because the legislature their head refused to do it, six years in a row if people wanted to get anything done. They had no choice but to take it into their own hands.
Julian Zelizer : Now the in in your other book.
Julian Zelizer : The heart of it is the National Party investing in these efforts going into Pennsylvania and pouring money into a very small seat that seemed irrelevant. In this case, it's more about citizen activism.
Julian Zelizer : Is their top down support in the stories you saw from from either funders or from the Democratic Party or are they kind of operating on their own. Once again, disconnected from a party that's it's not seeing this as central
David Daley : I think I think it started on its own. And I think that some funding has flown into it. Since then, um, I mean if
David Daley : I mean, if you look at, you know, Katie fee, and what happened in Michigan. There was, I think, a lot of reluctance to fund them at all.
David Daley : Because people thought that Michigan was Where Good Ideas went to die. And it was such an expensive states to try to operate in
David Daley : I don't think they had a lot of support until they got on the ballot and then until the, the Supreme Court, they're allowed them to stay on the ballot. And then I think you saw some of the National
David Daley : Money come in, largely foundation money you're kind of good government money, um, you know, but in a lot of these places. I mean, in Idaho reclaim Idaho starts with you know 1400 bucks, as they
David Daley : As they invest in an RV and they and they and they start driving, you know, I mean, Florida, and Florida is a very sophisticated operation and it had been going on for for many, many years. Um, the Brennan Center ACLU involved. I mean, but I mean, also the
David Daley : Koch brothers come in with a lot of funding there and the messaging disappointing the polling groups that they did in Florida were really out of this world. It was it was
David Daley : A you know the reason I think in many ways, they were able to win is they they did not talk about this in racial justice.
David Daley : Frames at all, they explicitly kept that far out of the frame. And they talked about second chances and eligibility for second chances for people who had, you know, completed their sentences.
David Daley : They did not talk about how this was, you know, a Jim Crow era abomination that had to be fixed because that I think they worried would make it part of them.
David Daley : So, so some of these groups certainly had sophisticated operations.
David Daley : Others are just are just, you know, citizen groups that you know got moving and found each other.
Sam Wang: Yeah, it strikes me that that it's a bit of a tightrope, on the one hand fighting for structural reform. On the other hand, bringing it to people's lives without making it into a partisan food fight.
Sam Wang: I've got some questions here that are relevant to this actually quite a lot of questions. So maybe I'll turn to those i but i do have to interject. It was if you were riding around Idaho 1400 dollar RV.
Sam Wang: I am so glad you made it to finish this book.
Sam Wang: I mean, that just seems like a real
Sam Wang: Bargain. Let's say for an RV like I just, it just feels like it might be a little dangerous but you know
David Daley : This thing this thing.
David Daley : teetered on Idaho has speed limits about 7580 miles an hour. This thing topped out about 55
Sam Wang: I don't have high speed limits.
David Daley : It does, they're just very, very high but
Sam Wang: Let me go to some of these questions I've got some Twitter under the hashtag fixing bugs and democracy and also in the zoom acuity.
Sam Wang: Let's see. So let's see, there's some pretty good questions here. Let's continue this for a little bit, Kyle wants
Sam Wang: Kyra writes in and says, Hi, David. Love your books. I was really glad to see slay the dragon. Start by connecting the dots between the environmental justice crisis in Flint, Michigan and gerrymandering
Sam Wang: She says, I feel like a lot of people don't understand that the fight to engineering is directly related to the fight for social justice. How else we can we as a movement, do a better job of helping folks understand the significance, so
Sam Wang: Should one. How does one
David Daley : It's a great question. I mean, on gerrymandered Legislature's
David Daley : Are able to take actions that
David Daley : They're able to push extreme agendas and citizens can't do anything to stop them.
David Daley : Often ketones, you know, and I think what slayed the dragon does so well is it tells the story of Flint and the emergency manager law there and citizens in Michigan.
David Daley : voted to repeal the emergency manager provision Michigan's gerrymandered legislature six weeks later ignored the will of the people and just put it back into place on and that allowed
David Daley : The legislature to replace to fill a local elected officials and flint to bring in a manager who switch the
David Daley : Water Supply over to the Flint River and you know launches a Legionnaires disease crisis and it's the gerrymandered legislature in Wisconsin that forced voters to the polls in person during the pandemic. It's gerrymandered legislators across
David Daley : Michigan and Ohio and Wisconsin that have gone to war on
David Daley : On public universities.
David Daley : And the labor movement. And if you look at what's happened on voting rights over the course of this decade.
David Daley : As well in many ways. The first thing gerrymander legislators do is they they enact voter ID laws and they close precincts and work on voter role purchase and make it harder to do that early voting or or voter registration.
David Daley : Now this makes me sound like a partisan um but what has happened when these legislators are beyond
David Daley : The reach of the people is that they're able to take actions that place them further beyond the reach of people
David Daley : And that is what I think we have to do a better job of explaining. I mean gerrymandering is cheating.
David Daley : You know it cheats people out of fair elections it cheats people out of accountable representation and it's not about
David Daley : Which side wins. It's about whether or not a majority of Americans are able to translate themselves into a majority of seats or whether there's been some kind of, you know, enduring
David Daley : minority rule enacted, and I think we have to we have to be aware of what the parties and consequences are without seeing it through a partisan lens, if that makes sense.
Sam Wang: Now that feedback loop of legislators, keeping themselves in power. So these initiatives have the potential to change that. But those legislators are still there. So Zach, who's a student here at Princeton.
Sam Wang: Zach I think he's in Kentucky right now you know all the students have gone home so I believe Zacks in Kentucky Zach wants to know about.
Sam Wang: The interaction with the legislators and these are forms exact says if 2018 was a year of progress on keep out initiatives like
Sam Wang: Amendment for in Florida restoring fell voting rights, like the Medicaid expansion. How would you respond to these rollback attempts by Republican state legislators on these issues and I'll throw in
Sam Wang: Missouri redistricting reform Utah redistricting reform those legislators were elected. I'll be at gerrymandered there's still an office. So now there's this battle so so talk about that a little bit.
David Daley : But it's a battle.
David Daley : The fight is on it's been engaged.
Sam Wang: And voters and their
David Daley : Legislators yeah it's amazing, right, I mean, yes, this is in many ways, this is a war between voters and their elected representatives on
David Daley : Let me back up though because Zach asks a great question and it's a question that I struggle with in the last chapter
David Daley : Of the book because I was trying to paint all of these. I was trying to tell the stories of these amazing victories. And as I'm finishing the book.
David Daley : The gerrymandered legislators that I'd written about in the first book kept unwinding. All of these winds. Wait, stop. Just let me finish on and they didn't offer me that respect. Thanks a lot for, um, and
David Daley : Here's what I would say. I mean, Idaho goes ahead and they enact some work.
David Daley : Restrictions on Medicaid. So instead of 70,000 people getting it. You probably got 52 to 55,000 Florida instead of 1.4 million people, the restrictions that the legislature placed on it.
David Daley : Will allow between three and 600,000 people to get their voting rights back and the
Sam Wang: Having the courts, put a stellar
David Daley : Know, actually. Well,
Sam Wang: It's a back and forth. I thought the court.
David Daley : Said, it's a constant back and forth. And the last ruling was positive for the reformers, it's probably going to end up at the US Supreme Court ultimately
David Daley : But there's been progress made on all of these things. If we want to focus on the half step backwards and all of these states.
David Daley : We can, but there's also been a couple of steps ahead, and that his this the history of voting rights in this country is not a straight line towards progress the history of voting rights.
David Daley : Did not immediately become
David Daley : Over
David Daley : With the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, um, you know, if it was a straight line.
David Daley : Those amendments would have cured. A lot of this right if if it was a straight line than the passage of the Voting Rights Act that would have fixed. A lot of these problems. It's not. It's a story of progress in retrenchment sometimes
David Daley : All at once. And what's important is that mean Dr. King talked about the moral arc of the universe being long but bending towards justice and it doesn't pin towards justice by itself.
Sam Wang: Right, you gotta bend it
David Daley : It only when all of us, grab it and what happened at 2018 is that people grabbed it
Julian Zelizer : Just jump in on that one point because I often hear that if
Julian Zelizer : It and Sam. This is for you as much for both of you. I have my answer. But I'm curious if viewers if gerrymandering
Julian Zelizer : Is so powerful. If it locks in preferences so much then you hit 2018 or you hit other elections like that when it's broken.
Julian Zelizer : By electoral mobilization, to some extent, that's how people feel Why invest in the structural reform as opposed to winning elections party reform and and kind of mobilizing for these kinds of ways.
David Daley : Because wasn't broken in 2008
Sam Wang: You don't want to wait for a wave of public opinion, like
Sam Wang: 2008. It sounds great to say, wow, we were inspired, we voted for Barack Obama. What happened in 2008 was there this
Sam Wang: Recession that took down the American economy and citizen to this place where we would rather not be and for elections to only be responsive to
Sam Wang: Voter is one voters are so in such desperate straits. I mean, what is like, do we have to wait for a worldwide depression to to get change the government. I think the key here is building governmental system that's responsive to voter to voters changing under normal circumstances.
David Daley : Right.
Sam Wang: Yeah, like this levy that gets built around
David Daley : What I would add, though, is that 2018 did not defeat gerrymandering democrats might have taken back control of Congress in 2018
David Daley : They did so by threading a really difficult needle by winning the three quarters of the seats that flipped in 2018 we're drawn by commissions and courts.
David Daley : And they were able to win in 2018 after Pennsylvania annex a new map that turns a 13 five gerrymandered map into a fair amount AFTER FLORIDA AND
David Daley : Virginia do mid decade redraws
David Daley : But democrats made very little gains in any of the states that were the most excessively partisan gerrymandering, they didn't take back a single seat in Ohio. They didn't take back a single seat in
David Daley : Wisconsin. They didn't take back a single seat in North Carolina. All of those states state exactly the same, not only in Congress, but also in their state legislators and this is especially clear if you look at Wisconsin where in all the statewide races.
David Daley : US Senate Gov. All you know
David Daley : Attorney General treasure. All of the all of those offices go for the Democrats in 2018
David Daley : And voters give 190,000 votes statewide to Democrats for the assembly and democrats are able to flip the exactly one seat.
David Daley : At cutting a majority to 6336 it's even a wave is not enough against these maps. I think it's a real misnomer, if we think that Democrats defeated gerrymandering because of Blue Wave.
David Daley : Tip Congress in their direction and 2018 this remains a huge problem not only nationally in Congress, but in state legislatures around the country that are wildly unrepresentative on maps that are completely not responsive to those
Sam Wang: Connect the dots there and then turn back to one of the listener questions.
Sam Wang: Or I guess we were questions. So I think broadly speaking, there's a tendency. That's kind of baked into how progressives and liberals think especially if they understand history.
Sam Wang: That national reform can change democracy that Dr. King led a national movement that national opinion, a wave of opinion can sweep one party party into power or can sweep the other party in the power. So that's a theory of of change that really comes naturally. I think the liberals
Sam Wang: But really I think a lot of what we're talking about unread is discovering your inner Federalists finding ways to make state government more responsive and I want to turn to.
Sam Wang: And what that means is that one needs to take a more granular view and I and even pat a little while ago asked a question that perhaps
Sam Wang: On that note, Dave. They asked, Are there signs of hope in particular states and they want to know about state courts and they're curious about exactly what kinds of things you see in state courts, and I think the implication is it's about redistricting.
David Daley : On I mean state courts are now the only game in town. Now that the Supreme Court has been declared
David Daley : Partisan gerrymandering on just despicable, which is not necessarily bad news because state courts and state constitutions often have far more robust protections of voting rights, the right to vote, then the US Constitution, which doesn't really mentioned it at all. Um, so
David Daley : Senior Pennsylvania in 2018 and then in New York.
David Daley : Yeah, um,
David Daley : So, so in Pennsylvania in 2018 and in North Carolina in 2019 you had state courts that overturned.
David Daley : unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps and impose new maps and we did not see any additional litigation on that front. I imagine it's too late in the cycle.
David Daley : And litigation is expensive and people decided not to push it, but the the playing field in 2021 for the next set of maps is going to be in state courts.
David Daley : On. I mean, I think it would be better if we had a federal national standard on this and we didn't have to have a litigation and 50 states. And as we have seen, you know, some of those states have, you know, deeply partisan a Supreme Court. So then you end up with all of these
David Daley : And then you end up with funneling a lot of money into state court races as proxies for redistricting fights and that's the like.
Sam Wang: Last week's WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT RACE. Right. That was yes.
Sam Wang: heavily funded hotly contested in the envelope April one, I think in part because it was at the same time as the Democratic primary.
David Daley : That's right. But I mean, also, Pennsylvania. I mean, I mean, Pennsylvania was only able to win that map because democrats in the state invested millions of dollars in
David Daley : In fighting to take back the States Supreme Court.
David Daley : They put their own sympathizers on that court and and what a ruling that I think was right. But you know it came. It came because the democrats spent
David Daley : You know, eight figures on States Supreme Court races in Pennsylvania 2015
Judy.
Sam Wang: Listener Judy wants to know about a specific station Western about Texas her general question is what do you do about a state that doesn't have the initiative process to put a question on the ballot.
Sam Wang: And I think this gets. Why don't we just do specifically Texas is there hope or they do.
David Daley : On
David Daley : Texas.
David Daley : Yeah, I mean, maybe
David Daley : I'm
Sam Wang: They've got racial gerrymandering lawsuits right like that that is a route for taxes.
David Daley : I mean, I say this, I'd say Texas at the beginning of this of this decade was 101 49 and it state house and it's now down to I think eight seats.
David Daley : So a huge advantage is now down to about eight seats, you get for maps in states when both sides have a seat at the table and you often get fairer maps when
David Daley : Both parties are afraid that the other side could win a seat at the table. So they are willing to sort of negotiate and make a deal. So in Texas. Your best bet is probably the democrats are somehow able to take back chamber.
David Daley : Earn a seat at the table and then you get something closer to fair but there's
David Daley : Not gonna be good.
Sam Wang: There's multiple states like that Texas nine seats are I think you're right, eight seats flips that Texas house in Florida flipping nine seats flips the house representatives in Kansas flipping one legislative seed breaks the veto proof majority.
Sam Wang: And so therefore they have to work with the governor. And so I think there's, there seems to in some states that seems like just brute forces that is the answer.
Sam Wang: Sandra Sandra cause Grove rights. She's the president of the League of Women Voters in Nevada. And she says, What do you think of Eric Holder's
Sam Wang: Elect more democrat strategy. So she's so Sondra is essentially conceding the partisan point. And she says, How about just selecting more Democrats or should we get more independent redistricting commissions.
David Daley : Yes, yes, I think.
David Daley : Depending redistricting conditions, but I think the political reality is that the only way to
David Daley : The only way to force progress at the political level, if you don't have an initiative is to have both sides. Have a seat.
Sam Wang: But it strikes me that there's two questions here. It's not just powerful between Democrats and Republicans. It's building districts that are responsive to make everybody responsive and that
David Daley : That's really what I'm talking. We're independent
Sam Wang: commissions have no substitute because because you just break that loop and make it not about DS versus ours.
Sam Wang: He's thinking about voters and they're like,
David Daley : I don't. I mean, I'm not wishing for Democrats to take back the house in Texas, because I'm, I'm a partisan, I would like to see a process that creates a fair map that is responsive to voters. I think that that's the essence of
David Daley : Majority rule. The problem is in all of the states right now and that
David Daley : The only way forward is often going to be through politics.
David Daley : And that is, that means that this becomes part isn't in some ways it's inevitable. And it's frustrating.
David Daley : And it could be the unraveling of reform but
David Daley : There's no other. There's no other way to do it in any places.
Julian Zelizer : You think, and we talked about this with Fe last week, but now you have a sample of many activists ran a pandemic as, as you've heard things are shut down. We're living in a virtual world.
Julian Zelizer : The kinds of activism that is always central and was in her case going out signing things knocking on doors for the foreseeable future.
Julian Zelizer : That might not happen. And she was very optimistic. Still, but I'm curious from your journalistic perspective, what kind of impact can this possibly have even if it goes on in some variation for a while on this movement that you've traced
David Daley : I admire Katie's optimism. Um, I don't always see it myself. I wish I could on but i mean i know that there have been anti gerrymandering efforts that we're going to be on the ballot this year in Arkansas, Oklahoma.
David Daley : And Oregon, all of which are in some state of disarray. At this point, there's a lot of ballot initiatives ever having a real hard time collecting signatures, let alone, doing the work of door knocking. It's going to be really, really hard.
David Daley : What we're going to need to do, you know, maybe there's questions on this too is we have to rethink our voting model ahead of the fall, we clearly need to move towards a vote by mail.
David Daley : We don't know what this pandemic is going to look like in the fall. What we do know is the in person voting is going to be extraordinarily difficult in
Sam Wang: Over 70
Sam Wang: Over 70% of votes in Wisconsin last week were cast by mail.
Sam Wang: Yeah, so that was actually despite all those stank. If you, if for nerds who follow that closely, a lot of focus was on courts and how, of course, were so annoying and made the election happened.
Sam Wang: A state court made the election happened. The Supreme Court said you had to count the votes in a fairly restrictive way.
Sam Wang: And in the end, 71% of people voted by mail. It was actually record turnout for a one pro election where there was only one primary contested. I think at some level, I, it looks like when properly mobilized voters can get pretty riled up about about their right to vote.
David Daley : Oh, I think that's absolutely right. But the question is, are we ready for vote by mail to go from 10 or 12% up to 70% and know states aren't ready for this. They're not ready to
Sam Wang: Johnson was lucky.
David Daley : They're not ready to print these ballots. They're not ready to
Julian Zelizer : David, the little like you 2010 story where I mean one party is seeing what's about to come the GOP in terms of lowering turnout and it's not clear to me the other party is saying this is a priority right now.
David Daley : They should make it right. Yeah.
Sam Wang: Yeah. What about so just following up to that point, we got a couple of questions from listeners della from I believe Virginia wants to know about how coronavirus will affect you. You may even know Dale.
Sam Wang: I think, yeah, I think you probably do.
Sam Wang: I wouldn't go so far as to call this the usual suspects, but I know a few of the names on the question thread.
Sam Wang: But wants to know about covert and the census delay impacting redistricting politics Judy has a similar question. What about how is this sort of getting into the weeds a tiny bit. But we've talked about voting in coronavirus and what that means for democracy. What about the census.
David Daley : It's going to make it really hard for census goers to to go door to door and and count people, and if you don't have an accurate count you
David Daley : You have a lot of problems, whether its funding formulas, whether it's apportionment in an accurate way which then affects the Electoral College count. And then it's redistricting for all these states, especially Virginia and
David Daley : Your Jersey states that
David Daley : Have audio elections. Right. Boy, I mean, if you start pushing this back three, four months on you run into a lot of trouble.
Sam Wang: With my staff was looking at the rules and as far as we can tell, it's not possible to have an election on time in New Jersey in November, and the only way it can happen is to either postpone the November election by weeks or a month or two.
Sam Wang: Or to use estimated populations to draw lines like the
David Daley : Democrats were thinking about this in a sophisticated serious way right now. They would be saying okay because Congress has to sign off on on
David Daley : On changes to the census deadlines, they would be saying we will sign off on this, but you can't use citizen voting age population to draw state legislators.
Sam Wang: Well, so that's interesting. So, it is true that populations at the state legislative level don't have to be exactly the same number of people. So there is. And it's actually true congressional now.
Sam Wang: doodle West Virginian case. So you can imagine maybe doing it based on estimated population like that'd be one way through it wouldn't be ideal. Um,
Sam Wang: So let's see. So back to these questions here. I'm just looking at it. We've actually got some pretty good questions. If people want to ask questions, it's possible to ask on the zoom Q AMP a
Sam Wang: On Twitter with the hashtag fixing bugs and democracy and finally by texting to 929-242-9349 and and I want to go back to this and kind of interesting questions here.
Sam Wang: Wow. So here's one from Jennifer who who I believe is from North Carolina, and she wants to know, What do you think about the reform process and the outcome room, Virginia. So what's your snapshot of what's going on there, Virginia.
David Daley : On the reform process in Virginia is really interesting. Um,
David Daley : I
David Daley : Let's see. I would say this on.
David Daley : It's an imperfect compromise, but it's the compromise the Democrats and Republicans both signed on to. And in many ways, it's the best the political deal that couldn't have been gotten
David Daley : By Democrats and Republicans sitting down together.
David Daley : Legislators in Virginia gave up more power over this voluntarily than any other state in the nation ever has. Yeah.
Sam Wang: They're afraid.
David Daley : To start, you know, it's a start. It's not perfect. Um, and then you had a lot of democrats who didn't want to follow up on it once they took complete control.
David Daley : Down there on and that would have been a disaster for reform, whether or not you think that that's a perfect reform. It's the one that both parties signed on to. It's the one that they campaigned on
David Daley : And had democrats in Virginia walked away from that reform and said we're going to go ahead and use our Trifecta power and play constitutional hardball and ram this down the other side's throat, it would have been
David Daley : A disaster and sit back, the reform movement and an overly politicized it
David Daley : And given you know Scott Walker and his side all the ammunition that they needed to say that Democrats are just talking out of both sides of their mouth on this.
Sam Wang: But it is going to the ballot in November, and so they eventually, after thinking about some alternatives to the right thing.
David Daley : It passed well
David Daley : It passed because 45 Republicans and Democrats moved out of the house. So, it passed in the Senate overwhelmingly the bipartisan Lee and the house in Virginia, almost stopped it.
Sam Wang: I mean, you know, I, but good god bless him those eight Democrats, I mean,
Like
David Daley : I, I have a lot of
David Daley : Respect for their courage.
Sam Wang: valkenburgh and and seven others I believe so. Hey, by the way, I just wanted to mention that you were saying bad things about the census and how that's going to screw things up, but I wanted to, I can always find something positive.
Sam Wang: With unemployment through the roof.
Sam Wang: There's people who are available to be census takers. And so if we can just get out of this dark, dark tunnel, we're in, there's going to be a bunch of people who, you know, I wish had jobs.
Sam Wang: But it turns out that they can get jobs as census takers. And so you guys get, get out there to like whatever my senses 2020 dot gov
Sam Wang: Fill out your senses form poke around the website, get a job, taking a sentence in your community. So I think, I think there's ways for it.
Sam Wang: Hey, listen, we're a little short on time here. We're kind of winding down to the end. But Dave my last question for you is we're as you're going around talking about this terrific book on rigged.
Sam Wang: And you're talking about democracy for reform nationwide as you go around. What are you watching for the summer and we as we go into the fall. What things around the country are you keeping an eye on as you think of things he couldn't quite make it into the book.
David Daley : To me, the pandemic has changed all of this and
David Daley : The question of voting rights is only going to become more crucial over these next few months, we've got about 200 days before the presidential election.
David Daley : We need to be certain that every American is able to vote freely fairly safely and securely and that means really ramping up vote by mail, which is not an easy thing to do. It's not a flip
David Daley : It's not a switch. You can flip it is a process, unless you've done thoughtfully and carefully and has to be funded.
David Daley : And there's a patchwork of state laws around the country that are are governing this and what we already see right now is that, you know, many states are trying to slow it down and
David Daley : You've it's being pushed into partisan politics and not being funded properly.
David Daley : You've got some states that are saying that a pandemic is is is not enough of an excuse to vote absentee you've got States that want to make you
David Daley : Request a ballot and give you sort of an additional step to go through rather than simply mailing you about it. There are laws and a lot of states that
David Daley : Need to be addressed if 70% of the votes coming in or by mail than the election officials have to be able to start counting those a little bit earlier.
David Daley : Or else you know in Pennsylvania, Michigan, you know, two states that have dramatically expanded vote by mail, but they say the clerk's can't start counting until election day.
David Daley : Imagine if that's the case for you know 70% of the ballots. We might not have results for days and then you're going to have a lot of
David Daley : You know, talk about voter fraud is the numbers change is going to call all of this into question we've got to have a way to see ourselves to a nonpartisan conversation about how we safeguard in election during the pandemic.
Sam Wang: But, you know, Wisconsin again got got a job. And one of the things they did is they waited until a week after the election to announce results. And I gotta say that really took the pressure off. I found it kind of relaxing, honestly.
Sam Wang: But I agree with you. That's a good point about vote by mail and finding ways to secure the vote, it feels like that's going to be right up front, as we roll into November.
Sam Wang: Alright, well, we are unfortunately out of time. I just want to say that it's been a real pleasure to have Dave daily on talking about his new book on rigged.
Sam Wang: How Americans are battling back to save democracy. And this is a really interesting book, I highly recommend it. It's sort of a, you know, you don't think of democracy from reform this way, but it's a rollicking tour through all the different ways that democracy is being
Sam Wang: Performed around the country. And so, David's been very good at about joining us and you can
Sam Wang: And this has been part of fixing bugs and democracy series done by the Princeton gerrymandering project and by the pace Center for Civic Engagement here at Princeton University. It's also an episode of politics and poles and politics and polls is a podcast of the Woodrow Wilson School
Sam Wang: And it's available. And let's see, Julie, you gotta help me here at Stitcher.
Julian Zelizer : And SoundCloud Stitcher Spotify and our website politics polls that Princeton not Ed.
Sam Wang: Yep, thank you very, very well done in
Sam Wang: School and people can also find us on Twitter as Sam Wang PhD.
Julian Zelizer : zahniser
Sam Wang: Julian cells are. Yeah. Okay, so we're we're reachable anyway. So Dave, thanks again.
David Daley : Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks to everybody, thanks for all these great questions. I'm Dave daily three on Twitter, we didn't get to your questions to find me up there and you know until I get my job as a census taker. I'm around and can answer all your questions.
Sam Wang: FREE COPY OF unranked with your
Sam Wang: No, no, no, no, no, no.
Sam Wang: Just counted 20% off.
David Daley : Thanks, everybody. There's a lot of fun.
Sam Wang: All right, take care. Bye bye.
