5 takeaways:
➀ Redistricting is a tough topic and math is required. So are maps, said David Daley, author of “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count” and “Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy.” The technicalities matter: Redistricting “will define the playing field of your state’s politics, the kinds of policies that emerge for the next decade,” Daley said. Redistricting is one of the “most powerful structural forces in American politics,” and the gerrymandering happening now is “worse than it ever has been in our country’s history,” he added.
➁ Efforts to draw gerrymandered districts have grown more powerful in the past decade. Advancing technology, big data and political polarization has led to politicians weaponizing redistricting for “blunt force political gain,” making it “almost impossible to undo at the ballot box for many, many years,” said Daley. That transforms redistricting into gerrymandering — or the drawing of political boundaries to maximize political power or dilute the strength of certain voters. Two strategies that reinforce gerrymandering are “cracking” and “packing.” Cracking happens when voters are spread across as many districts as possible. Packing takes many of the other side’s voters and stuffs them into one or two districts, allowing them to win the packed districts easily even as they struggle to compete in the more numerous surrounding districts. These tactics are about power and not always about partisanship, argued Daley.
➂ Maps drawn in 2011 were three times as partisan as maps drawn in 2001. By deploying mass amounts of voter data, advanced geographic information systems, mapping software and supercomputers, politicians have become more strategic at. Voting patterns are “easier to predict in this era of partisan polarization,” he added. Journalists need to learn probe the mapmaking process and contact the consultants, universities or other experts hired to draw the maps. “Figure out what the transparency rules are in your state,” he advised. “What email do you have access to, what records do you have access to? Who is drawing the lines? What kind of contracts have been created? What kind of consultants have come on? In Wisconsin, the Republicans drawing the lines there hired a political science professor in Oklahoma for tens of thousands of dollars to do a fancy regression study and to determine whether or not these maps would hold even in Democratic years… You might be able to sneak some kind of extra insight into what’s unfolding behind closed doors.”
➃ Gerrymandering creates maps that are both unrepresentative and “unresponsive to a political shift in the electorate.” Just drive down certain streets to see for yourself, Daley said. Some maps look “so insane” on paper but “then you get to the street level and you take the turns and you see how perfectly they correspond to economics and demographics,” he said. One example: Michigan’s 14th congressional district has been gerrymandered to link the poorest African American neighborhoods in Detroit to the city of Pontiac, 35 miles north. It happened “intentionally and by design,” he said.
➄ There’ll be more partisan pressure on maps than ever before. While Republicans won the redistricting wars after the 2010 census, this is a game that both parties play. In New York, for example, the state’s Democratic majority has attempted to pass a law that will allow them to “mess with the work of the commission that draws the lines there,” Daley explained. Republicans in Arizona have been trying to interfere with the appointment of the chair of the independent redistricting commission, Daley added. “This, in many ways, is at the heart of our watchdog role. The integrity of these maps determines the fairness of our politics, and it can be a life-or-death issue,” said Daley.
Speaker:
David Daley, Author, “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count”
This program was funded by Arnold Ventures. NPF is solely responsible for the content.
