sacrificial in order for us to get there. then we need to disciplined and focused leaders who demand the best from the country because demanding from themselves first. >> please join me in thanking the senator. [applause]

i'm with the bookstore and want to thank you for coming out tonight. i did hear a about the book when i was reviewing the summer catalog with my penguin random house representative and it seemed like an interesting topic and when i saw that he was from

you nf i thought that would be great let's do an event. they were thrilled and reached out andut here we are. now i did not know we would have so much activity in our state in the last few months between now and then and i have to confess i don't know much about gerrymandering and i can honestly say i've never met an expert. does anyone else feel the same? we are looking forward to a conversation that will educate us for those that haven't had a chance to scan the faculty page, please let me introduce the professor and interim chair at the department of political science at the university of north florida. his research examines the intersection of law and politics in the united states with a particular focus on redistricting reform and administration. the author of the book drawing

the lien, constraints on gerrymandering and politics which was published in 2017 as well as the title of the evening one person one vote a surprising intory of gerrymandering america. our conversationalist this evening of the florida times union has been a columnist for the florida times union since 2019 and before that he was the investigative reporter focused on covering jacksonville city hall which is the largest municipal government in florida and prior to arriving in in 2013 a reporter for the newspapers in the florida panhandle and south louisiana. the army core screw ups ande bingo nights at the senior citizen center. the conversation between will be will be doing a q-and-a session.

as i mentioned we have c-span with us this evening and they enwill be recording the proceedings when you are ready to ask a question if you will line up at one of the slide mics and weights so everyone can hea you, and please don't forget to stop by the bookstore and let us know if you would like to attend more events like this. thank you and good evening. [applause]

i think perhaps the best way is to kind of give you a quick definition of what it is we mean by gerrymandering because it's one of those political terms some people are kind of aware of and have some idea of what it is and how it works. it's one of those things they kind of throw into the bucket or the category of kind of bad democracy thinking. it's one of those elements of the government that is functional, that obstructs the translation of the people's cypreferences into government policy so something that is complex and complicated. i want to begin with a quote that i will read here to make

sure i get it right because this is the quote that i opened the book with and i think it is probably the best idea of what gerrymandering is that i've encountered. this is a quote by a republican political strategist who basically no one had ever heard of until after he died in 2018 and his estranged daughter released to the media a treasure trove that documented the influence that he had behind the scenes on american politics through gerrymandering. he says redistricting is like an election in reverse usually they get to pick the politicians and

that i think is perhaps the best way to summarize what it is that we are talking about tonight. >> i think that all of us can feel from time to time like we don't have as much control as we would like. how many times have you showed up to the ballot box and reviled every choice that you have? i think redistricting explains this lack of agency they feel and it's a deliberate thing. redistricting is the people and power to determine their own future, the future of their chosen successors and we see this on every level. i expect we will talk tonight maybe even about the city councilsy redistricting process and the state of florida struggled with this for a long

time. >> i think that hits at the core of the problem. it removes choice and ability to hold the government accountable. the gridlock, the corruption, politicians doing their own selfish interest rather than the interest of the constituents and the fact they know they will not be held accountable for what they do while they are in office and gerrymandering is a big part of that because it involves taking elections that might previously have been competitive where either the democrats or republicans could have one

control of the city council in jacksonville where the state legislature in tallahassee and making those uncompetitive, the districts that are lopsided where the vast majority of the people who live there are either democrats or republicans and when that happens there's no meaningful choice for the people that live in those districts particularlyho if you're one of those unfortunate ones that find yourself in a heavily republican seat or heavily democratic seat. when that occurs it shifts the entire focus and selection process to the primary and the people who vote in primaries tend to be more ideological and inevitably the candidates that

emerge when they are fairly extreme the district is not competitive, it's kind of that pretty much guaranteed to win anyway and you just have to look at some of the characters that are representing various districts in the house of representatives right now to rokind of see that process in action. .... like a lot of criminality, criminal behavior, redistricting has adapted over time as our understanding about what sort of priorities, policymakers ought to have in mind when they draw districts has changed as the

courts have in the past sort of tried to control or set some rules for what is allowed although there has not been much of that. it has are tools like our dated tools and mapping tools have improved the politicians have adapted to that. they have come up with more insidious ways of preserving their ownth power. i think that is a really important theme in your book. i also think an important theme in your book and i would argue we saw that play out on the jacksonville cityt council levl is that when people hear the term redistricting, particular because of the tenor of our discourse there is an assumption redistricting only happens when michael one party controls all the levers ofty government. in reality there's something called bipartisan redistricting. which is just as bad and involves people coming to an agreement to protectue themselv. which is the most bipartisan

issue there is. >> one of the main things i wanted to accomplish with this book, redistricting and gerrymandering are subjects that a lot of stuff a lot of things in the media, a lot of things by academics. and a so what i think is differt about this book and unique about this book is that it looks it gerrymandering across the entirety of u.s. history. what i discovered when i began researching this topic is that gerrymandering is not as old as the united states itself. it is in fact older than the united states itself. it has its origins in a somewhat quirky practice in british politics and they were the ways that british aristocrats traditionally used the

arrangements of government to maintain their stranglehold on power. it involved essentially controlling the number of people who would get to vote in the district. on so you could potentially have a seat in parliament that had ur500 or 1000 people living at d ultimately three or four of them were actually eligible to vote. the land owner, the nobleman would bribe patronage of the seat. we saw something similar translated across to the united states during the colonial era. these kind of early gerrymander is whether there prior to independence or post independence do not really look a whole lot like gerrymandering as we imagine it today. the image of gerrymandering the

>> of these bizarre and misshapen what you see on map sometimes as nay was saying it is only the technology that is available to politicians today. it was not until the 1970s that computers and software were used for the first time in the redistricting process. it was really not until 20 tens sophisticated algorithms and simulations began to enter the scene. with these allowed the verse to do was not only drug district based on what has happened in prior elections. so you can draw a seat the way you can figure it, it looks like this seat has voted republican for the last two or three cycles. we draw the district this way we are pretty confident it will vote republican moving forward.

this is kind of historically how gerrymandering was done. they look at the census numbers. they would look at how people had voted in prior elections and they would extrapolate that into the future. andyb often times that would wok for maybe one election or possibly twobu elections. but then people would kind of move around a little bit and perhaps the political winds or ties would start to change direction. and often gerrymandering would not remained robust throughout an entire decade or even longer. what happens today as we have these sophisticated models by which they can simulate how the districts they draw will perform under a wide variety of hypothetical future scenarios. they can then tweak the boundaries and tweak the lines to create the optimal

gerrymander to remain robust throughout an entire decade. and there are u.s. states that are for all intents purposes no longer really democracies inle terms of their legislative elections for the example i begin thehe book with an eye thk it is one of the most glaring one is the state of wisconsin. after the 2010 election the republican party controlled state government and the state of wisconsin. and they drew what i consider to be one of the most severe gerrymander in american history. and as a result of that the republican party has retained control of around about two thirds of the seats in the wisconsin state legislature for the entirety of the last decade. and in that decade there were two elections were the democrats won the popular vote overall on the state of wisconsin.

and yet the republicans maintain controls of two thirds of the seats. and that is what gerrymandering can do. it can render essentially an entire state no longer a democracy for an entire decade. another consequence of that is that after the most recent census, guess who was in control of redistricting again in wisconsin? it was the same republicans who had gerrymandered it a decade ago. and that is what really concerns me moving forward. thatet gerrymandering is not jut going to be something that allows politicians up at their thumbs on the scale for a couple of elections. it's going to be something that allows the political party to essentially create a one party and use gerrymandering decade after decade to kind of exclude their opponents in the political process. >> is not shocking at all to see in this book redistricting like almost every other malevolent

force in the world today is uniquely american. like we took something from britain which, you correct me if i'm wrong. the redistricting was the ancestor of what wee have today was more like a mall apportionment. just a passive not changing boundaries as populations shifted overr time, to something that is like incrediblyy proactive. this regime of data analysis that you are describing this is an effort to take people's voice and vote away today on into the sfuture. and it is incredibly effective. i mean it is really worth considering that in florida the legislature not this latest round but in the 20 tens the

redistricting processth then is not often described in these terms. but that was one of the largest most brazen corruption scandals in florida history. a trial court level a judge found there was a systemic sort of scheme underway by the legislature to draw maps with partisan intent contrary to the law. the legislator went to great lengths to do that. they concealed their communications with political consultants. they deleted records shortly after redistricting was done even though they knew they should've been public record of lauper there be litigation file that would destroy important discovery. these are the stakes. the stakes are quite literally the control of our democracy and all of our little democracies in our states and in our cities. i was really interested, i had

no idea about the history of it. i had no idea it was as old as you describe. i just think like maybe i feel like you should explain donald trump on a turkey in the crowd that the thing in the book. >> i can explain that. one of the things i do in the book is present examples of what i think are some of the most interesting or whole areas or in this case hilarious and disturbing districts in american history. this kind of a game and those who are in the business of analyzing gerrymandered like to play this to kind of describe districts inso terms of what thy lookri like. so if you have a particularly misshapen districts on a map people will go to great lengths

to insinuate what it is that district resembles. sometimes they actually looked more like the thingm then on other occasions. there are couple from the state of new york that i talked about in the book. one from the 1990s and one from the 2000's. the first one is a district in new york which is a big isolated island in the middle of upstate new york. if you look at it resembles almost uncanny level abraham lincoln writing out a vacuum cleaner. pictures of all these in the book. you can take a look for yourself. it is remarkable. there is another district from a decade later. which is a district that runs up

and down the hudson valley north of new york city. in a nickname for this was donald trump urinating on the small turkey. you can see this if you read the book. you may not want to see it you will certainly never be able to unseal it. that is what the district resembles. >> it ist real. there is one other district i write about in the book as well. this one is kind of interesting. if you go back historically a lot of times the districts were drawn and away were not all of the parts of them were physically connected to one another. the idea that this is now a requirement on the federal law

that districts have to be contiguous. have to be geographically connected with one another.ts there is one major exception to this what does that districts are allowed to cross directly over a body of water. so a river, lake, something like that . otherwise it's physically impossible to divide the state into districts if you do not have the ability to crosspost water features. soan back in the 1980s there was a congressman from california. his name was philip burton. i kind of credit him in the book as being one of the inventor of the modern gerrymander the type of gerrymander that relies not so much on mall apportionment

calming very different populations between districts and a sense for the title of the book one person one vote comes from a series of supreme court decisions the 1960s r that required under the constitution all districts to have equal populations. and so those one person one vote decisions really change gerrymandering from a situation where politicians could draw one district over here that had 500 voters in it. and another went over here that had 5000 voters in i it. that was the way districts were often manipulated. but sinces the 1970s redistricting has to be done in complies with one person one vote principle. which mean no two are responsible for it have to be a little more creative when it comes to manipulating the lines to ensure whatever the political outcome is that they are looking

for. so phil burton, congressman from california was in control of california's redistricting in the early 1980s. on the other side of that debate was the h aforementioned the republican political strategist was his first rodeo in his 50 year gerrymandering career. what phil burton decided to do not create a gerrymander that would allow the democrats number of seats in the state of california was to draw a district that included three disconnected parts of the bay area around san francisco. it had downtown san francisco. had this acidity of help across the bay from there. then i had a large rural section

across on the other side of the bay. the only district in california history to take advantage the idea you could include noncontiguous territory in a district if it goes directly across a body of water. it's a district entirely unrelated to secure the outcome he is looking for. ask we had some fun with this tonight redistricting, where to shape districts. that is not a requirement of

redistricting. redistricting and essences in a drawing of boundaries that's done with intent to protect someone's interest. you actually lay out you argue for a specific definition of what redistricting is in the book. i encouraged can run us through that. >> i think it leads to discount gerrymandering with this is not produced district that are bizarrely misshapen. one example might be the recent gerrymander by our states governor rod desantis who rejected the maps that have been proposed by the state legislature. he proposed his own map on the result of that map is that in florida, a state that's pretty close to 50/50 democrats and republicans it is almost

guaranteed republican will win 20 of the 28 florida seats in the house of representatives and the elections. to give an illustration of how gerrymandering works in practice, maybe it's best to think of a hypothetical. from a college professor i love thinking and hypotheticals. some of you always get so let's imagine a hypothetical completely made up midsized american city. as a city government the mayor gets elected by the voters of the city as a whole. and it has a three member city council who are elected from

districts. those districts have cap equal populations also keep things simple. publicize the city of jacksonville. [inaudible] but he of made up of 50% one political party the red team. they contest elections in jacksonville for cooks who is the mayor? >> are going to get to that in a second period the merrill elections is no opportunity for gerrymandering there, right? requires districts. the outcome for elections for mayor are going to be driven by

turnout. the more red team, blue team voters turn out to vote in the election parade they're going to be driven by the quality of the candidates. putin nominates a particularly incompetent candidate for mayor of jacksonville. it's likely to lose that election because it is a 50/50 city. say the red team nominates a pretty good candidate. some young up-and-coming star politician let's call him lawrence trevor. lawrence trevor is likely to win that election. because i get it is fair. his 50/50 the voters decide the outcome. we've just had a census in

jacksonville the three city council districts need to be redrawn in order to comply with one person one vote when he talked about a minute ago. and it just so happens the time of redistricting lose control of the mayor's office and a majority of the city council. there are a couple different ways you can draw a fair map for the city of jacksonville. you can try it make all three of thed districts reasonably competitive. but approximately equal numbers of team read in team blue voters into all three of the districts. and then the elections are going to depend on how you as a candidate, how good their campaigns are. do they contact with that thconstituent? alternatively if that is not practical voters in jacksonville areea not evenly distributed.

you have read team neighborhoods and blue team neighborhoods. maybe you could draw one district that has a blue team majorityty pretty cap one distrt that has a red team majority. you could draw one district that is pretty competitive. again, that's going to leave the choice of the outcome into the hands of the voters. most elections red teams going to win 1c, blue teams going to win one seat and the competitive district is going to determine who controls the city council. that is in theory how democracy is supposed to work. let's now imagine ed gerrymanderingso scenario. let's say the red team in control of redistricting draws one of the three districts so they pack in all of the blue team voters they can find. it ends up 80% blue team in 20% red team voters.

the other two districts they draw them so they have 65% red team 3 voters and 35% blue team voters. so you have three districts they are in compliance with one person one vote. they all have the same population. one district is two districts are 65 -- 35. that is than a gerrymander because none of those three districts are competitive. none of those three districts are likely to change hands even when you take into account the things that might happen over the course of a decade. people move around within the city. new voters come in, people move out but none of those changes area going to be significant enough to move any of those seats into a situation where they are likely to change hands. impeachedf they get for misappropriation of city

funds the parties going to be pretty unpopular but it's not going to be sufficient to shift the powers enough to make any of those competitive. you've basically drawn the district in such a white you guaranteed that no matter what happens, no matter how the people vote the red team is going to into districts the city council and the blue teams going to win one. that is how gerrymandering workt and that is what has occurred but only here in jacksonville but across the state of florida and a whole host of places around the unitedow states. >> it is interesting. what you are describing is attacking a certain subset of voters into a district weon get one district that is very highly concentrated blue team. and then to that or maybe not as concentrated but still very like red team friendly. we talk aboutap adaptability in

american history with minority voters i think the strategy at one time was vote dilution to draw districts to dilute the vote. then we have court rulings on behalf of the civil rights movement there is emphasis on mandatory minority access. so then the strategy becomes packing. so we will not dilute to these voters. if we have to make space for them we will make space for them in the smallest number that we can. and so with that looks like in practice there is a city council district in jacksonville and has a voting age population that is 75% black. which is way over the amount necessary to ensure that black voters met district to elect the candidate of their choice. this varies by district.

the number only needs to be about 48 -- 50% of the voting age population being a minority to give minority voters to elect the candidate of their choice. we can see district was 60 and 70% which is way more than it needs to be. that's we actually have in jacksonville for therefore minority access seats but are far in excess of what they need to provide to actually be minority access. the council i would argue engage in this bipartisan redistricting phenomenon that we talked about earlier put the democrats on the city council were in many ways more fierce defenders of this map than the republicans were. in this map disadvantages democrats and minority voters.

it is kind of amazing you see the stuff play out. but this is happening everywhere. >> one of the major themes of the book is how gerrymandering can take a number of different forms. we tend to think about gerrymandering and the concept of partisan gerrymandering the example or one political party controls the redistricting process. they use it to try and keep themselves in power. try to maintain their majority in the city council or thete legislature or whatever. but in delving back into the history of gerrymandering, i found that there were numerous different types that have been used for various different political purposes. which is why the definition of gerrymandering that i used and begin the book with i simply

that it is the manipulation of districts for some kind of political purpose. it does not have to be partisan there has to be a goal in mind. i write a lot in the book about how gerrymandering was used as a tool of racial oppression. most notably the 1970s. because what happened with the civil rights movement in the 1960s was that all of the traditional tools ofan disenfranchisement that was used against african americans in the south to prevent them from registering to vote, to prevent them from participating in elections. suddenly all of us were outlawed by the federalal government. the federal government began aggressively scrutinizing southern states in order to ensure their compliance with the civil rights act and the voting rights act.

though racial gerrymandering in the 1970s became the new way that the white majority and states like texas and georgia and louisiana could exclude african americans from political office. they could draw the district in such a way that black voters were dispersed among a number of districts where there was a white majority. because it's called racially polarized t voting and operatio, the white voters tended to fight vote for white candidates the black voters tended to vote for black candidates. this to ensure no black candidates could ever realistically be elected for any of the districts in those

states. and thankfully both the supreme court and the u.s. congress began to crack down on that type o' racial gerrymandering in the 1980s. scott known as a vote dilution. there is legislation passed by congress in 1982 to amend the voting rights act to crack down on this kind of vote dilution. there were a series of decisions by the supreme court to prevent states from doing that moving forward. so thankfully that kind of gerrymandering became a lot less prevalent in recent decades. but as they mention, politicians are resourceful. and they are strategic. you close off one avenue of manipulation and they will figure out another way to achieve the same goal. and so what the republican parties began doing doing in the 1990s was instead of dividing

minority voters among a bunch of different districts or none of their candidates could get elected. instead they figured if you passed huge super majorities of african americans or latinos or asian americans into a single district no matter how large their numbers they're likely to elect member of the legislature. this had the advantage of benefiting the republican candidates and surrounding areas were all of the minority voters were democrats where they could pack as many minority democrats as they could into an individual district. that would have the effect of allowing republicans to win almost all of the surrounding seats. this is what started going on all over the south in the 1990s. and it is what we have seen happening here in jacksonville

and this most recent redistricting cycle. jacksonville has a large african-american population and the city council passed all of those voters into a huge super majority district. essentially ensures there's almost no opportunity for black candidates to get elected from anywhere else in the city. >> one thing that strikes me the pace of how quickly have gotten worse. when i was a reporter in 2010 and that redistricting cycle i was working in south louisiana. the school board, the parachute governments, the county governments, every little no matter how w small these politil boundaries to work, when they were redrawn they had to be submitted to the u.s. justice department for preclearance. so they were not allowed to approve anything on their own.

those watching the processes it played out everyone had to hire a consultant. the process was very professionalized. it was very formalized. the reasons why the jews districts arein drawn the way ty were was clearly explained by the politicians themselves did not actually have -- the public. more controlled and exerted but this was a very professional run process. the supreme court has since done away with the preclearance concept. and what we see now all of those politicians i covered in 2010 are now free to draw these districts however they like. the only way to hold them accountable is to go to court where they are likely to encounter a judge who is pretty hostile towards the idea of rtintervening and demanding thaa certain set of political boundaries get changed. i was wondering if you could maybe walk us through some of the modern supreme court

decisions that have really, at least in my view, undermined our democracy by closing off the courts as an avenue to get reliefe . >> yes. there've been to kind of parallel threads of supreme court cases that have concerned gerrymandering. you have had the cases were activist attorneys have been attempting, unsuccessfully tried to persuade the justices to step in and say the most egregious examples of partisan .errymandering kind b of like what i talked abt in wisconsin a little bit earlier. that these and violate the constitution. these violate the equal protection clause because you are discriminating against voters based on their political affiliation. entering the district in such a way that one half of the political spectrum has no meaningfulul opportunity to

influence election outcomes. it is been three significant cases. the justices kind of said we think there are some circumstances here are some thoughts you might go about adjudicating that. the justices were really split between several different opinions. what was unconstitutional or constitutional when it comes to gerrymandering. as another case involving a

challenge to districts the court was ready to lay their cards on the table. your four conservative justices who wanted to say it should not be entertaining these questions. without the supreme court should really step in and strike down these very bad gerrymander's. your justice kennedy in the middle justice kennedy as was often his style refused to make up his mind. there another split decision another decade t of no clear guidance how lower court should be doing with gerrymandering. that in this most recent decade we had two cases involving the wisconsin gerrymander the

justices dismissed that one on grounds.l yet the final nail in the coffin which was in decision which was a challenge that was the case in an opinion by chief justice john roberts the justices said were closing the doors of the federal courthouses to gerrymandering challenges entirely. you could no longer mitigate these cases in federal court. we have also seen a lot of decisions that touched on these a little earlier. that crackdown on racial gerrymandering. recent decades of the shelby county decision preclearance that was crucial in preventing these states that had

traditionally been engaged in racial discrimination from backsliding. and predictably shelby county we seen quite a bit of that backsliding starting to occur. it has been happening in louisiana in the most recent redistricting cycle for the state declines to draw a second black influence congressional district for the lower court said this is a violation of the voting rights in the supreme court reversed that decision. said that maps the legislator had drawn could go into effect. and i think that decision embolden ron desantis to eliminate the two minorityen influence district seat in north florida val deming seat in the orlando area.

the desantis gerrymander gets ridth of two districts that have african-american candidates. this never would've been possible prior to shelby county. or it has a constitutional amendment that prohibits the diminishment of minority voting. but the florida supreme court did not see it that way in a recent ruling they allowed desantis to go into effect. that happens the supreme court has a seven -- zero republican majority on it. including three of the seven justices that were appointed by desantis themselves. it seems he is confident the state supreme court is going to interpret anyway. >> and soon to bee a fourth. >> will soon have a state supreme court for the majority

of justices by the current governor. a couple of really major concerns moving forward. first disease florida supreme court can strike down the district amendments. these were the amendments to the state constitution the voters approved back in 2010. which prohibit partisan gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering. my second major concern is that the supreme court is either going to strike down or sharply limit section two of the voting rights act of 1965. the legislation that requires states into account when drawing districts. thanks a chance and both ofar those things can happen within the next two or three years. >> matching the tenor of those comments, there is a thread of hope you weave through your

book. i would stop short ofti saying t is an optimistic book and not an optimist about much. i wonder if you can explain to us your view how optimistic or were you not about the future? >> think there has been a meaningful progress in combating gerrymandering particularly within at the impetus of politicians. in most of the time not at the impetus of judges either. it is, the impetus of the thpeople. you need the opportunity to

collect signatures, to place initiative on the ballot to amend the state constitution are put in place a regular statute there have been a number of redistricting reform anti- gerrymandering initiatives that have been voted on in the last decade. and every single one of those has been approved by the voters of their respective states. we are not to talk about blue states here we are talking about utah, florida, michigan, ohio. every chance that people have to weigh in on this question message they are sending is clear. we do not want politicians controlling this process. we do not want the politicians to sign an agenda and choose their voters. i think in the next decade will continue to see incremental

reforms. particularly in those states where those are available. that is not in every state. and so in states or you do not have that option you are relying on the politicians to perform gerrymandering. that is not always work terribly well. those are the ones currently reaping the greatest benefits of the current system. i have less optimism and those states. greater optimism in states where ballot initiatives are available. i have somewhere in between a level of optimism when it comes to congress. what happens to fixed gerrymandering at the state

level and state elections is going to be decided by each of the individual 50 states. congress has the power to fix gerrymandering when it comes to federal elections. the institution gives congress the authority to determine how members of congress will bef elected. and how congress has various times place all kinds of constraints and requirements on that process. we have seen just in the last two years two different bills introduced that would try to help fix the problem of gerrymandering. one whichns would have required every state to create an independent citizens commission that would be responsible for drawing districts after each census. that is the approach i favor. it is an approach that has worked wellin states like

california and colorado and michigan. we saw anotherl bill proposed is kind of a compromise bill by senator joe manchin which would have placed legal constraints on state legislatures when it comes to drawing congressional districts. it will probably not surprise you to learn neither of those bills was actuallyte successfuly enacted. they're both filibustered in the senate part of the reason for that is there introduced as part of the democrats operative us lotta stuff in there and tighten gerrymandering as a stand-alone bill members of the house vote on it.

it's overwhelmingly popular with the people. whether it suggests democrats, republicans, independence no americans like gerrymandering.he or when you've seen the people vote on it is pretty clear what they want to happen. and i hope weau see more meaningful progress in the next decade. obviously we have not done enough to fix the problem so far. >> are the only person i've heard say they're hopeful about something congress is dealing with. should be opened up to questions? >> that's a good idea. don't be shy come up to the microphones. x isn't it true the u.s. constitution gives state legislatures the authority for redistricting? and if that is true, how could

congress make the change you want by l law? >> it works a little differently depending upon when you talk about state elections or federal elections. when it comes to state elections by individual state constitution and undresses no authority to interfere with that. it comes to federal elections, elections for the u.s. house of the u.s. senate, the constitution gives authority to both state legislatures and to the u.s. congress. this is a provision called the elections clause. i will try and recite it to the best of b my ability off the top of my head. it basically says state legislatures are responsible for setting the times, places and manner of election for senators and representatives but congress may make or alter such regulations. so it allows states to set the

procedures that will be used to run federal elections. but it also empowers congress to place its own restrictions, its own alterations are what the states will do. it isn't that clause specifically the provision that allows congress to make or alter those regulations, that empowers them to pass legislation that would prohibit gerrymandering. butan only for elections to the u.s. house. it would not give them anyn authority to tell states how to run their own state elections. >> so i think the re- districts in florida and jacksonville l.a. competing story about what is best for which party. so youou complained about the bipartisan gerrymander of the role of the democrats basically

ensuring their subservience during the next ten years. the democrats at the statehouse on the opposite way for they kicked scream, kick their feet and protested and map that would've been 17 -- 11. had they gone along with that roughly unanimous support in the state legislature might that have enabled them at that point to maybe then stick with that and overturned the initial veto and leaving them better off? >> if the argument is there is any scenario in which the florida legislature was not going to kyiv to ron desantis because the democrats would have beenju nicer, i don't buy that theory. i know that is a thing that is out there. i think were going to get the

map to santos wanted by virtue of republican-controlled legislature and desantis standing with voters in florida with the party. >> i tend to agree with that. and ultimately. [inaudible] that is intense. ultimately i think it is a lose/lose situation. you can perhaps extract somees concession if you go along with the process. that is i basically what here in jacksonville decided to do. think it is notable in a city that is basically 50/50 between democrats and republicans once again we are going to have city council where you have what is

it nine -- four would exclude the at-large? nine -- four republican majority on the city council for the next decade. maybe that will shift one or two tsetse their way. there's a 0% chance that we'll win the majority on the jacksonville council. members of the council decide they put their own careers ahead of the interests of the people. they basically get to hand it to tailor their own districts to ensure they at least get to stick around for as long asow ty want to empower. the democrats in tallahassee i think arere going to get run roughshod over desantis. whatever they did. it was a lose/lose situation. and i almost think sometimes the bipartisan gerrymander's are

almost worse than the partisan ones. it is one thing for a political party to use his influence to try and gain as much of an edge as it can within legal means. at least to some extent is politics as usual. something politicians have done for time. but when you have two polar opposites democrats and republicans they agree on nothing. but the one thing they are able to cooperate on is getting together when it comes time to draw the districts. basically carving up the map so all of them get to keep their seats. all good to stay in office. this basically happen for 50 years in the state of newhe yor. for the 1960s the 20 tens, new york state had a situation where the democratic party controlled the state assembly republican

party controlled the state senate. they would keep control and agreeing to allow the opposing party in the other chamber to draw their individual map. this is the longest period of uninterrupted, divided legislative control of the single state in u.s. history. there's something else that even comes close. for five decades the same voters return the democratic majority to the state assembly into the state said it. solely because of how the districts were drawn to. that almost seems worse to me. it's politicians coming together and said you can't agree on anything else other than subverting the will of the electorate. undermine the ability of voters to hold us accountable. it is we all get to keep our

jobs. box one final cup i make about the jacksonville redistricting process i would think local democrats were in practical terms not in a great position to affect the outcome that they got. there is a super majority -- make the republicans hold a super majority of the city council. they certainly were not going to just okay the creation of a fifth minority access. the bizarre spectacle he saw play out was the democrats on the city council argued forcefully as any republican was not onlyut the best we were goig to get but this is morally upstanding, how dare you suggest we do something different otherwise map. which is odd. if you are concerned about minority voters ability to

choose candidates of their choice. that's not the best they could have pushed for. recalling at a bipartisan gerrymandering. it's kind of what they was. they got co-opted and it is not a good map. thank you for writing a book. i have a question. in this day and age as all the technology we have, we have latitude and longitude. why don't we come up with something using technology to evenly distribute areas? and nothing is perfect so scenario a and hitting a lake happens you do a, b, or c. something along those lines. where it is more rule-based and

automated instead of just letting people's opinions run awry. >> thanks for the question. there has been quite a bit of research that has looked at doing redistricting using algorithms. instead of having humans sit down and manipulate the software districts are going to be redrawn. instead you can have an algorithm basically draw thousands of different potential maps. and then you can choose one that optimizes whatever criteriaoo it is you are looking b for. that can be a valuable tool. i also don't think there is no platonic ideal of a good redistricting plan. redistricting is all about

trade-offs. you cannot achieve all of those things at the same time. you can perhaps tell the algorithm you wanted to draw a lot of competitive districts. you can tell the algorithm you wanted to follow existing communities, existing county and municipal boundaries. you can tell the algorithm to draw districts that are pretty compact at a regularly shaped they do not have bizarre contortions and appendages and things look really well on a map until the algorithm you wanted to prioritize theon protection o draw districts that would ensure they have an opportunity to select candidates of their choice. you cannot tell the algorithm to do all these things at the same

time. mutually exclusive but you cannot have districts that preserve communities and are also fair and competitive. they're not fair and competitive. americans tend to cluster together into neighborhoods that are more democratic in neighborhoods that are more republican. you often end up at the district that is not especially competitive. i think you are right, that kind of technology can be a useful tool but ultimately the algorithms are and it tends on human choices about what to prioritize and redistricting. >> in a lot of ways is our system by a large relies on people we elect the decisions

protecting themselves. fundamentally incapable of making that choice enough times to not have a completely screwed up system. >> and gerrymanderingma incentivizes them to make the wrong choice in that situation. we have fewer competitive districts. neither point the essence of the form to 35 seats in the u.s. house of representatives, somewhere around 38 -- 35 of those are going to be competitive seats in the november election later this year. there are 30 -- 35 seats out of 435 where both parties have a meaningful opportunity to win that seat. the others have been drawn so

they are so lopsided is the democrat or the republican is basically guaranteed to win. and when elections are not competitive, politicians cannot be held accountable for what they do in office. and so it becomes all the more tempting to prioritize their own interest over the interest of c their constituent. today with things like the the fair districts amendment passing or being asked of the amendment process and how the florida supreme court reacted and how the current super majority of the national supreme court is what is the what is the alternative? what is the strategy for fair redistricting? even in places where you have laws on the books that either nonpartisan or fair

redistricting when you have courts that get to decide what the meaning of is is. i think the fair amendments actually >> i think the district amendments actually worked really well a decade ago or at least as well as they could have been expected to work. what happened is that they place to the provisions in the state constitution. those provisions said you cannot engage in partisan gerrymandering and rick scott and the republican majority in tallahassee went ahead and ignored them and put in place districts for the congressional seats and the state senate that were republican jerry manders and it took a few years, but in 2015 the state supreme court struck the districts down and required the legislature to

redraw them. what replaced it was a pretty fairad map. democrats have a reasonable shot they didn't end up doing it but they had a reasonable shot they had better candidates and better campaigns at winning the state senate at the tail end of the last decade and had a reasonable mashot of winning the majority f the congressional seat. neither of those things are possible anymore. but the supreme court even though it had a republican majority or it may have been more close to being evenly divided at the time, but it was lconsiderably less skewed than today. i have less confidence that the state supreme courtre will uphod and apply the fair district amendments this time around which is why i think what we need to do here in florida is put a new state constitutional

amendment on the ballot and say we gave you an opportunity to abide by this. you failed to do it for two consecutive decades so now we are going to take that power away from you and create a nonpartisan independent commission made up of regular citizens and they will have the power to control districts. i think the main thing that i took away from this book is that the main the problem with problh redistricting in the united states and the problem that every other nation has managed to fix is simply the fact that we allow politicianswh to contrl it and when you take politicians out of the equation you're not always going to get a fair amount. you shouldn't always expect to get a fair amount, but you're going to get one more often than we do now.

>> thank you for your book and for this talk. i have lived here my whole life and i've been apparently swimming in this see of denial i guess i always knew it was happening but this really spells it out in black-and-white. how to proceed i guess i'm struggling to make a question. how do i get people to vote. is it the responsibility of the voters to find a solution to this? i thinkk it is. is it the responsibility of the voters to use the people in office if they voted for them or not to try to enact change? i see no reason for change.

there has to be a way for me to convince a woman that her vote will count and that hers matters as much as the one in murray hill or i don't see a democracy anymore and i cannot live in that country. i certainly am having a hard time living in that state. any hope outside of the ballot initiative that we can try to push for can we get out and try to get those initiatives by numbers or get people to unite under this scenario that you've presented or do we go about our business the way we have for all of my life? i don't know which way to proceed, and i do appreciate you bringing it to our attention. thank you. >> i think we are all screwed, so you better take this question. [laughter] i guess i have to try to find

the silver lining in this again. what i would say a lot of times you're b going to go to the votg booth and most of the choices that you have are not going to be meaningful, but there's always going to be something on the ballot that is meaningful. there's always going to be a race whether it is the city council or something even further downwn. the ballot thers going to be an opportunity for your voice to be heard and for it to be able to make a difference. i think as depressing as things are in our political system right now, i do think that there is hope to try to fix those things. it's not going to be easy, and i know that it's depressing to have to kind of fight a constant holding action to cling onto the

vestiges of democracy that we still have but the alternative is all of that going away. people have to put in the effort that an engaged citizenry is something that i've done quite h bit of work on. one of the things i do is work as a consultant for the florida department of education on their civic literacy initiative which is designed to try to get students in k-12 and universities engaged in politics interested in politics equipped with the knowledge into the tools to become effective and engaged democratic citizens and hopefully that has an impact, but i think it's hard and you

just have to kind of say that we needgh to fight for this. we need to fight is better and preserve what we already have. maintaining a healthy representative democracy requires citizen engagement. it doesn't take care of itself. the framers provided us with many of the institutions to have such a system and a lot of those have weathered for centuries but not the virtues and the norms necessary to sustain that in perpetuity. that is our responsibility as citizens and it is only through participation no matter how small, voting in elections, getting involved in your

community. all theseow things make a contribution to improving the politics and it's only by aggregating all of those together that change i wouldn't let the last comment to be that we are totally screwed. i think that all of us struggle. anyone that is specifically engaged in this feeling of helplessness and certainly the newspaper am i toiling away in obscurity and if you are a campaign organizer, you might hear the same. you might feel like your efforts don't measure up to the challenges we face that are quite significant. dbut one thing that you can do that will guarantee that nothing will get better is to stop those

things. i see that alley an argument for carrying on. civic engagement is the only way we will dig ourselves out of it and if that seems inadequate, it's not. >> i would have to say that was in intellectually stimulating evening. i want to thank everyone for coming out and beingve part of e engaged citizenry that we have in jacksonville. i'm excited with the turnout. i didn't know what to expect and again i want to thank everyone for coming. we do have books available and he will be out assigning books on the left if anyone wants their books signed. we are open for more. thank you. [applause]