How Gerrymandering Is Reshaping the 2026 Elections with FairVote's David Daley

David Daley joins Faithful Politics to explain how gerrymandering, mid-decade redistricting, and recent Supreme Court decisions are reshaping the 2026 elections. The conversation covers Virginia’s redistricting fight, the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the weakening of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and the potential loss of Black political representation across the South. Daley also explains why noncompetitive districts fuel polarization and why reforms like proportional representation, multi-member districts, ranked choice voting, and the Fair Representation Act may be necessary to restore meaningful voter representation.

https://fairvote.org/

Guest bio:

David Daley is a senior fellow at FairVote and a leading writer and commentator on gerrymandering, redistricting, voting rights, and democratic reform. He is the author of the national bestseller Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, which helped bring national attention to the modern strategy, technology, and political consequences of partisan gerrymandering. He is also the author of Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy and Antidemocratic, which examines the Supreme Court, voting rights, and the long-term weakening of democratic protections. 

Daley’s journalism and commentary have appeared in outlets including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Slate, The New Republic, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. He previously served as editor-in-chief of Salon and has become one of the country’s most prominent public voices on how redistricting shapes political power. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:16

We are likely to see additional maps coming out of Alabama, Louisiana, maybe even South Carolina. And all of this is just, you know, an hors d'oeuvre for what's going to happen in 2028, when Republicans are able to go after the rest of those seats in the South, and when Democrats are going to counterattack all over the country, probably in New York and Colorado, New Jersey, Washington State, maybe go back into California. This is about to become a redistricting free-for-all. And the end result is probably going to be fewer competitive seats than we've ever had, which is saying something, being as held that there's not that much right now. Almost entirely all red delegations from red states, almost entirely blue delegations from blue states. And I think one of the really important pieces of this as well, you know, on the question of racial representation, we are likely to see the largest reduction in black representation and political power that we've seen in this country since the end of Reconstruction.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers. I'm your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. What's going on, Josh? Doing just fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

What's going on, Will?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

I am doing well. Thanks for asking. And joining us again is David Daly. He is a senior fellow at Fair Vote and a leading expert on redistricting, gerrymandering, and voting rights. He's also the author of a book called Rat F Asterisk Asterisk K-E-D.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

And I'm not saying that on Faithful Politics.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

This is a family show. Why your vote doesn't count. He is a foremost expert in all things elections and voting, and we're just so glad to have him back because there's a lot to talk about. So welcome back to Faithful Politics, David. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so I guess we'll just jump right into it. Currently, as we're recording this, it seems like the state of our elections, or at least voting in the country, is somewhat discombobulated. There are a lot of different things happening in a lot of different states. Before we dive down into some of the more specifics that we asked you to come here to come here for, can you just give us like a I don't know, a state of the union? What is the state of our election system in voting for the year 2026?

SPEAKER_03 2:49

Whew. Well, you know, we have midterm elections coming up in November. That's only six months from now. And we don't know what the maps are going to look like in some of these states for the all-important race for the U.S. House. So, really, you know, I'm an expert in gerrymandering and redistricting, which means I am a lot of fun at parties. People see me coming and they head the other way. You know, I end up with a title like that for my book because people are like, it's the most boring topic in the world. You can't give it a boring name. But redistricting and gerrymandering is really at the heart of what's happening right now with our elections. And redistricting, we usually do it once a decade. It usually happens right after the census in order to account for population changes. You know, the idea of this is to actually make things more fair, to be be certain that every district is equal. Well, politicians being politicians, they've also figured out that the ability to draw these district lines and to decide who's in them and who's out of them gives them a big leg up when it comes to picking winners and losers. And as the technology has gotten that much better, they're able to refine their approach and really know the result of an election, oftentimes before a single ballot is even cast. The state of the House is very, very close, right? Republicans currently have a three-seat edge. So in the middle of 2025, Donald Trump went to Texas and he said, Give me five more seats, let's do a mid-decade redistricting. Pretty rare, doesn't usually happen. But Texas went ahead and reworked their map and they added an additional five Republican seats. California said, Well, if you're gonna do that, so are we. And so they drew a map that has five more Democratic seats. Didn't stop there. Republicans went into Missouri and North Carolina and Ohio. Democrats said, Well, you took four districts there, we're gonna go into Virginia. And that was where things stood a couple of weeks ago. The two parties had largely fought these unprecedented mid-decade gerrymandering wars to a draw. The U.S. Supreme Court said, not so fast. And they, in a case from Louisiana, this case is called Calais versus Louisiana, they essentially really upended what was left of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which had to do with the drawing of majority-minority seats. And I'm sure we can get into the history of that and what it means. Essentially, there are about 19 of these districts across the South, districts that are protected so that communities of color are not sliced and diced amongst districts and don't have the ability to elect a member of their own choosing, even when they have enough uh people and population to do so. And so ever since that decision came down, and in anticipation of that decision coming, we've seen Florida rework its map to about four additional Republican seats. We have seen Tennessee take the Memphis area seat. We are likely to see additional maps coming out of Alabama, Louisiana, maybe even South Carolina. And all of this is just, you know, an hors d'oeuvre for what's going to happen in 2028. When Republicans are able to go after the rest of those seats in the South, and when Democrats are going to counterattack all over the country, probably in New York and Colorado, New Jersey, Washington State, maybe go back into California. This is about to become a redistricting free-for-all. And the end result is probably going to be fewer competitive seats than we've ever had, which is saying something, being as hell, there's not that much right now. Almost entirely all red delegations from red states, almost entirely blue delegations from blue states. And I think one of the really important pieces of this as well, you know, on the question of racial representation, we are likely to see the largest r reduction in black representation and political power that we've seen in this country since the end of Reconstruction.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

That's a lot. And I I understand now why you wanted to name your book Rhett F.E.D. Because it sounds like that is sort of the moment that we are in. And and I I wanna I definitely want to talk about the Louisiana thing. But but given that you know Faithful Politics is located here in Virginia, we have been sort of immersed in this, like, I don't know, redistricting vote for the past several months. I've got like, I don't know, probably no less than than a dozen mailers that you know depicts like Jim Crow era uh voting sort of like scare tactics, which which is which is really weird. Number one, because my my middle schooler checks the mail when he comes home from school every day. So so every time those mailers came in, it always presented like a very interesting discussion moment where he's like, why are these black people not able to vote, Dad? And I'm like, well, you know, that's that's not the story, you know? And and with everything happening in Virginia, I mean, one day it was like, okay, now there's gonna be like a 10 to 1 map, and now there's not going to be a 10 to 1. Can you just help us make sense of like what the heck is happening in Virginia?

SPEAKER_03 9:02

Virginia's complicated story, as you all know. And in many ways, you all got sort of caught in the partisan crossfire. And what's happening in Virginia in many ways, right, is a sign of just how how bad gerrymandering is, and just what it does to take power away from voters. So it was only, you know, a little over five years ago, that more than 60% of voters in Virginia, and and for that to happen, it has to be Democrats, Republicans, and independents, amended the state constitution in order to uh put uh uh you know a bipartisan, fair, uh citizen-centered redistricting in place in Virginia. And the result was one of the fairest maps in the country. You know, the I believe right now you have a six-five Democratic delegation. You know, that's that's about what Virginia is most of the time. And if it's a big Republican year, maybe it could it could tip Republican and a big Democratic year, you could probably have a couple of those seats be competitive the other way. So Virginia looked like they had this all sorted out. But the trouble is, whenever some states are bad actors, uh it leaves everybody else sort of vulnerable. You know, and once you know the thing about a national congressional map is anything one state does has r ripple effects for everybody else. So once Missouri and Ohio and North Carolina redrew, people began looking to see, well, where can Democrats even this out? And it's not fair for Republicans in Virginia in the same way it's not fair for, you know, Democrats in North Carolina. But here we are, you know, it's a zero-sum uh game when you have single-member districts. So in order to get this through, Democrats needed to pass it in two consecutive legislatures, and then they needed to take it to the people of Virginia for a vote. They did this. It won narrowly 5148 to enact this, you know, brutal 10-1 map. Republicans took it to the the state Supreme Court, and the state Supreme Court overturned it, largely on a technicality saying that, you know, essentially having to do with with the meaning of the word election. Republicans, you know, uh this had to be within a certain period of days before an election. And Democrats said, well, an election means election day, and Republicans said, no, an election means the start of early voting. And the court narrowly, you know, in a 4-3 decision, said it it means once voting starts. And so this map is likely not going to be used in the fall. Virginia will likely be back to the old map, which is a 6-5 Democratic map with a couple of competitive districts. I believe that even without, you know, gerrymandering the state into oblivion with good candidates and good campaigns, Democrats probably still pick up a couple of seats in Virginia. You know, maybe that's the way it should be, right? You know, good candidates run a good race, and that sounds people. Don't draw the lines one way.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

My goodness. I w what did you just say? Uh it's like my mind is being blown right now. Wow. I'm so yeah, it's crazy, right? Just good candidates in competitive districts that are gonna be there for their voters. It's like it's like a pipe dream. It's like uh it's like a dream of heaven. You know, David, when you're when we're talking about this, you know, uh one of the complaints I've heard is that this was on a technicality. How what this Virginia Supreme Court decision, of course, now this is gonna be on its way to the Supreme Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court. Where do you imagine, where do you imagine this going? And do you think it was a technicality, or is this like like how do you interpret that? I guess that decision.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

Yeah, I think it is a technicality, right? I mean, I think how you define the word election, you could argue that either way. And I think, you know, a lot of election lawyers looked at this case and said, I could see it, you know, coming out either way. So it's, you know, i it's certainly not a clear-cut. One side is obviously right here. It will move on to the Supreme Court. I think it's very hard to imagine that this Supreme Court will allow a 10-1 democratic gerrymander while the Chief Justice continues to assure us that they're not a partisan political branch of government. Their actions suggest otherwise, even the ones this week. And so, you know, I I I don't think that they're going to reach down and stop that. So I imagine that the Virginia gerrymander is probably dead.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Do wouldn't this, though, set a precedent then to potentially challenge this in other states, the gerrymandering that's happened, or no, or is that or is it because of the technicality of it, it just won't it doesn't fit in the other state?

SPEAKER_03 14:48

Aaron Powell Yeah, you know, every state has has different rules on redistricting, and every state's constitution speaks to this a little bit differently. What this also speaks to, right, is the um importance of judges. You know, and in lots of states, the political parties have, you know, uh sort of buttressed their gerrymanders by also being certain that the Supreme Court is packed in their favor. We have we have seen, you know, Democrats in New York do this, we've seen Republicans in Florida, Arizona, Utah, Ohio, you know, North Carolina. So this is, you know, a really complicated issue, and it becomes a lot harder for voters to get relief here. You know, that to me was the real sadness of what the Supreme Court did back in 2019 in the Rucho case out of North Carolina, where they closed the federal courts to partisan gerrymandering claims. This was the best opportunity for us to have a national standard. And at the time, you had federal judges appointed by presidents of both parties, looking at partisan gerrymanders drawn by both parties, by Democrats in Maryland, by Republicans in Ohio and Wisconsin and North Carolina, and you had these judges say, we have everything we need to determine when one of these maps goes too far. We have standards, we have evidence, we can treat this like any other trial, we know what we're doing. When, by the way, if we don't do this, uh voters are left completely on their own because they can't appeal to their politicians when their politicians are the ones who did this in the first place. And so the Rucho case was our best chance to solve this, but that's not what the Supreme Court did. Instead, the Supreme Court said, this is a political issue, we can't decide political issues, right? They don't do that. And they essentially opened the door to all of these gerrymanders in all of these states.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

They removed any chance that any state might be held accountable, and so they unleashed this sort of, you know, uh gerrymandering Armageddon that, you know, threatens now to devour the entire congressional switching gears over to Louisiana and the voting rights at case, that this is this is actually a a case that I I have not really been spending a lot of time reading about, but I know that it has you know the like gargantuan implications for for for a whole bunch of other stuff. So I'd love for for you to you know kind of 30,000 foot this and then we can kind of drill in into the details, like how did this case get to the Supreme Court? Like what are some some of the particulars that that led to it? If you happen to know who's arguing, I'm just kind of curious. That that might be helpful. But yeah, just just fit familiarize us with the Louisiana case.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

Well, the Louisiana case, it's very complicated, of course, and it moves through lots of of uh of different permutations. But I think the important thing to understand here is that uh Louisiana drew a 4-2 map. It has six congressional districts, it drew it drew four Republican seats, and it drew a map that had two seats that were black opportunity districts. The population in Louisiana is about a third black. So it worked out that you know two was essentially the uh, you know, right number. White uh citizens, a handful of white citizens in Louisiana were the plaintiffs here. And indeed one of them, Mr. Calais, was um present on January 6th at the Capitol. And they argued that this was an unfair racial gerrymander. They essentially argued that allowing for these black opportunity districts was discriminatory against them, and that this was an unfair racial gerrymander as a result. Now, what the Voting Rights Act has said on this question and how the courts have ruled is that there has to be the creation of an opportunity districts where minority voters have the chance to elect a member of their community any time that those voters exist in significant numbers within a compact enough a population and in a state with a history of racially polarized voting. And so that all applied in Louisiana and so these two districts were drawn. And that essentially set up the challenge from these white plaintiffs.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

So if I understand the tension here, there's two two way like two tensions here. One is there's section two of the voting rights act, right, which essentially says that states can't dilute minority votes, correct? Like that's that's it's you know, layman's terms. They can't make minority votes count less. And then you have an equal protection clause that says that you can't, I guess, when applied to gerrymandering, that race shouldn't be overly used in that. And I guess like I'm trying to understand how can we be saying that race conscious remedies are required and then they're also forbidden. And what, you know, what is that accurate, the tension here in this case, and maybe take that and make it so a layman can understand. You have your what's going on.

SPEAKER_03 21:28

Yeah, you have your hand you you've got your finger on on the complicated crux of racial gerrymandering law in this country for the last you know 40 years. You know, it becomes this you know question of how much race is too much race, and when has race been used too much in order to, you know, draw district lines. And that is always a balancing act. Now, in a state that has a history of racially polarized voting and that has you know a population that is about a third black, you know, simple math ought to oughta oughta solve you know, some of the complicated law. There ought to be an opportunity to elect in at least two of those six districts. And it doesn't mean automatically elect, it means an opportunity to elect. And the the threat of vote dilution in these states with racially polarized voting is that these communities are drawn into pieces. They're they're sliced and diced in such a way that a minority community is carved up like a you know a pizza and some of them are at the tip of every district and then those districts uh go out i into more rural, whiter, more conservative areas, and then there is no opportunity to elect. What the court told us in this case is that times have changed. We don't necessarily need all of these protections anymore. And unfortunately what we've seen since that decision came down is this exact kind of slicing and dicing, right? I mean Memphis the district in Memphis, Tennessee, should have been a black opportunity district going back many decades now, you know, carved into three pieces, stretched out into the middle of Tennessee, no real opportunity to elect there. And I imagine that's what we will see on new maps in Alabama and Louisiana as well.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

You know, the uh the there's there's probably a reason that you know the first article I read about this particular story didn't resonate because it's like this is a complicated story. I mean it's got like lots of layers you know and it and it feels almost like this is this is going to be somewhat unrelated but related at the same time like the Muller report where where it's like the Muller report came out I read the thing multiple times I'm trying to tell everybody about it. They're just like I have no idea what you're talking about Will you know like like are you speaking Russian now? And I'm just like forget it. And and and this seems like one of those things where it's got so many different moving pieces but it's going to be so consequential to to like what America looks like. So I I'd love for you just to expand a little bit more about how are people taking what the Supreme Court did and you know using that to I don't know suddenly redraw their their maps you know and if if I'm mischaracterizing that just correct me because I I don't I don't know if they were already in the in the process of of redistricting or if this SCOTUS case was the you know the the catalyst.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

Yeah this SCOTUS case was the catalyst. I mean if you look around the country right there was a lot of mid-decade redistricting going on last year and this spring but it wasn't happening in Louisiana or Alabama or or Florida or Mississippi or South Carolina or Tennessee, right? And that's because these districts were protected. And as soon as those protections were removed these districts are all of a sudden in the crosshairs. So this very much has to do with the court's decision. And the court told us that these protections weren't needed. And yet we can see in the days afterwards in the hours afterwards w what the consequences are. It reminds me a lot of the court's decision in the Shelby County case that began this you know slow bleeding of the Voting Rights Act back in 2013 when it put an end to preclearance the most important enforcement mechanism and the court said you know things have changed in the South 2013 isn't 1965. Things have gotten a lot better and it's hard to argue that right I mean I mean you know it's it's not 1965 and you know things certainly are better right I mean I mean registration rates are you know not 4% anymore. You know the, you know, a lot of these things have changed. But the question is you know have things changed sufficiently when the second that protections are removed some of the same old laws come back? And that's what Ruth Bader Ginsberg was trying to say in her dissent in that case when she said you know she likened the Voting Rights Act to an umbrella that you wear you you hold up in a rainstorm. And she said you don't get rid of your umbrella in a rainstorm and think you're not going to get wet and if you throw it as you know you're not dry because it's not raining. You're dry because you're you you're holding up something to pr protect you and we can say that things have changed but if all of a sudden we throw the protections aside and get soaked maybe we haven't changed as much as we'd like to believe.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Yeah I think that's the big question isn't it have we changed sufficiently is is the argument that well it's not nineteen sixty five and things have changed. I guess what is that argument grounded in in terms of right I guess public view and sentiment laws actual laws in the books things like that and and I guess you made a statement about this taking us back to the reconstruction and you know when when someone hears that and I've heard that in a few different places and once someone hears that they they might feel shock they might feel anger or they might feel disagreement well how can you say that it's taking us back there when we say that things have changed and I just like even in light of the I guess in the spirit of the of the question you're just answering the way you're I think the trajectory you're just going I just would love for you to go further into that and kind of like help us understand why we should be very concerned about this in terms of is the rainstorm there, right? And some people may think that's an ignorant question. And I understand that there's quite a bit out there that's to be concerning I'm more asking this about someone who is very skeptical coming into this and and they're thinking well the Voting Rights Act did what it needed to do during the time and now it you know we need to move on some there might be people that are very sympathetic to that view as well as antagonistic and I get that.

SPEAKER_03 29:55

So why should the people that are sympathetic be concerned like hey this is this actually is taking us to a place we don't want to go when when I say this might take us back to a period like that, I certainly don't mean it's going to take us back to a period of poll tests or or lynchings or you know violence when anybody who's not white attempts to go up to a polling place. But what I do mean is that when we look at the political map after the 2026 and after the 2028 elections there might not be many if any black lawmakers still in the US House from any of these southern states. And so the political map will look a lot like it did from 1900 until 1965 you know North Carolina when it elected Mel Watt and Eva Clayton to the US House back in the 1990s these were the first black members elected from North Carolina since 1900 you know so in some of these states it's a century of of not having representation that is aligned to your community or to your interests. And I think that's really dangerous you know and and it's anti-democratic especially when these communities exist in numbers that they ought to have some representation. Nobody's asking for all of the political power right people are asking for a chance to elect up to the numbers that they represent. So you know and to and to not have schemes that make it possible to stand in the way and block that kind of representation it used to be that you know cities would elect all of their members at large from a city council and the point of at-large elections would be that the majority group would win every seat. And when you do that for city council and for school board or for congress it it gives it gives all of the power to one side and it doesn't require any any sharing and when and with all of the power you know comes all of the resources and all you have to do is look at what happened you know in southern cities when all of the resources were on one side where they went to as far as you know parks or schools or you know fixing potholes. And that really is what we are talking about. We're talking about the idea of representation and what it means.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

And by getting rid of the Voting Rights Act essentially here it's going to affect representation at every single level of American political life not just Congress which is what we're talking about but also state legislatures local school boards at judicial races and when it's this easy to draw lines that you know dilute and slice and dice and crack communities it's possible to take all of the power in all of the places and when that happens something really serious dies I think in a democracy when thinking about like gerrymandered maps that are gerrymandered either for political purposes or for racial purposes reasons like is there is there any like discernible like similarities or or or are all political maps kind of de facto you know racially gerrymandered maps? Like like w what's the best way to kind of kind of look at the difference between those two?

SPEAKER_03 34:39

Whenever you have someone drawing district lines, you're going to have choices that are being made and so it becomes a question around what are the rules governing those choices so that elections are are equitable and fair and representative. And you know Virginia as we've seen right Virginia is not a 91% democratic state but you can draw a 10-1 map it's not fair but you can do it. And if you have 52% of the legislature and 51% of the population say we're gonna do it, you can cram through your map that gives you 91% of the power you know I mean it's wrong. You know it's fundamentally you know not how this is supposed to work. And the same way, right you know in Louisiana it would be or Alabama, both of which have six districts and are about a third black it would be really easy to draw maps that you know take those black communities and scatter them across all of those districts you can do it right I mean you could draw a 52 nothing map in the state of California if you wanted to you could draw 17 nothing in Illinois if you wanted to you could probably get pretty close to 100% in Texas and Florida. But is that what we want what happens to our politics when that's w uh what happens right when you have non-competitive districts all the all the energy moves into the the the party primary you might have 12 candidates running in that party primary so someone can win it with 18% of the vote and then they go into a non-competitive election with you know we all know party primaries tend to be you know won sometimes by the craziest of the crazy on whatever side and then those people go to Washington and they're not they're not looking to represent everybody. They're looking to represent the their voters in the primary because that's how they got there and that's how they can lose. So we we polarize ourselves we uh lose the ability to talk at you know in coalitions to to talk to one another when all of these states have 100% delegations from one party or another you lose the voice of r rural Democrats and urban Republicans you know Southern Democrats you know Northeast Republicans those have been the deal makers in other Congresses. Those are people who can talk to everybody and kind of get things done. So our choice is trying to find a way that leads us towards coalition and dialogue and compromise and talking to one another or elections that further polarize us. I know which you know path I'd rather choose. I mean I think there's a way to get there right I mean a more proportional U.S. House would elect Republicans Democrats independents from every district in every state you would likely you know see the politics as well as the uh you know racial breakdowns of states represented more accurately and fairly you know John Adams talked about you know Congress being a perfect replica of the people in miniature we don't have that it's getting worse we need to fix it and make it better you know I um I have a friend who the other day texted me a an AI image of like like Virginia redistricted according to the founders or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

I mean like like he he he's smart enough to know that you know don't trust AI but it was more or less just of a conversation starter you know saying like yeah this is kind of like how the the founders envisioned and it was you know it was like it it was like layered it kind of looked like one of those barbershop poles you know and just had lines and everything was like perfect and I'm just like oh well that would be great you know so I I'm curious like in in your opinion like like what do you think the founders would have thought or or would think about just our current state of I don't know like gerrymandering and I know it's a bit of a loaded question but so I'm just you know like high level like like would they approve would they say yeah that's democracy or like what do you think?

SPEAKER_03 39:34

They did it too you know as long as we've had politicians uh we've had these districts gerrymandering takes its name from Elbridge Gary who was one of the the signers of these founding documents he was the governor of Massachusetts in 1812 when they were drawing state senate districts up here trying to help out his party and to screw over the Federalists you can trace it back even further though to you know Patrick Henry trying to keep James Madison out of the out of our very first Congress we've been doing it for a long time doesn't make it right doesn't make it good and oh no other country in the world gives their politicians this kind of power every other modern democracy has hit upon a better way of doing this that does not allow the lawmakers themselves to draw their own lines choose their own voters and entrench themselves in power you know so we don't have to do it this way it is a really silly idea you know I mean of course politicians shouldn't have the ability to draw these maps and choose their own voters and lock themselves in office. And by the way the technology and I I don't even mean AI the technology that these guys have now is the ability to do this like a video game you know and it you know and the video games we think of from our childhood you know Atari or you know Pac-Man or any of those things they're a little bit better now you know the uh ones my kid has are pretty real life you know you know Madden Madden football is pretty gosh darn good and so when they take the data that they have the public data but also all of the private data that can be collected on each one of us from our web searches from our purchases from the maps of where we go the magazine subscriptions we have you know when these mapmakers draw these lines they know every last thing about every single person in these houses. They know what car you drive they know if you have a hunting license they know if you have a gun license if you drive a certain kind of truck or a certain kind of car I can I can tell you something about you. You know, I mean all of that is there and they go up and down these streets and I've driven these streets going around the country and it's like oh that's so interesting how this side of the street and that side are different. Well oftentimes they are politics change right that the demographics change block to block they know this when they're drawing these lines they couldn't do that back in Patrick Henry's days that they couldn't even do it back in the 80s and 90s the politicians were doing this on napkins down at the bar in California you know I mean um it is a high-tech game and it's taken you know and we have to give them rules or else they will continue to abuse it so what are the moral obligations of citizens like us who now live in these democratic systems that feel like they're falling apart and are structurally manipulated at a level of sophistication that's you know mind-blowing you know and of course bringing in AI it will even get more personalized and and more sophisticated in their ability to draw lines to stay in power and so I guess like you know we want to get our voices out there and everything we don't feel like we're being represented and all that but what what is the moral obligation?

SPEAKER_01 43:39

Is it like how does the normal citizen jump in and get involved in politics without being corrupted or you know what whatever it is because it seems like good people are leaving and we have to fight for a national solution.

SPEAKER_03 43:56

You know I mean the fight for gerrymandering over the course of the last ten years has been state by state and that didn't work. You know and it didn't work because a good people in some places could be outdone by people acting in their own self interest elsewhere. And so if we're going To fix this, it's going to require a national solution that's fair to everybody. And I think that's what the people of good faith and good intent ought to be working towards, understanding that we are on a broken path, we are heading further down the broken path. It's a race to the bottom, and we're not that far away.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

And once we get to the constitutional amendment, is that what you're saying? Like we rise.

SPEAKER_03 44:41

You know, I think Congress could do this uh with an act of Congress. I think uh Congress could do this statutarily. You know, once you hit the bottom and you can't go any further, you've got to start thinking about how you dig out. And so I fear we are about to hit the bottom, and then we can maybe have a conversation about how we start it coming out of the hole we've dug. I think that the best way forward is a more proportional house that, you know, is passed by Congress and that forces every state to draw larger multi-member districts that can't be gerrymandered. And each of those districts will, you know, if they're districts of three, four, and five, you will elect Democrats, Republicans, maybe even independents, uh, out of all of them, everywhere. I mean, I'm talking to you from Massachusetts. Massachusetts is a 9-0 Democratic state. I mean, that's crazy. There's plenty of Republicans here, you know. It's it's it's it's a 60-40 state, but it's but it's 100 to nothing in representation. And that's not right, you know, and it's bad for our politics. It would be good for our politics if we had some Massachusetts Republicans in office. And, you know, Tennessee is about to go 9-0 the other way, and that's not right, you know, and it would be good for our politics if we had some Tennessee Democrats in there. So let's do this. Let's find a way to make all of these states and the only solution is a national one. And it's going to have to bring fairness everywhere. We, you know, and if we can find a way to do this, I think we will look back on these 250 years of gerrymandering and say, what the heck were we thinking?

SPEAKER_00 46:30

I I love your optimism, but I, you know, as an American, I I know that we're optimism, boy.

SPEAKER_03 46:37

I was I was telling you at the beginning that I don't get invited to a lot of parties.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

And you know like Americans are not good at reflecting back, you know, and learning from our mistakes. So chances are it'd be like, you know, another 250 years and then there'll be another like you know, people redistricting again. But I I I I I am I am curious though about um what do some of those like institutional reforms actually look like? I mean, is it ranked choice voting? Is it like going to popular vote? Like uh what what are those things? Because it seems like we're at a moment now where people are probably a little bit more open to ideas. You know, they're like, hey, like what we have going has been great, but it's not really working anymore. I don't know about third party, you know, but I also hear about ranked choice voting. I don't know enough about it. So like what are the solutions?

SPEAKER_03 47:28

Yeah, you know, I mean, I think that if we want to fix the gerrymandering problem and the racial representation problem in the US House, the best fix is a more proportional system that uses larger multi-member districts and ranked choice voting. And if you you know, if a state like Virginia has 11 districts, so if you had you know, a one district of five and two districts of three or you know, three, three, four, a three-three, four wouldn't get you there. My math is already off. You know, you're making me do math. Anyway, if you had, you know, three multi-member districts that were essentially uh the you know same size in all of these states, it's a lot easier to think about in Massachusetts 3-3-3. And if you used rank choice voting, you would see that the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Independents in all of these places actually had representation, because y y you would have enough voters to elect somebody with a third. Right? I mean, if you're electing three people in a district, somebody wins if if they have twenty-six percent of the vote. You can't keep somebody out. You can't keep a political party or a racial group out if uh twenty-six percent is enough to win representation. So uh a more proportional uh uh uh uh form is really the the the way to go. Uh Don Byer from uh Virginia has got a really good plan. It's called the uh a Fair Representation Act, and it would do exactly this, right? You would see a 6-3 delegation in Massachusetts, probably a 6-3 delegation in Tennessee, you know, Alabama, uh Louisiana would keep black representation in in proportion to their numbers. I think you would continue to see a Congress that actually reflected the ideological and you know and and population breakdown of a state. But you know, that makes too much sense, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:51

It makes way too much sense. You you you you just stop stop talking, Dave. It's too, it's it's too smart. It's too logical.

SPEAKER_03 50:00

I don't get that all the time.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

It's making me uncomfortable with how rational it is. So here's kind of the last, you know, big question, and it's kind of a whopper, I think. Uh right. Do you think well, and I think I know the answer to this question, but it's more like it's kind of a yes or no question, but it really gets into like yes or no, and why you think that? Can a can a democracy be healthy if it's increasingly about manipulating the rules before a vote is even cast? Right? Like, and I guess how how how quickly is that unhealth going to manifest itself? It already is, I'm sure, but I don't know. There's a question makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 50:55

How can it makes it makes great sense, you know? You know I I think that a democracy is not a democracy if people can't change uh their elected officials. So elections have to be about what you know it a democracy comes down to consent of the governed. Yes. And what gerrymandering and what all of these manipulations do is they interfere with consent of the governed. And if we don't have a way to vote the rascals out or to if a majority of us cannot come together at the ballot box and r replace or create a government that is is by and for the people, then elections have no purpose. And you're not in a democracy. And once you can't use elections to express your opinions about the direction of a nation, you open the doors to uh other ways of of that frustration coming out and being expressed. So when you don't have healthy elections, you don't have a healthy nation, let alone a healthy democracy. And so, yes, I fear that, you know, very quickly we're heading down a road in which if we don't think about these big structural fixes to big structural problems, we are are going to find ourselves in a place that we didn't imagine could happen here in our lifetimes.

SPEAKER_01 52:44

Wow. I appreciate the candidness. I do appreciate appreciate the candor because it's it's important. I think that we understand what's at stake here. How can people get involved? The normal person listening to them, what do you recommend they do? How can they connect with you and your work and what you're doing?

SPEAKER_03 53:04

Yeah, absolutely. I'm a I'm a fellow at Fairvote. You can find Fairvote at fairvote.org where you can find all kinds of information about the Fair Representation Act and proportional representation. I've got a bunch of books. You can you can find my books. There's a new one called Antidemocratic that you can find everywhere, and I won't have to say the names of the other ones. You know, you can find me on Blue Sky, I'm Dave Daly on Blue Sky, I'm Dave Daly3 over over on Twitter. You know, Fair Vote is up on all the socials as well. You know, there's a lot that people can do to fight for ranked choice voting, for proportional representation in their towns and their communities. I think we have to have these conversations with our friends and our neighbors. That's why I'm so grateful for you all and and for faithful politics, for the chance to come on and have you know meaningful dialogue about change, because that's how we make change by talking to one another and and trying to convince and persuade. So let's keep doing.

SPEAKER_01 54:06

Yeah, thank you so much, David, for coming on the show, spending some time with us, man. It's it's always a pleasure.

SPEAKER_03 54:12

Thank you. Always a pleasure here as well. So absolutely anytime. Thanks again.

SPEAKER_01 54:16

Absolutely. And to our viewers and our listeners, guys, thanks for joining us. Share this with someone who needs to hear it. Share it with your crazy uncle Frank, with your with your sweet aunt Sally. Whoever needs to hear it, we need to get this stuff out there and have these conversations. Look in the description. We'll put links. And until next time, guys, keep your conversations not right or left. But thanks and God bless.