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unidentified
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| Our first guest of the morning, David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. | ||
| He serves as their founder and executive director here to talk, amongst other things, redistricting and the topic that's taking place across the country. | ||
| Mr. Becker, welcome. | ||
| Thanks, Pedro. | ||
| First, a little bit about your organization. | ||
| What were you designed to do and how were you funded? | ||
| So I've been in elections for over 25 years now. | ||
| I served with the Justice Department as a voting attorney in the Civil Rights Division for three attorneys general, one Democrat, two Republicans. | ||
| And in 2016, I founded the Center for Election Innovation and Research to work with election officials of both parties all across the country to support elections the voters should and do trust. | ||
| And what we've seen is the election officials of this country are doing a remarkably good job, even under tremendous stress. | ||
| Our elections are more secure than they've ever been. | ||
| We have 98% paper ballots, which are the most secure way. | ||
| The only state without them is Louisiana. | ||
| Those ballots are audited so we know that the voting technology is counting them properly. | ||
| We don't just trust it. | ||
| We confirm that that worked. | ||
| Our elections are also as accessible as they've ever been. | ||
| It's easier to register to vote than ever before. | ||
| More voters with access to same-day registration, online voter registration than ever before. | ||
| And more voters with access to things like early voting and mail voting than ever before. | ||
| So despite all of those successes, our election officials have been under stress for the last five to 10 years as disinformation about our elections this world. | ||
| And one of the other things we do is we run the Election Officials Legal Defense Network, which provides a pro bono attorney to match with an election official who needs any advice or assistance if they're under threat or abuse or harassment. | ||
| We're funded generally through large foundations. | ||
| We're a 501c3. | ||
| We're completely nonpartisan. | ||
| You take a look at the outcomes of elections, how they're conducted, the outcome. | ||
| But back up to that, how does redistricting affect elections ultimately? | ||
| Yeah, redistricting, it's not just about the politics because once the legislators are done playing their political games to try to maximize their political power, then the real work begins for the election officials of the country who have to, because they have new lines, they have to re-precinct, which might mean they have to move people from a precinct they used to be in to another precinct, find a new polling place perhaps for people. | ||
| They'll have to educate their voters about the fact that they might have been expecting to vote in one particular congressional district for a particular representative that they were used to and that changed. | ||
| That amount of work is manageable if it's once every 10 years, but if we start getting into this tit for tat, this gamesmanship between the parties, we could see this happening literally every two years and quintuple that amount of work. | ||
| And it's tremendous. | ||
| And we're talking about a very short period of time. | ||
| There is a September 9th deadline in Texas law right now that the legislature can change, but that's because they've got a March primary and you need time for the election officials to do all that work, as well as for the candidates to qualify in whatever district lines ultimately get drawn. | ||
| What do you make of the Texas, not only what Texas officials are doing when it comes to restricting, but what they're saying gives them the right to do that? | ||
| So it is not illegal. to engage in mid-decade redistricting under federal law. | ||
| Texas attempted to do this about 20 years ago. | ||
| The Supreme Court held in 2006 that there was nothing in the federal constitution that prevented it. | ||
| Now, that doesn't mean it's a good idea. | ||
| It just means that there's nothing that actually prohibits it. | ||
| And under Texas law, they are allowed to do it. | ||
| Now, there might still be other considerations in play. | ||
| The Supreme Court has indicated that they're concerned about extreme partisan gerrymandering, but they've also said that they don't think there's anything they can do about it. | ||
| But there are other considerations such as the Voting Rights Act, which is also under attack to some degree, and the Supreme Court has indicated they might be reconsidering the degree to which the Voting Rights Act is constitutional or applies to certain redistricting plans. | ||
| So while all of those laws might apply, it does seem like Texas can likely redistrict if it chooses to do so with some caveats as to how it might apply to federal law. | ||
| What's the reverberations from Texas' decision as you see it right now? | ||
| Well, and they're largely political, right? | ||
| I mean, in the past, what's happened in 20 years ago or so, Texas redistricted in advance of the 2006 election. | ||
| That plan went into play. | ||
| But other states did not retaliate. | ||
| I think now what we're seeing is the margins are so narrow in the House of Representatives that the Democrats are not willing to unilaterally disarm in that fight, even though they have adopted in general in some states, California being most notable, independent redistricting commissions, which are designed under state law to create the fairest set of districts, the least political set of districts possible. | ||
| Under that plan in California, currently there are nine Republicans out of the 52 representatives. | ||
| But if they move forward with their plan, perhaps a ballot referendum in this fall, that would enable them to redistrict as well, they could draw as many as five to even all nine districts Democratic, depending on how they wanted to do it, given that there are so few constraints right now on that redistricting process. | ||
| If the Republicans can do it legally, the Democrats can definitely do it legally as well. | ||
| This is the case that the Texas governor made yesterday when he was talking about this issue on Fox News. | ||
| I want to play a little bit from Greg Abbott and get your response to it. | ||
| You look at what the way lines are drawn in California, in New York, in Illinois, Massachusetts, where there are no Republicans whatsoever, they run out of Republicans that they can move out of office. | ||
| If Texas had drawn our lines mathematically the same way that California had, we would be not adding five more seats. | ||
| We would be adding 10 more seats. | ||
| And if you look at all the Republican states across the entire country, if we engage in this war, making sure that each state is going to draw their lines away that the Democrat states have, Republicans are going to be able to pick up maybe as many as 25 seats. | ||
| And then I'll add on top of that, with each passing census, it's the red states that are getting the population. | ||
| The blue states are losing population. | ||
| We know mathematically that New York and California, they lost seats this last census. | ||
| They're going to be losing more seats in the coming censuses because people are fleeing the leftist ideology of New York, of California, of Illinois, and they're coming to free states like Texas and Florida and Tennessee and others. | ||
| So David Becker, there's the justification, at least from the governor's perspective. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| Well, I mean, no other state is engaging in mid-decade redistricting right now. | ||
| No Democratic state has started that process. | ||
| If California goes through this, they are likely to pass a ballot referendum that would have a trigger that says we will only do this if Texas or some other states go through it. | ||
| Texas is the only state that I know of that has voluntarily mid-decade redistricted before. | ||
| Texas is doing it again. | ||
| Again, we should remember, take a step back to why the founders created the House of Representatives as it was in Article I of the Constitution. | ||
| The House of Representatives was supposed to be the people's house. | ||
| It was supposed to represent the people. | ||
| The Senate was more of an elite house where there were two representatives, two senators from each state, but the House of Representatives was supposed to represent the people. | ||
| And what's happening now is this is the House of Representatives is just being played for political gain one way or the other. | ||
| And the pawns in the middle are the voters, the voters who might get moved from a district where they know their representative, where they perhaps have petitioned that representative for help in the past, into another district where they don't know those people, perhaps tied to communities they don't feel tied to as they do now. | ||
| And the districts that are currently in effect in Texas were drawn by the Texas legislature. | ||
| No one forced that on the Texas legislature or on the governor of Texas. | ||
| They drew them through a political process, whereas in California, they drew it through an independent redistricting process, as some other states have. | ||
| Now, there are some Democratic states that also do it politically. | ||
| New York, Illinois, Maryland also do it politically. | ||
| But the number of states that either party could gain are possibly about the same, depending upon how you view this. | ||
| And we should be very careful about making assumptions about what would happen with the census over time. | ||
| Things change over time. | ||
| Used to be that California was a growing state not that long ago. | ||
| It shrunk in the last census, rather. | ||
| That could change. | ||
| One other point I think is really important. | ||
| When political parties seek to gerrymander, seek to maximize the number of districts that they have, the way they generally have to do that, to enlarge the number of districts, they have to minimize their margins. | ||
| And so they're shrinking some of their margins in some of these districts. | ||
| And the proposed Texas plan does this as well. | ||
| And whether those margins have been shrunk too much or not, it does render those districts vulnerable to a potential wave election. | ||
| And I mentioned the 2006 election where Texas did a mid-decade redistricting. | ||
| And we all remember what happened in 2006. | ||
| It was a Democratic wave election. | ||
| And the Democrats won the House that year, and Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House in the next Congress. | ||
| David Becker with us. | ||
| He's with the Center for Election Innovation and Research. | ||
| 202748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| 202748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text us your thoughts or questions at 202-748-8003. | ||
| In Phoenix, Republican line, this is Tony for David Becker. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hey, good morning, Pedro. | |
| Good morning, David. | ||
| I just wanted to comment on the redistricting. | ||
| Obviously, I'm glad this was brought to light. | ||
| A lot of people are being educated on gerrymandering and redistricting. | ||
| So I'm glad the Democrats fled the state to break quorum in legislation. | ||
| And I just want to say, you know, good luck, basically, because California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, they all gerrymandered, and there's not much more gerrymandering they can do. | ||
| A lot of red states have a lot of room to work. | ||
| So I'm glad this has happened. | ||
| You know, for instance, in Massachusetts, I think 37% of the people voted for Trump, yet they don't have one representative in Congress. | ||
| New York, or California has 52, I think, representatives, and only seven are conservative Republicans. | ||
| So, yeah, I don't think those states have much room. | ||
| So, you know, but I am glad because a lot of people are getting educated and normally wouldn't think of this stuff. | ||
| Okay, Tony, there in Phoenix. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| Yeah, I mean, so there likely is some room for states to do this. | ||
| I mean, Tony is quite right. | ||
| I mean, there were, whereas New York had 37% or so voting for Trump, in Texas, 43% voted for Harris. | ||
| In California, around 40% voted for Trump. | ||
| So we think of these states as deep, blue, or deep red. | ||
| But even when you're a majority party in an overwhelmingly blue or red state, about 40 or so percent of the population is still voting for the other party. | ||
| And it's unfortunate that we haven't seen widespread redistricting reform that applied the same standard to all the states that would have basically said you have to adopt some kind of independent, non-political redistricting process like California has and several other states have engaged in, largely Democratic states, it should be stated. | ||
| But if we're going to engage in redistricting as if it is just all about political warfare, all about trying to get to 218 in the United States House of Representatives and forget about the voters entirely, then we have to expect that both parties are going to do that. | ||
| And until both parties effectively deter each other, creating kind of a mutually assured destruction in this arms race, then we should expect that we're going to see every two years perhaps complete redistricting, chaos for the voters who ultimately are going to pay a price for this. | ||
| In New York, Rob is next. | ||
| Independent line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for the opportunity in the vehicle to talk about this stuff. | ||
| I'm trying to understand. | ||
| You mentioned that California had an independent redistricting committee, yet there is still, I think the figure was 40% Republican voted for Trump. | ||
| Yet they have such a small percentage of representatives. | ||
| Can you mechanically, how does that happen? | ||
| Well, I can tell, actually, Rob, I can tell you exactly how that happened because I actually served as counsel to the California Independent Redistricting Commission in this last round. | ||
| California's laws require that the line drawers, the independent commission made up of Republicans, Democrats, and independents in California, looks at no political data. | ||
| They don't even look at the residences where the current representatives live. | ||
| Unlike a lot of states where representatives carve out a district based upon where they live to make it work for them, the existing representatives do not get that in California. | ||
| This is very similar to how it works in other states as well. | ||
| So no political information, no identification of whether voters might be Democrat or Republican in any particular district. | ||
| And the result was a plan where, out of the 52 districts, nine Republicans won in the last election. | ||
| Now, I should also state one of the things about the California Redistricting Plan in the 2020 cycle. | ||
| No one filed a lawsuit challenging the plan. | ||
| This is very rare. | ||
| In almost every state, you'll see one party or the other, an interest group, a minority group, someone else, filing a lawsuit, whether they win or lose. | ||
| No lawsuits were filed against that plan at the time. | ||
| And I think the commissioners of the Independent Redistricting Commission, again, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, were very proud of their work and they should have been. | ||
| California voters wanted to have an independent redistricting commission that was not about politics. | ||
| In the past, we've seen prominent Democrats placed into the same district after a decennial redistricting. | ||
| Berman and Sherman were two such Democrats in the Los Angeles area many years ago. | ||
| So this districting plan has worked, but what California Democrats are now saying and seeing is that there's going to be an effort to maximize Republican power, perhaps at the expense of voters in some of the Republican states. | ||
| And so they're going to do the same thing. | ||
| That doesn't make it right. | ||
| It just means that they are not going to unilaterally disarm in the redistricting wars. | ||
| We should say that this is not only on one party. | ||
| I mean, the Democrats tried to do this, not in a mid-decade sense, but in Oregon, they tried to maximize Democratic seats several years ago, and Republicans walked out and tried to prevent a quorum from happening. | ||
| So this can be done on both sides. | ||
| And again, the people who ultimately pay the price are the voters in each of these districts. | ||
| What data, if a redistricting effort is done aside from politics, what data is used to determine new districts? | ||
| You're going to look at, obviously, population. | ||
| You're going to look at census data in each of the census blocks and census blocks groups. | ||
| You're going to look at where communities of interest are. | ||
| For instance, are there communities that all go to the same schools? | ||
| Are there communities that tend towards the same shopping areas or the same commuting routes? | ||
| Communities that are linked through a variety of reasons. | ||
| That is what, for instance, in California, the law requires them to look at. | ||
| When politics plays a role, it tends to play the primary role, and that's when you get odd-looking districts that link communities that are not really linked together in order to maximize political power. | ||
| California's districts were compact. | ||
| They were, in other words, there weren't like two big groups combined by a highway in between. | ||
| They were compact and they were contiguous. | ||
| Those are requirements in the California Constitution with regard to redistricting. | ||
| California, again, if Republicans didn't like the plan, they certainly have lawyers ready to file a lawsuit against those plans. | ||
| They did in other states. | ||
| California, they did not even bring a lawsuit, which demonstrates to you how well the Independent Redistricting Commission worked in California. | ||
| David Becker, our guest for this conversation, Tim in Wisconsin. | ||
| Democrats line, you're up next. | ||
| Go ahead, please. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I would just like to ask the gentleman that Trump, I know, wants to quit counting migrants in the census. | ||
| Won't that have an impact on California, Texas, Florida, several other states that have millions of immigrants in them if they don't count them? | ||
| Won't that take away from their seats in the House of Representatives? | ||
| And I live in a district as one of the 19 that are possibly could swing either way. | ||
| Van Orden happens to be our representative, and I see he's already going on Sunday morning talk shows and stuff. | ||
| So I think every seat must be very important because I think 415 of them are already determined according to what I've heard. | ||
| So I would just like to ask you, have your answer to this question, sir. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Tim in Westby, Wisconsin. | ||
| Yeah, Tim raises a really good point. | ||
| The president has indicated through an executive order that he's going to try to direct the census not to count non-citizens in its decennial census of persons in the United States for purposes of apportionment. | ||
| But this is in the Constitution. | ||
| The 14th Amendment specifically says that, or the Constitution rather specifically says, that the apportionment shall be by the number of persons. | ||
| It could have said citizens. | ||
| The writers of the Constitution could have said that, but they didn't. | ||
| They said persons. | ||
| And the court has ruled on this in the past. | ||
| The Constitution is extremely clear on this. | ||
| So I expect that any attempt not to count all persons in districts will be held unconstitutional by the courts. | ||
| But I'll also say, I think this is a really good point. | ||
| There are many states who, if this went forward, would suffer in terms of apportionment. | ||
| And it's not just blue states. | ||
| It's not just states like California, but certainly Texas and Florida, which have a significant number of non-citizen residents in them, would also suffer when it comes to apportionment and the designation of the number of representatives that each state has. | ||
| So this might be one of those things where a lot of cases things are done for purely political reasons, but they don't have the political consequences that people expect. | ||
| And when lawmakers are crafting laws trying to dictate political outcomes for their own political party, in our history, that almost always fails. | ||
| It almost always yields unintended consequences. | ||
| And that's because the American voter is a very, very complex person. | ||
| American voters do not just sit there and vote party line across the board. | ||
| In Texas, they're looking at the Trump vote percentage in 2024 to determine some of these districts. | ||
| But the Trump voting percentage in 2024 looked a lot different than the Trump voting percentage in 2016, for instance. | ||
| And so if you're trying to use past election behavior from one particular election where you might have maxed out some of your political party success, you might be surprised at what happens in a midterm election when President Trump isn't on the ballot in future presidential elections where voters are going to evolve and change in a variety of ways. | ||
| Another Wisconsinite. | ||
| This is from Irving in Milwaukee, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Oh, I just want to make a comment in reference to the Democrats fleeing the state of Texas with the redistricting. | ||
| That's about as dumb as you can get. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, they've done this before two or three times, and the results have always been the same. | |
| They've lost every time. | ||
| And I mean, when you think about it, they have to go home sometime. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, they can't stay out forever. | |
| So I just want to say how stupid it is with what they're doing. | ||
| And it will come to naught. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Irving in Wisconsin. | ||
| I mean, obviously they're doing what they think is politically necessary for them, just as the Republicans in Oregon, as I mentioned, did the same thing when they were faced with a districting plan that they didn't like. | ||
| So, look, this is not every state has this possibility where the minority party can flee the state and deny a quorum to the legislature. | ||
| Texas is one state where the Democrats do have this ability. | ||
| Obviously, they're making their own political judgment, just as the governor is making his own political judgment with regard to a mid-decade redistricting. | ||
| And again, the existing plan was drawn entirely by Republicans, by the Republican-controlled legislature, by the governor of Texas signing off on that bill. | ||
| So this is not a plan that was imposed on the Republican Party and they're trying to fix. | ||
| It was a plan that they themselves drew that currently exists. | ||
| David Beckett is our guest until 845. | ||
| If you want to ask him questions, you can choose the phone lines. | ||
| It's 202748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| One of the things your organization does is track this topic of non-citizen voters in elections. | ||
| Why does the center involve itself at that? | ||
| Well, it's because it's become a big issue. | ||
| And there's one big election administration bill pending in Congress right now. | ||
| It's called the SAVE Act. | ||
| And it's about requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in the United States, which is not currently the law in the United States. | ||
| So non-citizen registration and voting has become a political issue. | ||
| We remember in the campaign in 2024, this was raised many, many times, the threat of waves of non-citizens somehow changing our election outcomes and voting. | ||
| And so we decided to look at this from the perspective of what the states had actually found when they analyzed their lists, including states that were allied with President Trump during the election, including states like Texas, for instance, which we've been spending a lot of time talking about. | ||
| All Americans should understand, first of all, is that we effectively already have voter ID in the United States nationwide. | ||
| The Help America Vote Act requires that every single voter since 2002, when they register to vote, provides a driver's license number, which is checked against the motor vehicles file. | ||
| If they don't have a driver's license number, they can provide a social security number, which is checked against the Social Security Administration file. | ||
| And in the very, very small number of people who don't provide either, they have to provide ID when they show up to vote the first time. | ||
| So we already have nationwide ID in order to register and vote in the United States. | ||
| But there has been this specter of large numbers of non-citizens. | ||
| And we looked at every single state that had conducted any kind of public assessment of non-citizens on their voter lists. | ||
| And what we found is the numbers are shockingly small. | ||
| The numbers are not zero, but they're not much larger than zero. | ||
| The state of Texas, for instance, during the campaign claimed that there were thousands of non-citizens on their voter list, of potential non-citizens. | ||
| But once the campaign was over and in 2025, they were required to put up or shut up on that. | ||
| They only referred 33 possible cases statewide in a state with well over 10 million registered voters, 10 million voters. | ||
| Other states have found similar numbers. | ||
| Georgia looked at this very comprehensively, found single digits over a period of about a decade of non-citizens voting. | ||
| Ohio, similarly, about 10 or 12 years, found a handful, fewer than 10, that had voted. | ||
| Most states are finding right around that number over time. | ||
| And the states are also showing that they currently have the tools to find and flag those individuals and confirm whether or not they're citizens. | ||
| They have a variety of tools with the Real ID Act. | ||
| Their DMVs have better information than ever before on citizenship. | ||
| Everyone who's listening probably knows when they go into the DMV, they have to show proof of legal presence. | ||
| And that proof of legal presence is almost always, if you're a citizen, a birth certificate or a passport, which the DMV then captures. | ||
| Or if you're not a citizen, it might be, for instance, a green card or some kind of visa. | ||
| But that is also captured, which will clearly indicate on the motor vehicles file that you are not a citizen, at least at that point where you went to the DMV. | ||
| So we're doing a very good job as a country on that. | ||
| Apologies. | ||
| It's called the Review of Allegations of Non-Citizen Registrants and Voters. | ||
| If you want to see the report on their line, you threw three large conclusions. | ||
| I think you've already addressed some of them, but I'll just share with the audience that when it comes to the analysis that you did, no apples to apples comparisons. | ||
| What do you mean by that? | ||
| Well, because some states did a really comprehensive look. | ||
| They started with the number of possible non-citizens, but they understood that number might be inflated. | ||
| For instance, someone had gone to the DMV, shown a non-citizen document, and then two or three latest got registered, two or three years later, got registered to vote. | ||
| And it turns out that almost all of those people are naturalized citizens, and oftentimes they got registered to vote right after their naturalization ceremony. | ||
| So the states that did a really good job of this showed what they do is before they announce any numbers, they get the pool of potential non-citizens, and then they do everything they can to whittle that down to the number that actually might have registered and voted. | ||
| Georgia did a good job of that. | ||
| Michigan did a good job of that. | ||
| Georgia's run by a Republican Secretary of State, Michigan by a Democratic Secretary of State. | ||
| But other states just did that first layer and said, here's the number of people we don't know whether they're citizens or not, and put that number out. | ||
| And that number is clearly a vast overcount of the number of actual non-citizens of the state. | ||
| Steve is in Ohio, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hey, good morning. | ||
| Yeah, with respect to gerrymandering, the fact that the House of Representatives has remained frozen at 435 seats for over a century, | ||
| and with population growth, obviously the congressional districts are becoming larger and larger, which increase the opportunity for gerrymandering because they can manipulate these larger populations for congressional districts. | ||
| And so shouldn't there be some way of sizing the U.S. House of Representatives as a house of the people relative to population so that these districts don't become so large, which make gerrymandering and this fight among states more severe? | ||
| And so, you know, why isn't it that they just size the house relative to the least populous state? | ||
| And then accordingly, everybody can the house can grow with population. | ||
| And maybe is that one part of solving the gerrymandering problem? | ||
| That's Steve. | ||
| Thanks for the call. | ||
| Yeah, that's a great point by Steve. | ||
| It's been about 100 years since the House of Representatives was increased in size. | ||
| The number of members of the House of Representatives is not in the U.S. Constitution. | ||
| Congress can change this. | ||
| And right now we have more people in each district than we ever have before in American history. | ||
| It's about a million people in each district. | ||
| And Congress could change that. | ||
| And there have been proposals to do that at various times. | ||
| It could be, I honestly think it's a very good idea to take the smallest state population and use that as the baseline. | ||
| There have been others' thoughts to increase it to 1,000 districts or something of that sort. | ||
| Is that the idea of proportional representation? | ||
| So proportional representation is a little bit different where you could end up getting, instead of breaking a state into districts, you could end up basically allowing everyone a certain number of votes so that the district lines wouldn't be drawn quite the same way. | ||
| But certainly as you break the units down into smaller units, representation does get proportional. | ||
| So because you can divide it, you can divide it a little more equally. | ||
| So for instance, there are states with one district that are fairly large or fairly small for the one district. | ||
| And then there are states that always are on the cusp of getting another seat. | ||
| Utah famously was that way recently. | ||
| And it's not one party or the other. | ||
| It's usually very close. | ||
| It's just based on population. | ||
| And at some point, it's just math. | ||
| You just decide where is the cutoff when you get 435. | ||
| And that math is a lot easier if the number is larger. | ||
| Let's hear from Michael. | ||
| Michael is on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Orlando, Florida. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mr. Becker. | |
| A couple questions. | ||
| One, what has the impact of counting this census with all the undocumented coming to the country? | ||
| Does that really impact the number of House seats like New York or California gets? | ||
| So that's one question. | ||
| And I don't think it's kind of working the way people wanted it to work in Texas. | ||
| I think that's what's going on here. | ||
| But the other thing is they had Governor Pritzker on the Stephen Colbert show, and they showed the gerrymandering map. | ||
| And he tried to make sense of it, but when it looks so ridiculous of how they were carving out, trying to get the votes, you know, he even said it was just kind of like my child drew this up or a kid did this. | ||
| So I think what's going on here is the Democrats are doing exactly what they have to do politically, but they would be doing the opposite if it was the other way around. | ||
| Thank you for my call. | ||
| Michael and Orlando, thanks. | ||
| I think Michael raises a really good point. | ||
| I think this is, I think certainly extreme partisan gerrymanders are not the province of only one party, certainly not the province of only the Republican Party historically. | ||
| Democrats have done this and where politicians draw the lines to fit their goals rather than lines being drawn for the goals of the voters as they've expressed them. | ||
| It creates these problems and it's not just a Republican or Democratic problem. | ||
| Illinois and Texas have drawn the lines according to political goals. | ||
| California, as I mentioned, has passed this independent redistricting commission that draws lines in a more fair way. | ||
| So I think that extreme partisan gerrymandering, I think Michael's exactly right. | ||
| This is Democrats are doing what they think they need to do politically. | ||
| No one's hands are completely clean here. | ||
| But I do think that ultimately, one possible good outcome of this is that the parties will see that this tit-for-tat every two years is not working out for anybody and that they might come together and come up with some agreement on how at least federal redistricting should apply to the states. | ||
| Michael also raised the question of how the counting of non-citizens in states is affecting the number of districts in the states. | ||
| First, we should say this is not a new thing. | ||
| This is the way it has literally always been. | ||
| We have always counted the number of persons because the Constitution uses the word persons. | ||
| It specifically mandates that we count all of the number of persons in determining how many districts in each state. | ||
| And so this is not a new thing, but it's unquestionable that states with larger numbers of non-citizen populations, and this is not just blue states, Texas and California, Florida all have significant numbers of non-citizens. | ||
| New York also, but there are many states that have more than others. | ||
| It's unclear exactly what effect that would have. | ||
| But again, I am very, very confident that the courts in this country will read the Constitution as it is clearly written and as it has been applied throughout our entire history. | ||
| Do people who file lawsuits against redistrict areas generally win? | ||
| I mean, it's always, you know, case-by-case basis, right? | ||
| I mean, you'll, there are, the Voting Rights Act has been a very robust check on some of the extreme redistrictings that might occur. | ||
| In that mid-decade redistricting that I mentioned in Texas about 20 years ago, the United States Supreme Court said, yes, there's no prohibition on you doing this. | ||
| And it approved much of the plan, but it actually found a couple of districts that violated the Voting Rights Act and sent it back to Texas to redraw. | ||
| There's also a check on that as well, where the Supreme Court has held that race under the Voting Rights Act can apply, but it can't so predominate over these other traditional redistricting principles that I've mentioned, communities of interest, for instance. | ||
| And if it does, that could violate the United States Constitution as well. | ||
| So there are a variety of legal challenges that could be brought. | ||
| I would say the degree to which state legislatures are restricted by any of these federal requirements is probably at its low point over the last 60 years. | ||
| Just last week, we had the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, August 6th. | ||
| It is considered the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. | ||
| It has been upheld and renewed by Congress multiple times, most recently, only about 20 years ago in an almost unanimous Congress. | ||
| And we're seeing it weaken more than ever before in recent years. | ||
| There's a story in the New York Times today that highlights the fact that it was on the last day of the Supreme Court term in June the justices announced that they would not immediately decide a case from Louisiana testing voting maps that include two majority black districts to satisfy the Voting Rights Act. | ||
| A lower court said that the race had played too large a role in the process where the state said lawmakers had been motivated by permissible partisan politics. | ||
| But it also adds that the unsigned order in June, the court said it would hear a second argument in the case in the term starting in October. | ||
| They say that's a significant development. | ||
| Yeah, and they've recently indicated what questions they'd like answered. | ||
| And those questions have led many election experts to wonder whether or not there's a majority on this court that is ready to hold the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. | ||
| Again, the Voting Rights Act, which has led to so many important advancements over the last 60 years. | ||
| You know, we should remember in 1965 when it was passed, we had many of the states of the old Confederacy where African American citizens effectively could not exercise their right to vote. | ||
| There were literacy tests and other things that were preventing them from registering. | ||
| They were often redistricted out of any kind of representation. | ||
| And now I look at a state like Georgia, which has often become a kind of a hot-button state in many ways. | ||
| But I want to give credit to the state of Georgia. | ||
| Georgia, and Georgia's been led by Republicans for the last two-plus decades. | ||
| Georgia is a state now with one of the highest voter registration rates in the country, with parity between black and white voter registration rates and turnout rates in the country, where African Americans are able to run for statewide office. | ||
| Now, Democrats, African-American Democrats do not yet have the vote totals to be able to get to that point, but they have an African-American senator in the state of Georgia now. | ||
| An African-American candidate came within 55,000 votes of winning the governorship in 2018. | ||
| This is thanks to the Voting Rights Act and our evolution as a nation. | ||
| And we're now seeing that the Supreme Court might strike it down or weaken it further. | ||
| This is David Becker joining us. | ||
| He's with the Center for Election Innovation and Research. | ||
| We'll hear from Mike. | ||
| Mike is in Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
| Mike, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| From Ohio, I was raised in a purple state. | ||
| I can recall presidential candidates coming by through Ohio. | ||
| I love purple states. | ||
| I wish we had at least 40 purple states, okay, in this country. | ||
| It would be nice if I could do that. | ||
| Right now, they're trying to make it even more red than before. | ||
| Right now, we have 10 Republicans and five Democrats in the House. | ||
| They want it to be down to 12 to 3. | ||
| They want to take away Ebelia Sykes. | ||
| She's my congresswoman here in Akron. | ||
| Now, when it comes to local elections, like I said, I am an independent, but when it comes to city council, I always vote for the Republican. | ||
| We've never had more than one Republican on city council at Akron. | ||
| So that one office, I always vote for the GOP. | ||
| I was also a poll worker. | ||
| I'm now retired. | ||
| I said something independent to ask me what party do I favor most of the time. | ||
| I said Democrat. | ||
| They said, that's fine. | ||
| We'll back to it with the Republican. | ||
| That's what I wanted them to do. | ||
| The Republican poll workers I worked with were the best people I could hope to work with. | ||
| Every poll worker I know was as honest as the day is long, whether there's a D by their name, an R by their name. | ||
| I expected them to back me up with a Republican, and I respected that person as they did me. | ||
| And finally, what I would like to say, as I admire Mike DeWine, he's a Republican governor. | ||
| At least he stood up for the Hastings and speaks through Ohio, saying they did not eat people's dogs and cats. | ||
| Unfortunately, he chose Jim Trussell as his lieutenant governor, who is former coach of Ohio State. | ||
| He doesn't have a chance as governor, our next governor will actually be Ravaswamy. | ||
| I would much rather, man, would I love to vote for Jim Tressel for Ohio's governor because he's now our lieutenant governor. | ||
| But no, I'm afraid that Ravaswamy may be our next governor. | ||
| Gotcha, Mike. | ||
| Mike, you put a lot out for the guest, Mr. Becker. | ||
| I am so glad Mike called. | ||
| Mike, first of all, thank you for being a poll worker. | ||
| You and as you said, people who you might agree with or disagree with that you work with, you serve such an important role. | ||
| Anyone who has any doubts about our elections, volunteer to be a poll worker, and you'll learn about the checks and balances, the redundancies, the transparencies we have in our process that prevent election fraud and make our system so effective. | ||
| You are giving all of us our voice in our elections, no matter who wins. | ||
| And this is particularly poignant right now because tomorrow is National Poll Worker Recruitment Day. | ||
| So if you're thinking about playing a role in our democracy, no matter which party you vote for, no matter which candidate you're going to vote for, call up your local county or local election office and volunteer to be a poll worker and learn just the incredible sense of satisfaction that you'll have in doing that work for your community. | ||
| I have a high schooler. | ||
| He's done it now twice. | ||
| I'm very proud of him for having done this. | ||
| It is not always easy work, but it's incredibly rewarding. | ||
| And so this is call up your find your county election office and volunteer to be a poll worker. | ||
| And thank you, Mike. | ||
| Oh, do you need a specific background to become a poll worker? | ||
| No. | ||
| Some places require you to be a resident of the state or of the county. | ||
| Some places require you to be a citizen. | ||
| Some don't. | ||
| Oftentimes, special skills like language skills or technical skills are very valuable. | ||
| This is why young people as poll workers are so helpful because they often have some language skills or especially technical skills that maybe older poll workers might be a little intimidated by some of the technology that's out there. | ||
| Anyone, just if you have any doubts, don't self-select out of this. | ||
| If it's something you want to do, contact your county or local election office. | ||
| Volunteer to be a poll worker. | ||
| They're going to find a way to use you. | ||
| It'll be incredibly rewarding. | ||
| You perform such an important role. | ||
| Thank you, Mike. | ||
| Let's hear from Steve. | ||
| Steve's in California, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Becker, thank you very much. | |
| I'm enjoying watching this question. | ||
| You mentioned earlier that there were two methods of being able to vote, a birth certificate or a driver's license. | ||
| Number one, you know, recently, in the past dozen years, there was all the squabble over should people have to present a photo ID to vote. | ||
| So that's my first question. | ||
| Do you believe that's an important factor in keeping a secure election? | ||
| And my second one is, if that's the case, a number of states, I understand, have given out driver's licenses to illegal immigrants or whatever the proper terminology is, undocumented people. | ||
| And what's your feelings on that? | ||
| Does that raise a concern for you? | ||
| And with that, I'll take your answer on TV. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Steve in California. | ||
| Thanks, Steve. | ||
| So first of all, we should separate out the registration and voting process. | ||
| As I mentioned, federal law, all 50 states, NDC, require you to provide ID when you register to vote, a driver's license number that is matched against the driver file in your state. | ||
| The driver file in your state, even if you've shown non-citizenship or you haven't documented citizenship one way or the other, that will flag in the voter registration system and election officials might follow up. | ||
| So you've got, so there's a filter at the very beginning before you ever cast a ballot to confirm you are who you are and you're eligible to vote. | ||
| This is one of the reasons we see very, very small numbers of non-citizens voting. | ||
| And then secondly, how do you verify your identity when you're actually casting a ballot? | ||
| And every state has a way of doing that. | ||
| Some require photo ID. | ||
| One of the concerns some states have indicated with regard to photo ID is we know not everyone has photo ID. | ||
| Some states do some very odd things with photo ID, like for instance saying student IDs aren't okay, but hunting and fishing licenses are okay. | ||
| I don't know what the justification for that might be other than political. | ||
| We've also seen odd things where even with student IDs, public university student IDs are okay, but private university student IDs aren't. | ||
| So in Indiana, for instance, Indiana University, you could use your ID. | ||
| Notre Dame, you couldn't. | ||
| Those are some odd things. | ||
| But in every state, you have to show your ID. | ||
| That might be through a signature verification at the time you vote or by mail ballot. | ||
| California, most ballots are by mail. | ||
| It might be that when I show up at the polls, I get asked information that only I would have at the time when I'm checking in, whether I show ID or not. | ||
| But everyone does this. | ||
| And this is one of the reasons we know voter fraud is extremely rare in this country. | ||
| If anyone has any doubts about that, I don't encourage you to try to commit voter fraud because you will get caught, you will be prosecuted, and you will end up spending time in state or federal prison for committing voting fraud. | ||
| The number of prosecutions in every election cycle is shockingly small. | ||
| Those people are caught and prosecuted. | ||
| One more call from Minnesota Republican line. | ||
| Terry, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, David. | |
| Sam, I want to address the illegals being counted in the census and then being represented based on those numbers. | ||
| I think the extraordinary circumstances of the last few years, 10 to 20 million illegals, on top of the illegals that are already here, do play an unfair, you know, it's unfair, takes away votes from legal citizens when they're in that area. | ||
| I also think when you say the 14th Amendment says it, the 14th Amendment also refers to only male citizens being able to vote over 21. | ||
| I think that the court very well could overlook it. | ||
| They overlooked the male citizens part. | ||
| This court absolutely could overlook it. | ||
| But more importantly, I think for anyone to deny the fact that 80% of American citizens would say this is unfair. | ||
| We should not be peeing one voter in a district with an overwhelming amount of illegals getting a representative where another place doesn't because they don't have illegal immigrants there. | ||
| It just seems unfair, and I think that it would be very, very popular. | ||
| Sorry, Terry, let me stop you there only because apologies, Terry. | ||
| I'm sorry about that. | ||
| We're almost out of time, but we'll let our guests respond. | ||
| Look, there might be a legitimate disagreement of opinion over whether or not non-citizens should count when we're doing the census and apportioning representatives. | ||
| But if Terry's right and it's so popular, there's a right way to go about this, and that is the constitutional amendment process, because the Constitution says what it says. | ||
| And with regard to male citizens, that's exactly what happened. | ||
| Women were granted the right to vote in the 19th Amendment, and then 18-year-olds were granted the right to vote, I think in the 23rd Amendment, but I didn't look at my Constitution this morning, so I hope I'm not wrong about that. | ||
| Might have been the 24th. | ||
| But the so if you really want to push this, this can't be done by the president as a dictator with the swipe of a pen. | ||
| This has to go through the people and the states as the Constitution demands to amend the Constitution. | ||
| And if they want to go through that process, I think, you know, the kind of democratic process that the founders envisioned is always helpful. | ||
| We'll find out if it really is popular. | ||
| We'll find out if it's something that actually can pass the amendment process and become a part of the Constitution. | ||
| You were close to the 26th Amendment. | ||
| 26th. | ||
| Darn it. | ||
| It's early in the morning. | ||
| I'm sorry, Banjo. | ||
| David Becker off this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| Don't worry about it. | ||
| Electioninnovation.org, the website if you want to hear more about the guest work when it comes to elections and how they're conducted. | ||
| David Becker, the founder and executive director. | ||
| Thanks for your time this morning. | ||
| Thank you, Pedro. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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