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Chapter 1: Why is understanding electoral maps crucial for democracy?
Newsflash, you can't think about this year's midterm elections or the coming presidential election without thinking about the maps. I know things like gerrymandering can be boring and political gamesmanship can be confusing, but understanding the maps and who gets political power in our country is vitally important to understanding the health of our democratic system.
So who actually has power in our democracy and who has power in name only? Let's dig in. Support for today's show comes from BetterHelp. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a reminder that whatever you're going through, you do not have to go through it alone. BetterHelp can match you with a licensed therapist who will help you get through it.
Chapter 2: How does gerrymandering affect political power in the U.S.?
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So here's one thing I never understood about the 2024 election. Why did Democrats spend so much time saying they were going to protect democracy? Now, I get it. Donald Trump has tested every single limit of our political system. And of course, the health of our democracy is an important goal.
But to say you're going to protect democracy implies that democracy was working in the first place, or at least that it was working until Donald Trump came along. And that isn't true. American democracy is broken, and most of us are written out of the political process on purpose.
It's a big reason why Congress passes less legislation than ever, why the Senate rarely seems to reflect public opinion, or why presidential elections obsess over the same seven states. Let me explain. I'm going to show three charts in three minutes that help you understand why American democracy needs to be improved, not just protected, and why one person, one vote is more myth than reality.
For those listening, I'm going to bring up a couple charts that show the structural health of our democracy or lack thereof. The first is about the Electoral College. Now, everybody knows that the Electoral College is a little messed up, We don't choose the president via direct popular vote. We choose it through this funky system made hundreds of years ago.
But did you know that it's not just that the Electoral College causes us to focus on six or seven states for battleground presidential results? It also means that the electoral votes themselves aren't distributed equally. Let's look at the relative voting power by state in the 2024 election.
The least populous states, places like Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, all of that has the highest relative voting power, if you think about the population of those states, to their electoral votes. The smallest relative voting power belongs to populous states that don't get as many electoral votes. Places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New York.
The second chart I'm going to show is about the Senate, because I think it takes the last problem and makes it a little more clear. Because the Senate has two senators for every state, it is equally distributed in terms of representation. Right? Wrong. The Senate actually shows how least populous states have more power and the racial and demographic impacts of that distribution.
Take a look at this chart that the Washington Post made in 2023. It showed that one person in Wyoming had similar influence in the Senate to 68 people in California, 50 people in Texas, and 37 people in Florida. And it's not just that the numbers don't add up. It's that the type of people changes also.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the Electoral College in elections?
It chipped away at Voting Rights Act protections and federal law and basically gave a green light to some of these GOP redistricting efforts. When we think about the short term question of November, how much do you see this decision affecting the question of control of Congress?
Well, I guess, so let's put it into two categories. One is how many seats actually shift from Democratic held to Republican held? And if we assume that the maps that passed in Tennessee and Alabama, they pass legal muster, we're still waiting on Alabama, that basically took three Black majority districts, two of which were represented by Black members of Congress and made them safely Republican.
Okay. Three gone, right? So three gone.
But you also wonder, to the point of its impact on the sort of environment in November, we already know that Democrats are much more interested and engaged when it comes to voting. They are more fired up. They are more frustrated. And it's just one more – way in which Democrats may have something else to fire up their voters.
And honestly, instead, this is what some Republicans will say they are worried about, which is, you know, maybe you get three seats, but you've also put a hornet's nest. And it could engage voters to come and turn out who... really hadn't felt that interested in voting before this decision.
Just a long-term question, though. How real is the threat to Black representation because of this decision?
Yeah, this to me becomes the other really interesting question as we go forward, which is how far will Democrats be willing to go to expand their advantage in states where they have majority Black or majority Hispanic seats.
Yeah. But if you break up those seats, well... Yeah, I want to slow this down because it does feel like an important conundrum that might be in our future. There is the reality of the threat that the Calais decision poses to majority Black districts and Black representatives, particularly in the South. But in the Democrats' desire to respond to Republican redistricting efforts,
the clearest way for them to do so might be breaking up their own Black or Hispanic districts to disperse those to make, I guess, lighter blue districts in their cities. Like, the incentives could be such that both sides agree that kind of Black representation or minority representation is not the priority for them in Congress.
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Chapter 4: How does the Senate's structure impact representation?
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I want to think about another question to go back to our kind of original point, which was specific to protecting versus improving democracy. I'm someone who thought that the Democrats really erred in 2024 by talking about the protection of democracy rather than kind of acknowledging some of the shortcomings with our political system and vowing to improve it.
I want to kind of put you in that hot seat. If you could pass a law or wave a magic wand that you think would make our democracy more fair, what would it be?
Yeah. I don't know that it would make it more fair. I do think at its core, one of the biggest challenges we have is the primary process, right? Which was designed more than 100 years ago to deal with another political problem we had, which was the sort of backroom, smoke-filled room way in which... Nominees came to be. Let's be clear, the corrupt way that literally you had...
People basically picked by a handful of folks, including business interests and et cetera, picking who the nominee would be. And the idea of opening up to the people was that, to your point about protecting versus preserving democracy, boy, that was a really great way to protect and preserve democracy, right? Making it one that took it out of the hands of the few and put it in the hands of many.
But now the primary process has become as corrupted as it was back then. The amount of money that is coming into these primaries by outside groups Many of whom are attached either to an issue or a corporate interest is skyrocketing. The people who show up and vote in primaries ideologically are very far left or right.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of competitive house districts on elections?
I mean, here in New York, I think ranked choice voting certainly like I feel like got some good reviews, has invigorated folks into the process. I think in the mayor's race, you saw different levels of cooperation or things you wouldn't have seen before. Like to take the California thought, like if the reforms don't lead to greater participation, like what overcomes the malaise?
I know. Well, one thing would be like government actually working. And so that is, but here's where the problem comes. The incentive structure has to change. Right now, if you are a member of Congress who actually just like keeps your head down and gets stuff done and you're not in the spotlight negatively, you're not going to get rewarded for that.
Yeah, I'm like, you start the clock.
You won't be there long. Instead, you do a good job. Like in your real job, like in real jobs. People who do a good job, who show up, who put in the effort, like, oh, you can get a raise or you're getting a promotion. In Washington, that is getting you zero. And so as long as the incentive structure is,
benefits those who make the most noise, do the most damage, refuse to do any sort of compromising, well, there's not much that any sort of reform is going to be able to change. And the people that change the incentive structure Or, well, they're us. And this is the circular conversation, right? If you don't like those people, then stop voting for them.
Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
But it gets harder and harder to have that conversation. Fundamentally, I think we have to change our framework. So instead, like, if you go back and you read American history, we've been slogging through for a long time. It's never been great. It's never been perfect. It's always been messy. And it has been corrupted and all these different. Thanks. And we keep slogging our way through.
So I think slogging is just the reality of America. But one thing I think that has been really hard for, especially people who are living in this moment, is that we experienced from basically the end of World War II through the end of the 20th century, a level of bipartisanship. And comity, C-O-M-I-T-Y, in our politics, that was rare. And we think that is normal.
And so we keep saying, why can't it be like it was in 1979 or whatever, 1983, when, you know, Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan were friends. It's like, well, because... That was the aberration.
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