 Well good evening everybody. How are you all? Do you make it through the bad weather all right? Good. My name is Victor Obaseky. I'm a board member of the future forum here, and just here to give a welcome to this fantastic panel that we've assembled. I wanted to really emphasize exactly what the future forum is about. We really aim to create community and space around around engaging on the issues that matter most in our community and in our society. And so we're really pleased to have you tonight. Again, thanks for getting through the bad weather. I know we have at least one panelist all the way here from San Antonio. So thanks again for being here. Here's a short video that talks about the future forum. I'm involved with the future forum because of programming. It's phenomenal. They talk about things at the local level, the city-wide level, the state level, nationwide politics, and then sometimes what's going on in the world. The LBJ library is here at the University of Texas. It's visited by people from all over the world every single day. You know, it's a Texas-born president, and he's got Austin roots, and so it's a great asset that way. So again, thanks for being here. I wanted to quickly, just two housekeeping pieces. If you'd like to join a future forum, there's an iPad on that table, and we have one of my colleagues over there that can help you with that. And then afterward, of course, there will be a reception in the adjacent room. But without further ado, we want to talk voting rights tonight with this fantastic panel. So let me introduce the moderator, Dr. James Henson. I think he goes by Jim. Jim directs the Texas Politics Project and teaches in the Department of Government here at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 2008, he's co-directed the University of Texas-Texas Tribune poll, and has designed and implemented polls and provided strategic analyses for a wide range of nonprofits and integral groups, interest groups, I should say. His work has featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and other outlets. He, of course, earned his MA and PhD here at the University of Texas in the Department of Government, Hookam-Horns. And he served as a member and chairman of the City of Austin Ethics Review Commission from 2009 to 2012, and importantly, is a member of the Travis County Election Study Group, and has been a member of the Supiendo Leadership Academy Advisory Board since its founding in 2010. Without further ado, Dr. James Henson. Thank you, sir. That makes me sound a lot busier than I actually am, but thanks for the kind introduction and thanks especially to Sarah McCracken from the LBJ Foundation, who tolerated my really terrible email habits and the lead up to this event. I'm very happy to be back at the Future Forum, though it seems like a world away from the last time I was here. Maybe some of you were part of that, I suspect, which was as a guest in a taping of the ticket podcast at a Clinton-Trump debate watch party. A few things have changed since then, which does bring us to tonight's subject, Voting Rights in the Trump Era. I'm happy to have been asked to moderate this very distinguished panel of guests who join us to talk about gerrymandering, voter ID, and the present and future of the electoral system in Texas and the country at large, all in 40 minutes. Immediately to my left, Ernest De Herera is a native of San Antonio after graduating from Columbia College in New York. He attended the University of New Mexico School of Law. Since 2013, he has worked as a staff attorney at the Southwest Regional Office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, who we will be hearing about again tonight, I suspect. In addition to litigating voting rights issues, he works on educational quality cases in Texas and the Southwest. Next to Ernest is Eric Opelia, who just missed the dramatic entrance, which, you know, almost... Austin traffic. It's like the punchline to everything now. Eric graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and earned his law degree from the UT School of Law. After law school, he clerked for the honorable Mary Ellen Costner-Williams on the United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C. He serves as Executive Director of the Republican Party of Texas from 2008 to 2009, and most recently was Associate General Counsel from 2010 to 2017. Next to Eric is Professor Norma Cantu, a joint appointment who has a joint appointment in the Education and Law Schools here at the University of Texas at Austin. For eight years, she served as the Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights in the Clinton Administration. Prior to that service, she worked for 14 years as Regional Counsel and Education Director of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Told you. Professor Cantu graduated from University of Texas, Pan American, at the age of 19, subsequently enrolling at Harvard Law School where she graduated at the age of 22. Well, anyway, I was gonna say what I was doing at age 22, but I think I'm gonna pass. A couple of senators said, but what have you done lately? And last but not least, next to Norma, in his 50-plus years of law practice, David Richards has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Texas Law School and served as an attorney with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. From 1982 to 1985, he was Executive Assistant Attorney General of Texas, supervising the state's litigation. David has handled a number of appellate courses at the U.S. Supreme Court, the Texas Supreme Court, Intermediate, Federal and State Appellate Courts, and there's a long list of these I picked too, including White v. Register and Ed Wood v. Kirby, a couple that you've probably heard of. He has an undergraduate degree from Baylor University and also subsequently graduated from the UT Law School. It's a great panel, please welcome our guests. David volunteered in a way to get us started. David, could you just make sure everybody's on the same page? Could you give us kind of the status quo on where we are with the redistricting fights in Texas and the voting rights cases in Texas, and then no one else will have to say anything for 40 minutes? Well, I'll take a whack at it. The redistricting is all the paperwork is making its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Let's see, we have two separate appeals going up, one on congressional redistricting from by the state appealing and one on the appeal from the Texas House of Representatives case. Presumably all the documents will be filed within the next 30 days, I think they're abouts, which means that it is least possible that it will be dealt with in this term of court. Of course, that's terribly conjectural. But in the meantime, everything's on hold and it's, if you want to come by my office, there are four boxes, I suppose, all stand about that tall with the paperwork there. And it's monumental and boring at this stage in my life, after all. Voter ID is in a strange posture. That case has been extremely interesting, actually. The fact, you may know or may not know. At the trial court level, there was a finding of intentional discrimination based on race. There was also a finding of 14th Amendment violation just as an oppression of voting rights. Amazingly, the 5th Circuit, which is one of the most devastating ban circuits in the country, unbog. No editorialism going on here. There will be more editorialism coming. Any of it unbog affirmed at least a portion of that case and then remanded the intentional finding. And they've made a hearing on that. It's going back up now and lastly, I'm on the pleadings but don't have to do any work in the case. That's where it is. And it's locked in the process, too. That's helpful. So I kind of want to open it up and people can take turns and editorialize in certain measures. Let's start with redistricting. Now, Eric, you weighed in. What's at stake here? The future of America. I'm sorry. You got to be quick on this panel. To a large extent, we've now gone eight years since the last census. We only have two more cycles left. I think that this exceeds even the record we had the last decade in terms of having the lines in court. Keep in mind the Democrats were in court in the 1990s. Now Republicans have the majority. The Democrats are in court against us. And so to a large extent, we have two districts that are in play at this juncture before the Supreme Court. The perennial candidate, CD 23, CD 27, or portions of it in Nueces County are also being challenged at the Supreme Court. And so the rest of the map, however, at least on the last finding by the three judge panel in San Antonio, seems to be pretty solid. There is some debate about how Travis County can be formed as a result of some of the findings with regard to CD 23. But at most, there's one or two, three districts that are in play still before the Supreme Court. Optimistically, some people can think it might happen this term. I think it might be held over until the October term of 2018, just given the state of the docket over at the Supreme Court, and they don't seem to be in any hurry to hear it this term. You're not hearing that. What do you think? Well, before that happens, we have so many other lawsuits I wanted to hear about the other cases that Maldives is handling that are on their way up to the Supreme Court at some point. You want to talk about the sanctuary cities and just give me a quick docket update? Oh, well, at the risk of Maldives monopolizing it, we do have SB 4 in front of the Fifth Circuit, not the voting rights issue, of course, but another case that Maldives has litigated recently that I think is important to the direction of the Voting Rights Act, the voting rights post the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder case in Pasadena, Texas, a mayor who dropped a gun at a meeting at one point, City Council meeting in public, decided that when Latinos were winning too many seats on the City Council that he was going to change the entire system, take away two single member districts and make two of them elected by the city as a whole, where Latinos were not the voting majority. And we took that to court in front of the Houston Federal, Houston Division of the Southern District, and Maldives clients were victorious in showing that the city had intentionally discriminated against them. And in addition, of course, some of you who follow this stuff probably know that with the 2013 Supreme Court decision, pre-clearance or DOJ oversight ended effectively everywhere. Pasadena, the voters, Latino voters who brought this case in front of federal court, succeeded in getting that federal court to put Pasadena under DOJ monitoring for six years from this year. Important victory. There was an appeal was in front of the Fifth Circuit, but the city and the plaintiffs came to an agreement and the order of using the eighth single member district map and being under DOJ oversight for every part of their voting rules and laws in that city stays in those things stay in effect. So that was something that also there were voting rights advocates with NAACP and others in nearby Galveston that prevented a very similar disenfranchisement of African American voters from going into effect. Without even going to court, the city council just decided not to try it. But to give a brief history, but that was the brief history of that case. Okay, so I want to come back and talk about the voting rights. I want to clear a little bit of the underbrush and redistricting first, though, before we move on. And by asking you, you all have watched this from various perspectives at various periods. And it does seem to me that one of the, we're on the brink of a possible kind of fundamental shift in how we view the regime of redistricting and how it happens in the country as we consider the relationship between the limit on racial redistricting and the increasing discussion that perhaps partisan redistricting might not be allowable under certain circumstances as well, right in Wisconsin. So, am I reading that right? You all are lawyers. I mean, is that shift eminent? It looks like it's under discussion. That shift doesn't affect what Maldew's work is, which is preventing discrimination against Latino voters, which has happened both under Republican and Democratic regimes, governments and jurisdictions. So the end of partisan gerrymandering being an issue doesn't affect what we do, except for if advocates for that partisan gerrymandering decide that the creation of, for example, minority opportunity districts, which is what the Voting Rights Act does in its current incarnation, if they decide that that's no longer important and that Democrats winning seats or Republicans winning seats is more important than racial equality. So that's, it doesn't affect what we do. Well, the political gerrymandering case, as you know, was argued this term and here's the transcript of the argument and it's not very edifying and I think the likelihood in my opinion is it'll, the court will stay about where they always have been, which is it's not, we don't like it, but we don't know what to do with it and go away. But then the other thing they don't, so clearly to read the argument that predictably Chief Justice was saying, if we do it, if we let you win this case basically, then we'll just be flooded with more cases of this kind. And my own guess is that that will be a terrible impediment to any significant decision. Do you read that the same way? I do as well. It's not often I agree with my colleague here on the left. Far left. But I too don't see. Purely coincidentally. I don't know why I'm sitting even. But the question of political gerrymandering really, we've, keep in mind the Supreme Court has not changed its stance yet. We've just had a court in Wisconsin, which has ruled in a different direction than the existing case law. The same claims were made by the Texas Democratic Party in our redistricting case here in Texas. The three judge panel here in Texas summarily dismissed those and said, in light of the lack of a standard set forth by the Supreme Court, we're not going to entertain that motion at this time. Now, they did file this week a jurisdictional statement at the Supreme Court trying to get the Supreme Court to hear that issue. And it did the proper legwork at the lower court level trying to get that properly positioned before the Supreme Court. But, you know, we don't know what the Supreme Court's going to do by June of next year, but at least as the law stands right now, political gerrymandering is not really before the court in our case here in Texas. And speaking of judges, I've got a pitch to make to you about women judges. So Texas is one of seven states where judges run by party designation. And so you think that what we do is what everybody does, well, that's not true. We're, you know, a kind of different from the rest of the country. And it doesn't work for getting women elected to the Texas Supreme Court or the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. I mean, the first women who were appointed to the Texas Court was back in 1920s, because we had a case where all of the male judges had to recuse themselves, the woodmen of the world insurance case. And so they had to come up with a special panel and they found women in the 1920s. And I give you their names because if I don't say it, you'll never hear their names. And I want to say women's names because the Suffragette Act 19th Amendment is coming up for an anniversary in 2020. So for two years, I want us to think of do we see women in those top positions, bringing it back to redistricting. We had O'Connor, a very key person who was handling Supreme Court dealing with it very deftly. We may not have agreed with what she did, but she brought everyone together and got compromises and got decisions ruled out in a timely way. So a name that you all need to know is Hortense Sparks Ward, the first woman to pass the Texas bar, 1910. She was appointed to that three all women judge panel to hear the case. The second name I want you to remember, hopefully, is Ruth Virginia, Brazil of Galveston. And the third name is Hattie Lee Hennenberg of Dallas. Now, this is something that I want young folk and people of my age to remember that women were qualified to serve on the Supreme Court back in the 1920s. The next time a woman was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court was 1982. So 60 years later, we had a gap. And that was appointed by William P. Clements. Now, that's a surprise. Take that to a trivia contest and see if you don't win a free beer at a bar. A bonus you didn't think you were going to get from a panel like this. Okay. Well, someone hinted that if you're there, talk about 2020 and I am. So her name is Ruby Kless Sondak. And she was appointed to serve by a sitting governor and the first woman elected Rose Spector in 1992. But the Republican governor no less, too. Exactly. We've had quite a few Republican just. But a big gap between 82 and 92, where Republicans could have appointed more. So we've had more women on the court. But yet considering that it's been about 100 years that the first women served on that, that's something that is affected by who serves in the governor's seat and it's affected by who we vote for. And so that is my, I used to teach eighth graders. So that's my homework class. Go home and think about what you can do to get more women on those positions. I had a little historical thing I wanted to offer you. Since we talked about gerrymandering. Yeah, that'd be great. Historically, Elbridge Gary, who for whom it's named, was a hero of American Revolution, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and was vice president under James Madison died in office. And so we've mispronounced his name ever since. It's Gary, but anyway, we've alerted for gerrymandering. But anyway, and if you've ever seen a map of the Massachusetts legislature, I guess with Senate seat, I can't remember which one. I think it was Senate seat. It is a salamander that's a classic form of gerrymandering on a political basis. So he was, as I say, the hero of the revolution. And so we should honor him at least for that purpose. So we should honor him as well. Beneath the kind of surface of this a moment ago, I mean, something Eric said about the fact that we went through this long redistricting fight in the 90s. We're in the middle of another one now. And likely, or towards the end of another one, one way or the other, probably, this one has lasted virtually the entire life of the map. So well, in 1970, when we tried white versus registered twice to the US Supreme Court. And as I think I got finally got my attorney's fees award. I helped you. That's right. I think nine years after the, just before the new census, basically, which actually is even better for the question, which is, you know, is this perpetual litigation over the maps? Is this a sign that the system that the process works or that it doesn't? Works for lawyers. Not even, I didn't make any money on it. If it took you nine years to get paid, maybe not. Well, and I'll pause it talking about attorney's fees. There's millions of dollars in attorney's fees on both sides that have been racked up in every decade worth of this litigation. I think attorney's fees, to some extent, drives this litigation because there's always going to be a winner and there's always going to be a loser in court. There's always a winner in the legislature and the side that loses in the legislature goes to court. And to some extent, this is the Lawyer's Full Employment Act. You know, you have attorneys that are challenging this on the part of whoever lost at the ballot box. So are you arguing for taking it out of the hands of the legislature? Not at all. Just wondering. Not at all. Yeah. No, what I'm actually arguing for is a better defined standard and better direction for the legislature on how to draw lines because that frankly isn't there. We're kind of doing ping pong back and forth with differing court opinions just over the last 15 years. And I think it's very difficult for practitioners to figure out what the law really is with regard to what is acceptable by the Supreme Court. And I think the Supreme Court's recognizing that in the political gerrymandering case that's before it is because if they draw a line here, there's somebody who's going to draw a line, well, draw maybe a differing line. Sets of lines, yeah. Yeah, that metaphor kind of collapses on it. Yeah, it does. I don't really know where to go with that, but... What are you thinking of stuff? Well, the thing is, I think, so this is taking it back to the Guilvy-Wittford case that's in Wisconsin. One interesting thing listening to the oral argument from that case was where the plaintiff's attorney talked about, well, actually might have been the state's attorney, talking about how much technology has changed and how much more ways there are to manipulate data now. Now, I think a lot of kind of optimistic, good government, our favorite policy wonks want to say, well, that's how we can get rid of redistricting. But in some ways, that's what's helping from our perspective at MALDEF what we've seen in some cases is a way to more easily or in a more sophisticated way manipulate the drawing of districts to disadvantage minorities. And that's driven... We can simplify that by saying whatever means are available, they may be used to discriminate against Latinos. And as long as that's still there, I think the Voting Rights Act is still necessary. And it might be a very blunt application of that discrimination, such as what happened in Pasadena where you just take away two seats altogether from the city council and give them to the city, the white majority, or it might happen in such a sophisticated way that you need ways to calculate and measure how to discriminate against Latinos. I think technology is a big factor. I'm still not sure if you told me whether you think it works or not. I think it's just like anything else. It's just like any other institution, or just like any other tool, it can be used for good or bad in our eyes or racial discrimination or not discriminating against people on the basis of ethnicity, which is why I'm glad we have our constitution and the Voting Rights Act. When you ask technology, are you talking about how to draw maps or are you talking about how to vote? Because in the drawing of apps technology has been a miracle because when David and I were doing stuff in the 70s, we were still drawing by hand and holding up a vellum piece of paper to a window with a sunlight through it so we could trace copies of what we drew by hand. And I still remember sitting at a bar with a very famous person who I will not name who said, Norma, what's that round district? And I said, that's a ring from your beer can. But so yes, if there is the political will to follow the guidance of the courts that are above us, you can draw any map you want because technology takes a second. You just wish it and you can you can program it and anyone can draw a different map that says I can do that even better. So technology has moved us forward. In terms of giving us trust that our vote mattered and that it got correctly counted, that depends upon who the Secretary of State or who the Director of Voting is and what directions they give them to folk to secure the vote. We were losing confidence in 2016 because rumors were going around that folk were hacking our votes and we can't have that. We cannot have our elected officials or appointed officials undermining our confidence in our vote. They've got to work harder. They've got to do more. They've got to talk to us and reassure us that when we walked away from that electronic machine that it didn't suck all our money like an ATM draining an account. So we've got some real issues to work with. I think we ought to go back to paper ballot and that's been clear to me forever. Stuart Long, who none of you are old enough, well maybe you remember Stuart, but who was Emma Long's husband and a long-time political person here. When the first punch cards came in, which was supposed to be a great innovation, Stuart said I'm not going to trust it. Some banker is going to count these things and we ought to stay with the paper ballot. I didn't feel that way then, but I've come back to that. We're so preoccupied with speed. That is we've got to have immediate access or results and that I think we sacrifice ballot both integrity and confidence by that damn preoccupation. And if I could print a receipt at my bank and know what my balance is, I should be able to print a receipt from my vote and walk out with a copy of that. Now the other thing is they can use technology to shame you. I went and voted last year and it asked me do you want to vote in Spanish? So there's an iPad and in front of everybody I've got to choose my loyalty. Am I going to vote in English or am I going to vote in Spanish? So I'm comfortable in English. I hit English. Then I go into the private booth and the machine again says do you want to vote in English or Spanish? Why are they asking me twice? What makes me think that they want me in front of an audience to declare my loyalty as an American? I asked afterwards, why am I having to disclose twice? And they said we thought of that ourselves. We don't know the answer. We don't know why we're putting you through that twice. Might just be a bug rather than a feature. That's one of the problems with some of the voting systems. I've tried recounts, tried election contests and I see it on both sides of this. The recounts where I've had the largest change in votes this last year in the primary in Bell County, I had a 30-vote shift in hand counted paper ballots. Oh really? And there's a human error that gets introduced in that and a computer reads those and kicks them out if it can't read it or and then the humans go back and find those. So we have problems with that but I also agree with you that we have some voting systems in this state. I really hesitate to name names because you know there's lobbyists on both sides of this here but we had a big fight this last session during the regular session over the voting systems and we have the biggest problem that we have with electronic voting systems is the age of those systems. I had another recount and election contest over in Beaumont a couple of years ago where it was switching the votes. The touch screen was so old, it's about 15 years old now, that the plastic had deformed on it. You'd select straight ticket Republican and it would mark everybody as Democrat or vice versa. So we do have some problems that we that unfortunately money has to solve. I do think some sort of verified paper trail, it's one of the things we call for in our platform would be good. We're getting closer to the technology for that. It used to be more expensive and the printed ballot, the printed receipts used to trigger more errors. I think we're getting closer to where that's going. And where there's a handful of errors in terms of folk who didn't have accurate ID or accurate residents. But there could be millions of errors in the computer. And you never know about it. And you never know about it. So it should be a priority, don't you think, to fix the computer issue? Now I heard somewhere I think it might have been Virginia where they were going to use the electronic systems but have the paper backups as well. And I think that's brilliant. This was one of the vendors wanted to do that. It's not actually legal for a vendor under our current state law to have an individualized ballot printed from the electronic machine. We ran into a huge wall by other vendors whose equipment couldn't do it. And lobbied against being able to do that and successfully killed the bill that would have allowed you to have that individual ballot. With regard to receipts, I think that's a challenge because you can always take that receipt and use it as proof to someone like an employer or a union. You don't want to really get into that because then you're going to have the old South Texas system. That's right. The full tab. So I don't advocate for that. But we could do a lottery to get more turnout and you would see your receipt, you would verify that's right and you would drop it into a lottery and you'd win a prize for going to vote. Well habits secured and don't go back to the union steward and we'll be okay with that. I mean one of the challenges obviously before we move is that the electoral law and the electoral systems are so decentralized in our system that it's hard to set standards and it's hard for the vendors to know how to follow the market and they follow the market in the wrong direction frequently enough I think. I want to go back to or circle back to something that came up. There's a little too much agreement right now I think. But I am curious. The Voting Rights Act we kind of nudged on a couple of times ago in terms of the way that the Voting Rights Act continues to be a factor. We're sitting in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library. I mean it seems to me we have to discuss at least briefly the future of the Voting Rights Act. We've noted that some of the some of the elements of the Voting Rights Act have been struck down or no longer operative. At the same time the Voting Rights Act for those that weren't working on it I think the Pasadena case sort of came out of nowhere in a lot of ways in terms of the outcome of that the role of the Voting Rights Act in that decision. What is the future of the Voting Rights Act or it's days numbered? Do we expect it to continue in some kind of attenuated way or you know and how do we know what are the factors? Until into the OTSA 2006 or so there was pretty widespread agreement about keeping the Voting Rights Act in place because of the success that it had and it was past it was extended on bipartisan terms at that time. We saw you know judicial movement trying to get rid of it after that and to the 2013 was a big hit against it not fatal by any means because it's obviously still in effect it just takes a lot of a lot more work. It takes people on the ground keeping up with what's going on who you know and they know the locals in Pasadena they knew what was happening at the time but it depends is I think it depends on in part on what politics are how cynical they are or how maybe racist they might be so it's hard to tell at the moment which way we go. I don't think it depends on the who's in charge in terms of party because sometimes these things might come down to political expediency but I think it's worth preserving. What do you think? When I was in D.C. I kept getting counsel from outside groups that say stop working on affirmative action we predict the Supreme Court's going to drop it and I told them I'm not there to enforce predictions so it's my job working in Washington to enforce the federal law as the Supreme Court has currently interpreted it not the way someone wished it would not the way someone in their crystal ball wishes if they would so we need to hold our U.S. Department of Justice to enforce the law that is not the law they wish they would see and we ourselves rather than engaging in predictions we need to work really hard to document those acts of discrimination and those acts of people who don't follow the law and be ready to testify about that because the court cases are part of what builds that record and holds people accountable. And I will say when so the the order that went into effect in Pasadena the Fifth Circuit while the while the appeal was still pending the Fifth Circuit decided that that the order should stay in place and that Pasadena should remain under monitoring. It had an election under the constitutional legal map in May of this year and DOJ called us and they called local plaintiffs who had been involved in the case to ask if we needed assistance or if we knew of anything. So as far as you know as late as May 2017 that I know of DOJ was on the ground literally on the ground in Pasadena trying to see if everything was going okay there were some changes that were made Pasadena as the order said let let the plaintiffs know and let the court know that there would be some polling locations moved. But on when election day or election early voting came and there were some irregularities caused not by the city actually but by the county unfortunately. DOJ was calling us and we were investigating investigating it too. So it was still working however however afraid people might be under this this this administration of it not continuing. So I think it's working as it should at the moment. It's just that unfortunately other jurisdictions have been let out under its from under it. So Eric stipulating that it's still in effect. I mean what's your what's your sense of this? I think what you what you see on the part of the Trump administration is that the proper view of the Voting Rights Act is as a shield not as a sword a shield against discrimination racial discrimination not to be used as a sword by political parties to try to get their result that they couldn't get at at the ballot box or in the legislature. And so that's the shift that you've seen. I think that the Trump administration is as you saw in in Pasadena very active at enforcing the law that exists but is not you know activist as the prior administration has been in taking positions to to use it as a sword rather than as a shield. We'll see what Chris Kovac does of course though. David you wanted to say we have the 14th amendment which probably does about as much as the current status of the Voting Rights Act if it's just harder to litigate and we keep in mind that the early cases quite versus register which decided of the 14th amendment it wasn't decided under the Voting Rights Act and so it's still there and the 14th amendment. I don't think it's going to go away probably even in this administration. I want to open it up for questions in a minute but I want to do a quick sort of a lightning round to kind of give you guys one last sort of pop at this before we open it to the audience for question. What's the one thing people should pay the most attention to right now in terms of the integrity and and the future of the election system. I'm going to start with you but like 20 seconds. I think everyone has to look at one of the big things that's going to be coming up is the census. How is the census going to be conducted because that will really affect both how the Voting Rights Act is litigated or used or used by the administration protect voters or hurt voters and it's always it's also going to affect how jurisdictions, cities, counties, states do redistricting in 2021. Which watch are I think this Supreme Court and in particular not necessarily the justices are on the Supreme Court now but the makeup of the Supreme Court over the next two years with a number of retirements that are that are expected to happen or you know we we unexpectedly lost Justice Scalia you know in the last well now it's been almost two years and that dramatically for a period of time really changed the game with regards to Voting Rights litigation. Gorsuch has been in the same line as Scalia and so we're back to the Supreme Court that we had prior to Scalia's passing but we do have the opportunity to have a shift from a 5-4 court to a different makeup over the next two to three years as part of the current administration and I think that's the biggest thing to watch. Professor? I don't have a national policy position or a state policy position. I have a personal wish. I spent two days with my nephew trying to get him a voter ID. Okay he was about to turn 18. I wanted him to have an ID. It took me two days because the first day I went they gave me a piece of paper that was torn in half and it was for immigrant people and what visas to bring and I and I didn't even read it until I got home and I had to go back and say are you talking about me? I'm fourth generation Texan. Are you talking about me? They gave me the right piece of paper but then they said he had to come in with correspondence that had been mailed to his home address to prove that he lived where he said he lived. Okay is it the year 2017 or are we living where mail is how you get your report card and mail is how you correspond with your friends and mail is where you you know get your deliveries? No the DPS is still living in the 1940s and 50s. At best. At best and the DPS is standing in the way of young people being able to vote. David? I'm still hooked on electoral systems. I would like along with Eric to find a electoral system that gave us all confidence that what went into the voting booth came out accurately at the other end and I think that's critical and I hope it continues to be a matter of concern. So you heard it here we went it's the beginning of a bipartisan Texas committee on electoral system on voting systems. Well and you know we work together you know I was representing the the Republican party this last legislative session and Glenn Maxey who y'all probably know here in Austin was representing the Democratic party we passed a great law that was in effect for one election unfortunately to solve some of the problems that that I both parties agree are there with regard to mail-in ballots and abuse of the elderly and nursing facilities and unfortunately we saw that rolled back in the special session but where part of the problem was the election administrators didn't want to do the extra work to find the election judges to go visit the nursing homes in a bipartisan manner. We need to do more things from a bipartisan perspective I think that this fighting back and forth is not good for democracy and there is some common ground that can be found between constitutional conservatives and liberals with regard to voting systems. On that I think we're going to go to the audience for questions there's a microphone so if you'll wait so we can get the questions on the recording we'll go here and then here and then we won't lose you in the back I promise. Thank you I appreciate this very much correction constitutional liberals because that's actually what I'd like to say there's a very old saying about you know it's hard to define pornography but I know it when I see it the constitution is what we need to be teaching our kids and how we need to be running our governments and the parties have me so angry both sides have been so evil at times do you think please get to a question so we can get other questions that's the thing here do you think that Texas has a chance of doing the the ballots where the parties aren't there and you just have an automatic runoff with like the top two or three candidates on a ballot okay it's good no I think there's but I'm sensing agreement but again you help get agreement we'll be closer to this one of the things that that we did do this session which uh you know surprisingly getting all three houses you know in terms of the governor the senate and the house to all agree on is getting rid of straight ticket or one punch voting which takes them the the mindless voter makes them actually have to pick candidates and I think that's that's an important step in that direction and as you saw last night of this is me taking off my Maldef hat because we're nonpartisan but in Virginia the and in a few other cities and states there were people elected I believe both right and left non who did not identify with either party a number of independent progressives were elected to judgeships city councils and state legislatures as well as I could see this happening on say if there was a tea party break off becoming an actual party so that's something to to keep an eye on yeah hi my name is Sylvia Revellis Scheller and I really really appreciate your comment about it wasn't just the Republicans that were suppressing like minority vote especially the Latino vote because you know we are the third largest Latino state in nation and I did an extensive voter registration project in Dallas it first started out with the southwest voter registration however the problem there is that they leave after the elections and it really takes a massaging you know making sure people are getting their cards they know what to do that and also making sure that there was just many levels and I operated a non-partisan voter registration and involved the city of Dallas I mean the yeah we did a mail in a mail in registration back when we had the gas bill the library by law there mandated to have a voting rights clerk the wasn't happening the Catholic diocese got involved it was a comprehensive push and I will say on behalf of the Republican chair I asked them to sign on to my letter and the Democrat chair refused there was the fear and he told me we are fearful of how those new Latino voters will vote I called the Republican chair and he agreed to sign on I was doing this from a passion because my father was 80 years old and he had a stroke and he was in the VA and he literally dragged himself out of the hospital made my sister take him to go and vote they got hit on the way back and I remember thinking oh my gosh you know I'm a policy major and to Notre Dame and I hadn't been voting and I was ashamed he never missed an election and it really made me reassessed you know he was old enough to do alive during the poll tax so I wanted to ask you on this bipartisan theme what is it that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party can do on an ongoing basis to make sure that it's not difficult it's not rocket science it just takes sincerity but what could we do when it's not election cycle to make sure that people are ready to go to the polls well I don't speak for either party but one thing that is I think Texas could use a change in is how many different ways it's made it difficult for someone to become a deputy registrar that is something that can be changed if I live you know there are people who live on county boundaries and your community might encompass a couple of counties and if you want to get people involved you have to make sure they're registered in both counties there are problems with the forms there have been although some of these things are being fixed problems with the availability of these forms in both Spanish and English so there are a number of things that Texas can look at in terms of and of course I don't speak for either party that that can be looked at in terms of what are these what are the hurdles to registration and participation and which ones are are really necessary some of them are put up with the idea that there is a voter integrity problem but there just hasn't been any proof of that as of yet but we hear complaints about hurdles in terms of registration so thanks for your comment oh I'm sorry no on the part of the Republican Party as you saw with your situation Republican Party has been proactive at reaching out to the Hispanic community at least at the party level and of course you know we've had more Hispanic statewide elected officials as Republicans than the Democrats have had in a hundred years worth of control in this state but there has to be a continual effort of engagement I was a big fan when I was executive director of the state party to not talk about outreach it's about engagement because that talks of another when you're outreaching to someone else when you're engaging all Texans as part of your conversation you bring those people over on the basis of your ideas and your principles which are shared a lot with the Hispanic community in terms of social conservative values to your party and you have to have that continual engagement not just when you show up in the two weeks before the election that's the that's the problem that I see for elected officials and candidates is there's a maybe it's driven by economics in terms of campaign money the cost of engagement on a continual basis but I think it's very important for the Republican Party and I know that the party has been making efforts to do this to have a continual engagement Governor Abbott has done a great job I think of having that year-round engagement that year-round reaching out in other areas not just the talking to country club Republicans or something you know what what the stereotype is he has people all across the state working hard okay I promise where is she though there she is right there I promise the moderators I bring us in or the hosts I bring us in on time but I also promise you you get a question so thank you unless I get permission you get the last one okay thank you so what I want to state is redistricting gerrymandering it's a very very important issue for the future of democracy and it is it would be very important to move the decision on redistricting out of the political area out of the legislature and into a independent commission and I'm asking each of the panel member to tell me how they think this could be achieved I tried to get that earlier so thanks is there any is there any potential for an independent in Texas no not in our lifetimes I I'd say that I mean not I would say it would be very difficult and in California where they've tried commissions it politics seep into that too that's the problem I mean in Arizona in California where you've seen these commissions done it's just been a bunch of Democrats on the commission for the result that's happened from from our perspective it has not taken politics out of the process it's just hidden it behind a wall where you can't hold the elected officials accountable keep in mind when the legislature well I'm I'm talking about that is one example Austin has admirably done an effort to move away to single from from citywide election to single member districts which has allowed conservatives to have a seat on the city council or two depending on you know whenever the election happens in in in the city of Austin but that is the one exception that I've seen I just don't see it happening at the statewide level the trick has always been that that is as this comes out there's a it's a two-part question inherently it's hey can you change the institutional arrangements through the rules and if you could is there any way to insulate a topic that at all levels that we've talked about tonight except with very few exceptions is inherently political and so I think there's a there's a struggle here no matter what we do so it's been a great panel great questions thank you guys please thanks the panel