 My name is Sandra Blum and I'm the events co-chair of the Fairfield League of Women Voters and on behalf of the Fairfield League We want to welcome you We want to welcome you tonight and to thank Fairfield University for partnering with us in bringing you this event Redistricting how has it done and why is that important? We created this free public series because we think the issues before us are so complex They deserve more than a single presentation or panel For example, the next session on December 7th. We'll put the spotlight on redistricting in the news What becomes news and And how in a process that happens mainly outside of the public view Oh and how what becomes news and how in a process that happens mainly outside of the public's view I Have to read my own writing the series will conclude in late January. So stay tuned Now little about us the League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan political Organization encouraging informed and active participation in government It influences public policy through education and advocacy the League welcomes women and men of All ages as members The League was founded in 1920 to defend women's right to vote We have been and are an activist grassroots Organization all volunteers pretty much. I should add the League is non-profit or no profit I'd like to quote what Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the majority in 1964 on Reynolds versus Sim Before we move on to the program Have to take a breath in here The right to vote freely for the candidate of one's choice is the essence of a democratic society and Any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government and the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen's vote just as effectively as By wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise Dr. Gail Alberta whose research focuses on the intersection of election laws political participation and civic engagement and election administration We'll take it from here. Thanks Gail All right. Thank you and thank you all for being here and thank the League for Allowing us to be part of their series So as Indicated I am Dr. Gail Alberta. I'm an assistant professor of politics I'm and the director of the masters of public administration administration program here at Fairfield tonight's collaboration or presentation is a collaboration of various fields of study and different types of analysis so as Indicated my research focuses on election laws election administration and the intersections with that with political participation Mehmet John say no John soy. Sorry about that Is an assistant professor of psychology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology where he researches the relationship between technology and inequality specifically the emergence of online platforms and the gig economy Jonathan Delgado Serves as the assistant director for the community community engaged research program in the Center for Social Impact in this role He works with staff faculty and students to design and implement research projects with community partners and join us later during question-and-answer time Dr. Kurt Shiklin is a professor of emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology his research focuses on Using GIS and census data to study the spatial organization of American society at the neighborhood level in addition Dr. John so and I brought this project into our classroom our students conducted research and built websites that either explain redistricting or Offer insights on how other electoral democracy democracies ensure things like political equality representation and enumeration a Tall order that I think we can say we're proud that they not only met but surpassed so the first step in the process of Allocation is enumeration which is found in article one of the US Constitution the enumeration clause Tells us three main things one that we have to do actual enumeration or an actual head count to How often this actual head count must occur and three that Congress has discretion in Determining the details of that count. So how do we do this? We complete an actual count of people in the US every ten years through the US census Once it's complete the data is used to determine apportionment the allocation of US house seats to the states after each census Since Congress has discretion in determining the details of the method of allocation. It has adopted a method of equal Proportion in 1929 so as people move from state to state the number of congressional seats each state receives is going to fluctuate Once the states know the number of congressional seats They will have after the census the states begin drawing these new district lines. This is the process called redistricting The states have discretion over drawing these lines. They must meet certain criteria. They must be continuous They cannot be divided into two separate parts of a state and these are all conditions that will be discussed more In more detail later in this presentation In addition The US Supreme Court ruled that districts must be equal in population and Gary versus Sanders in 1963 The court wrote the concept of political equality from the Declaration of Independence to Lincoln-Sketteburg address to the 14th 15th 17th and 19th amendments can only mean one thing One person one vote and indeed the court has overturned redistricting plans with populations that deviate in district by point seven percent And all this ties into representation therefore political power How do we draw district lines to best represent voters? This is the heart of the presentation tonight We will highlight how district lines can meet the criteria how they can delude or enhance voters And how the lines can meet all the requirements yet still look a little weird and on that note I'm going to turn it over to dr. John soy Thank you. Yeah So hi everyone, I'm going to talk about a couple of things here and we're gonna start with a very simple idea So let's assume we have this district made up of 36 waters the purple waters have one political preference the orange waters have another one and What I want us to understand is in most political systems across the world in such a district You would usually end up with two the elected representatives from each party the purple party would get two of them The orange party would get to others Now the problem is When we gerrymander especially the way we do it in the United States, we can change that equal that balance a little bit The first way we can do it is by packing minority waters in this case the orange party waters into a single district So imagine we ended up with four districts nine people in each of them that ended up looking like this one as You can see in the middle district all orange party waters are packed. They get that that's a very safe district for them They're going to win every election there, but then in the rest of the districts. They're always a permanent minority They're never going to be able to win that so this is the packing process The opposite of this is the cracking process where you dilute the votes of the minority party supporters To the point where they don't have any seats in which they are actually competitive That's the cracking and we can draw a four cracked seats very easily with this map We will just throw those two little U shapes there and suddenly instead of a 2-2 split you would have a 4-0 thing Purple Party win without changing anything without doing any political campaigning without having to do any of these changes so gerrymandering is a problem because of this because it ultimately is An and run around doing politics the way most of us understand it the other problem here is The other thing I want to note here is that you don't need to do either or so you don't need to do either packing or cracking for Many gerrymandered maps both of these processes are applied usually at the same time So we're going to take a look at a couple of examples of this in the real world actually so this is the 2016 North Carolina map because North Carolina redrew their maps after the 2010 census and it was ruled unconstitutional They tried to re-draw that in 2013 that was also ruled unconstitutional and in 2016 the Supreme Court of the state had to draw their lines That was because North Carolina was violating one of the principal rules that govern our redistricting process which is Not diluting communities of interest in this case the black vote in Durham Raleigh and God, what's the third city there Wilmington? No, not Wilmington Charlotte. Thank you very much so This was the 2016 map We can also see examples of cracking so let's take a look at Texas ten years before then On the left-hand side here. You see the 2002 districts in Texas and you can see Austin split up into two seats the little pink area South and east of Austin is a safe democratic seat in 2002 and the Yellow district is a safe Republican seat in 2004 when the Texas maps are redrawn Austin is cracked into three and no part of Austin Alexa Democratic representative anymore Now what it's important to get is that this is not necessarily a new problem So this is the famous gerrymander cartoon. It's from 18 1812 and from Massachusetts I used to live in Boston for a while And I can already tell you like the interests of people in Chelsea Which is basically a suburb of Boston and the interest of people like north of Newbury port are not We're not the same at 200 years ago. They're not the same now But this district was drawn up in the before the election of 18 to after the election of 1812 I think and it ended up being the Being the phenomenon where we get the name gerrymander from because the idea was this looked like a salamander and It was the governor of Massachusetts. Last name was Jerry. So this became a gerrymander after the governor So it's not a new problem and as we'll talk about at the end It's not necessarily an American problem a uniquely American problem either, but it's a uniquely bad problem in America So let's take a look at a couple of other districts that we have been dealing with more recently So you've probably seen headlines like this all the time. This was a district drawn in Pennsylvania, so this is this connects the suburbs of Philly to more rural areas of the state and the idea being basically to dilute the votes in the suburbs of Philly that tend to go more democratic and Basically create a safe Republican seat. So Washington Post named it Goofy kicking goofy kicking Donald Duck in I think this was from 2016 Gail But in this case, this is a partisan gerrymander and but it was a legal one So goofy kicking Donald Duck is still around this year. It might change. I think it's going to change Given the population shifts in Philly especially But we have other legal gerrymanders here as well So for example, Ohio snake by the lake is a famous one. This was Basically this used to be two separate districts on up until 2012 and then in 2012 the state legislature of Ohio basically merged big population centers of two formerly democratic districts pitting to incumbent democratic Like representatives against one another Diluting the votes in like for example the suburbs of Big cities Cleveland here and then Toledo here connecting them by like the tennis margins that they could Now not all funny-looking gerrymanders are always illegal or done with ill intent though So you've probably seen this other one that I'm going to show you here the earmuffs of Illinois This looks highly suspect as well, right like it's probably worse than the snake by the lake honestly but the earmuffs of Illinois are like their Area surrounding it or even the area in the middle and the earmuffs themselves are also the the democratic districts the idea here was basically in the north of downtown Chicago and south of downtown Chicago you have large Hispanic minorities and the idea was to basically Connect them with an under path highway underpass over here to create a seat in which the Hispanic minority could safely elect one Representative the first Hispanic representative from Illinois in the 1990s however People still have Misgivings about these things because ultimately we have debates about what are the right metrics for it to understand the gerrymander to Judge it to say that this is too far and this is too little John is going to talk to you more about it But there are a couple of baselines that we try to follow when we are redistricting So what does this mean for us in Connecticut? Well, we try to follow four big ideas for big rules when we are doing redistricting and the Commission is doing it right now for the state So districts like Gail mentioned earlier should have equal populations They should be in Connecticut within one percent of each other Though the state Supreme Court has previously ruled even point zero seven percent as an illegal gerrymander Here in Connecticut the rule is that for the US state US House seats we try to keep towns whole so not not lines running through towns Unless there is an exception unless the Commission cannot come up with a way to keep them intact The rule is the third rule is that all districts have to be contiguous You can't have a district. That's two separate parts. They have to be connected That's why we have the like highway underpass connections in the earmuffs for example And no district can have holes in them. So basically one district cannot be fully enclosed in another one Now Jonathan is going to show you guys some maps of what Potential redistricting for the US house can look like in our state So the first thing that we wanted to do is look at the current congressional districts to try to understand them before we decided on What our examples could look like So currently we have five districts right the district one being Harvard and it's surrounding Towns you have district two Which is the eastern part of the state district three which is what I call New Haven County and Friends and then district four is Fairfield County and Five is is Western Connecticut Now there's a few things that sit out to us about the map as it currently sits one population deviation is too high, right? Both Dr. Johnson and Dr. Alberta mentioned earlier. We have to stay below this point seven five percent threshold The other thing was we have split towns, right? I think a lot of this has to do with the The fact that the 2013 mappage the one that we're currently working on with rather was Only slightly modified from the 2003 map. I think if you look, you know previous iterations There was a lot of difference between the way that they were composed Whereas this one's really just minimal changes likely. It's just to make the population totals kind of makes sense So the picture there is an example of waterberry having pieces of two different districts in it One thing you also notice is that As far as party control goes only two of them are considered Competitive and that's district five and district two And the other three are considered in democratic locks From a population perspective District two and district four the ones that are kind of out of whack You notice district two is about 20,000 shy of the Goal of about 721,000 residents per district and district four is about 25,000 too many So the first map that we set out to do is largely the same strategy as the 2013 So how can we only make changes at the precinct level so that we can Right create these population totals that they're supposed to be so you'll notice that we still have some split towns and Rather unorthodox looking districts So as I mentioned we we made sure that our populations were equal But we didn't make any changes for compactness or anything else The chart that you see there is just showing right the difference between the current population totals and the ones that we created So we were able to equalize them As much as we could Now what you see here is the minimal changes map that I just showed you But with the boundaries from the current map on top of it So I think though, you know the largest changes are you know district four expanded some district three as well But one five and two are relatively the same So this is something that could come up if they decided to move in the same way they did the last time Now the second example, I call it compact districts, right? We made sure that every town Isn't split right we have full towns and we wanted to make our boundaries as clean crisp and ideal as possible In doing so we were able to make district five much more competitive. I think there's a two and a half point bump on the Republican side and District three also comes in a little more competitive The only thing is district four ended up being a little less But all things considered this is something that we would like to see when these maps are drawn Here we have the same thing with the current 2013 maps late on top of the Compact maps and I think you can see just how much cleaner and easier to understand that map is Compared to the one late on top of it The application that we used in order to create the maps has some Analytical features built into it. So I just wanted to show here. There's I think Five different measures that they look into competitiveness Minority voter representation proportionality Splitting and compactness. So in every category, right the map that was just shown beat out what we currently have So in this case the larger the number the better, right? So you can see the compact districts right or squaring higher than the the last one and Our last one I wanted to create something that was an orthodox but right fit all of the legal requirements I dubbed it the barking puppy. I think Some of you might see something else I think districts who kind of looks like a tried into what So here we largely followed the same Strategy and making sure that we use full towns. There were no splits We were able to equalize the population and create something that was rather unorthodox that said We also created a democratic stronghold in four of the five districts, right? only district five is Better, okay District five is the only one that's competitive and that's because it was built off of the other map that that we had That's you know illegal Jari at Mander and here you can see kind of The same thing with the 2013 map on top of this one And I think one thing that you can see is our current map, right district one Doesn't look that much different from what I created here So just to recap based on the requirements that are expected of us, right? The compact districts and the legal Jari Mander meet them all With the exception of the minimal change map because we still had splits similar to what we currently have and the Right current 2013 maps don't have full towns and obviously have a huge population deviation. I Just wanted to Shout out the application that we use and that's Dave's redistricting app Actually, Mehmet found it and it was really useful in doing this and it's something that everyone can Gain access to it and use to create maps and kind of toy with the way that these things are constructed And we use QGIS in order to show you that overlay With the data that we extracted from from the application that we use And I'd like to thank Michael Gerge who's not here with us But it's a graduate assistant for the program to help me in developing all of this I did wanted to make a disclaimer and that's that you know We stuck to write the most basic requirements of the maps that we created and there's a lot more nuance in The way that especially smaller boundaries like State House State Senate or even RTM districts are constructed So I don't want to make it look too easy because there's a lot that goes into these processes And some of the additional considerations right are crossing County and town boundaries, which were certain districts aren't allowed Smaller populations make it really hard to use whole towns We you know, we played around with state Senate and state rep districts And it's very difficult because the numbers rarely match up with anything close to what the town populations are And so again take this all with a grain of salt and then now Pass it off Proportionality means of the underlying vote do parties get roughly equal numbers of representatives So that's the metric and as you saw that was a zero. I'm gonna talk about that never You don't realize how short you are until you get a laptop and a podium What So Jonathan, thank you So now we're gonna talk about this impact of redistricting that it has on a variety of different things But in particular, I wanted to look at the three big things that we think about When it comes to redistricting electoral college federal funding and then representation So the number of electoral votes each state receives is based on the number of people that that state has in Congress So each state is guaranteed to US senators and one representative therefore three electoral votes However, we know that the population is in stagnant. I just moved here six years ago now so As the population shifts and people move in and out so too does the number of electoral votes so when the government does the US Census The results of that data indicate either an increase if the population shift is significant enough to allocate Additional congressional seats then the state receives an additional electoral votes Accordingly similarly if the state experiences population losses the number of congressional seats Decrease and so too does the number of electoral votes So in short the number of electoral votes that a state has And is the number of us senators plus the number of us Representatives so a state with three US representatives has two senators therefore five electoral votes So in this way we see that our electoral Impact on the electoral college can dramatically shift from year to year to year As far as after the census is conducted or I should say shifts from census to census to census and So with that we know that the census which becomes like the most important document you're going to hear us talk about tonight and Is also how we do our enumeration So federal funding for a variety of projects like infrastructure or housing are based off of the US Census But then the question becomes who should be counted and how should we be counting? So in this way the process of counting becomes extremely important and often very political So each decision that we make about how to count and when to count and who to count is going to impact the results So for instance This year was the first time that the election or sorry until I was just teaching about elections today This is the first time that the US Census was online Okay, which is a vastly different method than the old paper ballot or wow Paper copy or going door-to-door So districts right can be drawn in a variety different ways as Jonathan showed us In all of this impacts this idea of representation So lines can be drawn where we have incumbents that are eliminated such was the case with Ohio I was actually living in that district when they drew the snake by the lake And we had one incumbent member of Congress Eliminated likewise districts can be carved out to eliminate challengers right so you can carve out their house. This happened Allegedly to Barack Obama when he was in the state Senate in Illinois where they drew his house into a different district his block Like likewise As we've seen they can be drawn to for political advantage or diluting minority votes Either way that we determine the lines. We're determining power political power in particular And in doing so we are going to influence things like who controls Congress The number the total number of US representatives. It's 435 and that's by a statute Yeah, yep, so just to reiterate because I know we are recording this so I want to make sure to get Your question on the recording so yes The number of US House of Representatives seats is in statute and that is 435 voting members We have three non voting members and those three electoral votes go to Washington DC per the constitutional amendment The that number 435 doesn't change so as we have grown in population And we've just reallocated out that so Let's just say hypothetically right, so like hypothetically if Texas were to get really large right in population they would just get more Versus let's say Connecticut if we lose population that being said the kind of important thing to think about what I would tell my students is What is the number of people that are represented per per? US rep so currently I am I think this year it's right around 7 was it 760 I think Right on the money so seven 30 years seven. Okay, so right around 730,000 this year, so you take that that math total population divided out By 435 Yeah, and then right so back in the day if we go back a couple hundred years or a hundred years The population might only been 200,000 and he divided out right so they're actually if you look at article one of the Constitution where the new the enumeration clauses it actually outlines how the first couple congresses did do the headcount and And That's why we also have in 1929 that law that allows for us to Determine how we do the count too So no you're fine So one of one of the points and it's actually an interesting question to jump into it this time is because all of this Does control power right who is represented it who is represented and how are they being represented? so for instance if We allocate seats out in a certain way or draw district lines in a certain way like Jonathan showed in one map We can actually allow one party You know to have more seats in Congress than another not always does that mean we've been Malicious in drawing those lines sometimes it is kind of you know the way the process works But either way that not only affects Congress therefore the makeup of Congress right that also would then include things like the makeup of our state General Assembly are Possibly our local government so think school boards city councils things along those lines Then what that does is that then impacts our public policy what issues are we going to bring to the table? What matters will Congress take up what will they be voting for okay? What projects or programs or services are going to be funded which ones will receive more funding and then on the flip side Which programs our services are going to receive less funding or be eliminated or cut? Okay What about our policies which policies are going to be tabled as a result of who holds power? And then what issues might be ignored because of who holds power, so it's you know that double-edged sword, right? Which brings us to like who how we draw lines matters because it's about who we elect and Then what they bring to the table in their legislative bodies? So bottom line is that redistricting impacts Who is being represented and then the next layer of that is? What will of the people or whose will is being represented in that legislative body? And with that I'm going to let you talk about alternatives So one of the first out Okay, so one of the first alternatives I'm going to talk about and I'm gonna offer brief sketches of these and I'm happy to talk more about them if people are interested Is that we can abandon single-member districts? We can have a different type of political representation that what we have now So let's take a look at the 2020 results in our state. So Quanticate has been fairly stable in its partisan makeup for a couple of presidential cycles now Usually we get something around 40% Republican votes and something around 60% Democratic votes In print in a majority of Democratic Countries around the world this would give Republicans two seats in the US house and Democrats three seats However, for the last couple of cycles, we've had a solid five-seat Democratic majority So this is that proportionality problem, right? Like there is about About 750,000 Republican voters in the state that never get candidates of their preference represented and The majority of Democratic countries around the world have proportional representation systems in which Political parties get awarded representatives based on their share of the vote rather than whether they won a plurality in Every district that they were running it Now this does present some problems for us. The biggest one is that it's unconstitutional the Supreme Court in 1970 decided that having more than one person running for office in a single district So having a multi-member district was unconstitutional. I think the Supreme Court's interpretation in that case was misguided to say the least because The reasoning was very briefly that having more than one representative took away The people's chance to cast a tie-breaking vote because if there's just one election happening Every vote can be the tie-breaking vote if there are two elections happening two people from different parties can get elected and they read that as a Breaking of the principle of one person one vote again I think that's a misguided way of reading it because in many of our districts No one gets to cast a tie-breaking vote. They are safely partisan the second alternative I'm going to again just briefly sketch out here is Having a national registry as dr. Alberta mentioned the census and our decennial census the one that we do every ten years plays incredibly important role in our political processes and It's a fundamentally like it's an incredibly useful tool But it's a flaw tool like Because it's such a hard thing to do to go out once every decade and try to count every person living in this country We know that the census has huge problems of data collection So for about 30 years up until the mid 1990s The census had a very well established scientific undercount and counting especially Hispanic residents But also like hard to reach populations everywhere even today counting the homeless population For example, which on any given day is about half a million people in the country is basically impossible So we know that the census misses these groups and We also know that we can't really do much in the mid 1990s We've coupled the actual headcount with a sampling approach which tries to Calculate how many people we could be missing and tries to add those numbers to the census That has been a hugely politicized process as well The second problem here is the periodicity of the census the fact that it only happens every 10 years as Jonathan showed you earlier Every 10 years Representation gets completely out of balance in our current system that like 4% difference here in Connecticut alone Which again? We haven't been a very mobile population state over the last decade think of states like California Which ended up losing a seat for this cycle because for the first time in 200 years. They've lost population or Texas which gained I think two states this time two representatives this time around Because so many people are moving in when population movements are that rapid the census gets out of date very quickly And because we only do it every 10 years We have to live with those consequences with people getting under or over represented for a solid decade for five congresses The last thing I'll mention is again a Majority of democratic countries around the world don't deal with their political representation problem this way They have national registries every person living in the country is registered somewhere. They know where their population is and In addition to the political solutions, it makes life a lot easier But for our specific problems and national registry offers some solutions to so for example the fact that water registration is such a chronic problem in our Electoral system could be sidestepped by a national registry that keeps that gets being updated by a federal national registry or The fights over water ID and what types of ID are admissible would be sidestepped if we had a national registry that gave every person ID card it Would make representation much more accurate especially if we did redistricting more frequently based on Population movements and finally it would make apportionment the movement of seats between states much more fluid and It would for example the census would stop being this like high stakes exercise Where New York rules the seat because 800 fewer people were counted and if 800 one people more people were counted it would have kept the seat So as I said these are very brief sketches of these alternatives There are a couple of other ideas I'm happy to throw around if people are interested But we'll throw it to you guys and let you guys ask us some questions and we'll try to connect with So the national voter ID is a great sounds like an interesting solution potential solution who's against it why Thank you for yeah, thank you for starting with the easy stuff. Oh, thank you. Hello. Do you mind? Okay, Kurt is online great You want to introduce yourself Kurt real quick with Gail Jonathan and Fascinating it's a fascinating process. You can see how how many Plans you can create There's no there's no magical one point And I just put that one thing that is that in some states in most states You let the Reapportioning process is through the state legislature and they put a party that controls the state legislature control to reapportion the process And there has there are a number of states. However, we're going to a bipartisan non-political process So that's possible to do Thank you, Kurt. So I'll go back to the question of why we don't have a national registry It's a complicated answer to say the least the easiest way to frame frame it is to think of it as a politically very contested thing in the United States Because there's so much. I mean, they're different schools ideological opposition to it from like people on the right thinking of it in terms of like creating a registry of gun owners, for example and all the like Fears and anxieties around that to people on the left thinking about the same thing and like Harkening it back to like McCarthyism because The idea that the federal government would track all of us down individually is a scary thing to many people now I would argue that this is a Basically we are living in a world worst of both worlds where that tracking does happen But we don't get the benefits of a registry Yes Social security card. Yep. And if you moved it would come with you Yeah so Definitely agree with you. So again, like we have the tracking system But we don't employ it where it would actually do the most good for us or one of the places where it would do the most good for us Thank you for the question Other questions. I have to I What percentage of the states do have bipartisan? Processes like Connecticut does Can you hear me? Okay, and what percentage have independent commissions and what are controlled by state legislatures? Which is part one Part two is how much danger in this country right now is there of Permanent minority rule. So one of the things that We did initially look at was Your first question, right? What does that look like? How would that play out? Would it be different? right the results and We didn't go down that rabbit hole Just because we wanted to keep it centered on Connecticut however I have lived in a state where it has one of everything And it's a it's a completely different process in the sense of Timelines or the ability to draw the maps I mean, it's still politicized in either way because in reality you are determining a lot of things that have to do with power But the bipartisan independent kind of commissions are coming up I think more and more frequently in today's World I'm actually going to look that up right now in the website that lists all of them So while Gail is looking that up I can add a couple of things which is the bipartisan commissions that the question was about that Kurt mentioned earlier can look very different from state to state so for example in California it is a belt initiative initiated process where they passed it in 2008 if I remember correctly and Basically, they take applications from Republicans, Democrats and independents their applications are reviewed By independent people and by the legislature and like there are quotas from each So by basically making it a very arduous process They try to make sure that committed people end up getting through and seems to be working Relatively okay for them their maps are already in unlike ours So there's something to be said for that but in other states I think it was Iowa Gail when we were looking at it Has a very different setup where the legislature appoints the Commission and they've had similar problems to politically run Redistricting processes. So an independent commission The success or failure of it is usually determined by who like the processes in which the commission is appointed Yeah, so for congressional districts 33 states have state legislators that draw them. So that's majority eight use commissions and two states use a form of a hybrid where they do a commission in conjunction with the state legislator for State legislative districts To be drawn. You have 33 use the state legislator 14 use commissions in three use hybrids What's happening is There's also a special part of that and that the population of the country is sorting itself out where people live Along for example, education lines So in Connecticut, we looked at the what are called the numeration districts already doing a project for the reddish on the way and there are some parts of town spiritual county Where all of the adults actually all of the adults To adjacent neighborhoods Have a college degree or higher And then there are other parts of the state where it's just the opposite proportion of people with college degrees is Allowing the US 33 percent. It's much lower than that. It's 10 percent And politically that matters because we've seen in the past couple of years the past couple of elections Really split voting along education lines and so we live in in these different neighborhoods and That's sometimes what You have to draw the wrong line. You got to reach enough people who you want to be in a particular district By based on their demographics and their income Good evening My first question I have to my first question is and pertains to the difference between the enumeration individual enumeration of individuals and the a statistical modeling of Account for the census. So essentially in your opinions is a statistical modeling form of counting constitutional and I mean I would argue especially as Yeah, we'll go we've all I'm just not close enough. So it's it's in regard to individual enumeration of counting of people versus statistical modeling and trying to get a proper accurate count in that Respect and if that would be more beneficial how Constitutional that may be and the second one the second question doesn't necessarily relate to redistricting but the census Leaves out a lot of people including those experiencing homelessness as we talked about and The same individuals also are systematically disenfranchised You know those individuals in order to register to vote right you have to have an address And they usually ask you where that address is when you go to or a voter ID of us Individuals who don't have ideas Or they don't have the vital records in order to gain Even if those will be paid for by the state that has what are idealist a lot of a lot of Barriers to individuals who may attempt to register and how could we solve those problems? So it's a systematic disenfranchisement and would a national registry help in that respect I'm just gonna throw out there that I'm very proud of that question because you took my war in voting class And I see all of it intertwined in here Also give a shout out to that class if you want to take it why don't you go ahead and answer the census one sure you are so Thankfully I don't have to guess this has been tried before the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said yes, it's constitutional Again a much more like textual reading of the Constitution would probably suggest no so Again, I don't see signs of this But it's possible that this could be something that gets dropped down because it's a very contentious thing because those hard to reach voters tend to have partisan preferences in favor of the Democratic Party So that means that does make this Basically counting those populations by other means a political process because ultimately it's about power like Dr. Albert I keep saying Here we want to tackle the other one. I'm gonna throw it to Kurt first. Do you have anything you want to add? Again, it's that it's just as Mehmet said it's it's the partisan divide and Look look at the look at the turmoil that we've faced now in these past two years with the COVID and and trying to reach out to To people and there are pockets of people who are fully vaccinated They were vaccinated early and there were there are pockets of people who won't vaccinate and they live in Neighborhoods where so those two polar groups live in neighborhoods where people are similar to themselves And then that gets translated into a political process So you'd find people who would say this is an intrusion in government into my private life And I don't want to join any kind of a registry and you would find people who it's who would be supportive And it's it's it's dividing along the partisan lines now, and it's It's really really difficult So I'm gonna leave that one alone, but I'm gonna dive into Tyler your second question I'm Which deals with how can we solve this issue of systematically leaving individuals out of the voting process? in large part for either the undercounting of certain groups with a census therefore right with redistricting and other initiatives and federal funding but then also With I think respect to just the hurdles one needs to go through in order to vote So one of the things that I teach in my class is that the voting process is three parts You first have to register to vote then you have to vote Which is what most people think of and then there's this third part This is what I like to think of as the fun part and what I research and study Which is how we count the votes? Okay, how we count the votes matters just as much as I The who can vote in all of that other stuff that comes with that And there's tons of different laws that you know guide all these processes, and we know from US history that the founding of the country I'm forward so from the Constitution forward the right to vote is very much a American myth in the sense that constitutionally your Vote is a privilege It is something that has to had to be earned over time whether you whether it was disenfranchising the poor disenfranchising the the illiterate disenfranchising certain racial and ethnic groups or disenfranchising women Gender and so if you read those amendments really carefully what it tells us is not that those groups have the right to vote But that though that we won't discriminate against Those groups so we still can do other things that could potentially have some sort of systematic impact so To say you know what? Thing you know is our magic wand that would you know fix it? You know the answer is sure if I had one, right? Maybe we could but we don't and There are things that we can do we can Do things like voter registration drives we could From the state legislative side we could ease some of the registration requirements like North Dakota doesn't have voter registration and We do some of that right when with the Motor Voter Act the National Voter Registration Act in 1993 It allows you to do it while you get your license We could allow you to register on Election Day like we do in Connecticut Or before Election Day and then also vote that same-day registration So there are some things that people or states are you know toying with an adopting that you know Does help that and what's interesting about the pandemic to kind of go back to what you guys were saying earlier with your part? one question is The pant my big takeaway as you know an election science scholar and someone who used to work in elections Was that if people are given the opportunity to vote? They will right and in in 2020 one of the things that happened because of the pandemic was we had this conflict over public health and access to the ballot and then you throw in their election security and integrity and a Lot of states like Connecticut transitioned very quickly to all mail-in balloting and That allowed the ballot to be delivered to probably more individuals Then who would have normally wanted to vote or could vote? More importantly that election and so we saw record turnout both in primaries and in the general election So I think that shows us that sometimes are the systematic disenfranchisement that we see is Kind of a byproduct of not the only thing but a byproduct of some of the laws that we have that Just create these hurdles that we got to you know keep jumping through these hoops, you know to to get there I'll do that something very quick because Gales of these these things very extensively I'm more of an outsider to the subject and sometimes I think that gives me a little different perspective Which is we don't have the magic wand but other countries have figured out a way to get one I like that way to steal that A big one would be to vote on weekends Yeah, yeah having the election on weekends. I'll say one more thing I'm a double citizen. I come from Turkey Turkey has horrible problems with this democracy But it has 90% turnout on voting days We do one-day elections in person voting only but we have a national registry and the national elections Authority mails you here's your water ID show up on the school in this classroom And everyone knows what's going to happen all 65 million people Nowhere to go to vote and 55 million of them vote every election. Yeah, there's also Another like steal from other countries would be to do compulsatory voting. Yeah, right where you are mandated to vote That's what happens like in Australia Or New Zealand in particular. You know that doesn't mean that you go there and you have to cast a ballot You just have to show up and they have to you know, check you in and then you can not vote should you choose the other thing that I would add after what you know Kirk mentioned and Is back in the day election day used to be a party? Okay, like full-fledged like I know we're in Connecticut So I'm just gonna say the New Englanders back in the day man They knew how to through an election like you would come out like parades as you were coming in like they pick people up Is they're coming down to the town green to vote and they just make these big parades and you'd have music and you'd have the kids We're playing and the the wives and the women in the community were out so they couldn't vote yet But you were out in the community and there would be free beer And free food and you would go to that the town green you would call your name So Tyler since I you don't know you you're gonna stand up. You're gonna tell me your vote You're gonna sit back down. I record it and we keep going meantime You know, there's free beer and food on the town green and when we're done we're gonna head to the tavern and it was a big social event and so No, it's on a Tuesday because of Farming basically we're an agricultural nation back in the day But not only moving it to a weekend, but just having that holiday again And having that civic that social aspect could really increase Voter turnout, especially if you're given the day off and a lot of towns are doing this There's a town in Ohio who started doing it and they're seeing increases in their local turnout already In the state legislature in Wisconsin in the vote in the state of Wisconsin more Democrats voted For Democrats, but the way that it's it's districted where the district works There are more representatives in the state legislature that are Republican. That makes no sense It would seem to me that's unconstitutional Right. Yeah Explain to me how that would work in the same side. Yeah, I mean Yeah Go ahead. Sure. So Thank you for the comment slash question I think it is a huge problem for American democracy in the sense that like if And it's not just like what's happening within Wisconsin, but Connecticut is not Gerrymandered that's heavily so compared to them if what's in Connecticut are much more competitive As opposed to what's in Wisconsin? So we end up with not just partisan balances there, but what votes mean across states Defer significantly now in 2018 the Supreme Court did take this up And Wisconsin and Maryland were the two states where the Supreme Court was asked to vote is partisan German drink to this extent Unconstitutional the Supreme Court basically said that it could be but courts are not where this should be decided Which is a problematic way because we don't have any other body which can make these decisions So basically we are now in a system in which we think it's unconstitutional But no one can ascertain that it is So I don't know that there's a way out of this Conundrum of the unless Gail has a magic wand in her back pocket It would take either some sort of amendment to the Constitution or some sort of statutory law that could then be enforced Since the Supreme Court isn't really touching it because they would be then the ultimate authority, right? They have the power of the supremacy clause Yeah But we do teach it I like and tell it Aren't there provisions in the John John Lewis voting? rights advancement law that would That wouldn't that would make these things better And it would be stat like by statute as you're as you're saying it wouldn't we wouldn't put it in the Supreme Court's lap Because we're very afraid of putting in the Supreme Court's lap right now Yeah, so the voting bill that you're talking about That is I think it's stalled in the Senate right now And it would change so the last time we had a huge voting rights act of any kind was the voting rights act of 1965 Then we had motor voter in 93 And All of that does it gives us some sort of national Precedent right and the states have to follow because of the supremacy clause they have to follow that so Yes to answer your question. It could tell the states what to do And it could then you know Change some state laws which ones in particular would be dependent on how the bill was Comes out of the Senate and how it you know would be signed into law so I'm not going to speculate on those changes, but It would have some sort of power right Now the states in that sense too Where a federalist We have a federalist constitution We're a republic and we have democratic values. So it's also You know states do have sovereignty here as well, right? So there would be then maybe this question of is this a right reserved for the states It had been if you look at the original constitution the first seven articles and even the first ten amendments They didn't touch Voting right and who should vote a voter qualifications with a ton of football 100 football even right so They left that to the states and then we saw that the federal government encroached on those Qualifications and determining that over time For you know a variety of reasons right the Civil Rights Act allowing women to vote etc. So That would be probably the you know some states would have that perspective of it viewing it as that encroachment That could then maybe go into a legal challenge depending and then the Supreme Court would have to determine that Or it could not right, but you know, there's there's a will there's a way all the time, right? I'll talk a tiny bit about the technical side of this which is like at least with the 1965 voting rights act we now have the legal Technical mechanisms through which we determine like does a law or it does a gerrymander Violate the voting rights act With partisan gerrymanders, we don't have established ones yet But there are now technical measures out there You might have heard of some of them like the efficiency gap that tries to measure like how much of partisan votes Relatively are wasted in each district. I think with further development of those tools We might get to a point where it becomes actually enforceable if the some version of the law was to pass Just a further thought with with the partisan nature of many many of those four hundred and thirty five congressional districts The the the general election is it's far less important than the primary So in many districts that whether either Republican or Democratic It's it's it's the primary that really matters because there are not enough People of the other party in the district because they've been eliminated to have a contest in the general election And then what that allows is for Is for the fringe of the two parties who there's all sorts of fringes They then have really disproportionate power Before we wind up and I think one thing I wanted to say is partly what we're talking about Talking about partisan gerrymandering gerrymandering partisan gerrymandering, but we haven't said the term that's usually used extreme partisan gerrymandering Which is where the court step in or you start to have trouble and or violate versus One person one vote or other state statutes or constitutional ones But beyond that could you talk a little bit about the involvement of the students? What their actions were how much they knew how valuable the exercise was to go through this for the curriculum and For you personally Well, I think we have two here They both are just like oh So you want to start with yours and then I'll talk about mine So for my students they focused on countries outside of the US like looking at their electoral systems how they do redistricting and We tried to cover a wide variety of countries not just Western European democracies, but like large democracies like India problematic democracies like Brazil and trying to understand like what do these processes look like and I think it was very Informative for them to understand first of all so many of the problems. We're talking about are uniquely American in the sense that like Redistricting happens everywhere, but nowhere is it this like politically contentious process that we live through even in countries Like the UK where the electoral system is very similar partially because their House of Commons has Variable numbers so people like the number of districts change across the country so that they can allocate as needed and it becomes much less of a political I Don't know barrel bomb whatever you might want to call it The second thing is I think they found it very useful to then compare it to the US because we spent about three weeks in class talking about the American system and then at the end of their project they compared Italian Redistricting process to the American one the British one the Australian one the Indian one and I think At least from having read all of them last night to prepare for today. It looks like a lot of them came to appreciate the The fact that the American democracy has not been updated in a long time Because I mean this is not a new observation by any means But the fact that it's so hard to change our Constitution Makes some of these like gradual changes that other countries have been able to Achieve over the last hundred years impossible here and Like we can talk about this in terms of many other things from the Balfour state to everything else But the electoral system is definitely showing its age to Yeah, so one of the things that I did is I Brought it into my public administration class Which you know you wouldn't think would work right when we talk about redistricting But there is a lot of choices that go into Something like this and so they got to exercise and utilize concepts like federalism and bureaucratic discretion and accountability and all those fun things and so my students were tasked with creating well first of all researching and Redistricting and I did not give them much direction because oftentimes Our processes are very vague right and we have to determine how to figure that out. So I just said tell me about redistricting Probably much to their chagrin and then they had to develop websites that explain to that process to an average American and That's what they did. So they did everything from Websites on the cut the census and how that plays a role in redistricting to the different ways that states do it to gerrymandering and male apportionment conversations on on a website The history of it and why we are doing what we're doing. So it was really unique and to get at the educational aspect I Created a survey and the students took it beforehand and it asked them a variety of questions Some of them were knowledge based about the process and then others had to do with I think kind of course concepts and curriculum and then And then personal questions as far as like, you know Is this useful right those kinds of questions? So we tried to measure and then at the end I should say at the end of it They will also be taking a survey a follow-up survey. So we have a pre and a post test where We're going to see if knowledge levels changed We're gonna see if it's a useful tool in the classroom Doing a project like this and does it meet our each of our classes like goals and objectives? And then also citizenship outcomes does something like this engage you enough to become interested in In part of the process So those results will be forthcoming Next time stay tuned And then I will say the center for social impact they have research Assistants that played an integral role in this process as well. And so I'll let Jonathan talk about I think for Well, it's Michael myself and in current I think The biggest thing was trying to figure out where to start I like when in coming up with these maps think obviously it's an iterative process And we needed to start with what we had and try to come up with something new But I think that entire process was enlightening and thinking about just how complicated it must be at the state Senate State House level so I think you know from us. It was definitely, you know an interesting exercise I think one of the things that came out of conversations Prior to this was, you know, whether it makes sense to come up with some type of Kind of continual project really looking at analyzing right how competitive how compact all those measures that we talked about before Some of our our state districts are on a regular basis. I think that's something that we would really like to see and potentially work on but overall really interesting and Looking forward to working on things like this again And I'll just put a plug in for the league and they've done events here at Fairfield on and off for a while now And it's always cool when they come to you with like this like unique idea and they're like Oh, what do you think about this? Could it be and then instantly you start you get to think about Because of the various projects and connections that were all involved in when you know Kirk before he retired He was in the NPA program with me And the med and I were in a faculty learning community because of a grant Jonathan is my former NPA student now graduate So you get to see these connections and now they're in these roles and you're like oh look at this It's a great idea And you get to pull them in and the synergies that are there are so cool And the way that you can just bounce things off and build these amazing things. I think that is Very unique and and I would say thank you to the league for allowing us that to have that opportunity Yes, we have before you go if you want to hit the next slide we do have real quick The kind of the league's upcoming events. I just wanted to make you aware of those for more information You can go to their websites or talk to Anyone here with the league and Kurt. Thank you for