Debugging Democracy: Using Law and Data to Help Bring About Fair - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Debugging Democracy: Using Law and Data to Help Bring About Fair Districts @SamWangPhD Prof. Sam Wang CGA Conference – May 3, 2019 Bug courtesy of Lafayette College

The Princeton Gerrymandering Project team: Will Adler, Ben Williams, James Turk, Hannah Wheelen (and we are hiring!) gerrymander.princeton.edu openprecincts.org Educational Ventures Educational Ventures

Two Gilded Ages Racial divisions Racial divisions Technological disruption Technological disruption Increasing inequality Increasing inequality Deep partisanship Deep partisanship

http://prospect.org/article/slaying-partisan-gerrymander

Redistricting Reform in 2019 and Beyond: A Theory Of Change

Fix #1: Federal courts Fix #2: State courts Fix #3: Citizen action Fundamental challenge: breaking the feedback loop

A pretty map can still hide ill intent From A Citizen’s Guide To Redistricting in Michigan . http://gerrymander.princeton.edu/michigan

- State constitutions: freedom of speech (50 states) and association (47 states), equal protection (24 states), free and equal elections (28 states) - Possible targets: North Carolina and Wisconsin Ober, Williams, and Wang, U. Penn. Journal of Constitutional Law , forthcoming, 2019

Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justice Elena Kagan (decision) (concurrence) Viewpoint discrimination (Am. I) Unequal voter power (Am. XIV)

Who draws Congressional lines? Who draws state legislative lines?

Existing public and private databases contain many errors Problems: free data online, repackaged and sold, little quality control

OpenPrecincts: Helping citizens talk back to redistricters • Open data cleanup and validation tools • Crowdsourcing • Demonstration project: >10 states (OH/VA/PA/MI…) • Access to redistricting software (Dave’s Redistricting, ESRI Redistricting, districtr…) • Expand to all 50 states + DC + Puerto Rico in time for 2021 redistricting

of Maps from 131 of 133 jurisdictions 98.6% verification using voter rolls

OpenPrecincts shared data: Virginia (Bethune-Hill case) Outlets: Virginian-Pilot , OneVirginia2021, William and Mary Law School

The national government belongs to the whole American people. Our whole experiment is meaningless unless we are to make this a democracy in the fullest sense of the word. If the minority is as powerful as the majority there is no use of having political contests at all, for there is no use in having a majority. Theodore Roosevelt 26 th President, 1901-1909

Shapes aren’t enough – people matter too

Since 2012, gerrymandering has reached new heights

In 2018, cracks in the gerrymandered wall

On the docket in 2019: North Carolina’s partisan gerrymander