SLIDE 1 Bug courtesy of Lafayette College
Debugging Democracy: Using Law and Data to Help Bring About Fair Districts
CGA Conference – May 3, 2019
@SamWangPhD
SLIDE 2 Educational Ventures
The Princeton Gerrymandering Project team: Will Adler, Ben Williams, James Turk, Hannah Wheelen (and we are hiring!) gerrymander.princeton.edu
Educational Ventures
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Two Gilded Ages
Racial divisions Technological disruption Increasing inequality Deep partisanship Racial divisions Technological disruption Increasing inequality Deep partisanship
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http://prospect.org/article/slaying-partisan-gerrymander
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Redistricting Reform in 2019 and Beyond: A Theory Of Change
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Fix #1: Federal courts Fix #2: State courts Fix #3: Citizen action
Fundamental challenge: breaking the feedback loop
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From A Citizen’s Guide To Redistricting in Michigan. http://gerrymander.princeton.edu/michigan
A pretty map can still hide ill intent
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freedom of speech (50 states) and association (47 states), equal protection (24 states), free and equal elections (28 states)
Carolina and Wisconsin Ober, Williams, and Wang, U. Penn. Journal of Constitutional Law, forthcoming, 2019
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Chief Justice John Roberts (decision) Associate Justice Elena Kagan (concurrence)
Unequal voter power (Am. XIV) Viewpoint discrimination (Am. I)
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Who draws Congressional lines? Who draws state legislative lines?
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Existing public and private databases contain many errors
Problems: free data online, repackaged and sold, little quality control
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SLIDE 17 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
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Maps from 131 of 133 jurisdictions 98.6% verification using voter rolls
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OpenPrecincts shared data: Virginia (Bethune-Hill case)
Outlets: Virginian-Pilot, OneVirginia2021, William and Mary Law School
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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 26th President, 1901-1909
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Shapes aren’t enough – people matter too
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Since 2012, gerrymandering has reached new heights
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In 2018, cracks in the gerrymandered wall
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On the docket in 2019: North Carolina’s partisan gerrymander
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