thank you for having me it is great to be someplace right can say right fucked after being on the radio doing cumin and well this has been quite a week already we saw on the breaks it results last night the impact of an angry frustrated nationalism some of us see that mood reflected right here at home in the presumptive nominee of the republican party the night before we watched angry frustrated democrats stage a sit in on the floor of the house of representatives to protest in action on a series of post romantic gun control measures fired up democrats energize their base one social media and dreamed of gains this november by taking a radical stand on an issue with broad popular support and deep emotional resonance i want to suggest tonight however that the anger and frustration in our politics the dysfunction and the extremism the disconnect between a broad popular will in the kinds of action we see coming from congress and state legislatures springs from a root cause it's called the red map short for redistricting majority project and it was an odd day shifts and radical plan by the republicans to redraw our legislative maps so they could govern from the minority did it ever live up to its name the lines the republicans true after the two thousand and ten elections ensured republican control of the house at least through the two thousand and twenty census no matter how big the democrats win the white house leaving sputtering house liberals few options besides this week's sit in but the new lines also created so many uncompetitive districts four hundred of the four hundred thirty five so tilted we barely need to hold the election that it changed the tone and tenor of the g o p as well creating the conditions for donald trump to walk away with the party this practice is commonly called gerrymandering it put many of us to sleep in eighth grade civics it can be traced all the way back to seventeen ninety in the roots of our republic it is among the oldest political tricks in the book the constitution mandates that all state legislative a congressional districts be redrawn every ten years section one article two to adjust for population shifts as long as we've had politicians they have tried to game the system for their side but what happened in two thousand and ten was not like any other gerrymander in our history let's put it this way from seven hundred ninety all the way get to two thousand  gerrymandering is in it's it's horse and buggy error in two thousand and ten and skip straight to a rocket ship it had been a useful if crude tool for devious political revenge incumbent protection for either party to grab an undeserved seat here or there what the republicans execute in two thousand and ten is something we have never seen before the oldest trick in the book used in a thoroughly modern new way they used the gerrymander not only as a blunt partisan weapon but as a way to govern from the minority and new technology and mapping tools would provide impregnable district lines as their fire wall it was different historically so thanks to driven republican strategists determined to take full advantage of redistricting and cutting edge mapping technologies and demographic tools that made it easier than ever to craft an unbeatable g o p majority is and the wave of post citizens united dark money which helped fund this plan red map is the reason why republicans held the house in two thousand and twelve despite almost a million and a half fewer votes and it's the reason why republicans have a hammerlock on the house into the next decade impervious to most any landslide we have been say it with me right fucked this is not politics as usual this is a crisis of democracy and we can't talk about our broken and extreme politics honestly or with any hope of making the system responsive until we fully come to terms with what happened in two thousand and ten and two thousand and eleven right under our noses at this book started when i tried to answer a really simple question i fundamentally didn't understand how  reelected in two thousand and twelve with a solid electoral college majority of three thirty two to a six a popular vote majority of just under five million but barely budged the house of representatives the democrats won twenty five of thirty three senate seats that november and did gain seven seats in the house but that only trimmed the republican majority to two to thirty four to one the house would continue to lead the opposition to the president's policies frustrating liberals who saw their tactics as obstructionist like i just mentioned if you were to add up the votes in all four hundred thirty five house elections that year the democrats win by a one point four million that's not a shabby margin house speaker boehner would claim on election night that americans said renewed the republicans majority in reality this was the first time in forty years since one thousand seventy two and just the second time since world war two that the party that won most votes did not also take control of the chamber and when the majority of the seats so what happened we know the tickets splitting has decreased over recent decades in two thousand and twelve it actually fell to a ninety two year low so it wasn't the people voted for a democratic president and a republican house as a check on his power that's when i came across a group called the republican state leadership committee and their plan a called red map their strategy emerges from the republican doldrums after being routed in two thousand and eight republicans had lost the popular vote for the white house that night for the fourth time in fifty in five elections they stared at the democratic super majority in the senate and as they watched fox news through a fuzzy third martini glow feared they were staring down a looming demographic nightmare that could render a minority party for the near future while some despaired a brilliant strategist named christian koski the executive director of that r s l say had an idea he saw the seeds for hope and change of his own and he realizes that the truly important election is not two thousand and eight but in two thousand and ten that's the census year that's the redistricting year every line in every state legislature and all four hundred thirty five congressional districts are about to be redrawn jankauskas understands that elections in years and even zero simply mean more than others they reverberate throughout the decade and he was determined to make that  so he may not be as well known as other strategist like his friends karl rove and frank luntz or his boss that they are a selfie of the former republican national committee chairman ed gillespie he spent his career strategizing victories at the state level and he knew you could get more done for the conservative cause and at a bargain basement price in state elections this is why he's able to envision a bold national redistricting play that he looted strategists of both parties even as they gerrymandered for two hundred years big g o p donors may not feel like a king maker or a coke brother by writing a check to the candidate running and in pennsylvania's one hundred thirty five house district but caskey knew the money would go much much further there in thirty seven of fifty states the legislature plays the primary role in drawing its own lines forty two of those states they play the primary role in drawing congressional lines jankauskas strategy becomes so simple and elegant it's amazing no one had hit on it quite before and being as how karl rove announces the strategy in the wall street journal in march of two thousand and ten it's amazing that the democrats are unable to play defense and stop it the republican state leadership committee strategists decided to target takeovers of as many state legislative chambers as they can in two thousand and ten with an item maximizing the number of states where they could have total control the only seats at the table when it came to drawing new maps in the following year knew they could do it they had to sell republican donors first on this play people call us a vast right wing conspiracy but we're really a half assed right wing conspiracy rove told one deep pocketed republican gathering trying to talk them out of money for this now it's time to get serious they told their wealthy benefactors the party spent one hundred ten million dollars battling cycle after cycle in just twenty of the competitive house districts over the last decade for thirty million they promised they'd take those districts off the table and draw them safely for the republicans for the next decade we weren't selling access anymore and caskey told me we were selling an outcome and an impact on the political they spent a million dollars on ohio state house races flipping the chamber and giving the republicans complete control over the redrawing of one hundred thirty two legislative districts and sixteen congressional seats another million in michigan flipped both the house and the senate there bring in complete control of one hundred forty eight legislative districts and fourteen more seats they spent just under a million in pennsylvania delivering a veto proof control over redistricting in another otherwise blue state red map delivers everything it promised republicans gain some seven hundred state legislative seats nationwide by the end of election night two thousand and ten they control two thirds of all legislative chambers in the country they pressed that demographic advantage big time in two thousand and eleven using the most advanced mapmaking technology ever to superglue their gains in place e mail records and depositions show the epic lengths the republicans went to in two thousand and eleven to draw maps with the goal of locking in a decade at least of house dominance in court case after court case whether in wisconsin north carolina florida or texas region or in other states like ohio where freedom of information act request uncovered revealing e mail exchanges between operatives and map makers the story just gets scary or for anyone who cares about participatory democracy in ohio republican strategist barricade themselves into a suite at the doubletree hotel and up at the bunker they tell no one where they are together with strategies from the r and c and speaker boehner as political team devise new lines based on complicated mathematical algorithms in wisconsin operatives tied to paul ryan barricade themselves in a law firm across from the capitol claim attorney client privilege for the maps they're drawing require even republican incumbents to sign confidentiality agreements before being shown their new districts in north carolina they bring in a master mapmaker named tom ho feller who treats redistricting like it's espionage and gives colleagues a presentation warning them not to use their email not to use their computers visible visible and not to fire the staff before they're sure the process is done in florida strategists inspired an end run around a new state constitutional amendment mandating nonpartisan redistricting by running a secret shadow redistricting process and funneling maps through phony e mails and former interns without their knowledge what does all this mean in practical terms republicans got themselves complete control over the drawing of a hundred and ninety three districts democrats had complete control over just forty four you need to eighteen for controls that's a pretty good start more importantly democrat the national public radio peddle able to seventy districts competitive in two thousand and ten after election day two thousand and ten the g o p controlled the  drawing of lines of forty seven of those red map takes the seats completely off the table move ahead to two thousand and twelve you have the first elections run on these new maps and we see just how effective they are they provide the firewall to keep the republicans in power in pennsylvania democratic house candidates receive one hundred thousand more votes republicans take thirteen of the eighteen seats fifty two percent of the vote equals twenty eight percent of the seats in michigan house democrats win two hundred forty thousand more votes republicans take nine of the fourteen states in ohio republicans won a super majority in the state house despite having fewer votes and take twelve of the sixteen congressional seats despite the votes being split about fifty fifty it happens state after state after state and these maps are so sturdy that it takes a democratic  point four million votes and renders it completely invisible there are two main ways of gerrymandering you can pack and you can crack that packing involves cramming as many democrats as you can into one district by any creative means possible turns the neighboring districts more republican cracking means dividing them a critic stronghold into pieces so as to lessen its impact but it's the technology that's available in two thousand and ten relief for the first time that makes these new districts so foolproof they're drawn with a sophisticated and expensive program called map to tud which comes pre loaded with reams of census data economics ethnicity religion specific demographic breakdowns of all types then you can add on to this any public record dataset one of the arizona met makers showed me how it works so you can factor in the election results voter turnout in all of this on the level of precincts in tiny census blocks and down ballot elections going back years then if you want you can add in private datasets magazine subscriptions popular browsing histories by zip code entire cloud worth of consumer preferences and buying patterns with so much information map makers in two thousand and ten are able to draw precise perfect boundaries that they knew would be reliable partisan performers for the next decade they could shift the lines in any direction and immediately understand how it would influence the results these programs are only going to get more powerful next time one map to the expert told me that by the twenty two thousand and one redistricting you'll be able to use all this information to generate a predictive algorithm of how a district is likely to change and evolve over the next ten years mean you have a sense of how moving any line would influence the results even further down the road there are a lot of dangers in this for a democracy yes but also for the partisans playing cartographic god s you might argue that the republicans got too cute that this put has backfired on them in some ways that they guaranteed themselves control of congress but they also generated a republican caucus they cannot control for example when republicans redistricted in north carolina they took the city of funky college town and it had been represented by a conservative democrat named heath shuler you may have seen here when he was a quarterback for the washington redskins  and they cracked the democratic vote in two and divided into two districts both won by very conservative republicans ashville would now be represented by mark meadows a tea party  on the platform of sending president obama back to kenya he's no more and narrative speaker boehner it's meadows who is part of the renegade house freedom caucus a group of conservatives appear in their distaste for deal making it made up almost entirely of republicans made up if you mean elected on these new maps this decade who files the parliamentary move which leads to banners undoing as speaker the establishment falls and fared no better this year in the presidential campaign nominees by the name of bush christy rubio kay sick and walker might tell you this is what we've done by creating so hundred plus of four hundred thirty five districts where there is no true competition outside the party primary members from these districts need only go to their base compromise governing common ground all of the things central to the out of politics are the exact things that threaten their livelihood these congressmen the not talk to the rest of us and indeed they are insulated from any response we want to give them at the ballot box on competitive districts have made the government responsive only to the extremes they are the reason why the debate within one party looks a lot like i'm really crazy oh no you are not crazy enough i am a much pure breed of crazy then you they are the reason we can't get action on issues where the great center agrees and there is agreement on immigration on climate change on planned parenthood funding guns this is not going to be easy to undo it's not a case of winning one election the system has been knotted up at all different levels state houses congress state judiciaries and it can take years and many election cycles for these far reaching consequences to be cleared away the democrats are trying to run the republicans play themselves in two thousand and twenty but they will have less money no element of surprise and the hardest challenge of all winning on maps so tilted that they have rigged the game let alone the voter id laws and restrictions on early voting we are the only democracy in the world that allows politicians to choose their own voters and draw their own lines we want our votes to count our elections to matter but when our democratic institutions become separated from the popular will they cease to be effective or democratic the very constitutional notion of the house is a mirror of popular  comes into question the idea that nothing happens when a majority expresses disfavor with the party in power is the opposite of participatory democracy the trendy headline this week is that  clinton lands and a trump debacle could tilt the house to the democrats one hesitates to call anything out of reach during this campaign season except that you can take this one to the bank it can't happen on these maps it would require the democrats turning their one point four million voted vantage from two thousand and twelve into something more like ten million in two thousand and sixteen doesn't work but if we are going to have four more months of debating whether the democrats stand even the most remote possibility of capturing the house it's important to understand the recent history which explains why it's a nonstarter our political conversation around the partisan divide in congress and how it got this way is too often a historical and wrong the media still thinks we're in the horse and buggy era where both sides do it in the same way hillary clinton and bernie sanders barely under the term gerrymandering or redistricting in any of their debates the democrats are not ready to fight ahead of two thousand and twenty redistricting changed forever after this last census we have three cycles left to fix that or we live with the consequences for another decade i'm sorry that i don't have a happy ending i am happy to take questions thank you my wife and i work very hard and have for a long time to get democrats elected and over and over i find the democrats just play the patsy when it comes to the just g o p tricks it's not just recently jury manner it is one thing vote flipping by electronic data devices is another and i dealt to george bush ever won the two thousand and four election but yet the democrat side warned top democratic leaders over and over i said watch out for these tricks and yet over and over they say the party will take care of it or whatever and nothing gets done do you have any explanation why the democrats are patsies when it comes to these tricks it's the million dollar question i don't i don't have a good answer to it i mean i could offer a few theories i mean the leadership of the party is super coastal and they don't always understand what is happening outside of those coasts if you look at where the big gerrymandering gains have been done these are in industrial states these are in the south and sometimes when you are representing districts from other parts of the country you understand what's happening a little more clearly  they were warned about this you know i mean i mean karl rove writes this piece in big flashing neon lights so they didn't need to have the imagination or the vision to come up with this play all they needed to do was read the wall street journal and recognize where they had to play defense and i mean the chant koski tells me throughout the fall of tw ten he's running around all these states and he can't believe the democrats are now out on the playing field with him trying to you know even attempt to match what he's doing and nobody is they have the field to themselves i mean it's a catastrophic strategic failure on so many levels and  i don't know why it is that democrats always get elected and think that they can simply reason with the other side that their supreme oratorical powers and and logic will carry the day no matter how many times and how many years it's not the case it took barack obama i mean i mean that this congress and this house stymied him every step of the way i don't think he mentioned the word gerrymandering until his his final state of the union address you know some of us might have you know told him six years ago that this was happening time and time again and they they lack the the deviousness or the or the cunning or the strategic know how to do anything about it but worse they don't seem to be planning for it again and this is going to be a long road back i feel like they i mean democrats only turn out in presidential years so it is is easy to have what happened in twenty ten happen to you again but they have to be organized at the local level at the state level and at the national level and until you you build a party that wants to run races and all of those places and is committed to winning them that this has to be overturned legislative chamber by a legislative chamber and earning seats back at the table in this process and they've got five years to do it all i'm sorry over this process did this process affected you just share yes not as much as it did legislative districts but you can follow the money in some of these states especially north carolina and wisconsin and you can see how some of these koch brother aligned groups some of these alec aligned groups are are just as involved in in funding races for states priem court and all of these other issue to shiel level cases there are even cases in north carolina where the judges that they helped elect with the koch brothers money are ruling on the redistricting cases guess which side they came down on how much of this problem do you think can be solved by winning state legislative elections and how much could be solved by direct popular referendums or state ones rampaging arson redistricting or something like that and then  if the democrats want to if we want to put our faith in the democratic party where it might be mis placed their game needs to be winning back legislative chambers  and they have to do so before the next redistricting but there we the way that they want to do that involves sinking seventy million dollars into something called advantage twenty twenty and trying to do the same thing that the republicans did last time you know go into state races with a lot of money and try to you know up in those races it just it just brings it just brings more money into the system it brings more negativity into the system it brings more it makes it harder for regular people to to run for office it's it's not a recipe for good politics referendums on the other hand are popular i think that people understand that this is a problem it appeals to our fundamental sense of fairness which is something that there's enough good minded people on both sides of this on all sides of this to believe in these ideals that the side with the most votes ought to win that our elections ought to be about a person and  building a mandate for solving problems and moving forward and when you have had referendums in red states and blue states in purple states ohio florida arizona california they have passed with upwards of sixty percent of the vote and usually they lead to more competitive districts it doesn't always take the partisanship out of it because it depends on how you constitute a commission and sometimes the commissions just end up being appointed by the same politicians and it just becomes a proxy fight and it just moves it into a smaller room but a commission that has pacific statute to follow in their work may will be the best way to make this happen first part of my question is have you found leaders who are on whom we could coalesce opinion and effort in the process of going around the country i have not found it anybody in the democratic party really taking this seriously and i talk to lots of people there are i mean there were democrats who in the last decade tried to put up you know national redistricting plans and john tanner of tennessee tried martin frost tried that there were lots of folks who attempted this and the leadership of the party even when they were in control  had no interest seems to me would be a pretty terrific agenda for the sanders campaign talking about a political revolution to put its muscle behind right now well you  assume you have a website and perhaps the people who are who are interested in pursuing this could make use that website is a organizing tool in there there's a great group called fair vote in d c that that has you know a number of really interesting plans and proposals around this some of them seem a little probably radical to people who are used to a system working one way things like multimember districts or instant it sounds like the application and use of technology was a very big factor in what the republican strategy wise and i'm wondering about the origins of that you know how they managed to basically wind up the democratic party and whether the democratic party is getting any traction with regards to technology and use of it it's amazing that this happens in two thousand and ten because in two thousand and eight the democrats used technology so brilliantly in the obama campaign to you know micro target and identify you know possible voters and to then to get out that the vote and to really target messaging to say this if voters and then they just start completely unprepared for redistricting and they don't see the challenge in the same way i think i think perhaps because it had never been done before they just you know fall on their on their faces on me tom reynolds who was the republican in charge of their of their campaign in two thousand and ten says to me that these obama guys were really really smart in two thousand and eight and we just plain skunk them you know in the state house races i think that they're aware of the problem now and the technology side they will at least be ready next time i just don't know if they can win enough elections on these maps to have enough seats at the table to do anything about it even if they figure out you know what these these algorithms are capable of  looks like from this plane it's even more evolved and then what you're talking about because to me it looks like republicans always try to reduce the number of folders so that they fire at their base and then they can we do actu know i mean that was a completely different set of maps of the year two thousand election would have been run on the on the one nine hundred ninety one maps and this had not quite progress to that level of gamesmanship at that point in one thousand nine hundred one it's a fairly even split i believe i think by one thousand nine hundred one democrats are actually drawing more lines then republicans were they were simply doing it in the old horse and buggy way of you know saving an incumbent and maybe trying to get an extra seat here or there you know both parties kind of getting together be like well there's a couple more of us we want to keep our seats i mean even in two thousand so so so after the year two thousand census the two thousand and one redistricting in which the first election is run in two thousand and two i mean democrats hold a small advantage then i think they drew one hundred thirty five lines republicans drew one hundred eight so so it was it was it was pretty close still at that point in time with the other ones being you know done by commissions or in states where the control was split and then you go to the decade after that and suddenly it jumps to one hundred ninety three to forty four and you see this strategy at work and the imbalance at play if you're in washington i think we're little more fortunate because we have the republicans put in their map the democrats put in their map and then you have to decide together which one you're going to look like a nice system and it and it worked well we got to got one new congressional district and it was it was just just about exactly fifty fifty republican democrat and a democrat was elected though in many aspects he's far more conservative than i would like her to be but put it at least that we did we did get a democratic representative in the house but our i don't know what's going to happen with our with our arse our state house and sen because we're just a little bit more democratic in the senate and a little more republican in the house i think we're mixing it up with the federal it's the reverse of the federal so and i'm a little concerned about what might happen on  the statewide level here and and also there's we've had a democratic governor governor for a long time and i'm not sure what's going to happen this time i'm not so sure g ensley is going to get reelected so have to see that's not really a question going to go over well i think you're right though i mean because this matters on a state level as well you look at you look at north carolina you look at ohio you see michigan wisconsin i keep coming back to to some of these states because that's it's the most egregious examples but the state legislatures in the states are just as badly gerrymandered as the congress is and there's real results there i mean that the transgender bathroom bill in north carolina never passes a fair cop a fair legislature there wisconsin don't happen in these states if the assemblies are not so thoroughly gerrymandered that more democratic votes lead somehow to republican super majorities i mean in michigan it's only after a gerrymandered excuse me republican legislature takes over that they pass the emergency manager law and it's and the voters overturn it a referendum and the legislature the votes it back in and that's how the flint government is replaced and a republican emergency manager is put in the water since the prize poisoned so this this works on a on a state level in the same way it does at the national level and if you don't have some kind of fairness in these loans they will be taken advantage of i'm not i'm not sure on the state state house and senate level whether it's the same process you know i just know about the national one but i think the lines are judicial decisions in texas would be way out of my oh i'm sorry i mean certainly i mean certainly texas has been a really important state on the gerrymandering side it was well gerrymandered by the democrats for years tom de lay figures out how to take it back by generating a whole lot of money that they get some indicted it's it's been a pretty good back and forth in texas it's been a real it's been a real political fight there and what you saw in the last go around was some of the craftiest usage of the voting rights act that maybe i've ever seen they got three new seats in texas and they wanted to give them the appearance of being majority minority seats so they found a college professor in oklahoma who is brilliant at drawing the lines by using voting the records of whether you actually showed up or not and they drew the lines on this block by block knowledge of whether these specific hispanic voters in these neighborhoods actually turned out and they drew three seats that republicans could win that looked like they were latino seats but it's a totally on paper so it's a pretty devious place tex's that's what tom de lay tried to do yes was texas in georgia when republican legislators took over said hey let's there's nothing stopping us from redrawing that that these lines now let's just let's press our advantage so thank you for writing this book and compiling all of this information i've been aware of the problem for a while but you know wrap my arms around it like you was like to point out that when you go first aid training and you see someone on the ground go to respond the second step is to point to someone and say you call an ambulance missing is the nickel summary at the end what am i supposed to do that's what i ask you now of all the variations referendum systems f redistricting if you were king or trump what would we be fighting for because i can't message so i can't put this into a resolution to go to the party i mee someone i meet the action steps not just you know which is the state that does the best job of this it seems to me is iowa where they have it in the hands of professional nonpartisan bureaucrats and they actually are professional nonpartisan bureaucrats and there's a culture of civic trust and political trust there that even though both of these sides love to to beat the other side's brains out and the people of the state and also the politicians take really seriously the fact that they redistricting this way i spent a week on the ground there and like people are genuinely proud of the way that they redistrict in iowa and it is part of the political culture there  i mean i think what we have to do is understand that these lines are the fundamental building blocks of our democracy and that we all of us have to take them seriously and not consider this to be politics as usual and to find a way to take the responsibility for for drawing this away from people who can't be trusted with it and to and to move it back our own control i do think that these commissions can work and i like that referendums in all of these states attract big majorities of republicans and democrats and independents and everyone else towards rebuilding a culture of fairness but i don't think anything changes until you can get the power for doing this away from the people redistricting in iowa ended up in the courts back in the one nine hundred seventy s in the legislature was so embarrassed that they couldn't get the job done that members of both parties got together and said let's figure out a way to fix this and they crafted a plan in the eighty's that is really really specific and it's statutes and at the lines are drawn up by a board and it's made up of of it of a handful of map makers and and nonpartisans who the bigger works with on drafting all of their the legislation they're not allowed to take incumbency into consideration at all they're not allowed to take the politics into consideration at all they simply have to draw lines that are equitable and unfair and they managed to pull it off the legislature gets to vote the plan up or down and if they vote it down they send it back to the board for another go around but they don't get to you know any extra insight or any extra you know chance to offer an opinion on it  and they may like that the second version less but it's insane almost that you actually have in iowa the state house speaker is a republican and he runs the state legislator version of the r s l c and the senate president is a democrat and he actually runs the democratic version of  this so both of them are eagerly trying to flip the chambers in other states but would never dream of doing it at home in iowa and it has something to do with the way that the people there take it very seriously and recognize that it makes their politics better so at the risk so many recently i haven't been able to quite understand how it is that we just dig was jurymen so much in favor of the republicans so my question to you is is there any recourse every state has their own process and what the republicans did so well in two thousand and ten was try to understand what the process was in every specific state and then to try to control every member of the board so say in ohio there's a five person apportionment board they set out to be sure that they controlled all five seats in north carolina it's the legislature the house and the senate who have the only say even the governor has no say so they set out to be sure they had both branches there it's a little different in michigan so they had to be sure that they had all of these pieces in place in each of the  states and then once you've done that you you don't even have to have the democrats in the room once you have control of all of the people who are responsible for this you can then force a plan through there is no supreme court ruling that has ever said you can't gerrymander for partisan purposes the last time this came before the court was in the mid two thousand so off of the pennsylvania case the first is true i always pronounce this wrong to peel were it's a tough one scalia in this case tries to take off the board forever the idea that the court could ever overturn a partisan gerrymander and his side carries the day except anthony kennedy has you know a different concurring opinion but kennedy says i'm open to a standard for recognizing and identifying what actionable partisan gerrymandering would be it's just that i don't see it here and i don't know you know someone has to show me what a just a simple are a number of cases that are trying to work their way through the system trying to appeal to can it is a plea for something there's a case that in wisconsin right now where a bunch of professors believe that they've figured out something called the the efficiency gap which is designed to show mathematically when a party has taken control by intentionally wasting the other party's votes  and that could reach the court in the next couple of years but that's the best chance for us supreme court ruling on  this i know that the road map was so effective in two thousand and ten that it almost seems fruitless in order try to go for house races in two thousand and sixteen and twenty eighteen but that almost seems like what the democrats have done this year that there are several house races where  filing deadline has already passed and democrats put up a candidate let alone just a paper candidate in order to go against republicans i don't know if this is an intentional employee in order to try to save money for the two thousand and twenty campaign i can't see that happening but is that an effective strategy or is that just turning people off from the whole process and do you have any insight on why democrats don't put up even just a name on a ballot in order to try to run against the republicans in these races this is part of the problem when you don't have competitive districts you don't have candidates who want to run in them it's hard to raise money that they run in them and it's a stable process i mean i think you're exactly right i mean i mean no one wants to run a race that they're going to lose and and too many of these districts are just start to start just made so one competitive that if you're an ambitious politician you have no reason to go out there and spend your i'd like to return to the theme of democrats democratic in effect you haven't mentioned the fact that i think would be really important which is the democrats should squeal like hell and cry like hell in the press and go to the press and all our campaigns talk about the insidious effect the jury bantering is having and try and educate the american public to the fact that the republicans do not have a majority and that  process has been rigged and yet over and over they say nothing as you point out i don't understand i completely agree with you i put that question to steve israel who chaired the democratic campaign congressional campaign committee  and his quotes in the book i mean he says people don't care about that we've poll tested in that we look like we're a bunch of whiners if we go out there and say that people want us to get things done and if we're out there crying about the system and saying it's unfair they're just going to say do your job and i'm not sure he's right that is bullshit i think people understand yeah i think that people understand that there is a connection between the rules and the lack of action on issues that matter to them and that if democrats did this it would be effective in important and i don't understand why they don't but time and again they in your opinion doesn't the mainstream media cover this oh man the mainstream media loves both sides do it stories the mainstream media loves it doesn't want to make any judgment on it and it and they there's a sense it's gerrymandering is too simple to be the answer here it can't just be gerrymandering it's got to be something else we have to come up with a more counterintuitive plan here you know no one gets that tenure retreated if you're a fury if you're saying that the thing that we all learned about in civics class is actually that the big problem you have to have a you know a better malcolm gladwell an an swer to it is so you read a lot about the big sort we have sorted ourselves because democrats only want to live around other democrats and it's not that it's it's gerrymandering it's that it's the big sort except it doesn't hold up if you actually bothered to look at the numbers i mean pennsylvania i think it provides a really great example of this in in two thousand and eight in in two thousand and twelve both the both years the democratic candidates for the house in the state win with about the same margin of votes in two thousand and eight that they win twelve seat as a result in two thousand and twelve they won five min what changed the lines you know it's not that hundreds of thousands of people in philadelphia and pittsburgh sorted themselves because they wanted to live with you know someone who looked more like they do that the winds changed and sometimes what's right under the nose of of these people is the first thing that gets missed