July 12, 2018 • 36 mins
No matter which side of the political spectrum you fall on, you should be outraged about the practice of gerrymandering. Redrawing voter district maps to ensure political dominance is about as undemocratic as it gets. Please enjoy Josh and Chuck getting unusually worked up about this abhorrent practice.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Jerrymander. Yeah,
that's right, our pet salamander, Jerrymander, And this is stuff
(00:25):
you should Know. That was a dad joke right out
of the gate man. Apparently that's all I've got these days,
or dad jokes. There's nothing wrong with that, I guess not,
which is really just a way of saying middle aged
dude jokes. Sure, sure, because I think our senses of
humor decline, we get less funny. Look at Jim gaff again,
(00:47):
but we think we're funnier, right, hot pockets. Actually, I
tease Jim, I I love your work. Oh are your pals? No? Okay, no,
but I do of his work. I'm just a fan. Yeah. Um, like,
like absolutely zero, there's zero not to like about Jim
(01:10):
gaff Agan. Um, you know my buddy Jim. I say
he's um, he's sort of pals with him. He says
he's a good guy. I like, there's no way he's not.
You know, like, you just you can't you can't, you
can't make up that level of like coolness and niceness
and approachability, affability, even maybe gaffability. He just went, that's genius.
(01:31):
I'm gonna trade Marty totally as if he listens to
this show. So here we're diving into politics, which we
keep saying, like, let's not do that because it's political.
But this is very newsy and not everyone understands jerrymandering,
and I think it's this file this under p s
a because it's a big deal and it stinks and
(01:52):
it's been going on for a long time. Yeah, it was.
I'm definitely one of those people who didn't understand it.
Like I knew, yeah, I had to do with drawing
maps and you could draw them so that they're unfair,
and I never thought, well, how do you do that?
And I found out thanks to researching this episode, and
apparently it's gotten way way worse in recent years. So
(02:12):
to understand gerrymandering, though, you have to understand a little
bit about the House of Representatives. One of the two
houses of Congress, one's the Senate. One is the House
of Representatives, and Webster's defines right, Yeah, so the deal
of the House is is that the founding fathers um
(02:35):
invented the House or established let's say the House to
be a much more sort of of the moment reactive, fair,
ultra democratic group of uh governing body, and that it's
only every two years. And the idea was to have
a lot of turnover and have them really uh you know,
(02:58):
because there's four five of them, have them really uh
really tied to their constituents, right, So it's just a
super fair way for things that really matter to you
on a smaller level are heard as opposed to the Senate,
which is you know, far far fewer, right. And there
are a couple of ways that they did this. One,
like you said, elections are held every two years. All
(03:21):
Congress people are up for re election every two years,
and they're they're elected directly by the people they represent.
And when they started, I think there was sixty five
seats in the House of Representatives, and by twelve I
think it was up to four d and thirty five.
And they added seats because they established the House of
(03:44):
Representatives to to represent a set proportion of um population population,
So each congress person represents one chunk of America from
their state, right. So the larger and large America grew
the more and more congress people you needed, and then
finally in nineteen twelve, they said, uh, we can't do
(04:06):
the same more. We're just gonna if you have too
many congress people, they're going to Um, you're not gonna
be able to do anything. It's just going to be
too many. Right, So they kept it at four and
thirty five. And that does something. It's it it means
that if you have a state that keeps growing, because
it's not like America stopped growing in population in nineteen twelve,
(04:26):
So as your population keeps growing, that means that as
one state keeps growing proportionately speaking, that means another state
is smaller, whether people move from that state to the
other larger state or the other larger state just by
contrast attractive more people. That means that the smaller state
or the one that didn't grow as much, is going
(04:46):
to actually lose congressional seats, and that the bigger seats
or the bigger state, the one that's growing, will actually
gain congressional seats. Because again, a congress person represents a
set amount of American public from their home state, and
right now it's about seven I think the average is
seven hundred and eleven thousand people is how many people
(05:08):
a congress person represents in the US today. Yeah, and
they did this through what's called the Reapportionment Act, of
which basically set up all right, here's an automatic system.
Now every ten years, we do a census, and they
will just redistribute and allocate seats according to that census
every ten years. And like you said, if you're growing,
(05:30):
we're gonna nip some away from the places that aren't
growing or shrinking. And it was, you know, it seemed
like a pretty fair way to redistribute and allocate these uh,
these seats. It is. It's extremely fair. And so as
a result, you've got like Montana that the whole state
has one congressional district that represents about a million people,
whereas New York State has, which is a third of
(05:52):
the size of Montana, has twenty seven congress congressional districts
and hence seats in Congress. Right, it's a very fair system.
Here's the problem when the Census Bureau figures out all
these figures and they say, well, this state actually should
get two new congress people, and you know, this state
should lose one and another state loses one. Um, they
(06:14):
have to redraw the maps of the state to show
what these new districts are because population is shifted every
over the ten years since the last census, so you
have to update the maps to make sure that they
each congress person is representing roughly the same number of
people and so everybody is accounted for. Again makes sense, right, Yeah,
(06:37):
But the problem came in when they were very vague
as far as the rules for drawing these boundaries. Uh.
It says something like geographically can geographically contiguous, compact in shape,
roughly equal in population. All these things are subjective, so
when partisan politics become involved, the people that redraw these maps,
(07:00):
it seems, can't help themselves but be like, hey, if
we move over ten blocks this way, and like a
couple of miles that way, and shape it like this,
which looks really weird, but hey, that's okay because these
rules are vague, then we you know, even though there
may be a majority of one party, we could still
(07:21):
win if we draw this thing the right way, right. Like.
The big problem with this whole process for apportioning the
House of Representative seats is that they left in each
state the dominant political party who happened to be in
power at the time when the maps need to be redrawn,
it was left up to them. There's no federal oversight,
there's no there's no oversight whatsoever. And the whole premise
(07:45):
of it was, well, okay, um, the voters will see
what they're doing and will vote those guys out. The
problem is, if you control the congressional maps, you can
draw them in such a way that even the voters
can't vote you out. And this is jerrymandering. And this
is the current state of politics right now and has
been for a very long time. Actually, we've been jerrymandering
(08:05):
for a while, but again, like I said, supposedly it's
gotten way worse in the last decade. Yeah, all right,
I'm a little worked up already. Yep, you've got a Interestingly,
you're crying blood. I'm trying not to, but it's not helping.
So we're gonna take a little break and maybe let's
(08:26):
jump back and talk history, if that's right with you.
I would love that, Chuck, and then we will go
back forward in time to study the current mess that
we're in right after this. Sorry, huh, all right, we're
(09:03):
in the way back machine. Yeah, it's Virginia ratifies. It's
ratifies the Constitution of the US. And former Governor Patrick
Henry convinces his state legislators to redraw the fifth Congressional
District to force his foe, James Madison, to run against
(09:24):
James Monroe, because he figured he could easily win. It
backfired on him. Madison came out on top. But this
kind of kick started at the onset of our founding
in our country in the Constitution, the process of jerrymandering,
even though at that point it wasn't quite known as
jerrymandering yet, No, it wasn't. It was known as jerrymandering
(09:46):
after I think eight the eighteen twenties, I believe, and
the governor of Massachusetts Elbridge Jerry eighteen twelve, Um Elbridge Jerry,
who was he was the governor of Massachusetts, right correct?
He um came up with a map that he drew
to help keep his party, the Democrat Republicans, I think,
(10:09):
which is beyond confusing, right but Um, he drew a
map that was just abhorrent. It was just so clearly
partisan and drawn just to keep his his party in
power in Massachusetts. But I think the Boston Gazette published
a picture of this map and proclaimed that it looked
(10:30):
like a salamander, and so they said, this isn't a salamander,
this is a jerrymander, which is a million times worse
because it's politically toxic and a lizard. I love that
little tidbit, but that's where the name came from. Yeah,
it had never had any idea, but that's where jerrymandering
came from. Not a pretty word, but it definitely rolls
(10:52):
off the tongue like a um oil. So it grew
to be a very common practice and very blatant, and
Congress at one point early on in two tried to
get it under control with that Apportionment Act that I
talked about um and that said, you know those vague
(11:13):
things like let's draw these thing as contiguous and compact
as possible. But it just apparently no one, I guess.
The rules were so vague and outlined in such a
nebulous manner that there was no way to enforce it,
such that at one point they carved out two separate
states North and South Dakota. Uh the Republican can controlled
(11:34):
Congress so they could get more seats in the Senate Yeah,
at the time, if you were a state, you had
three electoral College votes, don't matter your size or anything
like that. And the Dakota territories were Republican leaning, so
the Republicans said, hey, you guys, welcome to the Union.
And by the way, we're going to carve you into
two states. So now we have six electoral votes rather
than just the three if you were one big state. Yeah,
(11:58):
pretty clever, pretty sky says. So. Um. One thing that
this article, I think this is a Patrick Kiger article,
I think it's smart to point out is that this
is not just a Republican technique. This has been done
throughout history by both the parties UM, both the two
(12:18):
main parties, the Democrats and Republicans apparently also the Democratic
Republicans and UM two to the same effect, which is,
we're drawing these maps to make sure that you guys
don't have a fighting chance in the next congressional elections. Right.
(12:39):
I did some digging though, because I was curious about
these days, like who, um It's interesting because you can
say who is worse with jerry mandering, or more correctly,
maybe who was better at jerry mandering as far as
getting it pushed through more, and every political science and
mathematician will tell you that, uh, across the board sort
(13:01):
of Republicans are are either better at it or doing
it way more or that the the recent elections over
the last I think like three or so have have
favored the GOP in ways that they ended up with
something like twenty extra seats that they wouldn't have otherwise
(13:21):
had had the maps not been jerrymandered. Yeah. And then
in some of these I think Maryland was one case
where even though it was at Maryland where the Democrats
held like a majority, yet they the maps are drawn
in such a way that they would have to get
like an eight to ten point Oh I'm sorry this Wisconsin. Yeah,
(13:42):
Wisconsin an eight to ten point victory in order to
overcome those jerrymandering maps. Yeah, which is it's just not
going to happen because Wisconsin is pretty close to being
um down the middle. And that's actually a really good
example of the modern jerrymandering that's going on. Like Patrick
Group points out, when you think of jerryman doing this
(14:02):
kind of thing, you think of like guys like in
a back room smoking cigars and like like poking each
other in the chest say and this this is my district,
and you can have this one that kind of thing.
But this is actually like they're very specialized political consultants
who go around the country after each census and help
states draw their maps. Um, and they're there. They do
(14:26):
so with like really sophisticated software that has like block
level census data, so like just like by the block,
the people who live on a block, they can carve
it out like that so that they can more accurately
create these maps. And then when they create these maps,
they can create dozens as many as you want. And
(14:47):
when they when they use them as a model, they
can feed them into their their computers and run a
simulation of future elections based on this map. It's and
then they can this is why it's gotten so bad.
And then they can and um, just take this block out.
What happens if we take this blackout and put this
one in instead, And now all of a sudden, oh well,
we'll win for the next ten years. And they have
(15:11):
this this map. And the reason that I started talking
about this apparently Wisconsin has a map that's in effect
right now that is so well done that even if
the the Democrats get fifty of the vote statewide, the
(15:31):
Republicans would still control sixty seats in the in the
state Assembly, that they would not lose any seats whatsoever
even if the Democrats got the vote. Yeah. And um,
the one kind of um, the one thing where it
kind of stings them, even though there haven't been any
real repercussions yet, is that one political scientist said, it's
(15:51):
getting so sophisticated though, and they're drawing these maps in
such a weird way that you can then go back
and look and say, this is clearly an outlier because
this thing looks like a uh, sidewinder rattlesnake across the
state and that is neither contiguous or compact. And it's
(16:13):
just so obvious what's going on, because you're using these
computer programs to just distort these maps to your favor. Uh.
And this is where I just get so burned up
on both sides because it's it just completely subverts the
process in place, which is you were supposed to be
able to vote for the person that represents you in
(16:33):
that vote count. I'm glad you said that, man, because
it's absolutely true. This is not like lip service, like
both sides to it. So we're mad about it now
like this is this is genuinely like neither side of
this should be doing this. This is a inherent flaw
in the political system that back in the day, when
things were different, we could get along with it. It
(16:55):
was a stumbling block. It was kind of kind of
hamstrung the democratic process some Now with a couple of things, Uh,
it has gone into hyperdrive, like so many things have,
like like normal political weirdness put through certain filters, like
incredibly powerful computer programs that just hyper tailor things like this.
(17:18):
That's a big problem. The other problem is the the
polarization of politics to a degree that it hasn't been
for well over a century or so. That has made
jerrymandering all the worse because before you could jerrymander all
you want, and but there were such things as moderate
Democrats and moderate Republicans and if it was a reasonable
(17:40):
piece of legislation, they would cross the aisle to vote
for it. They would break ranks. That does not exist anymore.
If you're a moderate ten within the last ten years,
wealthy interests basically carved you out. They created um, they
created upstart political parties to run against you in the primaries,
(18:01):
so you would lose your seat or your national convention
would collude with their favorite candidate against you. There's no
middle any longer. So the fact that they're the current
political power, whoever is in charge of that state can
jerrymander makes it all the worse because it just makes
those divisions even deeper because the parties get what they
(18:23):
want one way or the other. There's no middle ground anymore.
So jerrymandering has become a real real problem in the century. Well, yeah,
and it's just the other thing that burns me up
is is it's just a a smack in the face
of the average citizen. Yeah, it's done behind closed doors
with zero thought to geez, what is this country supposed
(18:46):
to be about? And it's just it just really burns
me up. There was a report last year by the
Brennan Center for Justice, and this just really kind of
shows exactly what's going on. It's not like we needed
this proof, but almost all jerrymander districts in this country
are in seven states Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Texas,
(19:08):
in Virginia and Texas aside, what are those other states
have in common? With one another. I don't know. They're
the swing states. Oh yeah, yeah, so the swing states
have been lost as a result of jerrymandering. Huh yeah.
Those those those seven states are where these jerryman did
jerrymander districts are happening, and they're all swing states. It's
(19:30):
just like it's little. It's literally they're going in and targeting.
How can we rig this thing as much as possible? Right,
It's just it's disgusting. Plus also, the next time you
hear a politician um talk about the founding fathers and
what they wanted in their view of everything like this,
this runs so far afoul of what the framers of
(19:54):
the Constitution we're looking for when they found when they
established the House of Representatives. It's it's mind boggling, like
they're probably generating usable energy through the spinning in their
graves that's going on right now. Because they created the
House of Representative Representatives so that there would be, like
you said, Chuck, turnover every couple of years that they
(20:16):
were the pulse of the people there. They were elected
directly by the people. They were meant to be the
voice of the people at any given time. And the
fact that jerrymandering has has been allowed to go on
like this has means that there are safe seats now
states where you can reasonably expect the party and maybe
even a single politician to hold onto for a decade
(20:39):
or more, which is not how it was supposed to
be in the House. No, and I saw that these
days in the US and in UM congressional races, maybe
a hundred of the four hundred and thirty five seats
are actually competitive races. The rest have been so firmly
made safe through jerrymandering over the years that they're not
even competitive anymore, either that one candidate or there one
(21:02):
party is going to control that that district. Alright, I
see another trick of blood coming out of your eye
this one. So let's take another break and we're gonna
get come back and start up with the two main
mayor jerrymandering techniques right after this. See good shock. Al Right,
(21:39):
So I promised talk of techniques. Um, you hear jerrymandering
and redrawing maps. There are a couple of ways that
you can do this. Uh, They're called cracking and packing.
Cracking is when you when you scatter the political supporters
across a lot of different districts so that they just
never get a majority in any of them. Like, let
(21:59):
me just snake it this way for a mile, then
back down here, and we pretty much know that they're
not going to get a majority and we're gonna win.
The other one's called packing, and that's when they jam
everyone into just a few districts and essentially just say, fine,
we're gonna lose those districts, but we're gonna win overwhelmingly
everywhere else the majority of the other districts, so we're
(22:21):
gonna be fine. Right, And cracking and packing to sound
like a political consultant came up with those to explain
it to legislators, and they probably thought it was like
the most clever you know, get it, it rhymes even, right.
So here's the thing with that, right, you can you
can use those techniques in a couple of different ways.
But but with the advent of those same computer programs
(22:45):
that that can crack people or pack people more efficiently
into all different maps or whatever, you can use the
same ones to kind of expose that kind of thing, right,
And so you can actually with those same computers, I
think you were saying, you can use to to suppose
this kind of stuff and that that political scientists you mentioned, um,
not George Nicholas Stephanopolis. I looked, I don't think they're related. Well,
(23:11):
believe it or not, um, but the but Nicholas Stephanopolis
came up with that efficiency um percentage. And so what
you do, Chuck, is you let's say that we have
and here's the part where I confuse everybody. You're ready, Yeah,
I was waiting on this. Okay, good. So let's say
that you have five districts, and you have ten people
(23:32):
in a district, and there's just two parties. I'm already lost.
So I know I've got, I've got I'm gonna start over.
I just scratched out the old stuff starting a new.
When you pack a district, meaning you take basically a
huge chunk of the other party supporters and put them
(23:54):
into one or two districts, what you're doing is, like
you said, you're giving up those districts. You know you're
gonna lose them. But as long as there's only a
couple in the larger scheme of things, as far as
Congress is concerned, you're actually coming out on top because
you're going to win more because you've packed all of
the opposition into just a couple of districts, right, So
(24:16):
in any one of those districts, you have some wasted votes.
You have your people's wasted votes, because you're gonna have
some people who live in that district and their votes
cannot possibly change the outcome of those districts elections, so
their votes are literally what they call wasted votes. You
also have some of that the oppositions people's votes, because
(24:38):
all they need is the majority of the vote or
the most votes and they're gonna win. But whatever goes
over that, that's wasted votes too. So there's a bunch
of wasted votes in there. And then similarly with cracking,
when you dilute the other parties voters and you pack
them in with your people, but you have way more
people they're us are wasted, and you've got some people
(25:01):
whose votes are wasted either. So if you take all
the wasted votes in a state and you put them together,
subtract them from one another, and then divide that by
a hundred, you've got what's called this efficiency percentage, and
it's actually a usable number that when you look at
it shows you very clearly which party is favorite, it's
a negative or a positive percentage, and it will show
(25:23):
you whose favorite. And they're they're trying to come up
with a rule of thumb now that says that anything
over a seven percent efficiency percentage is is basically undemocratic
and should be outlawed. That wasn't too confusing, was it okay?
Not at all? Here's something that isn't confusing at all.
Prison jerrymandering. This is mind blowing that this is allowed. Uh,
(25:48):
certain states have counted prison populations as part of these
efforts to redraw these districts. Even though prisoners cannot vote,
they're not eligible to vote. So there's a ward in
Iowa that has fourteen hundred residents, hundred of whom are prisoners,
and that counts. And only a few a few states
(26:09):
so far have have ruled this unconstitutional. The rest are
just playing ball, right, And by doing that, you give
those hundred that can vote a way more power because
you're actually their their vote is the opposite diluted. It's
concentrated by the addition of the non voting block. Yeah,
and again, all this is happening because from the beginning,
(26:29):
political political parties are in charge of doing this and
The only thing that's going to stop this is uh,
because I would think any sensible, reasonably intelligent American would
say this is bad for democracy, no matter which party
is doing it. And the only way to possibly break
(26:49):
this up is to have nonpartisan commissions in charge of
redrawing these maps. Yeah, and supposedly they tried that in Canada.
I guess they had rampant jerry wandering and in the
sixties they said, we're done. Your political parties can't be
trusted with this anywhere, because Chuck, it's as simple as that.
There's no reason to put it any other way. Neither
(27:10):
of the political parties can be trusted with this very
very important task. It's just that's they've just proved it,
both of them, over and over again. And in Canada
in the sixties they finally just came out and said
it and put their foot down and they created a
nonpartisan unelected commission who's in charge of drawing all the
(27:30):
maps for all the districts in the whole country. Yeah,
and they've tried it, uh. So far in six states California, Arizona, Washington, Idaho, Jersey,
and Hawaii have passed over control h two commissions uh,
and these these maps don't even need approval, final approval
from governors or state legislators. But apparently even they're like
(27:53):
these people are appointed by somebody, so it's it's even
hard to clean it up then, And they've shown that
so far, like in California, I mean, it hasn't swung
any elections, it has made some of them closer, So
maybe it's working a little bit. It sounds like it
that I think that point is worth making. Yeah, what
did the elections that historically we're not closer closer? Yeah,
(28:16):
like like Darryl Lisa used to get like sixtent of
the vote, that's what he got in two thousand ten,
and once they instituted these nonpartisan commission maps in two sixteen,
he got just he got he got a margin of
less than one percent, so like he had a twelve
percent drop in votes once they change these maps. That's
(28:40):
significant to me. Yeah, So maybe it hasn't swung an
election in California yet, but that could be a sign
that if we continue to do this, it could work. Right,
But you would think chuck, Okay, so if this is
just such obvious like anti constitutional, anti democracy skull dug
ree of course the super fream court is going to
(29:00):
have something to say about this, right. Yeah. That's that's
where it's gotten really weird this year, is that there's
a case gil versus Whitford, uh that I believe was
that didn't the Supreme Court just say they're not even
gonna hear it? Yeah? They actually kicked it back down
to the lower courts on a technicality, saying that the
(29:20):
people involved hadn't shown that they have standing because they
hadn't been directly harmed by it. And they said, you
go prove that your vote was actually wasted because of
a jerrymandered map, which actually wouldn't be that hard to
do these days. Um, and and let another lower coote
rule on it, and maybe we'll we'll hear it next time.
(29:42):
But they've been punting on it. Yeah, I mean, and
that's the way our political system works. I'm not saying
subvert that, but it seems like at some point we
as a nation that should be able to come together
and say, hey, kind of like money and dark money
and stuff like, can we just clean this up? But
here's the thing, Chuck, if you got jerrymander maps, even
if everybody turns against the dominant political party. You have
(30:04):
to have like six of the vote, a massive votered
voter turnout with like six of the vote voting against
you to actually overwhelm the jerrymandering that that that these
these maps producer, that the um the political tenacity that
these jerrymandered maps produced, and you just don't have that,
(30:25):
and what you could do it with that. But it's
it's it's just as as the current political reality is,
it's just not gonna happen. And so as long as
they're allowed to to keep these maps, whoever's in power
whenever they redraw the maps actually gets to hang onto it. Yeah,
And this is just another example of like feeling powerless
(30:45):
because the stuff is being decided among very few people
in these U closed door sessions and they I'm sure
they all think they're very clever and how they're uh
taking advantage of the system, like right in front of
our stupid faces. And then and the Supreme Court to
not swinging in. On the one hand, it's like come on,
(31:05):
But on the other hand, a lot of times we
don't really want necessarily activist justices. It depends on the
topic probably or the issue and how you feel about it,
but there there. They have a long history of saying
that's political, that's not constitutional. You guys, go handle it yourself.
But one thing I saw as an explanation for why
the Supreme Court is yet to get involved is because
(31:27):
there's no UH standard for what constitutes a a congressional
or a state district map. There's no standard that the
Supreme Court can look at and say this is the standard.
This doesn't live up to that standard. Therefore we're going
to rule this way. So that's why they haven't done that.
But they tend more often than not to uphold maps.
(31:49):
Very very infrequently do they overrule them. And there was
like a whole space of maps from Texas, North Carolina, Maryland,
and Wisconsin that they basically said, yep, they're fine whatever.
And Texas they demonstrated that these jerrymandered maps had been
used to dilute the voting power of Hispanics who live
in Texas and are the majority of Texas. Now they
(32:10):
the maps have been drawn specifically with the purpose of
of diluting their voting power, which goes in against the
Voting Rights Act of nine. That's one thing they say, like,
you can't mess with minorities voting rights, and for a
long time they said, well that includes jerrymandering. Well, Neil
Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas are both um starting the I guess. Uh.
(32:33):
In this most recent one from I think Texas, they
added on their own opinions saying, we don't think the
Voting Right at Rights Act actually prohibits that. And I
think racial jerrymandering is totally fine under the law, which
is a big problem. Yeah, and then go back and
and then that act. Yeah, you could do that, but
(32:55):
then again you have to overcome the jerrymander right exactly. Man,
it's a what do eat? What's the snake that eats
and stale? What's that called? The Burrows District of Maryland
probably is what you call. It's what it looks like.
Oh it's depressing. Huh. Yeah. There's there's one more thing too.
This has been used actually to the opposite effect. Who
(33:16):
I think during the first Bush administration they were really
big on drawing maps that um that were called affirmative gerrymandering,
which made sure that majority minority, meaning that areas where
most of the people who lived there were minorities, uh,
that they had very very strong voting power that it was.
(33:37):
They went out of their way to reflect it, and
they actually overreached in that way too, and and sometimes
the courts would throw those out. But um, it's it's
gone both ways for sure throughout history. But it just
needs to stop entirely because people aren't able to actually
vote or be represented in Congress like they should be.
You got anything else? Now? I see the blood has
(34:01):
crusted up nicely from my eyes near. You settled down,
worked up in this one too, you were, And I
was glad. I was glad. Everybody should be worked up
about this one. Everybody. Yep. Uh. If you want to
know more about jerrymandering, we'll look up this article on
how stuff works. It's pretty good. Since I said it's
(34:22):
pretty good, it's time for listener, mate, I'm gonna call this. Uh.
This is a very sad one, but I'm trying to
get the word out to a to a listener. Here
for a listener, Um, guys. After a six year battle,
my father passed away last week from a m l
acute my Lloyd leukemia at only sixty five years old.
(34:44):
In the middle of his struggle, however, he was able
to achieve about two years of remission through the help
of a bone marrow stem cell treatment. While the treatment
ultimately failed, his remission gave him two more years would
be relatively healthy life where he was able to meet
the absolute apple of his I and my new baby daughter.
Uh sorsha, Oh congratulations, love that name. She will be
(35:06):
one year old July one, which is kind of right
around when this is coming out, probably Uh, and spend
time with my other two kids, Gavin and Grayson doing
one of the things he loved most in the world,
which is being a grandfather. Hoping maybe you guys can
give a shout out to the be The Match Bone
Marrow Registry only takes a few minutes to register and
(35:27):
they send you a little cheek swab kit that you
send back in and boom, you are now eligible to
get the call to possibly give someone more time with
their friends and family or possibly even save their life.
You can go to www dot b the match dot
org and check it out. Uh, and that is from
Chris and uh row back to Chris. Very sorry to
(35:50):
hear about his father and uh definitely definitely a worthy
organization to check out. Yeah, thanks for telling everybody, Chris
that's a that's a good one. I'm going to check
that out myself. Yep, me too. If you want to
let us know about something that we and everybody who
listens to this podcast can do to make the world
a better place, we really really want to know about it.
(36:11):
You can tweet to us. You can join us on Instagram,
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You can also send us an email send it to
Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
(36:31):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Jerrymander. Yeah,
that's right, our pet salamander, Jerrymander, And this is stuff
(00:25):
you should Know. That was a dad joke right out
of the gate man. Apparently that's all I've got these days,
or dad jokes. There's nothing wrong with that, I guess not,
which is really just a way of saying middle aged
dude jokes. Sure, sure, because I think our senses of
humor decline, we get less funny. Look at Jim gaff again,
(00:47):
but we think we're funnier, right, hot pockets. Actually, I
tease Jim, I I love your work. Oh are your pals? No? Okay, no,
but I do of his work. I'm just a fan. Yeah. Um, like,
like absolutely zero, there's zero not to like about Jim
(01:10):
gaff Agan. Um, you know my buddy Jim. I say
he's um, he's sort of pals with him. He says
he's a good guy. I like, there's no way he's not.
You know, like, you just you can't you can't, you
can't make up that level of like coolness and niceness
and approachability, affability, even maybe gaffability. He just went, that's genius.
(01:31):
I'm gonna trade Marty totally as if he listens to
this show. So here we're diving into politics, which we
keep saying, like, let's not do that because it's political.
But this is very newsy and not everyone understands jerrymandering,
and I think it's this file this under p s
a because it's a big deal and it stinks and
(01:52):
it's been going on for a long time. Yeah, it was.
I'm definitely one of those people who didn't understand it.
Like I knew, yeah, I had to do with drawing
maps and you could draw them so that they're unfair,
and I never thought, well, how do you do that?
And I found out thanks to researching this episode, and
apparently it's gotten way way worse in recent years. So
(02:12):
to understand gerrymandering, though, you have to understand a little
bit about the House of Representatives. One of the two
houses of Congress, one's the Senate. One is the House
of Representatives, and Webster's defines right, Yeah, so the deal
of the House is is that the founding fathers um
(02:35):
invented the House or established let's say the House to
be a much more sort of of the moment reactive, fair,
ultra democratic group of uh governing body, and that it's
only every two years. And the idea was to have
a lot of turnover and have them really uh you know,
(02:58):
because there's four five of them, have them really uh
really tied to their constituents, right, So it's just a
super fair way for things that really matter to you
on a smaller level are heard as opposed to the Senate,
which is you know, far far fewer, right. And there
are a couple of ways that they did this. One,
like you said, elections are held every two years. All
(03:21):
Congress people are up for re election every two years,
and they're they're elected directly by the people they represent.
And when they started, I think there was sixty five
seats in the House of Representatives, and by twelve I
think it was up to four d and thirty five.
And they added seats because they established the House of
(03:44):
Representatives to to represent a set proportion of um population population,
So each congress person represents one chunk of America from
their state, right. So the larger and large America grew
the more and more congress people you needed, and then
finally in nineteen twelve, they said, uh, we can't do
(04:06):
the same more. We're just gonna if you have too
many congress people, they're going to Um, you're not gonna
be able to do anything. It's just going to be
too many. Right, So they kept it at four and
thirty five. And that does something. It's it it means
that if you have a state that keeps growing, because
it's not like America stopped growing in population in nineteen twelve,
(04:26):
So as your population keeps growing, that means that as
one state keeps growing proportionately speaking, that means another state
is smaller, whether people move from that state to the
other larger state or the other larger state just by
contrast attractive more people. That means that the smaller state
or the one that didn't grow as much, is going
(04:46):
to actually lose congressional seats, and that the bigger seats
or the bigger state, the one that's growing, will actually
gain congressional seats. Because again, a congress person represents a
set amount of American public from their home state, and
right now it's about seven I think the average is
seven hundred and eleven thousand people is how many people
(05:08):
a congress person represents in the US today. Yeah, and
they did this through what's called the Reapportionment Act, of
which basically set up all right, here's an automatic system.
Now every ten years, we do a census, and they
will just redistribute and allocate seats according to that census
every ten years. And like you said, if you're growing,
(05:30):
we're gonna nip some away from the places that aren't
growing or shrinking. And it was, you know, it seemed
like a pretty fair way to redistribute and allocate these uh,
these seats. It is. It's extremely fair. And so as
a result, you've got like Montana that the whole state
has one congressional district that represents about a million people,
whereas New York State has, which is a third of
(05:52):
the size of Montana, has twenty seven congress congressional districts
and hence seats in Congress. Right, it's a very fair system.
Here's the problem when the Census Bureau figures out all
these figures and they say, well, this state actually should
get two new congress people, and you know, this state
should lose one and another state loses one. Um, they
(06:14):
have to redraw the maps of the state to show
what these new districts are because population is shifted every
over the ten years since the last census, so you
have to update the maps to make sure that they
each congress person is representing roughly the same number of
people and so everybody is accounted for. Again makes sense, right, Yeah,
(06:37):
But the problem came in when they were very vague
as far as the rules for drawing these boundaries. Uh.
It says something like geographically can geographically contiguous, compact in shape,
roughly equal in population. All these things are subjective, so
when partisan politics become involved, the people that redraw these maps,
(07:00):
it seems, can't help themselves but be like, hey, if
we move over ten blocks this way, and like a
couple of miles that way, and shape it like this,
which looks really weird, but hey, that's okay because these
rules are vague, then we you know, even though there
may be a majority of one party, we could still
(07:21):
win if we draw this thing the right way, right. Like.
The big problem with this whole process for apportioning the
House of Representative seats is that they left in each
state the dominant political party who happened to be in
power at the time when the maps need to be redrawn,
it was left up to them. There's no federal oversight,
there's no there's no oversight whatsoever. And the whole premise
(07:45):
of it was, well, okay, um, the voters will see
what they're doing and will vote those guys out. The
problem is, if you control the congressional maps, you can
draw them in such a way that even the voters
can't vote you out. And this is jerrymandering. And this
is the current state of politics right now and has
been for a very long time. Actually, we've been jerrymandering
(08:05):
for a while, but again, like I said, supposedly it's
gotten way worse in the last decade. Yeah, all right,
I'm a little worked up already. Yep, you've got a Interestingly,
you're crying blood. I'm trying not to, but it's not helping.
So we're gonna take a little break and maybe let's
(08:26):
jump back and talk history, if that's right with you.
I would love that, Chuck, and then we will go
back forward in time to study the current mess that
we're in right after this. Sorry, huh, all right, we're
(09:03):
in the way back machine. Yeah, it's Virginia ratifies. It's
ratifies the Constitution of the US. And former Governor Patrick
Henry convinces his state legislators to redraw the fifth Congressional
District to force his foe, James Madison, to run against
(09:24):
James Monroe, because he figured he could easily win. It
backfired on him. Madison came out on top. But this
kind of kick started at the onset of our founding
in our country in the Constitution, the process of jerrymandering,
even though at that point it wasn't quite known as
jerrymandering yet, No, it wasn't. It was known as jerrymandering
(09:46):
after I think eight the eighteen twenties, I believe, and
the governor of Massachusetts Elbridge Jerry eighteen twelve, Um Elbridge Jerry,
who was he was the governor of Massachusetts, right correct?
He um came up with a map that he drew
to help keep his party, the Democrat Republicans, I think,
(10:09):
which is beyond confusing, right but Um, he drew a
map that was just abhorrent. It was just so clearly
partisan and drawn just to keep his his party in
power in Massachusetts. But I think the Boston Gazette published
a picture of this map and proclaimed that it looked
(10:30):
like a salamander, and so they said, this isn't a salamander,
this is a jerrymander, which is a million times worse
because it's politically toxic and a lizard. I love that
little tidbit, but that's where the name came from. Yeah,
it had never had any idea, but that's where jerrymandering
came from. Not a pretty word, but it definitely rolls
(10:52):
off the tongue like a um oil. So it grew
to be a very common practice and very blatant, and
Congress at one point early on in two tried to
get it under control with that Apportionment Act that I
talked about um and that said, you know those vague
(11:13):
things like let's draw these thing as contiguous and compact
as possible. But it just apparently no one, I guess.
The rules were so vague and outlined in such a
nebulous manner that there was no way to enforce it,
such that at one point they carved out two separate
states North and South Dakota. Uh the Republican can controlled
(11:34):
Congress so they could get more seats in the Senate Yeah,
at the time, if you were a state, you had
three electoral College votes, don't matter your size or anything
like that. And the Dakota territories were Republican leaning, so
the Republicans said, hey, you guys, welcome to the Union.
And by the way, we're going to carve you into
two states. So now we have six electoral votes rather
than just the three if you were one big state. Yeah,
(11:58):
pretty clever, pretty sky says. So. Um. One thing that
this article, I think this is a Patrick Kiger article,
I think it's smart to point out is that this
is not just a Republican technique. This has been done
throughout history by both the parties UM, both the two
(12:18):
main parties, the Democrats and Republicans apparently also the Democratic
Republicans and UM two to the same effect, which is,
we're drawing these maps to make sure that you guys
don't have a fighting chance in the next congressional elections. Right.
(12:39):
I did some digging though, because I was curious about
these days, like who, um It's interesting because you can
say who is worse with jerry mandering, or more correctly,
maybe who was better at jerry mandering as far as
getting it pushed through more, and every political science and
mathematician will tell you that, uh, across the board sort
(13:01):
of Republicans are are either better at it or doing
it way more or that the the recent elections over
the last I think like three or so have have
favored the GOP in ways that they ended up with
something like twenty extra seats that they wouldn't have otherwise
(13:21):
had had the maps not been jerrymandered. Yeah. And then
in some of these I think Maryland was one case
where even though it was at Maryland where the Democrats
held like a majority, yet they the maps are drawn
in such a way that they would have to get
like an eight to ten point Oh I'm sorry this Wisconsin. Yeah,
(13:42):
Wisconsin an eight to ten point victory in order to
overcome those jerrymandering maps. Yeah, which is it's just not
going to happen because Wisconsin is pretty close to being
um down the middle. And that's actually a really good
example of the modern jerrymandering that's going on. Like Patrick
Group points out, when you think of jerryman doing this
(14:02):
kind of thing, you think of like guys like in
a back room smoking cigars and like like poking each
other in the chest say and this this is my district,
and you can have this one that kind of thing.
But this is actually like they're very specialized political consultants
who go around the country after each census and help
states draw their maps. Um, and they're there. They do
(14:26):
so with like really sophisticated software that has like block
level census data, so like just like by the block,
the people who live on a block, they can carve
it out like that so that they can more accurately
create these maps. And then when they create these maps,
they can create dozens as many as you want. And
(14:47):
when they when they use them as a model, they
can feed them into their their computers and run a
simulation of future elections based on this map. It's and
then they can this is why it's gotten so bad.
And then they can and um, just take this block out.
What happens if we take this blackout and put this
one in instead, And now all of a sudden, oh well,
we'll win for the next ten years. And they have
(15:11):
this this map. And the reason that I started talking
about this apparently Wisconsin has a map that's in effect
right now that is so well done that even if
the the Democrats get fifty of the vote statewide, the
(15:31):
Republicans would still control sixty seats in the in the
state Assembly, that they would not lose any seats whatsoever
even if the Democrats got the vote. Yeah. And um,
the one kind of um, the one thing where it
kind of stings them, even though there haven't been any
real repercussions yet, is that one political scientist said, it's
(15:51):
getting so sophisticated though, and they're drawing these maps in
such a weird way that you can then go back
and look and say, this is clearly an outlier because
this thing looks like a uh, sidewinder rattlesnake across the
state and that is neither contiguous or compact. And it's
(16:13):
just so obvious what's going on, because you're using these
computer programs to just distort these maps to your favor. Uh.
And this is where I just get so burned up
on both sides because it's it just completely subverts the
process in place, which is you were supposed to be
able to vote for the person that represents you in
(16:33):
that vote count. I'm glad you said that, man, because
it's absolutely true. This is not like lip service, like
both sides to it. So we're mad about it now
like this is this is genuinely like neither side of
this should be doing this. This is a inherent flaw
in the political system that back in the day, when
things were different, we could get along with it. It
(16:55):
was a stumbling block. It was kind of kind of
hamstrung the democratic process some Now with a couple of things, Uh,
it has gone into hyperdrive, like so many things have,
like like normal political weirdness put through certain filters, like
incredibly powerful computer programs that just hyper tailor things like this.
(17:18):
That's a big problem. The other problem is the the
polarization of politics to a degree that it hasn't been
for well over a century or so. That has made
jerrymandering all the worse because before you could jerrymander all
you want, and but there were such things as moderate
Democrats and moderate Republicans and if it was a reasonable
(17:40):
piece of legislation, they would cross the aisle to vote
for it. They would break ranks. That does not exist anymore.
If you're a moderate ten within the last ten years,
wealthy interests basically carved you out. They created um, they
created upstart political parties to run against you in the primaries,
(18:01):
so you would lose your seat or your national convention
would collude with their favorite candidate against you. There's no
middle any longer. So the fact that they're the current
political power, whoever is in charge of that state can
jerrymander makes it all the worse because it just makes
those divisions even deeper because the parties get what they
(18:23):
want one way or the other. There's no middle ground anymore.
So jerrymandering has become a real real problem in the century. Well, yeah,
and it's just the other thing that burns me up
is is it's just a a smack in the face
of the average citizen. Yeah, it's done behind closed doors
with zero thought to geez, what is this country supposed
(18:46):
to be about? And it's just it just really burns
me up. There was a report last year by the
Brennan Center for Justice, and this just really kind of
shows exactly what's going on. It's not like we needed
this proof, but almost all jerrymander districts in this country
are in seven states Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Texas,
(19:08):
in Virginia and Texas aside, what are those other states
have in common? With one another. I don't know. They're
the swing states. Oh yeah, yeah, so the swing states
have been lost as a result of jerrymandering. Huh yeah.
Those those those seven states are where these jerryman did
jerrymander districts are happening, and they're all swing states. It's
(19:30):
just like it's little. It's literally they're going in and targeting.
How can we rig this thing as much as possible? Right,
It's just it's disgusting. Plus also, the next time you
hear a politician um talk about the founding fathers and
what they wanted in their view of everything like this,
this runs so far afoul of what the framers of
(19:54):
the Constitution we're looking for when they found when they
established the House of Representatives. It's it's mind boggling, like
they're probably generating usable energy through the spinning in their
graves that's going on right now. Because they created the
House of Representative Representatives so that there would be, like
you said, Chuck, turnover every couple of years that they
(20:16):
were the pulse of the people there. They were elected
directly by the people. They were meant to be the
voice of the people at any given time. And the
fact that jerrymandering has has been allowed to go on
like this has means that there are safe seats now
states where you can reasonably expect the party and maybe
even a single politician to hold onto for a decade
(20:39):
or more, which is not how it was supposed to
be in the House. No, and I saw that these
days in the US and in UM congressional races, maybe
a hundred of the four hundred and thirty five seats
are actually competitive races. The rest have been so firmly
made safe through jerrymandering over the years that they're not
even competitive anymore, either that one candidate or there one
(21:02):
party is going to control that that district. Alright, I
see another trick of blood coming out of your eye
this one. So let's take another break and we're gonna
get come back and start up with the two main
mayor jerrymandering techniques right after this. See good shock. Al Right,
(21:39):
So I promised talk of techniques. Um, you hear jerrymandering
and redrawing maps. There are a couple of ways that
you can do this. Uh, They're called cracking and packing.
Cracking is when you when you scatter the political supporters
across a lot of different districts so that they just
never get a majority in any of them. Like, let
(21:59):
me just snake it this way for a mile, then
back down here, and we pretty much know that they're
not going to get a majority and we're gonna win.
The other one's called packing, and that's when they jam
everyone into just a few districts and essentially just say, fine,
we're gonna lose those districts, but we're gonna win overwhelmingly
everywhere else the majority of the other districts, so we're
(22:21):
gonna be fine. Right, And cracking and packing to sound
like a political consultant came up with those to explain
it to legislators, and they probably thought it was like
the most clever you know, get it, it rhymes even, right.
So here's the thing with that, right, you can you
can use those techniques in a couple of different ways.
But but with the advent of those same computer programs
(22:45):
that that can crack people or pack people more efficiently
into all different maps or whatever, you can use the
same ones to kind of expose that kind of thing, right,
And so you can actually with those same computers, I
think you were saying, you can use to to suppose
this kind of stuff and that that political scientists you mentioned, um,
not George Nicholas Stephanopolis. I looked, I don't think they're related. Well,
(23:11):
believe it or not, um, but the but Nicholas Stephanopolis
came up with that efficiency um percentage. And so what
you do, Chuck, is you let's say that we have
and here's the part where I confuse everybody. You're ready, Yeah,
I was waiting on this. Okay, good. So let's say
that you have five districts, and you have ten people
(23:32):
in a district, and there's just two parties. I'm already lost.
So I know I've got, I've got I'm gonna start over.
I just scratched out the old stuff starting a new.
When you pack a district, meaning you take basically a
huge chunk of the other party supporters and put them
(23:54):
into one or two districts, what you're doing is, like
you said, you're giving up those districts. You know you're
gonna lose them. But as long as there's only a
couple in the larger scheme of things, as far as
Congress is concerned, you're actually coming out on top because
you're going to win more because you've packed all of
the opposition into just a couple of districts, right, So
(24:16):
in any one of those districts, you have some wasted votes.
You have your people's wasted votes, because you're gonna have
some people who live in that district and their votes
cannot possibly change the outcome of those districts elections, so
their votes are literally what they call wasted votes. You
also have some of that the oppositions people's votes, because
(24:38):
all they need is the majority of the vote or
the most votes and they're gonna win. But whatever goes
over that, that's wasted votes too. So there's a bunch
of wasted votes in there. And then similarly with cracking,
when you dilute the other parties voters and you pack
them in with your people, but you have way more
people they're us are wasted, and you've got some people
(25:01):
whose votes are wasted either. So if you take all
the wasted votes in a state and you put them together,
subtract them from one another, and then divide that by
a hundred, you've got what's called this efficiency percentage, and
it's actually a usable number that when you look at
it shows you very clearly which party is favorite, it's
a negative or a positive percentage, and it will show
(25:23):
you whose favorite. And they're they're trying to come up
with a rule of thumb now that says that anything
over a seven percent efficiency percentage is is basically undemocratic
and should be outlawed. That wasn't too confusing, was it okay?
Not at all? Here's something that isn't confusing at all.
Prison jerrymandering. This is mind blowing that this is allowed. Uh,
(25:48):
certain states have counted prison populations as part of these
efforts to redraw these districts. Even though prisoners cannot vote,
they're not eligible to vote. So there's a ward in
Iowa that has fourteen hundred residents, hundred of whom are prisoners,
and that counts. And only a few a few states
(26:09):
so far have have ruled this unconstitutional. The rest are
just playing ball, right, And by doing that, you give
those hundred that can vote a way more power because
you're actually their their vote is the opposite diluted. It's
concentrated by the addition of the non voting block. Yeah,
and again, all this is happening because from the beginning,
(26:29):
political political parties are in charge of doing this and
The only thing that's going to stop this is uh,
because I would think any sensible, reasonably intelligent American would
say this is bad for democracy, no matter which party
is doing it. And the only way to possibly break
(26:49):
this up is to have nonpartisan commissions in charge of
redrawing these maps. Yeah, and supposedly they tried that in Canada.
I guess they had rampant jerry wandering and in the
sixties they said, we're done. Your political parties can't be
trusted with this anywhere, because Chuck, it's as simple as that.
There's no reason to put it any other way. Neither
(27:10):
of the political parties can be trusted with this very
very important task. It's just that's they've just proved it,
both of them, over and over again. And in Canada
in the sixties they finally just came out and said
it and put their foot down and they created a
nonpartisan unelected commission who's in charge of drawing all the
(27:30):
maps for all the districts in the whole country. Yeah,
and they've tried it, uh. So far in six states California, Arizona, Washington, Idaho, Jersey,
and Hawaii have passed over control h two commissions uh,
and these these maps don't even need approval, final approval
from governors or state legislators. But apparently even they're like
(27:53):
these people are appointed by somebody, so it's it's even
hard to clean it up then, And they've shown that
so far, like in California, I mean, it hasn't swung
any elections, it has made some of them closer, So
maybe it's working a little bit. It sounds like it
that I think that point is worth making. Yeah, what
did the elections that historically we're not closer closer? Yeah,
(28:16):
like like Darryl Lisa used to get like sixtent of
the vote, that's what he got in two thousand ten,
and once they instituted these nonpartisan commission maps in two sixteen,
he got just he got he got a margin of
less than one percent, so like he had a twelve
percent drop in votes once they change these maps. That's
(28:40):
significant to me. Yeah, So maybe it hasn't swung an
election in California yet, but that could be a sign
that if we continue to do this, it could work. Right,
But you would think chuck, Okay, so if this is
just such obvious like anti constitutional, anti democracy skull dug
ree of course the super fream court is going to
(29:00):
have something to say about this, right. Yeah. That's that's
where it's gotten really weird this year, is that there's
a case gil versus Whitford, uh that I believe was
that didn't the Supreme Court just say they're not even
gonna hear it? Yeah? They actually kicked it back down
to the lower courts on a technicality, saying that the
(29:20):
people involved hadn't shown that they have standing because they
hadn't been directly harmed by it. And they said, you
go prove that your vote was actually wasted because of
a jerrymandered map, which actually wouldn't be that hard to
do these days. Um, and and let another lower coote
rule on it, and maybe we'll we'll hear it next time.
(29:42):
But they've been punting on it. Yeah, I mean, and
that's the way our political system works. I'm not saying
subvert that, but it seems like at some point we
as a nation that should be able to come together
and say, hey, kind of like money and dark money
and stuff like, can we just clean this up? But
here's the thing, Chuck, if you got jerrymander maps, even
if everybody turns against the dominant political party. You have
(30:04):
to have like six of the vote, a massive votered
voter turnout with like six of the vote voting against
you to actually overwhelm the jerrymandering that that that these
these maps producer, that the um the political tenacity that
these jerrymandered maps produced, and you just don't have that,
(30:25):
and what you could do it with that. But it's
it's it's just as as the current political reality is,
it's just not gonna happen. And so as long as
they're allowed to to keep these maps, whoever's in power
whenever they redraw the maps actually gets to hang onto it. Yeah,
And this is just another example of like feeling powerless
(30:45):
because the stuff is being decided among very few people
in these U closed door sessions and they I'm sure
they all think they're very clever and how they're uh
taking advantage of the system, like right in front of
our stupid faces. And then and the Supreme Court to
not swinging in. On the one hand, it's like come on,
(31:05):
But on the other hand, a lot of times we
don't really want necessarily activist justices. It depends on the
topic probably or the issue and how you feel about it,
but there there. They have a long history of saying
that's political, that's not constitutional. You guys, go handle it yourself.
But one thing I saw as an explanation for why
the Supreme Court is yet to get involved is because
(31:27):
there's no UH standard for what constitutes a a congressional
or a state district map. There's no standard that the
Supreme Court can look at and say this is the standard.
This doesn't live up to that standard. Therefore we're going
to rule this way. So that's why they haven't done that.
But they tend more often than not to uphold maps.
(31:49):
Very very infrequently do they overrule them. And there was
like a whole space of maps from Texas, North Carolina, Maryland,
and Wisconsin that they basically said, yep, they're fine whatever.
And Texas they demonstrated that these jerrymandered maps had been
used to dilute the voting power of Hispanics who live
in Texas and are the majority of Texas. Now they
(32:10):
the maps have been drawn specifically with the purpose of
of diluting their voting power, which goes in against the
Voting Rights Act of nine. That's one thing they say, like,
you can't mess with minorities voting rights, and for a
long time they said, well that includes jerrymandering. Well, Neil
Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas are both um starting the I guess. Uh.
(32:33):
In this most recent one from I think Texas, they
added on their own opinions saying, we don't think the
Voting Right at Rights Act actually prohibits that. And I
think racial jerrymandering is totally fine under the law, which
is a big problem. Yeah, and then go back and
and then that act. Yeah, you could do that, but
(32:55):
then again you have to overcome the jerrymander right exactly. Man,
it's a what do eat? What's the snake that eats
and stale? What's that called? The Burrows District of Maryland
probably is what you call. It's what it looks like.
Oh it's depressing. Huh. Yeah. There's there's one more thing too.
This has been used actually to the opposite effect. Who
(33:16):
I think during the first Bush administration they were really
big on drawing maps that um that were called affirmative gerrymandering,
which made sure that majority minority, meaning that areas where
most of the people who lived there were minorities, uh,
that they had very very strong voting power that it was.
(33:37):
They went out of their way to reflect it, and
they actually overreached in that way too, and and sometimes
the courts would throw those out. But um, it's it's
gone both ways for sure throughout history. But it just
needs to stop entirely because people aren't able to actually
vote or be represented in Congress like they should be.
You got anything else? Now? I see the blood has
(34:01):
crusted up nicely from my eyes near. You settled down,
worked up in this one too, you were, And I
was glad. I was glad. Everybody should be worked up
about this one. Everybody. Yep. Uh. If you want to
know more about jerrymandering, we'll look up this article on
how stuff works. It's pretty good. Since I said it's
(34:22):
pretty good, it's time for listener, mate, I'm gonna call this. Uh.
This is a very sad one, but I'm trying to
get the word out to a to a listener. Here
for a listener, Um, guys. After a six year battle,
my father passed away last week from a m l
acute my Lloyd leukemia at only sixty five years old.
(34:44):
In the middle of his struggle, however, he was able
to achieve about two years of remission through the help
of a bone marrow stem cell treatment. While the treatment
ultimately failed, his remission gave him two more years would
be relatively healthy life where he was able to meet
the absolute apple of his I and my new baby daughter.
Uh sorsha, Oh congratulations, love that name. She will be
(35:06):
one year old July one, which is kind of right
around when this is coming out, probably Uh, and spend
time with my other two kids, Gavin and Grayson doing
one of the things he loved most in the world,
which is being a grandfather. Hoping maybe you guys can
give a shout out to the be The Match Bone
Marrow Registry only takes a few minutes to register and
(35:27):
they send you a little cheek swab kit that you
send back in and boom, you are now eligible to
get the call to possibly give someone more time with
their friends and family or possibly even save their life.
You can go to www dot b the match dot
org and check it out. Uh, and that is from
Chris and uh row back to Chris. Very sorry to
(35:50):
hear about his father and uh definitely definitely a worthy
organization to check out. Yeah, thanks for telling everybody, Chris
that's a that's a good one. I'm going to check
that out myself. Yep, me too. If you want to
let us know about something that we and everybody who
listens to this podcast can do to make the world
a better place, we really really want to know about it.
(36:11):
You can tweet to us. You can join us on Instagram,
on Facebook, all that jam. You can find all those
links at our website, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
You can also send us an email send it to
Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
(36:31):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com.
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