October 27, 2025 • 15 mins
Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley expose how gerrymandering and low-turnout primaries rig 87% of House races, leaving just 7% of voters in control. Guest Rob Richie, president of Expand Democracy and co-founder of FairVote, traces his reform journey from family legacy to pushing ranked choice voting and proportional representation. Diving into the Voting Rights Act's triumphs—like soaring Black voter registration post-1965—and its erosion by Supreme Court rulings, they reveal how fair systems could shatter racial barriers and empower every voice in a polarized democracy.
Timestamps:
- (00:00) Hidden Election Truths: Primaries Lock in Winners
- (00:37) Hosts and Guest: Jerremy, Dave, and Rob Richie
- (01:29) Rob's Reform Spark: From Family Legacy to Advocacy
- (03:54) Voting Systems Evolution: Duopolies and Third-Party Struggles
- (11:23) Voting Rights Act Impact: Breaking Racial Barriers
Connect: Rob Richie
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jerremy (00:00):
Most of America's elections are decided long before election day in 2024.
(00:08):
87% of house races weredecided before you even voted.
They're locked months before inprimaries by just 7% of voters deciding
who represents you and Congress.
It's not corruption.
It's designed, we draw lines that twistdemocracy into a system, rewarding
(00:31):
safe seats to big parties and extremeswhile leaving most voices out.
I'm Jerremy Alexander Newsom withmy co-host Dave Conley, and this
is Solving America's Problems.
This is a good one and we are reallypumped that it's mostly audio today
because Dave Dave is here in spirit.
(00:52):
He's gotten beat up pretty bad with somevery unique virus, but he is still here.
Today we're joined by Rob Richie,president of Expand Democracy and
co-founder of Fair Vote, whose reformsranked choice, voting proportional
representation, and Alaska's top fourprimary aim to make every vote matter.
(01:15):
. Rob, welcome to the show.
Rob (01:17):
Thank you Jerremy.
That was a lovely inter introductionand there's, so much to talk about, both
what has we've tried to do and done overthe last, uh, 35 years and all things.
We still need to do it.
Jerremy (01:29):
reflecting on your journey from Fair Votes founding in 1992 to
expand democracy today, what personalexperiences first sparked your focus
on the mechanics of electoral change?
Rob (01:43):
It was a combination of things.
I had the good fortune of being thegreat nephew of a guy named George
Hallett, who had been the leader of theproportional representation movement
in the 20th century, which a lot ofpeople don't even realize existed.
But a number of cities adopted proportionrepresentation in New York City being
the biggest in the thirties and forties.
(02:06):
And he edited a column in theNational Civic Review for many years.
And my dad had absorbedall of his insights.
And so as I was a young persongetting involved in politics,
he just shared about this idea.
So I had this kind of idea planted that,oh, we should be talking about this.
And then I got very involved in a charterreform effort in Washington state.
And in my county and said, oh of course weshould look at proportion representation.
(02:29):
And this is pre-internet and youjust send lots of letters out and
learn more and more about things.
And I think that what really drove myinterest in it is a belief that our
politics was too narrow at the time.
That was I think the insight of thetime that politics was like a duopoly
and third parties were isolated andindependents couldn't really run.
(02:51):
And what you saw emerging was Ross Pro ranfor president in 1992 or the first year.
That was a strong independent voicethat created a conversation about
ranked choice voting and the termlimits movement passed everywhere.
That was one approach to like, how canwe respond to things, but I felt that
proportion representation was thispositive change and it was really fun.
(03:15):
We connected with people.
We all convened in Cincinnati.
And stepped in without really anymoney, but a lot of energy and a
lot of good connections around thecountry and kind of year by year
have found a lot of things to do.
And I think what ultimatelywas the change that moved the
most was rank choice, voting.
But over the years I was fortunateenough to advance other good ideas,
(03:38):
like the National Popular Vote Plan anddifferent voter registration changes
and, you get a lot of changes, buthere we're with so much to do and so
it's not it hasn't been worth doing.
But it also is clear that wehave, we have a long way to go.
Jerremy (03:53):
Yep.
Yeah.
And when you think about the evolutionof your ideas from the 1998 Boston
Review essay on winner take all votingto the 2023 piece on the New Zealand's
model or New Zealand switch to morelike proportional voting system
in nine three, what emotions ariseabout the path to reform in America?
(04:14):
'cause mentioning we have so much left todo, what really gets sparks inside of you.
Rob (04:19):
What really drove my interest in the nineties and a lot of the
people coming into that generation, Ithink there were two major strands of
interest for proportion representation.
One was this sense of thehip lock nature of parties.
And so the energy really mostlycame from outside the parties,
like to the left or to the right.
You sometimes would see againthis Ross Perot kind of energy,
(04:41):
but more on the left and right.
On that piece now we don'tsee them as hip lock.
We see the parties as deadlocked.
We see like the polarization and thedoom loop of the parties being pushed
in each cycle farther and farther apart,and fearing and hating each other.
And when a party gets a chance to runthings, running it on its own, it's
very much against grain of how UnitedStates Constitution is set up and how
(05:06):
we govern best and also the whole timewe've had this conversation about how to
be a successful multiracial democracy.
And so when I first started, within thefirst year, we had the first major Supreme
Court rulings checking the approach toimplementing the Voting Rights Act to
create access to representation for racialminorities through drawing districts to
(05:29):
create black majority Latino, majorityAsian American majority districts within
a winner take all system, trying tomake it fair for those in the minority,
which is almost a contradiction.
And that approach becamecontroversial within that first year.
And we were engaging with thatand trying to point out that, a
proportional system would allowa voter driven process to that.
(05:52):
And now we're seeing that one heatingup in a whole different way too.
But that, so back inthe nineties was really.
Talking about it more through that lens.
I will say I've always had thisvision of making aspirational changes.
I wanna make big changes becauseI feel that we need to do a lot,
we need to address the electoralcollege, we need to have a right to
(06:12):
vote in the Constitution and so on.
And changing winner take all elections,but always wanting to be relevant,
always finding a way to move forwardand really engaging where people are.
And what we ultimately found inthe aughts and in the tens, is that
rankers voting was where peoplewere more ready to make changes.
(06:35):
And so I continue to believein proportional systems.
I think actually the trends I justtalked about create an opening for that.
But I also feel that rank trustvoting is just particularly relevant
for a change right now that canbe won, not easily, but that's one
that, so that has been important.
It's always this dance between keepingthe big ideas in mind, but trying
(06:59):
to find a vehicle to advance 'em.
Jerremy (07:02):
Right and.
This example where you're talkingabout, I think in general you have this
institutional trust at historic lows.
How do you see reforms like proportional,rank choice voting, which is a great way
to, allocate these seats based on voteshare using ranked ballots, addressing
(07:26):
that through more or better legislativeempowerment for everyday voters.
Rob (07:31):
I think the most exciting change that would happen is that all the
parts of the country would open up.
Toward relevant competitiveelections in November.
So that's step one.
That's also why I like thenational popular vote plan.
The having a direct election ofpresident, effectively within
the electoral college system.
But it, every vote in everystate counts the same.
(07:51):
And so the candidates will compete for avote in Mississippi and in Massachusetts
and Michigan and the swing states.
And in some ways the swing states,nonw states and presidential
elections underscores that in awinner take all system in this
heavily polarized environment.
There's only some places that are close.
So we can see that really clearlyin presidential races and the
(08:13):
candidates evidence that they justdon't campaign in, 80% of the country.
And then in house races because it'sfractured by having individual candidates.
It's maybe not as obvious, but we'regetting more and more aware of just
how similar it is in some ways,even more so in the sense of just.
Almost every congressional raceisn't competitive in November.
(08:34):
So if you just go tomulti-member districts.
So that's the step is like rightnow we have a single member district
system where the, that line drawingis so incredibly important because
you're shaping that one winner.
Take all contest to multi-member districtswhere you have more than one, you
combine districts to make them bigger.
And then if you use proportionalrank choice voting, which the
(08:54):
ballot is just like rank choice,voting, very simple, very intuitive.
It's who's my first choice?
Who's my second choice?
Who's my third choice?
Ah, I don't wanna rank anybody else.
You.
It's totally up to you.
You can rank within a party.
You don't have to rank within a party.
You have a lot of power as a voterto define what matters to you.
But let's look about it from apartisan lens, is that the math of
(09:15):
how to win changes from needing morethan 50% of the vote to a proportion
of the multi-member district.
So if it's a three seats, the math meansa little over a quarter of the vote.
Means that you can win, if it'sfive seats, gets down to about
little under 20%, so you know 17%and it's still ranked as voting.
So if you vote for a candidate who'sfarther down, it's not gonna win.
(09:38):
Your ballot can stillcount for a second choice.
So you put those together and essentiallyevery part of the country, the Fair
Representation Act, which is a statutoryproposal in Congress, would mean that
every state that has at least threeseats, very likely, every district would
have more than one party winning seats.
You wouldn't have this homogenous winnertake all red versus blue environment.
(10:01):
You'd have shades of purple anddifferences within the major parties.
Much more fluid access forthose racial minorities.
But that sense for voters, I'm ina competitive elections, candidates
are gonna reach out to me.
I have some real choices.
I don't even have to stick within themajor parties and, I can still have
a second choice within a major party.
Like I, I have a lot more powerand opportunity and politics
(10:24):
suddenly becomes real everywhere.
And when they win, you gotboth parties representing every
part of the country, right?
So you don't have this, oh, I'm aRepublican, so I don't care about the
big cities, or I'm a Democrat and I'mnot really looking at rural areas, right?
You have people from everywhereand you have minor parties and
independents holding them accountable,which we certainly need as well.
Jerremy (10:45):
Yeah.
And I think that's a reallygreat point just to be a little
bit more well representativeof what a revolution, right?
We could actually all really bemaking a choice a difference here.
In 2023, Rob, or sorry, yeah.
2023 you co-authored a piecediscussing voting rights.
(11:06):
The Voting Rights Act constraints, right?
Discussing the federalprotections against.
Racial discrimination in voting.
How do those continue to shape theadaptation of proportional systems
in the US for everyday communities?
Rob (11:23):
I would say this is that the Voting Rights Act was one of these
history making changes in the1960s, the first version of it 1965.
And, at that time we essentiallyhad a system of apartheid
in a lot of the country.
Or at least the south.
But even, Virginia, right across theriver from me you had segregation
(11:44):
about access to lunch countersand things, and in voting it could
get really bad, so in Mississippi.
Of eligible African American adultsor adults who are over 18 who are
African American only about 10%were registered to vote in 65.
And by 68, 69, that was up to I dunno, 85or 90 or something, like a massive change
(12:04):
because suddenly you were not able to denypeople based on race access to the ballot.
And there were other protections builtinto the Voting Rights Act o sort of
over time, the most probably impactfulof which was that in certain areas
of the country was measured historiesof racial discrimination practices.
(12:27):
If they tried to make any changeat any level of government in that
jurisdiction that affected voting, ithad to be reviewed by the Department
of Justice and to say, oh, that'snot gonna have a negative impact.
And so you had this, what wecall prophylactic change in that
most jurisdictions knowing that.
What was gonna be reviewed wouldbe thrown out if it wasn't fair,
(12:50):
just didn't do bad practices.
That particular provision, section fiveof the Voting Rights Act was thrown out
by the Supreme Court about a decade ago.
And that has opened the door towardjurisdictions pushing the boundaries.
So you can only stop thosepractices now within a, with a
lawsuit that's expensive to do.
(13:11):
And and that, that has had some reallyripple effects that are quite negative.
We're still seeing, we're not seeinganything like what we saw in the
sixties as far as disparate effectsfor voter registration and voter
turnout that we saw at that level.
But we're starting to see thingschip away and this new Voting Rights
Act case that was just heard in theSupreme Court recently, and there's
(13:35):
a lot of conjecture about what itmight mean, but they might take away.
The provision of the VotingRights Act that is more about
representation than about access.
And that representation piece isthat if there's certain standards,
so there's a history, so youhave to prove these things.
So it's not like you can dothis everywhere, but you have
to show that there's measurablediscrimination or voters factor
(13:59):
in race in the way they vote.
A racial minority is in the minority, sothey're not in the majority, and you put
those together, you have a challengingsituation for the racial minority to win.
And there's a solution.
There's a remedy.
And the traditional remedy thatyou can do is to be able to draw a
single member district to turn theracial minority into a majority.
(14:23):
That part is becoming very muchunder scrutiny of the majority of
the Supreme Court because it is,bringing race right into the process.
And they are trying to, there's a majorityof the court that's trying to say, Hey,
we're, let's move to colorblind worlds.
And what as an opportunity remainsis that the remedy is a system
that's just fair to more people.
(14:44):
That lowers the barrier torepresentation for everybody and voters.
It's very voter driven.
And you can say there's a history ofracial discrimination in how people vote.
But we're not saying peopleare gonna keep voting by race.
We're just gonna make sure everyone,including racial minorities
have the power to elect someone.
I think it's an attractive solution.
(15:06):
It may end up having to go throughthe political process and not the
legal one, though there have beensome voting rights cases, one, to make
that change and that is something thatremains as a potential legal strategy.
Alex (15:18):
Jerremy digs into Rob's early sparks for electoral reform, exposing
how winner-take-all locks out voices.
But next, as Rob unpacks voting rightsbarriers, the real stakes emerge—can
fair access shatter racial divides,or does the system keep twisting?
Most of America's elections are decided long before election day in 2024.
(00:08):
87% of house races weredecided before you even voted.
They're locked months before inprimaries by just 7% of voters deciding
who represents you and Congress.
It's not corruption.
It's designed, we draw lines that twistdemocracy into a system, rewarding
(00:31):
safe seats to big parties and extremeswhile leaving most voices out.
I'm Jerremy Alexander Newsom withmy co-host Dave Conley, and this
is Solving America's Problems.
This is a good one and we are reallypumped that it's mostly audio today
because Dave Dave is here in spirit.
(00:52):
He's gotten beat up pretty bad with somevery unique virus, but he is still here.
Today we're joined by Rob Richie,president of Expand Democracy and
co-founder of Fair Vote, whose reformsranked choice, voting proportional
representation, and Alaska's top fourprimary aim to make every vote matter.
(01:15):
. Rob, welcome to the show.
Rob (01:17):
Thank you Jerremy.
That was a lovely inter introductionand there's, so much to talk about, both
what has we've tried to do and done overthe last, uh, 35 years and all things.
We still need to do it.
Jerremy (01:29):
reflecting on your journey from Fair Votes founding in 1992 to
expand democracy today, what personalexperiences first sparked your focus
on the mechanics of electoral change?
Rob (01:43):
It was a combination of things.
I had the good fortune of being thegreat nephew of a guy named George
Hallett, who had been the leader of theproportional representation movement
in the 20th century, which a lot ofpeople don't even realize existed.
But a number of cities adopted proportionrepresentation in New York City being
the biggest in the thirties and forties.
(02:06):
And he edited a column in theNational Civic Review for many years.
And my dad had absorbedall of his insights.
And so as I was a young persongetting involved in politics,
he just shared about this idea.
So I had this kind of idea planted that,oh, we should be talking about this.
And then I got very involved in a charterreform effort in Washington state.
And in my county and said, oh of course weshould look at proportion representation.
(02:29):
And this is pre-internet and youjust send lots of letters out and
learn more and more about things.
And I think that what really drove myinterest in it is a belief that our
politics was too narrow at the time.
That was I think the insight of thetime that politics was like a duopoly
and third parties were isolated andindependents couldn't really run.
(02:51):
And what you saw emerging was Ross Pro ranfor president in 1992 or the first year.
That was a strong independent voicethat created a conversation about
ranked choice voting and the termlimits movement passed everywhere.
That was one approach to like, how canwe respond to things, but I felt that
proportion representation was thispositive change and it was really fun.
(03:15):
We connected with people.
We all convened in Cincinnati.
And stepped in without really anymoney, but a lot of energy and a
lot of good connections around thecountry and kind of year by year
have found a lot of things to do.
And I think what ultimatelywas the change that moved the
most was rank choice, voting.
But over the years I was fortunateenough to advance other good ideas,
(03:38):
like the National Popular Vote Plan anddifferent voter registration changes
and, you get a lot of changes, buthere we're with so much to do and so
it's not it hasn't been worth doing.
But it also is clear that wehave, we have a long way to go.
Jerremy (03:53):
Yep.
Yeah.
And when you think about the evolutionof your ideas from the 1998 Boston
Review essay on winner take all votingto the 2023 piece on the New Zealand's
model or New Zealand switch to morelike proportional voting system
in nine three, what emotions ariseabout the path to reform in America?
(04:14):
'cause mentioning we have so much left todo, what really gets sparks inside of you.
Rob (04:19):
What really drove my interest in the nineties and a lot of the
people coming into that generation, Ithink there were two major strands of
interest for proportion representation.
One was this sense of thehip lock nature of parties.
And so the energy really mostlycame from outside the parties,
like to the left or to the right.
You sometimes would see againthis Ross Perot kind of energy,
(04:41):
but more on the left and right.
On that piece now we don'tsee them as hip lock.
We see the parties as deadlocked.
We see like the polarization and thedoom loop of the parties being pushed
in each cycle farther and farther apart,and fearing and hating each other.
And when a party gets a chance to runthings, running it on its own, it's
very much against grain of how UnitedStates Constitution is set up and how
(05:06):
we govern best and also the whole timewe've had this conversation about how to
be a successful multiracial democracy.
And so when I first started, within thefirst year, we had the first major Supreme
Court rulings checking the approach toimplementing the Voting Rights Act to
create access to representation for racialminorities through drawing districts to
(05:29):
create black majority Latino, majorityAsian American majority districts within
a winner take all system, trying tomake it fair for those in the minority,
which is almost a contradiction.
And that approach becamecontroversial within that first year.
And we were engaging with thatand trying to point out that, a
proportional system would allowa voter driven process to that.
(05:52):
And now we're seeing that one heatingup in a whole different way too.
But that, so back inthe nineties was really.
Talking about it more through that lens.
I will say I've always had thisvision of making aspirational changes.
I wanna make big changes becauseI feel that we need to do a lot,
we need to address the electoralcollege, we need to have a right to
(06:12):
vote in the Constitution and so on.
And changing winner take all elections,but always wanting to be relevant,
always finding a way to move forwardand really engaging where people are.
And what we ultimately found inthe aughts and in the tens, is that
rankers voting was where peoplewere more ready to make changes.
(06:35):
And so I continue to believein proportional systems.
I think actually the trends I justtalked about create an opening for that.
But I also feel that rank trustvoting is just particularly relevant
for a change right now that canbe won, not easily, but that's one
that, so that has been important.
It's always this dance between keepingthe big ideas in mind, but trying
(06:59):
to find a vehicle to advance 'em.
Jerremy (07:02):
Right and.
This example where you're talkingabout, I think in general you have this
institutional trust at historic lows.
How do you see reforms like proportional,rank choice voting, which is a great way
to, allocate these seats based on voteshare using ranked ballots, addressing
(07:26):
that through more or better legislativeempowerment for everyday voters.
Rob (07:31):
I think the most exciting change that would happen is that all the
parts of the country would open up.
Toward relevant competitiveelections in November.
So that's step one.
That's also why I like thenational popular vote plan.
The having a direct election ofpresident, effectively within
the electoral college system.
But it, every vote in everystate counts the same.
(07:51):
And so the candidates will compete for avote in Mississippi and in Massachusetts
and Michigan and the swing states.
And in some ways the swing states,nonw states and presidential
elections underscores that in awinner take all system in this
heavily polarized environment.
There's only some places that are close.
So we can see that really clearlyin presidential races and the
(08:13):
candidates evidence that they justdon't campaign in, 80% of the country.
And then in house races because it'sfractured by having individual candidates.
It's maybe not as obvious, but we'regetting more and more aware of just
how similar it is in some ways,even more so in the sense of just.
Almost every congressional raceisn't competitive in November.
(08:34):
So if you just go tomulti-member districts.
So that's the step is like rightnow we have a single member district
system where the, that line drawingis so incredibly important because
you're shaping that one winner.
Take all contest to multi-member districtswhere you have more than one, you
combine districts to make them bigger.
And then if you use proportionalrank choice voting, which the
(08:54):
ballot is just like rank choice,voting, very simple, very intuitive.
It's who's my first choice?
Who's my second choice?
Who's my third choice?
Ah, I don't wanna rank anybody else.
You.
It's totally up to you.
You can rank within a party.
You don't have to rank within a party.
You have a lot of power as a voterto define what matters to you.
But let's look about it from apartisan lens, is that the math of
(09:15):
how to win changes from needing morethan 50% of the vote to a proportion
of the multi-member district.
So if it's a three seats, the math meansa little over a quarter of the vote.
Means that you can win, if it'sfive seats, gets down to about
little under 20%, so you know 17%and it's still ranked as voting.
So if you vote for a candidate who'sfarther down, it's not gonna win.
(09:38):
Your ballot can stillcount for a second choice.
So you put those together and essentiallyevery part of the country, the Fair
Representation Act, which is a statutoryproposal in Congress, would mean that
every state that has at least threeseats, very likely, every district would
have more than one party winning seats.
You wouldn't have this homogenous winnertake all red versus blue environment.
(10:01):
You'd have shades of purple anddifferences within the major parties.
Much more fluid access forthose racial minorities.
But that sense for voters, I'm ina competitive elections, candidates
are gonna reach out to me.
I have some real choices.
I don't even have to stick within themajor parties and, I can still have
a second choice within a major party.
Like I, I have a lot more powerand opportunity and politics
(10:24):
suddenly becomes real everywhere.
And when they win, you gotboth parties representing every
part of the country, right?
So you don't have this, oh, I'm aRepublican, so I don't care about the
big cities, or I'm a Democrat and I'mnot really looking at rural areas, right?
You have people from everywhereand you have minor parties and
independents holding them accountable,which we certainly need as well.
Jerremy (10:45):
Yeah.
And I think that's a reallygreat point just to be a little
bit more well representativeof what a revolution, right?
We could actually all really bemaking a choice a difference here.
In 2023, Rob, or sorry, yeah.
2023 you co-authored a piecediscussing voting rights.
(11:06):
The Voting Rights Act constraints, right?
Discussing the federalprotections against.
Racial discrimination in voting.
How do those continue to shape theadaptation of proportional systems
in the US for everyday communities?
Rob (11:23):
I would say this is that the Voting Rights Act was one of these
history making changes in the1960s, the first version of it 1965.
And, at that time we essentiallyhad a system of apartheid
in a lot of the country.
Or at least the south.
But even, Virginia, right across theriver from me you had segregation
(11:44):
about access to lunch countersand things, and in voting it could
get really bad, so in Mississippi.
Of eligible African American adultsor adults who are over 18 who are
African American only about 10%were registered to vote in 65.
And by 68, 69, that was up to I dunno, 85or 90 or something, like a massive change
(12:04):
because suddenly you were not able to denypeople based on race access to the ballot.
And there were other protections builtinto the Voting Rights Act o sort of
over time, the most probably impactfulof which was that in certain areas
of the country was measured historiesof racial discrimination practices.
(12:27):
If they tried to make any changeat any level of government in that
jurisdiction that affected voting, ithad to be reviewed by the Department
of Justice and to say, oh, that'snot gonna have a negative impact.
And so you had this, what wecall prophylactic change in that
most jurisdictions knowing that.
What was gonna be reviewed wouldbe thrown out if it wasn't fair,
(12:50):
just didn't do bad practices.
That particular provision, section fiveof the Voting Rights Act was thrown out
by the Supreme Court about a decade ago.
And that has opened the door towardjurisdictions pushing the boundaries.
So you can only stop thosepractices now within a, with a
lawsuit that's expensive to do.
(13:11):
And and that, that has had some reallyripple effects that are quite negative.
We're still seeing, we're not seeinganything like what we saw in the
sixties as far as disparate effectsfor voter registration and voter
turnout that we saw at that level.
But we're starting to see thingschip away and this new Voting Rights
Act case that was just heard in theSupreme Court recently, and there's
(13:35):
a lot of conjecture about what itmight mean, but they might take away.
The provision of the VotingRights Act that is more about
representation than about access.
And that representation piece isthat if there's certain standards,
so there's a history, so youhave to prove these things.
So it's not like you can dothis everywhere, but you have
to show that there's measurablediscrimination or voters factor
(13:59):
in race in the way they vote.
A racial minority is in the minority, sothey're not in the majority, and you put
those together, you have a challengingsituation for the racial minority to win.
And there's a solution.
There's a remedy.
And the traditional remedy thatyou can do is to be able to draw a
single member district to turn theracial minority into a majority.
(14:23):
That part is becoming very muchunder scrutiny of the majority of
the Supreme Court because it is,bringing race right into the process.
And they are trying to, there's a majorityof the court that's trying to say, Hey,
we're, let's move to colorblind worlds.
And what as an opportunity remainsis that the remedy is a system
that's just fair to more people.
(14:44):
That lowers the barrier torepresentation for everybody and voters.
It's very voter driven.
And you can say there's a history ofracial discrimination in how people vote.
But we're not saying peopleare gonna keep voting by race.
We're just gonna make sure everyone,including racial minorities
have the power to elect someone.
I think it's an attractive solution.
(15:06):
It may end up having to go throughthe political process and not the
legal one, though there have beensome voting rights cases, one, to make
that change and that is something thatremains as a potential legal strategy.
Alex (15:18):
Jerremy digs into Rob's early sparks for electoral reform, exposing
how winner-take-all locks out voices.
But next, as Rob unpacks voting rightsbarriers, the real stakes emerge—can
fair access shatter racial divides,or does the system keep twisting?
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