October 28, 2025 • 23 mins
Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley, with guest Rob Richie, unpack the Voting Rights Act's fading safeguards amid Supreme Court challenges, fueling discriminatory practices and polarized safe seats. Rob details his partisan voting index invention, spotlighting 95-99% incumbent retention and non-competitive districts. They explore fixes like proportional representation, Maine's ranked choice voting success, and interstate compacts for national popular vote. From Bush v. Gore's 2000 chaos to the Help America Vote Act's gains, they advocate constitutional right to vote amendments and automatic registration to modernize access and combat voter suppression.
Timestamps:
- (00:00) Voting Rights Decline: Court Challenges and Safe Seats
- (00:14) Partisan Voting Index: Predicting Locked Races
- (04:55) Maine Reforms: Ranked Choice in Action
- (09:10) Interstate Compacts: National Popular Vote Push
- (15:22) Bush v. Gore Legacy: Ballot Flaws Exposed
- (15:38) Florida 2000: Design Issues and Recounts
- (17:18) Help America Vote Act: Post-2000 Improvements
- (18:19) Voting Rights Proposals: Constitutional Fixes
- (20:56) Voter ID Challenges: Inclusive Solutions Needed
Connect: Rob Richie
📢 Solving America’s Problems Podcast – Real Solutions For Real Issues
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alex (00:00):
Jerremy presses Rob on Voting Rights Act fallout, as protections
crumble under court scrutiny.
The looming shadow?
If safe seats fuel polarization, voters'real power fades—yet one overlooked
fix still hangs in the balance.
Jerremy (00:14):
Rob, your invention of the partisan voting index revealed
distortions in winter, take allsystems, which you've mentioned a
couple times already in this discussion.
What surprises from that data challengeassumptions about reform feasibility
for individuals feeling unrepresented.
Rob (00:37):
Yeah, what was, we caught the wave, this is like back in 97.
So we had done initial set ofreports that just said, look,
most of us lived in congressionalelections where we can't make change.
And we lifted up incumbentretention rates, always over
95% and sometimes up to 99%.
Like that's a pretty high rate of return.
(00:58):
And the margins of victory andhow non-competitive it was.
And then what we decided to do,this is 97, so it was after the 96
elections, is to try to say, can wesomehow use numbers in a simple way?
To just say, this is notgonna be close in 98.
And it's not about money.
At the time, there was a beliefthat money buys elections.
(01:21):
Of course, the candidate spenta lot of time raising money.
So there must be something to it.
Like maybe it's the person withmore money always wins or something.
That was a lot of what people thought.
And I don't wanna undermine the casefor campaign finance reform because
there's a lot of reasons to tackle that,but not, but one of them isn't that
it creates a lot of non-competition.
In fact, it's the nature of thedistricts that we were trying
(01:44):
to show It was the imbalance.
And right at that time was when things,a couple trends were happening where
people were starting to not split tickets,meaning they'd vote for one party for
president and another party for Congress.
They were starting to get,the parties were getting more.
Branded for voters and they just saidI'm with Brand A I'm a Democrat, or
I'm a Republican and I'm just gonnastart voting down the ballot that way.
(02:06):
And that really kicked in 94 andthen kept accelerating in 96.
So we came up with this simplemeasure, which is, let's just look
at the presidential vote, and notjust in the round numbers, but
the relative presidential vote.
So if the national presidential votewas, say 48%, if a, the result for
the president presidential candidatesin that district was say 50 52%,
(02:29):
which is four points higher, thatis a district that a Democrat starts
off where that presidential vote.
With a four point advantagelike all things being equal,
they will win 54 to 46.
And we found, looking backat recent elections, that was
incredibly powerful open seats thatreally predicted open seat races.
And then we started to measure whatit meant to be an incumbent and
(02:51):
what an advantage you got from that.
We called that the incumbency bump.
And and you put those togetherand we can say, look, we can
predict 85, 90% of races.
This is now just done by everybodybut we did it first and and
got a lot of interest for it.
And it's gotten a little moresophisticated, but in some ways
just that simple measure hasbecome more and more potent.
We only have four members ofCongress today who represent.
(03:16):
The other party's district usingthat measure of relative presidential
vote outside of say 52 to 48, it'sjust incredible just how locked
in and almost all the districtsare outside of 52 48, right?
So you just have all these races where thegeneral election's incredibly predictable.
That makes the primaryelection the only one that's
competitive or theoretically is.
(03:37):
And and so what it created the basisfor is that's what we need to tackle.
In that sense of pragmaticpragmatism, what that led to first
is let's reform gerrymandering.
Let's reform the way districts aredrawn to at least take away the power
of the fox to guard the henhouse, thepoliticians to shape their own districts.
(03:58):
And that makes a lot of sense,but it only has limited effect on
that basic impact of competition.
But it's, it's a good thing to do.
And that was more straightforward todo 'cause it didn't really shake up
how candidates are used to winningand parties used to representing.
But now we're at that point wherethere, we've seen real limits of that.
And of course we're living inan era of just completely broken
(04:19):
down redistricting practices.
And so I think it's a reallytimely conversation to say, wait
a second, this whole single memberdistrict regime is just broken.
Jerremy (04:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Dave's over there shakinghis head up and down because
we've talked about that a lot.
And you mentioned the key word, I won $20.
The bet was gerrymandering isgonna come up in the first 20
minutes of this conversation.
'cause it has to.
It's one of those very interestingand in extremely wild way.
(04:49):
To, like you said, guardintentions for any particular
individual or voting season.
So for you, Rob, if advising a statelike Maine, what first steps would you
prioritize to implement a proportionalelement effectively for local communities?
(05:11):
Yep.
Rob (05:11):
Yeah, let's start with local 'cause it's interesting almost.
The great majority of local electionsdon't actually run with parties.
There are, some New York City, they,have Democratic nominees and Republican
nominees and so on, but most don't.
So candidates run in anonpartisan election.
So if you're changing winner take all.
The solution isn't goingto be a party based system.
(05:32):
And that's a different conversationfor when you have a partisan election.
So it's like how do you make more votes?
Count Maine.
I happen to know a lot about Maine'cause they have rank choice voting.
It was our kind of thresholdwin for rank choice voting.
Find every excuse to try to get upthere, such a beautiful state as well.
And but on most of their localelections are nonpartisan at large.
(05:54):
So candidates run, three candidatesup or three seats are up and people
have three votes and, it's notnecessarily super polarized and things.
So it's not necessarily clear whatmight be happening that's not,
it's giving some people the chanceto elect three people and others.
None.
But that actually happens.
(06:14):
Some people go out and they vote for threepeople and they lose, and their neighbor
votes for three people and they all win.
And it's a real imbalance.
When you think of representativedemocracy and Maine as part of New
England isn't far from the traditionswe started with town meetings, right?
And town meetings are still happenless in Maine than say Massachusetts.
Everyone goes, or noteveryone goes, but they can.
(06:36):
And then everyone is there,has a chance to be represented
because they are there physically.
So if you're trying to duplicate thegoal of oh, let's have the town in
the room, that's where proportionalrank choice voting really fits in.
And the Maine League of Womenvoters just endorse this principle
and are starting to work for it.
It's allowed in citiesin Maine to just do this.
And so a rank choice system withproportionality is so you run at large
(07:00):
and proportionality means, it's a bigword, but simply like-minded voters of
however, is defined by the way they vote.
Like it's not imposed uponthem from the outside.
It's the, is defined by thecohesion of how people vote.
They can elect.
People in proportion to their share.
(07:20):
So if you're electing three seats atlarge, and if 25% of people rank a
candidate, that candidate will win.
If 25% of people rank two candidates insome order first or second, but all of
them do those candidates either firstor second, then that candidate will win.
So there's a certain threshold thatwhere you are gonna have access to win.
(07:44):
At the end of the day, the math isabout 75% of people will help elect
someone, probably more than that.
Maybe 90% plus will have rankedsomeone highly and maybe their
vote didn't directly help electthem, but they feel represented.
So it greatly expands who's at the table.
Very good remedy for votingrights, minority voting rights.
(08:06):
Let's say a lot of cities, maybe biggerones, are having these debates about
growth, and it's like slow growth, biggrowth, build more, control, build growth
and and having both sides at the tablemeans you don't have like a growth regime
replaced by an anti-growth machine.
And this sort of winner takeall swing, you have more
continuity on an issue like that.
(08:28):
My wife runs a group on that calledRepresent Women, which works to elect more
women to office through structural change.
And they found that these kinds ofsystems do a lot for say, women's
representation are new voices.
We're trying to break into ourpolitics of however that is defined.
So I think there's a really greatcase for, at the local level it's
different case than what it is goinghigher up, but I think it's one
(08:51):
that quite specifically on Maine.
I think a lot of those main townswill be having that conversation.
We have.
One city Portland that uses someproportional rankers voting elections.
Not much, but some.
But I think there are other towns thatare gonna start looking at it too.
Jerremy (09:09):
Gotcha.
All right, beautiful.
So drawing from your national popularvote plan to elect the President
by popular vote, what interstatecompact strategies could accelerate
proportional adoption and make
National elections feel fair?
Rob (09:28):
Yeah.
Lemme briefly explain the interstatecompact and then pivot to how that
can be related to gerrymanderingand proportional voting.
'cause there is a connection, but one ofthe cool powers within the constitution.
Is that is, explicitly created,is that states have the right to
essentially go into formal agreementswith one another effectively, like
treaties, like international treaties.
But these are called interstate compacts.
(09:50):
They're on Powerball, the lottery orthe Port Authority between New York and
New Jersey, or they're the, I live in DCright outside DC in Maryland and Maryland.
DC and Virginia govern themetro system together, right?
And like through an interstate compact.
So the national popular voteInterstate Compact says, you know what?
We have the electoral college.
(10:11):
We as a single state arefrustrated that we're ignored,
which is true of, 43 states.
And they're just like really ignored.
We wanna do something about that.
Even the states, by the way,that are competitive can feel
unhappy with the system too.
It's easiest to make thecase where they're ignored.
But as a single actor, if we try tochange our system to make it more
(10:32):
competitive, we're sacrificing ourpolitical power by which currently comes
from giving all of our electoral votesto the winner, who's generally associated
with the majority in that state.
So there's a, this incentive tokeep winner take all if you act
on your own to back together inthrough an interstate compact.
The incentives change and the interstatecompact is defined by saying these
(10:54):
are states coming together in a formalagreement to say, we're gonna give all
of our electoral votes not to the winner.
Take all winner in our state,the candidate wins the most
popular votes in the state.
We're gonna do it for the whole nation.
All 50 states in DC every vote equal.
We wanna give our electoral votes tothe winner of the national popular
vote on the basis of equality.
(11:16):
But we don't wanna doit in an irrelevant way.
We wanna do it when it matters.
So we, this compact will be activatedand control what we do next once the
number of states that have passed it.
A majority in electoral college,they have enough electoral votes that
whoever wins the national popularvote gets all of those electoral
votes and that candidate always wins.
(11:37):
And there's this definitive nature.
We now up to 17 states in DCthat have passed this compact.
It's not up to a majorityof the electoral college.
So people keep, winning another stateand it's almost every year one state
join it or it's like taking some time.
But I think it could still govern if notthe 2028 election, the 2032 election,
but it still could the 2028 election.
(11:58):
So similarly, so that's thenational popular vote plan
changing presidential election.
So all of our boats count the same andthe popular boat winner always wins.
The, another approach with redistrictingwould be some ways, the mirror image of
it, the negative image of it is playingout right now in, in California and Texas.
(12:19):
So Texas redraws districts.
A lot of pressure from the NationalRepublican Party and the White House.
We're gonna try to chisel every seat wecan out of the current states and put a
lot of pressure and break all traditionsand re redistrict in the middle of
the decade to try to get extra seats.
And they got about five extra seats.
The Republicans, for their party,the voters have to go along with it.
(12:43):
But they basically createdopportunities for Republicans pretty
straightforwardly to gain five seats.
And Democrats therefore respondedin California and have this proposal
on the ballot to change districts.
So the Democrats have anadvantage in five seats, right?
And it equals it out, right?
And the math is, maybe not exactlyfive, five, but about that.
(13:05):
So another approach theoretically couldbe those two states could enter into an
agreement to say, okay rather than, beingunfair and make it even more unfair,
we're both gonna be fair together.
And that might mean in Californiarepublicans get five more seats 'cause
they're underrepresented right now.
And in Texas, Democrats might getfive more seats and we'll both do a
(13:28):
multi-member district system together,we'll draw this compact and kind of work,
work together and it balances things out.
That could be through fair districts,it could be through something else.
Like for me it would be multi-memberdistricts, but then you'd have
a, like those two states could befair together and still not have
one state being fair and the othernot affecting the national impact.
(13:53):
So this is again, just for congresscon, you know's a whole different
calculation when you're talkingabout state legislative elections.
This is like congressional elections,which are all part of the power
of the House of Representatives.
But that's that's an interstate compact.
So Jamie Raskin, who is mycongressman here in Maryland.
And used to be on our board.
And a good ally and friend when hewas in the Maryland legislature, put
this idea forward as a, like Maryland,we're gonna explore, he called it the
(14:17):
Potomac Compact, a negotiation withVirginia to try to be fair together.
It didn't move forward into law, butit triggered a good conversation.
And that's, that's a proactiveapproach to this problem that
doesn't rely on Congress.
So at the end of the day, Congresswould need to ratify the con or
approve the compact particularly forthe congressional election one 'cause
(14:40):
it affects a congressional power.
They don't actually, may not need todo the national popular vote plan.
That's in a dispute.
But yeah.
But it be started at the state level.
It's not, I would say at this point,a super likely strategy, but it
is an intriguing one and it givespeople some agency that's more
positive agency rather than this.
Race to the bottom that we'recurrently in, where every straight's
(15:02):
trying to be less and less fairto keep up with the other guys.
It's really messy.
Jerremy (15:07):
Yeah.
Oh man.
Let's history question for a quick second.
So the first time votingreform got on my radar.
Hanging Chads baby
Rob (15:21):
Yeah.
Jerremy (15:22):
Bush, v Gore.
So I feel like there's some, alwaysgood opportunity for positivity.
The US is the largest democracy thatsuccessfully processes hundreds of
millions of votes every two to four years.
What makes you really excitedand optimistic for the future?
Rob (15:38):
Let's, we'll briefly talk about Florida, 'cause that was a
really seminal opportunity to have adifferent conversation about voting.
What made it so important was thatin the electoral college system,
it all came down to Florida.
Whoever won Florida is gonna be president.
And the margin between those candidatesin the official tally was only
about 500 votes out of a big state.
(16:01):
And of course, almost anything, away of counting ballots a little bit
differently could flip the outcome.
And it really put great scrutiny on alot of practices that weren't very good.
I'll give you one example.
Duval County, where Jacksonvilleis Florida had changed their
ballot access laws, so a lot morecandidates can run for president.
And so these local jurisdictions, withoutany real oversight or support from outside
(16:27):
entities were coming up with solutions.
And in Duval County, they said let'shave the presidential candidates
listed on more than one page.
So we had page one and then pagetwo, and it was all one contest, but
they were across two different pages.
You at about 10% of voters.
Vote for candidates on both pages.
'cause it seemed intuitive thatthey should, oh I'll vote, vote
for the candidates here and I'llvote for the candidates here 'cause
(16:48):
it's the next page or something.
That's a lot of votes.
And there was, and the hanging chadslike machines that didn't count ballots
even though you punched it, maybe youdidn't completely punch the ballot out.
These were these old punch card systemsballot designs that were confusing
and people voted for a candidate.
They didn't realize that they werevoting for the butterfly ballot.
Voter registration issues and votetiming issues like Florida is divided
(17:11):
in two time zones and people werecalling the election starting to
call the election when some peoplewere still voting and that was messy.
So a lot of things to think aboutand within a couple years, in a cool
way Congress for the very first timepassed laws that appropriated funds
to states, the Help America Vote Act.
It was a bipartisan bill with a Republicanpresident and a Republican senate, but
(17:33):
a Democratic house, I think, it waslike the kind of a lot of negotiation.
And I forget which partycontrolled which chamber, but
anyway, it had to be bipartisan.
And and they put a couple standards in youhave the right to do a provisional ballot.
And that means that if they say, oh,you're not registered here, and wait
a second, I am registered here thatyou have a bureaucratic snafu, you
(17:54):
can still cast a ballot that will thenbe counted if if it d determined that
you should have been able to vote.
And that's a national standard.
Anyway, there were things like that.
So that was like some positive changesand it led to more professionalization
of election administration morestandards not perfect, far from perfect,
but I think today we run elections alot better than we did 25 years ago.
(18:16):
There's so much more to gojust on this access issue.
I would say if I could wave a wand,there's sort of two changes that I would,
that we've worked on over the yearsand I think would be really important.
One is a principle change and almostlike a mindset shift, which is to
have an affirmative right to votein the Constitution if American
citizens have a right to vote, right?
(18:36):
If you're 18 and above,you have a right to vote.
And that is not statedclearly in the Constitution.
When we started, therewas no right to vote.
And a whole bunch of peoplewere not able to vote.
And we've expanded votingrights, but not universally.
And I think if we set that principledown, then the lens by which we look at
voting would always be from a positive.
(18:58):
Is this good for voters, right?
Is, like voters first kind of thing.
Let's have a right to vote in theconstitution, which shockingly we don't
have almost all of our kind of majordemocracy allies and thi or in other
countries that are democracies havea right to vote in the constitution.
But we are.
An old democracy.
So we have some old waysof thinking about things.
The second one is to come upwith some smart way to say,
(19:24):
you are reaching voting age.
You are a new citizen.
You are now eligible tovote in this country.
One, there's some change where youweren't eligible to vote and now you
are, we're gonna get you registered tovote because we've determined you're
eligible and your voter registrationwill stay with you for your lifetime.
Some clear identifier.
(19:45):
And if I move to another state, myvoter registration moves with me.
I'm just, we get everyone registeredin this country and we have people who
aren't eligible, not registered, and we,so we come up with systems to do that.
It's not rocket science to do that.
We don't do that.
So we have a ton of people registered inmore than one place because they've moved.
We have confusion over that.
(20:05):
We have.
A whole bunch of people that don't andnever get registered in the first place.
And one of the sad realities of votingis that if you don't vote the first
time you're eligible, you begin toget an imprint in your own head.
I'm not a voter.
That's something that other people do.
And the lowest voter turnout ratesin the whole country are always for
people who are just eligible to votelike 18 to 25 year olds and so on.
(20:29):
And they're, we're imprinting with them.
Oh, that's not something that you do.
So that's a change that I'd love to see.
So there's progress, but there'sa lot more to do on, on, on
Jerremy (20:39):
It's one of those I love how you're like, it's not rocket science.
I fully agree.
Absolutely.
This is something that shouldbe very simple and effective.
And so I guess I'd be really interestedto hear your take on this because
you're obviously very extremely pro.
You should be registered to vote,but what about them showing that
(21:00):
registration at the voting station,which we could call it potentially an id?
Rob (21:06):
Yeah it's a charged question or charged policy because the choice
of ID has political repercussions.
So we're very used.
Those of us with driver's license, likeme, very, are very used to showing them
when we go places, I'm just was flyingon Saturday and I showed my ID as I
(21:29):
arrived, of course people can do that.
There's a lot of segments of the countrythat actually don't often have IDs
that are, or at least driver's license.
They're older and they've stopped driving.
They live in a city and they've nevergotten a driver's license, whatever it
is, they're and or your driver's licensehappens to expire and 'cause you don't
drive very much or and so if you say, oh,you have to have a valid driver's license,
(21:49):
that actually doesn't include everybody.
And but I think there are solutionspeople try to do signatures, but of
course, I don't know, in the modernera, people don't learn cursive and
they don't necessarily sign theirname the same way sort every time.
And that can be confusing.
And so I think there aresolutions that are more inclusive.
(22:10):
But I think that's the standard.
We should always look, are we making sure?
So if we're gonna do an id, I thinkit's the government's responsibility
to affirmatively make sure thatpeople have access to that id.
And but I think if we had thislifetime voter registration system.
And kind of database isconsistent with that.
And you have a kind ofa unique identifier.
(22:31):
It doesn't have to be your socialsecurity number, but some, like
your democracy number or whatever.
You have a unique identifier that wasassigned when you first got registered.
That to me would be, you're notvoting more than once and you're
eligible, like you haven't diedand you're here, so I think
Jerremy (22:46):
though, right?
That'd be the exact same thing as avoter ID is like showing your idea,
showing your registration form to vote.
Rob (22:52):
yeah, showing your something.
But I think if you had a uniquedemocracy number and it could be double
checked and say, oh you're Rob Richieand you live here and the person's
checking you in can double check that.
Of course, a lot of people voteby mail, so we have to have
systems that accommodate peoplevoting, voting by by paper or,
sending it in or dropping it off.
But just the principle, thisis where the right to vote
(23:13):
in the constitution kicks in.
Okay, you do these things, but justmake sure you're not doing it in a
way that undercuts the right to vote.
You're actually alwaysbuilding on the right to vote.
And if that's the principle, then wecan always come up with solutions.
Jerremy (23:27):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's, love it.
Alex (23:31):
Rob breaks down gerrymandering's grip on safe seats, as Jerremy
spotlights everyday voter disempowerment.
But next, shifting to holidays andeducation, Rob uncovers communal
gaps—can simple access igniteturnout, or does apathy win out?
Jerremy presses Rob on Voting Rights Act fallout, as protections
crumble under court scrutiny.
The looming shadow?
If safe seats fuel polarization, voters'real power fades—yet one overlooked
fix still hangs in the balance.
Jerremy (00:14):
Rob, your invention of the partisan voting index revealed
distortions in winter, take allsystems, which you've mentioned a
couple times already in this discussion.
What surprises from that data challengeassumptions about reform feasibility
for individuals feeling unrepresented.
Rob (00:37):
Yeah, what was, we caught the wave, this is like back in 97.
So we had done initial set ofreports that just said, look,
most of us lived in congressionalelections where we can't make change.
And we lifted up incumbentretention rates, always over
95% and sometimes up to 99%.
Like that's a pretty high rate of return.
(00:58):
And the margins of victory andhow non-competitive it was.
And then what we decided to do,this is 97, so it was after the 96
elections, is to try to say, can wesomehow use numbers in a simple way?
To just say, this is notgonna be close in 98.
And it's not about money.
At the time, there was a beliefthat money buys elections.
(01:21):
Of course, the candidate spenta lot of time raising money.
So there must be something to it.
Like maybe it's the person withmore money always wins or something.
That was a lot of what people thought.
And I don't wanna undermine the casefor campaign finance reform because
there's a lot of reasons to tackle that,but not, but one of them isn't that
it creates a lot of non-competition.
In fact, it's the nature of thedistricts that we were trying
(01:44):
to show It was the imbalance.
And right at that time was when things,a couple trends were happening where
people were starting to not split tickets,meaning they'd vote for one party for
president and another party for Congress.
They were starting to get,the parties were getting more.
Branded for voters and they just saidI'm with Brand A I'm a Democrat, or
I'm a Republican and I'm just gonnastart voting down the ballot that way.
(02:06):
And that really kicked in 94 andthen kept accelerating in 96.
So we came up with this simplemeasure, which is, let's just look
at the presidential vote, and notjust in the round numbers, but
the relative presidential vote.
So if the national presidential votewas, say 48%, if a, the result for
the president presidential candidatesin that district was say 50 52%,
(02:29):
which is four points higher, thatis a district that a Democrat starts
off where that presidential vote.
With a four point advantagelike all things being equal,
they will win 54 to 46.
And we found, looking backat recent elections, that was
incredibly powerful open seats thatreally predicted open seat races.
And then we started to measure whatit meant to be an incumbent and
(02:51):
what an advantage you got from that.
We called that the incumbency bump.
And and you put those togetherand we can say, look, we can
predict 85, 90% of races.
This is now just done by everybodybut we did it first and and
got a lot of interest for it.
And it's gotten a little moresophisticated, but in some ways
just that simple measure hasbecome more and more potent.
We only have four members ofCongress today who represent.
(03:16):
The other party's district usingthat measure of relative presidential
vote outside of say 52 to 48, it'sjust incredible just how locked
in and almost all the districtsare outside of 52 48, right?
So you just have all these races where thegeneral election's incredibly predictable.
That makes the primaryelection the only one that's
competitive or theoretically is.
(03:37):
And and so what it created the basisfor is that's what we need to tackle.
In that sense of pragmaticpragmatism, what that led to first
is let's reform gerrymandering.
Let's reform the way districts aredrawn to at least take away the power
of the fox to guard the henhouse, thepoliticians to shape their own districts.
(03:58):
And that makes a lot of sense,but it only has limited effect on
that basic impact of competition.
But it's, it's a good thing to do.
And that was more straightforward todo 'cause it didn't really shake up
how candidates are used to winningand parties used to representing.
But now we're at that point wherethere, we've seen real limits of that.
And of course we're living inan era of just completely broken
(04:19):
down redistricting practices.
And so I think it's a reallytimely conversation to say, wait
a second, this whole single memberdistrict regime is just broken.
Jerremy (04:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Dave's over there shakinghis head up and down because
we've talked about that a lot.
And you mentioned the key word, I won $20.
The bet was gerrymandering isgonna come up in the first 20
minutes of this conversation.
'cause it has to.
It's one of those very interestingand in extremely wild way.
(04:49):
To, like you said, guardintentions for any particular
individual or voting season.
So for you, Rob, if advising a statelike Maine, what first steps would you
prioritize to implement a proportionalelement effectively for local communities?
(05:11):
Yep.
Rob (05:11):
Yeah, let's start with local 'cause it's interesting almost.
The great majority of local electionsdon't actually run with parties.
There are, some New York City, they,have Democratic nominees and Republican
nominees and so on, but most don't.
So candidates run in anonpartisan election.
So if you're changing winner take all.
The solution isn't goingto be a party based system.
(05:32):
And that's a different conversationfor when you have a partisan election.
So it's like how do you make more votes?
Count Maine.
I happen to know a lot about Maine'cause they have rank choice voting.
It was our kind of thresholdwin for rank choice voting.
Find every excuse to try to get upthere, such a beautiful state as well.
And but on most of their localelections are nonpartisan at large.
(05:54):
So candidates run, three candidatesup or three seats are up and people
have three votes and, it's notnecessarily super polarized and things.
So it's not necessarily clear whatmight be happening that's not,
it's giving some people the chanceto elect three people and others.
None.
But that actually happens.
(06:14):
Some people go out and they vote for threepeople and they lose, and their neighbor
votes for three people and they all win.
And it's a real imbalance.
When you think of representativedemocracy and Maine as part of New
England isn't far from the traditionswe started with town meetings, right?
And town meetings are still happenless in Maine than say Massachusetts.
Everyone goes, or noteveryone goes, but they can.
(06:36):
And then everyone is there,has a chance to be represented
because they are there physically.
So if you're trying to duplicate thegoal of oh, let's have the town in
the room, that's where proportionalrank choice voting really fits in.
And the Maine League of Womenvoters just endorse this principle
and are starting to work for it.
It's allowed in citiesin Maine to just do this.
And so a rank choice system withproportionality is so you run at large
(07:00):
and proportionality means, it's a bigword, but simply like-minded voters of
however, is defined by the way they vote.
Like it's not imposed uponthem from the outside.
It's the, is defined by thecohesion of how people vote.
They can elect.
People in proportion to their share.
(07:20):
So if you're electing three seats atlarge, and if 25% of people rank a
candidate, that candidate will win.
If 25% of people rank two candidates insome order first or second, but all of
them do those candidates either firstor second, then that candidate will win.
So there's a certain threshold thatwhere you are gonna have access to win.
(07:44):
At the end of the day, the math isabout 75% of people will help elect
someone, probably more than that.
Maybe 90% plus will have rankedsomeone highly and maybe their
vote didn't directly help electthem, but they feel represented.
So it greatly expands who's at the table.
Very good remedy for votingrights, minority voting rights.
(08:06):
Let's say a lot of cities, maybe biggerones, are having these debates about
growth, and it's like slow growth, biggrowth, build more, control, build growth
and and having both sides at the tablemeans you don't have like a growth regime
replaced by an anti-growth machine.
And this sort of winner takeall swing, you have more
continuity on an issue like that.
(08:28):
My wife runs a group on that calledRepresent Women, which works to elect more
women to office through structural change.
And they found that these kinds ofsystems do a lot for say, women's
representation are new voices.
We're trying to break into ourpolitics of however that is defined.
So I think there's a really greatcase for, at the local level it's
different case than what it is goinghigher up, but I think it's one
(08:51):
that quite specifically on Maine.
I think a lot of those main townswill be having that conversation.
We have.
One city Portland that uses someproportional rankers voting elections.
Not much, but some.
But I think there are other towns thatare gonna start looking at it too.
Jerremy (09:09):
Gotcha.
All right, beautiful.
So drawing from your national popularvote plan to elect the President
by popular vote, what interstatecompact strategies could accelerate
proportional adoption and make
National elections feel fair?
Rob (09:28):
Yeah.
Lemme briefly explain the interstatecompact and then pivot to how that
can be related to gerrymanderingand proportional voting.
'cause there is a connection, but one ofthe cool powers within the constitution.
Is that is, explicitly created,is that states have the right to
essentially go into formal agreementswith one another effectively, like
treaties, like international treaties.
But these are called interstate compacts.
(09:50):
They're on Powerball, the lottery orthe Port Authority between New York and
New Jersey, or they're the, I live in DCright outside DC in Maryland and Maryland.
DC and Virginia govern themetro system together, right?
And like through an interstate compact.
So the national popular voteInterstate Compact says, you know what?
We have the electoral college.
(10:11):
We as a single state arefrustrated that we're ignored,
which is true of, 43 states.
And they're just like really ignored.
We wanna do something about that.
Even the states, by the way,that are competitive can feel
unhappy with the system too.
It's easiest to make thecase where they're ignored.
But as a single actor, if we try tochange our system to make it more
(10:32):
competitive, we're sacrificing ourpolitical power by which currently comes
from giving all of our electoral votesto the winner, who's generally associated
with the majority in that state.
So there's a, this incentive tokeep winner take all if you act
on your own to back together inthrough an interstate compact.
The incentives change and the interstatecompact is defined by saying these
(10:54):
are states coming together in a formalagreement to say, we're gonna give all
of our electoral votes not to the winner.
Take all winner in our state,the candidate wins the most
popular votes in the state.
We're gonna do it for the whole nation.
All 50 states in DC every vote equal.
We wanna give our electoral votes tothe winner of the national popular
vote on the basis of equality.
(11:16):
But we don't wanna doit in an irrelevant way.
We wanna do it when it matters.
So we, this compact will be activatedand control what we do next once the
number of states that have passed it.
A majority in electoral college,they have enough electoral votes that
whoever wins the national popularvote gets all of those electoral
votes and that candidate always wins.
(11:37):
And there's this definitive nature.
We now up to 17 states in DCthat have passed this compact.
It's not up to a majorityof the electoral college.
So people keep, winning another stateand it's almost every year one state
join it or it's like taking some time.
But I think it could still govern if notthe 2028 election, the 2032 election,
but it still could the 2028 election.
(11:58):
So similarly, so that's thenational popular vote plan
changing presidential election.
So all of our boats count the same andthe popular boat winner always wins.
The, another approach with redistrictingwould be some ways, the mirror image of
it, the negative image of it is playingout right now in, in California and Texas.
(12:19):
So Texas redraws districts.
A lot of pressure from the NationalRepublican Party and the White House.
We're gonna try to chisel every seat wecan out of the current states and put a
lot of pressure and break all traditionsand re redistrict in the middle of
the decade to try to get extra seats.
And they got about five extra seats.
The Republicans, for their party,the voters have to go along with it.
(12:43):
But they basically createdopportunities for Republicans pretty
straightforwardly to gain five seats.
And Democrats therefore respondedin California and have this proposal
on the ballot to change districts.
So the Democrats have anadvantage in five seats, right?
And it equals it out, right?
And the math is, maybe not exactlyfive, five, but about that.
(13:05):
So another approach theoretically couldbe those two states could enter into an
agreement to say, okay rather than, beingunfair and make it even more unfair,
we're both gonna be fair together.
And that might mean in Californiarepublicans get five more seats 'cause
they're underrepresented right now.
And in Texas, Democrats might getfive more seats and we'll both do a
(13:28):
multi-member district system together,we'll draw this compact and kind of work,
work together and it balances things out.
That could be through fair districts,it could be through something else.
Like for me it would be multi-memberdistricts, but then you'd have
a, like those two states could befair together and still not have
one state being fair and the othernot affecting the national impact.
(13:53):
So this is again, just for congresscon, you know's a whole different
calculation when you're talkingabout state legislative elections.
This is like congressional elections,which are all part of the power
of the House of Representatives.
But that's that's an interstate compact.
So Jamie Raskin, who is mycongressman here in Maryland.
And used to be on our board.
And a good ally and friend when hewas in the Maryland legislature, put
this idea forward as a, like Maryland,we're gonna explore, he called it the
(14:17):
Potomac Compact, a negotiation withVirginia to try to be fair together.
It didn't move forward into law, butit triggered a good conversation.
And that's, that's a proactiveapproach to this problem that
doesn't rely on Congress.
So at the end of the day, Congresswould need to ratify the con or
approve the compact particularly forthe congressional election one 'cause
(14:40):
it affects a congressional power.
They don't actually, may not need todo the national popular vote plan.
That's in a dispute.
But yeah.
But it be started at the state level.
It's not, I would say at this point,a super likely strategy, but it
is an intriguing one and it givespeople some agency that's more
positive agency rather than this.
Race to the bottom that we'recurrently in, where every straight's
(15:02):
trying to be less and less fairto keep up with the other guys.
It's really messy.
Jerremy (15:07):
Yeah.
Oh man.
Let's history question for a quick second.
So the first time votingreform got on my radar.
Hanging Chads baby
Rob (15:21):
Yeah.
Jerremy (15:22):
Bush, v Gore.
So I feel like there's some, alwaysgood opportunity for positivity.
The US is the largest democracy thatsuccessfully processes hundreds of
millions of votes every two to four years.
What makes you really excitedand optimistic for the future?
Rob (15:38):
Let's, we'll briefly talk about Florida, 'cause that was a
really seminal opportunity to have adifferent conversation about voting.
What made it so important was thatin the electoral college system,
it all came down to Florida.
Whoever won Florida is gonna be president.
And the margin between those candidatesin the official tally was only
about 500 votes out of a big state.
(16:01):
And of course, almost anything, away of counting ballots a little bit
differently could flip the outcome.
And it really put great scrutiny on alot of practices that weren't very good.
I'll give you one example.
Duval County, where Jacksonvilleis Florida had changed their
ballot access laws, so a lot morecandidates can run for president.
And so these local jurisdictions, withoutany real oversight or support from outside
(16:27):
entities were coming up with solutions.
And in Duval County, they said let'shave the presidential candidates
listed on more than one page.
So we had page one and then pagetwo, and it was all one contest, but
they were across two different pages.
You at about 10% of voters.
Vote for candidates on both pages.
'cause it seemed intuitive thatthey should, oh I'll vote, vote
for the candidates here and I'llvote for the candidates here 'cause
(16:48):
it's the next page or something.
That's a lot of votes.
And there was, and the hanging chadslike machines that didn't count ballots
even though you punched it, maybe youdidn't completely punch the ballot out.
These were these old punch card systemsballot designs that were confusing
and people voted for a candidate.
They didn't realize that they werevoting for the butterfly ballot.
Voter registration issues and votetiming issues like Florida is divided
(17:11):
in two time zones and people werecalling the election starting to
call the election when some peoplewere still voting and that was messy.
So a lot of things to think aboutand within a couple years, in a cool
way Congress for the very first timepassed laws that appropriated funds
to states, the Help America Vote Act.
It was a bipartisan bill with a Republicanpresident and a Republican senate, but
(17:33):
a Democratic house, I think, it waslike the kind of a lot of negotiation.
And I forget which partycontrolled which chamber, but
anyway, it had to be bipartisan.
And and they put a couple standards in youhave the right to do a provisional ballot.
And that means that if they say, oh,you're not registered here, and wait
a second, I am registered here thatyou have a bureaucratic snafu, you
(17:54):
can still cast a ballot that will thenbe counted if if it d determined that
you should have been able to vote.
And that's a national standard.
Anyway, there were things like that.
So that was like some positive changesand it led to more professionalization
of election administration morestandards not perfect, far from perfect,
but I think today we run elections alot better than we did 25 years ago.
(18:16):
There's so much more to gojust on this access issue.
I would say if I could wave a wand,there's sort of two changes that I would,
that we've worked on over the yearsand I think would be really important.
One is a principle change and almostlike a mindset shift, which is to
have an affirmative right to votein the Constitution if American
citizens have a right to vote, right?
(18:36):
If you're 18 and above,you have a right to vote.
And that is not statedclearly in the Constitution.
When we started, therewas no right to vote.
And a whole bunch of peoplewere not able to vote.
And we've expanded votingrights, but not universally.
And I think if we set that principledown, then the lens by which we look at
voting would always be from a positive.
(18:58):
Is this good for voters, right?
Is, like voters first kind of thing.
Let's have a right to vote in theconstitution, which shockingly we don't
have almost all of our kind of majordemocracy allies and thi or in other
countries that are democracies havea right to vote in the constitution.
But we are.
An old democracy.
So we have some old waysof thinking about things.
The second one is to come upwith some smart way to say,
(19:24):
you are reaching voting age.
You are a new citizen.
You are now eligible tovote in this country.
One, there's some change where youweren't eligible to vote and now you
are, we're gonna get you registered tovote because we've determined you're
eligible and your voter registrationwill stay with you for your lifetime.
Some clear identifier.
(19:45):
And if I move to another state, myvoter registration moves with me.
I'm just, we get everyone registeredin this country and we have people who
aren't eligible, not registered, and we,so we come up with systems to do that.
It's not rocket science to do that.
We don't do that.
So we have a ton of people registered inmore than one place because they've moved.
We have confusion over that.
(20:05):
We have.
A whole bunch of people that don't andnever get registered in the first place.
And one of the sad realities of votingis that if you don't vote the first
time you're eligible, you begin toget an imprint in your own head.
I'm not a voter.
That's something that other people do.
And the lowest voter turnout ratesin the whole country are always for
people who are just eligible to votelike 18 to 25 year olds and so on.
(20:29):
And they're, we're imprinting with them.
Oh, that's not something that you do.
So that's a change that I'd love to see.
So there's progress, but there'sa lot more to do on, on, on
Jerremy (20:39):
It's one of those I love how you're like, it's not rocket science.
I fully agree.
Absolutely.
This is something that shouldbe very simple and effective.
And so I guess I'd be really interestedto hear your take on this because
you're obviously very extremely pro.
You should be registered to vote,but what about them showing that
(21:00):
registration at the voting station,which we could call it potentially an id?
Rob (21:06):
Yeah it's a charged question or charged policy because the choice
of ID has political repercussions.
So we're very used.
Those of us with driver's license, likeme, very, are very used to showing them
when we go places, I'm just was flyingon Saturday and I showed my ID as I
(21:29):
arrived, of course people can do that.
There's a lot of segments of the countrythat actually don't often have IDs
that are, or at least driver's license.
They're older and they've stopped driving.
They live in a city and they've nevergotten a driver's license, whatever it
is, they're and or your driver's licensehappens to expire and 'cause you don't
drive very much or and so if you say, oh,you have to have a valid driver's license,
(21:49):
that actually doesn't include everybody.
And but I think there are solutionspeople try to do signatures, but of
course, I don't know, in the modernera, people don't learn cursive and
they don't necessarily sign theirname the same way sort every time.
And that can be confusing.
And so I think there aresolutions that are more inclusive.
(22:10):
But I think that's the standard.
We should always look, are we making sure?
So if we're gonna do an id, I thinkit's the government's responsibility
to affirmatively make sure thatpeople have access to that id.
And but I think if we had thislifetime voter registration system.
And kind of database isconsistent with that.
And you have a kind ofa unique identifier.
(22:31):
It doesn't have to be your socialsecurity number, but some, like
your democracy number or whatever.
You have a unique identifier that wasassigned when you first got registered.
That to me would be, you're notvoting more than once and you're
eligible, like you haven't diedand you're here, so I think
Jerremy (22:46):
though, right?
That'd be the exact same thing as avoter ID is like showing your idea,
showing your registration form to vote.
Rob (22:52):
yeah, showing your something.
But I think if you had a uniquedemocracy number and it could be double
checked and say, oh you're Rob Richieand you live here and the person's
checking you in can double check that.
Of course, a lot of people voteby mail, so we have to have
systems that accommodate peoplevoting, voting by by paper or,
sending it in or dropping it off.
But just the principle, thisis where the right to vote
(23:13):
in the constitution kicks in.
Okay, you do these things, but justmake sure you're not doing it in a
way that undercuts the right to vote.
You're actually alwaysbuilding on the right to vote.
And if that's the principle, then wecan always come up with solutions.
Jerremy (23:27):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's, love it.
Alex (23:31):
Rob breaks down gerrymandering's grip on safe seats, as Jerremy
spotlights everyday voter disempowerment.
But next, shifting to holidays andeducation, Rob uncovers communal
gaps—can simple access igniteturnout, or does apathy win out?
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