#212 Redistricting: A Primer w/ Wendy Underhill & Ben Williams
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2021
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There is a lot at stake when congressional districts are redrawn every ten years, and the complexity of redistricting can make it hard for even well-informed citizens to understand the process. In this episode, we get a primer on redistricting's past and present from the same experts that our state legislators turn to when it's time to redraw their districts: Wendy Underhill and Ben Williams of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Wendy and Ben take us through the history of redistricting, why it became mandatory only in the 1960s, and how new information and technology shape the way we're represented in our state and federal governments.
To find out more about redistricting in your state, check out "Redistricting Systems: A 50 State Overview" from NCSL.
Wendy Underhill is Director of NCSL's Elections and Redistricting Program.
Ben Williams is a Policy Specialist in Elections and Redistricting at NCSL. You can follow him on twitter at @ElectionBen.
A special thanks to Tim Story for helping to arrange this conversation.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. |
| 0:09.0 | Today's episode is a conversation that I had last week at the National Conference of State Legislatures Legislative Summit in Tampa, Florida. |
| 0:17.7 | I went down there to speak on a panel. It was fantastic. I spoke alongside Donna |
| 0:21.7 | Washington, the great storyteller on a panel called The Power of Story. That was great. |
| 0:27.5 | And that would have made it a great trip. But then I got the honor of speaking with Wendy Underhill |
| 0:31.9 | and Ben Williams, both of which worked for NCSL. and we had a whole conversation that we recorded. |
| 0:38.6 | We're sharing it with you today about the history and present of congressional redistricting. |
| 0:44.2 | It's a complicated thing, and I thought that maybe this episode would focus primarily on the present. |
| 0:49.5 | You know, we like to go into the past, but sometimes if something's pressing, we'll cover that now. |
| 0:54.5 | But oh my goodness, you can't even understand redistricting right now if you don't understand |
| 0:59.5 | changes in court decisions that took place in the 1960s. And Wendy and Ben are so knowledgeable |
| 1:05.4 | about this. They broke this down. Like, I had no clue that this redistricting that we're doing right now |
| 1:11.3 | wasn't even mandated until the 1960s. So they follow that through. They talk about the census, |
| 1:16.4 | how the data has changed over time, privacy protections, and just kind of what it looks like |
| 1:22.4 | whenever these legislators try to redraw these districts. One thing that I love about NCSL |
| 1:27.2 | is that it is a nonpartisan organization. |
| 1:30.3 | It serves the states and smaller governments and the territories as well. And it's just so great |
| 1:36.4 | to be around a bunch of people who want to serve. And because that's the tone they set, you have |
| 1:41.1 | legislators from different parties from all over the country coming together talking to |
| 1:45.4 | each other i had great conversations with people from all over the country from from both major |
| 1:50.3 | parties and in fact third parties and it just was great because really the issues were on the on the |
| 1:57.0 | ground they were on the table this wasn't. It was how do we figure out how to |
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