Democrats’ Gerrymandering Dilemma
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 October 2021
⏱️ 21 minutes
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Summary
With the results of the 2020 census in hand, all 50 states have begun the process of redistricting. Extremely thin margins in the House of Representatives mean that this hyper-local process has big implications on the balance of power at a national scale.
After aggressive Republican gerrymandering in the 2011 redistricting cycle, many Democrats came out in favor of creating non-partisan commissions to draw new voting maps. But how much of a moderating force are they really? And what happens if either side decides not to play by the commissions’ rules?
Guest: Nick Riccardi, a western political writer for AP.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Over the last few weeks, Colorado political reporters have been listening in on these conference calls. |
| 0:11.5 | At 601, I will call this Colorado Independent Congressional Districting Commission meeting to order. |
| 0:19.4 | It is hard to fully characterize exactly what they've been hearing. |
| 0:24.0 | I have to say that I am happy to be home, and my butt is happy not to be in the car all the time. |
| 0:29.4 | These calls are actually some of the tiniest building blocks of democracy. |
| 0:34.9 | But they sound like an old-fashioned party line gone haywire. |
| 0:39.0 | Hot yoga challenge for October. We should all do something. |
| 0:42.6 | So in Colorado for the first time, they're using an independent redistricting commission. |
| 0:49.8 | Nick Ricardy is one of the reporters who's been listening in. He says the 12 people exchanging |
| 0:55.0 | workout tips here. Other times they were guessing each other's birth order or showing off their cats. |
| 1:01.3 | They were just trying to burn time. Their real job was figuring out what Colorado's political |
| 1:07.2 | maps should look like. We'll just go with what I see, and I see Commissioner Coleman at the top with her hand up. |
| 1:14.8 | Commissioner Coleman? |
| 1:16.2 | Thank you, Jerome. |
| 1:17.5 | And I just want to say that this is, this process is a little crazy. |
| 1:34.3 | They're just kind of regular folks who have volunteered and gone through the application process for the commission. |
| 1:36.8 | The two maps we're considering keep on. |
| 1:39.7 | This is my time. |
| 1:43.9 | Suffice to say that the professionals who deal with them get a little frustrated. Nobody ever done this before in Colorado. They had to kind of create the system from scratch. Gentlemen, gentlemen, that's enough. Let's not devolve any further. Thank you all. We've had a lively discussion. Let's do another round of voting and we'll come back and let's come back with cool heads. |
| 2:11.4 | Congressional districts get remade every 10 years after the census comes out. So each state is going through a process that sounds something like this right now. Ideally, the districts |
| 2:16.9 | that get created, they're supposed to bundle |
| 2:19.2 | people together based on shared interest and geography. But if you look at some congressional |
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