‘You Can’t Out-Organize a Gerrymander’ with David Daley

Battleground with Amanda Litman and Faiz Shakir

The Recount

Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2014, Republicans won around 4.3 million more votes in House contests than Democrats, which netted them 247 congressional seats. In 2020, Democrats got approximately 4.7 million more votes, but won only 222 seats. For that unfair advantage, you can thank REDMAP: a Republican project to take state legislatures and then gerrymander districts, in order to win and hold power – even when they get fewer votes.

David Daley is a senior fellow at FairVote, a nonpartisan organization focused on making elections better, the author of two books on gerrymandering and voting rights, and the former editor-in-chief of Salon.com. With the August release of the 2020 Census data, Daley joins Battleground to sound the alarm on what’s looking more and more like the end of majoritarian rule. He and Amanda discuss the Roberts Court’s decision to stay out of states’ partisan redistricting efforts; the Democrat’s prospects in 2022; and how the party has mostly watched from the sidelines as these anti-democratic efforts unfold.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Amanda Litman and this is Battleground, a podcast from the recount and I heart radio.
0:13.6	Our guest this week is David Daly.
0:15.7	He's the author of Ratt Fucked, Why Your Vote Doesn't Count, and unregard how Americans
0:20.3	are battling back to save democracy.
0:22.1	I'm wanting to have Dave on the show to talk about the recently released census data
0:26.2	and how these numbers will affect the midterm elections and beyond.
0:29.7	He is the former editor-in-chief of Salon, a senior fellow at Fairvote, and really the
0:35.2	best reporter on redistricting.
0:37.8	We really wouldn't know about Red Map or any of the Republican strategies to control state
0:42.2	legislatures and ultimately control Congress for a decade without Dave's reporting.
0:47.0	We talk a lot about Republican strategies for retaining power on Battleground.
0:51.3	And so in this week's episode, Dave and I really get into the specifics of how they're
0:55.2	going to redraw districts to subvert democracy.
0:58.5	Abraham ends up that we are in an existential fight for the kind of democracy we want to
1:02.2	live in and that fight requires all of us to participate.
1:06.7	Before we get into my conversation with Dave, I want to talk a little bit about what's
1:10.0	going on on the local level across the country.
1:12.8	We have seen some incredible pushback by Democratic City Council members, school board members,
1:19.0	county judges, county executives against Republican governors who are banning mask mandates.
1:24.7	In Florida, Ron DeSantis is joining to ban school boards from issuing mask mandates.
1:30.0	He's threatened to take away their pay.
1:31.8	He said his pack will go after them, especially in some Democratic communities like Rowered
	...

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