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Mary Greene: This is the one great voice we have
in a democracy, the voice of our vote.
Paul Weyrich: I don't want everybody to vote.
Elections are not won by a majority of people,
they never have been, and they are not now.
Ronald Reagan: This idea that government is beholden
to the people is still the most unique idea
in all the long history of man.
Coretta Scott King: Make sure that we get people in office
who are going to be responsive to the needs of the individuals
that they represent.
John Lewis: They are changing the rules.
That's not right, that's not fair,
and that is not just.
(upbeat music playing)
Reporter: The National Guard has been called in
to aid in the water crisis in Flint, Michigan,
a city with a water supply contaminated with lead.
Reporter 2: Thousands of residents exposed
to toxic levels of rust,
iron, and lead want to know who is to blame.
Reporter 3: Volunteers from across the state and country
have trucked in water on U‐Haul trucks
because of the city's contaminated drinking water.
Reporter 4: The entire population,
roughly 100,000 was potentially exposed to lead.
Stephen: The Flint water crisis really starts
with the 2010 elections.
In those elections, Republicans gained
total control of the state government
in Michigan.
One of the things that they did was they passed
what they called an emergency manager law.
This law allowed the state government
to effectively override local government
and install their own executive
to do practically whatever they wanted
in terms of public policy.
Reporter: Governor Snyder signed a new law
giving financial managers broader powers
to fix the finances
of communities and school districts.
Reporter 2: Seven emergency financial managers
are in place including in cities like Detroit,
Flint, and Pontiac.
Rick: These emergency managers were described
as virtual dictators over their communities.
They could impose spending cuts,
they could re‐bargain contracts.
Rev. Williams: They took control to keep control.
If that meant taking democracy away,
they decided that that would be the route they would take.
We have to send the message
that we will not tolerate emergency dictators in the land.
Curt: There was widespread grassroots opposition
because it was so extreme.
Rev. Williams: We fought it, we fought it in protest,
we fought it using our bodies.
All: Shame, shame, shame, shame.
We fought it at the ballot box.
Curt: In November 2012, by a pretty significant margin,
voters rejected this extreme, emergency manager law.
Rev. Williams: We were excited because grassroots won,
everyday people won, and said,
"We don't want emergency management."
And then in the midnight hour, in a lame duck session,
the legislature found this loophole,
changed some words,
changed some commas, and created a new law,
and then after they changed it,
made sure that it could never be repealed again.
(ominous music playing)
Stephen: One of the first things that Republicans did
when they took over the legislature
was they drew these aggressive legislative districts
that locked in Republican majorities.
David: The legislature never would have passed
the Emergency Manager Act in Michigan if it had not been
for gerrymandering.
The people did not want this, they went to the ballot box
and they made that clear in a referendum.
But the legislature knew
they were no longer accountable to the people.
They knew that these district lines
completely insulated them.
Flint city officials: Three, two, one.
Man: Yeah!
Here's to Flint!
‐ Here's to Flint! ‐ Here, here!
Rev. Williams: My office started getting phone calls.
"This water is horrible, it comes out of the tap brown."
I'll never forget, one lady came up to me in a meeting
and said, "Reverend, my dog won't drink this water."
Reporter: This crisis began over a year ago, silently,
when the city switched from a Detroit water system,
to the Flint River.
The Flint River has a high salt content,
so it corroded the pipes that it flowed through,
and lead from those pipes leached into the system.
Rev. Williams: It happened because elected officials
had the ability to do whatever they wanted to do.
"If I don't ever have to worry about being unelected,
I don't care about your water.
Why? Because I don't have to be accountable to you."
Faith in government began to wane, faith in democracy,
faith in the whole process began to wane.
Katie: I think Flint woke people up.
Just sitting and watching, like, these politicians
just so blatantly disregard the will of the people.
You have these officials who feel untouchable,
who feel like they can't get unelected
because they've designed
and rigged a system to make it that way.
I just reached a point where it was like, why aren't we‐‐
how can we do something about this, like, how?
I wanted to have some way to come together
and start fixing this.
And stop accepting that things are corrupt.
In this age of the internet, you're so connected to, like,
these great examples of people who start off on something,
and it does work sometimes.
And so I think I thought, you know,
I'm going to throw it out into the world.
(keyboard clicking)
From the moment I posted it, I saw so many people
who were just upset with the current way politics
had been happening.
(keyboard clicking, pinging)
I saw that there was a pent‐up energy.
I was like, "I'm not alone."
So I just thought I would, yeah, try.
(laughs)
(curious music playing)
David: Where you draw the lines
makes all the difference.
A mapmaker knows as they draw a line
how it's going to influence an election precisely.
Ari: The reason that you gerrymander
is to make it harder
for your opponents' vote to count.
And there are a few different ways you do that.
You can pack your opponent,
so you can put your opponent's supporters
into as few districts as possible,
so they'll win some seats, but you'll win
all the other seats.
Then there is also cracking, that's the other way
gerrymandering works,
where you spread your opponents out.
So, fine, you'll give your opponents 20 percent
of the vote in a bunch of districts,
but they're never going to win those districts.
Kevin: The effects of packing and cracking
are to create seats that are safe.
The winner is pre‐decided,
just by the way that the districts are drawn.
Dale: It really represents legislators picking voters,
rather than voters picking legislators,
and I think most people find that offensive.
Katie: The system is no longer working,
the political system no longer works
for the average person,
and in Michigan, it no longer works for Michiganders.
So for today, we're going to do a campaign highlight,
kind of give everybody an update of what's happened
over the last month.
We wanted to do something about this issue,
but to pretend that we knew at all what we were doing
would be a complete lie.
I'm John Hanieski, I'm heading up
the finance committee.
I got pulled out a few weeks ago,
I know Katie from college, we sat next to each other
in public policy class.
And then I'm also the state field director,
so I have that group also which consists of...
Katie: There had been some news pieces saying
that there was not interest from our elected officials
in changing this.
The proposal at a glance is it's going
to be a citizen's commission.
Katie: And so it just felt like an independent
citizen‐driven commission that would draw the lines
in a fair and transparent way was the way to go.
You prescribe for fixing this, this citizens' commission.
Four would be Democrats, four would be Republicans,
five would be Independents.
Yeah, so right now the process happens completely
behind closed doors and is the most partisan thing
that could happen.
You have one party
with lobbyists locking themselves behind,
you know, that door.
Our process takes all of that and throws it out
into the open.
Thank you guys so much for coming out on a Saturday.
Katie: Because I don't do politics for a job,
it's not a huge part of my life.
When we started talking to other groups, you know,
they were like well, nobody in your group has, you know,
directly ran a ballot initiative, so...
Jonathan: I mean are you going out
and talking to groups, trying to get
some big organizations who might have some
financial resources behind them?
Katie: We're looking to coalition build.
It... Redistricting is an issue that affects
so many different things.
Tim: So who do you have onboard?
No organizations formally yet,
but we're working with plenty.
Rick: You're trying to coalition build,
who is in your coalition?
I think they didn't know what to do with us.
So this is part of the 14th Congressional District,
so why was it created this way?
Katie: But we started doing these town halls.
Kevin: Farmington has
a good number of Republicans in it,
so you pull Pontiac out
and you put it in the next district over
because there it contributes to majorities
for the other side.
Katie: And we saw, you know, a renewed sense of urgency
from the people of Michigan.
We started from a Facebook post in social media,
and quickly turned into a thousand different strangers
from across the state that have come together
to go through the process, learning as we go.
Male speaker: Seeing that all those in favor of the motion
‐ signify by saying aye. ‐ Female speaker: Aye.
All those opposed? The motion carries.
(cheering and applause)
Yes, we have something very important for you to do.
(exclaims) I'm going to cry.
(Katie laughs)
I am shaking, thank you.
Our whole campaign has been about the people,
about representing accurately the voices of the people
and making sure that what we actually want as change,
doesn't get manipulated from anybody,
and I feel so confident that we have done that
and will continue to do that.
So thanks and let's go gather petitions.
‐ Yeah! ‐ (cheering)
Thanks, Joe.
David: Gerrymandering takes its name
from a man named Elbridge Gerry,
the Governor of Massachusetts in 1812
who agrees to maps that draw up wild districts.
A political cartoonist takes one look at this
and thinks it looks like a salamander,
so it becomes known
as gerrymandering.
Quick sidenote, you are not wrong to notice
that the "gerry" in gerrymander
refers to a guy whose name was actually pronounced Gary
because literally everything
about gerrymandering is stupid and wrong.
Robert: All the way through the mid to latter part
of the 20th Century,
gerrymandering, though it was pervasive...
State legislatures all over America are at it again.
Robert: ...it was never used to consolidate
and make permanent
the power of any one political party.
Male speaker: Gerrymandering continues to be
an effective weapon to maintain the status quo.
David: It was often about incumbent protection
and both sides would do it.
Democrats did a terrific job of gerrymandering
California in the 1980s.
There was a congressman named Phillip Burton who used to say
that the district lines that he drew there
were his contribution to modern art.
Regan: The fact is gerrymandering
has become a national scandal.
The Democratic controlled state legislatures
have so rigged the electoral process
that the will of the people cannot be heard.
Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen,
the next first family of the United States of America.
(cheering)
David: November 2008, we have the historic election
of our first African American president.
You see a Democratic super majority
in the U. S. Senate,
and it returns a Democratic majority
to the U. S. House.
Reporter: The defeat is total, Republican leaders
just can't spin it any longer.
Reporter 2: Barack Obama promised to change
the red states blue and he did.
It is remarkable.
Dave: If you watch the news coverage of that night,
folks were talking as if the Republican party was dead
for a generation, not simply because of this election,
but because of the way American demographics
are changing.
Vann: I think Republicans saw the writing on the wall which is
there are fewer and fewer Republicans born every day,
and more and more Democrats every day.
They're running out of room.
There's no question now Republicans have got
a lot of work to do.
Something is wrong with the Republican party.
The damage is very severe.
Our party is eroding by the day.
Chris: There is always that moment, right?
Whenever there is a big loss for a party,
there's this moment of panic.
I think those of us who have been around a little bit
kind of can see past the panic, but still have the fundamental
strategic question: What are we going to do?
How do we get back?
And I think that, you know, part of that
turned out to be our REDMAP project.
David: Chris Jankowski is one of the smartest minds
in the Republican party.
He understands that as important as 2008 was,
2010 had the opportunity to be a much more
important election.
2010 is a zero year, elections ending in zero
are more consequential
because it's a census year and we redistrict
every state legislative seat and congressional seat
following the census.
Vann: The census provides an estimate of how many people
are in every state, and every county,
and every block.
As per the constitution, in order to keep up
with population shifts, they build new state
and congressional districts.
In 80 percent of all states,
it's the state legislatures that play the key role
in redistricting.
If you win state legislatures in 2010,
you get to draw the new maps that control all the elections
over the next decade, and they knew that.
David: Jankowski goes to Republican donors
and says I can deliver two things for you.
I can deliver conservative control of congress,
perhaps for a decade,
but I can also promise Republican control
the state legislatures
and we can move a conservative agenda
through the states as well.
It was a very easy sell to those
who were involved in state elections.
What we did was we took the cost
of swing congressional seats over 10 years, five elections,
and we pegged that at over 100 million per election.
We said okay for this price we can get control
of those state legislatures and re‐draw the maps.
We projected it would be quite a cost‐efficient endeavor.
25, 30 million dollars rather than
almost half a billion.
David: If you look at the donors to this project you see
the big money interests that help fund the Republican party
and conservative politics in the country.
Walmart.
Altria which is big tobacco.
The Chamber of Commerce.
Establishment corporate interests,
like the Koch brothers.
2010 already was setting up to be a big year
for the Republicans, but what they wanted to do
was win the right seats.
The key seats that would allow them to have an influence
on the redistricting process.
Chris: It was Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
North Carolina, Colorado.
You know Michigan, I had looked at their map,
looked at their research, and their plan,
and I said, "Okay, we're in for a million,"
and they said, "Really?"
And I said, "Yep, so I want you to spread this map.
Act like you've got another million."
They spent tons and tons of money in races
where people had never even seen TV ads before.
Female narrator: Senator Reynolds supports
Obama's health care takeover.
Male narrator: A billion‐dollar tax increase to fund
more government spending.
Female narrator 2: Unemployment has almost doubled.
Chris: We looked and said okay,
looks like crime is an issue here.
This incumbent has bad crime votes,
so we're going to educate them on that.
You know this is a bad budget vote,
this is a bad school vote.
We went wherever the data suggested we should go.
Margaret: We had no idea what was about to hit us.
Nobody had ever seen anything like it.
In the last weeks of that campaign,
mailers from my opponent were arriving every day.
Female narrator: Incumbent senator Margaret Dickson,
who does she really care about?
Margaret: Right at the end there was a campaign ad
against me that portrayed me apparently as a prostitute.
Female narrator: What does Margaret Dickson
really care about?
I didn't really sense it in North Carolina
until the very end, and I saw it in my race,
and I saw it when I talked to colleagues,
they were having the same experience.
We all had kind of this "ah‐ha" moment.
And it was true, it wasn't just North Carolina,
it was true across the country.
It's shaping up as a big Republican night.
It is being called a GOP sweep
and a Tea Party tidal wave.
Chris: We knew it was going to be a good night.
The Friday before that, I went out on a limb and predicted
we would pick up at least 10 legislative chambers
and possibly higher.
And right after I got off the phone with that reporter
I thought, "Ooph, that seems, yeah, I believe it,
I see it in the data, but it just seems really amazing."
But then as the night unfolded we took everything
we intended to take.
News pundit: North Carolina House and Senate flip
to the Republicans for the first time since 1870.
The Indiana House has flipped,
the Pennsylvania House has flipped,
Michigan House has flipped,
the Ohio House has flipped, the Iowa House has flipped.
A tsunami just hit the heartland.
This was actually something that wasn't covered
a whole lot at the time.
A dozen or so states would turn into Republican hands
and would now have control over drawing all
of the district boundaries.
David: They did this for 30 million dollars.
It's the biggest bargain and perhaps the biggest heist
in modern American political history.
Chris: For us, it was mission accomplished.
And then the second part of the plan was what happened
with redrawing the lines.
(keyboard clicking)
We sent out a letter to all of the new leaders
and said, "If you need resources,
we would be happy to provide those for you."
They say, "If you need mapping help,
if you need legal help, you let us know,
we've got the money for you.
We have the experts, we have the money, let us help."
(cheerful music playing)
Stephen: Tom Hofeller is kind of a superstar
in gerrymandering.
It's my job to advise Republican stakeholders
in the redistricting question on how they can maneuver
through these thickets.
Stephen: He goes around and works
for Republican legislators in multiple states
and will draw their maps.
There is something almost like
an old country doctor about Hofeller.
He would pack his old kit bag, you know, with his laptop,
kiss his wife in Alexandria, Virginia goodbye,
and pet his dog.
And then set off into a country
that was about to be redrawn by him.
Rob: Redistricting used to be done by legislators
or their legislative staff,
so it was always a partisan project,
but at least people lived in the state,
and they knew the people, and they knew the politics.
These people out of Washington,
all they know is where the airport is
when they come down and deliver the plans.
And they also know how to use sophisticated software
to maximize political results.
Jeff: Hofeller has got a piece of software
and he downloads a bunch of political data into that
and he spits out the most partisan map
that he thinks the courts will allow.
David: Gerrymandering from 1788 through 2000
is in its minor leagues.
In 2010, gerrymandering jumps straight
into its steroids era.
Big data and big technology emerge in such a way
that you can carve
more precise gerrymanders than ever.
Margaret: They used census data, educational levels,
income levels.
Stephen: Voters' partisan history,
their race and their gender, and their age,
those factors tell you so much about a voter
that you can predict how they're going to vote
in a few years with a strong degree of confidence.
Margaret: They could go down the street and, "These people
are Republicans, we're going to put them in this district,
these people are Democrats,
we're going to put them over here."
There was no transparency at all
because they were using private computers,
they were being drawn off site
by hired Republican consultants.
Jeff: Picture a black box.
Whatever happens inside that black box, you can't see.
They just come out and they say here is the map.
Stephen: It was a flawlessly functioning map.
Every single district hit what you might call
the sweet spot, safe enough for Republicans
to consistently win it,
but it didn't waste excess votes,
they could have spread around to other districts.
On the other hand,
the few Democratic districts they drew
were designed to quarantine as many Democratic voters
as possible.
So, here is what they do.
They get data on where all the African Americans live
and then they just draw lines around it
so the really crazy looking maps,
the really squiggly looking ones,
the reason they're squiggly is because they're picking up
all the African American communities
all throughout the state.
Seth: Take a look at North Carolina's congressional map.
Look at District 12, it's so weirdly shaped
they can't even fit the 12 in it.
Looks like a Rorschach test, what do you see in this shape?
I don't know, it's either a dragon or 300 years
of institutional racism.
(laughing)
Ari: Republicans have cynically
put more and more minorities into what's called
the majority minority district.
So the district goes 50 percent minority,
to 60 percent minority, to 70 percent minority,
and the reason they're doing this is so that minorities
will have less impact in all of the other districts.
And that was exactly the strategy that Tom Hofeller
used in North Carolina.
Funneling as many black voters as possible
into the 1st and 12th Congressional Districts,
while bleaching the surrounding areas.
Carter: The truth is
the Republicans targeted African Americans,
but the motivation wasn't,
"We want to hurt African‐Americans,"
it was "We want to hurt Democrats."
Robert: One of Hofeller's crowning achievements
is what he did in the western part
of North Carolina,
in particular, the district that was occupied at the time
by a moderate Democrat, Heath Shuler.
Rob: Heath Shuler was a former
University of Tennessee quarterback.
He was kind of a moderate to conservative Democrat.
You didn't send me up there
to blindly follow any one party,
you sent me up there to do what's right
for our mountain families.
Rob: Loved guns, is anti‐abortion,
he was the very picture of a good old boy.
And so you can't really run against this guy
like he's a San Francisco Democrat.
So they had to change the guy's district.
The most Democratic area of his district was Asheville,
which is this little Haight‐Ashbury
in the middle of the mountains.
Robert: Hofeller just essentially carved Asheville
out of that map and moved it to another area,
an area that was so Republican that it could absorb Asheville.
Suddenly that part of Buncombe County
where Asheville was a part
was suddenly quite a conservative district.
Heath Shuler, recognizing the writing on the wall,
retires from politics altogether.
Suddenly now it's there for the taking by Republicans
and the guy who wins it is a guy named Mark Meadows.
2012 is the time
that we're going to send Mr. Obama home
to Kenya or wherever it is, we're going to do it.
(cheering)
Stephen: Meadows is now
the chairman of the Freedom Caucus
which is the hardline group in the House of Representatives
that opposes anything that is not orthodox,
you know, conservatism.
Vann: Replacement of people like Shuler
with people like Meadows
is actually one of the reasons why
the country, as a whole, has become so hyper‐partisan.
Candidates in the middle, both moderate Republicans
and conservative Democrats, they've been the key targets.
It moves our political system towards polarization.
David: When a member of congress need only fear
a primary challenge,
when they are so safe in their seat
that they cannot actually lose an election,
all they care about is guarding their base.
So working across the aisle, compromise,
trying to find common ground, all of the things
we used to think of as being central
to the art of politics
actually become the only things that can cost them their seat.
These are all shrink‐wrapped in packages of a hundred
and so are the petitions,
so I'm just going to make sure that you have 19.
‐ Katie: These look great. ‐ Yeah, they do.
Then it's only for people who signed,
people who don't sign don't get anything.
Yeah, they don't. (laughs)
So, that's where we're headed.
Are you guys registered to vote in Michigan?
Volunteer: Excuse me, ma'am, are you a registered voter
here in Michigan?
Have you had a chance to sign the petition
to end gerrymandering in Michigan?
To end what?
Volunteer: Would you be interested in signing
a petition against gerrymandering?
Woman: Against what's that?
Volunteer: Gerrymandering.
Reporter: In Michigan it is almost impossible
for a petition drive to gather enough signatures
without using paid professional petition circulators.
You're not paying for names.
‐ Katie: Correct. ‐ And you don't intend to?
Katie: Correct, yeah.
Right now, we're at two weeks in officially today,
we have 50,000 signatures
that have been gathered a hundred percent
by volunteers from across the state.
Volunteer: We're working with Voters Not Politicians
for the anti‐gerrymandering drive.
Because right now politicians are manipulating
the system, so then they don't listen to voters.
Hi, this is Katie, I'm doing a super,
super late weekly update.
I just wanted to say thank you to every single person
who decided to start gathering signatures.
So I would start with today's date.
Kyle: The anti‐fracking movement had a lot of energy
and they failed to get the signatures needed
to get on the ballot.
‐ Do you know about the topic? ‐ Oh, yeah.
You're all set, okay, wonderful.
News pundit: I mean, the only group ever
to manage getting a petition on the ballot
using only volunteers was Right to Life.
If anyone else is interested in signing.
I'm not sure if anyone has been paying attention
at all to our ticker,
but we are at 196,000 signatures,
which is absolutely amazing.
They're not only on pace to get the 400,000
that they want, but they, it looks like they're going
to do it before their deadline which is really amazing.
I tell you these folks are everywhere.
I mean I can't go to a public event
without seeing them.
Oh my gosh, remember right after we got approval
where they called all our people old ladies
who aren't going to get anything done?
They're like, their minds are blown, it's awesome.
(keyboard clacking)
Woman: Aww, goodbye, hair.
Ah, I wish I was better at this.
Woman 2: It's pretty bad.
‐ Joe: Not as much as I do. ‐ (laughter)
Katie: Today we turn in our signatures
to the Secretary of State.
Who would have known that a little over a year ago
we would be here today turning them in two months early
with all volunteers?
In under 40 days
we got all 83 counties represented
and that is only possible
because all of you guys decided to say,
"Heck yeah I'm going to join onto this thing."
Here is where we're loading up the petitions.
I'm not sure if everybody can see this,
but there are literally rows and rows of boxes.
Rick: I remember the first time I saw this group get together
and talk about it and, you know,
I'm a veteran political reporter,
I'll have you know.
And I looked at these people and I was like, "No way."
No way.
I know what a winning operation looks like
and this isn't it.
Kathay: They have turned every political operative's
predictions on their head.
They have really blown the box up
and there is no more box, they have reinvented everything.
Our proposal will take redistricting out of the hands
of politicians and lobbyists
who do their work behind closed doors
and give it to citizens who will do it in the public.
What we've seen in other states who have done
redistricting efforts similar to ours
is you see higher voter turnout.
There's about 13 different states
that have independent commissions.
(cheering)
Our U‐Haul.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There it is, a really full truck.
Katie: Thousands of people worked on this campaign.
If we can get this passed in 2018,
there will be thousands of people who affected law
that will affect every election in Michigan.
It was for and by the people and I know that's like
kind of hokey, and kind of like, you know,
really Founding Fathers‐y, but like the fact
that we would actually be able to do that
and prove that democracy is still out there,
that's amazing.
No matter what you do for this campaign,
entering the check numbers, like it all is only possible
because of each of you.
And I know at least on my end, that's the best part
about this campaign is seeing that really the political power
is inherent in the people, so yeah!
(cheering)
Justin: The one thing that we are sure of
is that legislators will fight like crazy
to retain this power they have.
I think there will be a vicious fight by the people
who are in power to preserve that power.
They're going to want to try to find some way
to litigate us, to keep us off from the ballot.
We are not going to outspend our opposition.
We might get lucky and get outspent four to one.
We're probably going to get outspent 10 to 20 to one.
The opposition is going to try to bleed us dry financially.
And then they're going to go for the PR.
They're going to be saying that we are complex,
that we are complicated, and that we're confusing.
We cannot make our policy sound even a little bit...
complex, confusing at all.
Like, we have to make sure
it's a very simple and direct approach,
and that the language that we use
to describe the policy reflects that.
They're absolutely worried about us.
They know and we know
that once this gets on the ballot,
it almost always passes.
(elephant trumpets)
(snake hisses)
(bat chirps)
(duck quacks)
Justin: The election of 2010 had been the Tea Party wave
and the redistricting that followed
the election of 2010
would keep those legislators in their seats.
In a normal political cycle, we would expect a wave
to come in and a wave to recede,
and a wave to come in and a wave to recede.
We see this over and over again.
The election of 2010 was a giant wave
and the Republican Party
put up an enormous sea wall in order to stop
that wave from receding.
And when that happened, we have seen extreme policy
as a result.
(cheerful music playing)
Peter: Wisconsin is basically an evenly divided state.
Half of the state is Republican
and half the state is Democratic.
In 2010, Project REDMAP and the Republicans
invested a large amount
of very strategically targeted money.
They took the State Assembly and the State Senate
and they won the governorship.
Scott: No matter where you live,
no matter what your background,
no matter who you voted for,
we all live in Wisconsin together,
and we're going to move this state forward together.
(cheering)
Sly: Scott Walker just swept in
with the rest of the Republicans.
I mean the slate went from everything Democratic,
to everything Republican, everything.
Chris: REDMAP, for us, was only the beginning.
State governments, like Wisconsin,
were little laboratories of democracy.
Now that we got control of them,
we wanted to do something with it.
‐ Good morning. ‐ Officials: Good morning.
I see everyone's here to see my prediction for
the Ohio State/Wisconsin game on Saturday.
In this bill will be a change in terms of state employees
not being required to be a part of their union.
Barry: Act 10 would essentially do away
with collective bargaining for public sector employees.
That was something that had been a long tradition
in Wisconsin, had been a cherished part of the state.
That was a total surprise.
This is a significant change,
this is obviously a very bold and aggressive change.
The Republicans, they understood,
Scott Walker understood that public sector unions,
the teachers, the municipal workers,
the folks that pick up your garbage,
they tend to vote Democratic and they use their unions
as a means of promoting their political views.
Thanks very much for your time.
Peter: So he wanted to destroy that.
Dale: I knew what this would mean.
It came up in caucus and I think my exact words were,
"Are you crazy?"
People kill each other's dogs over this kind of stuff.
(playing "America the Beautiful" on bagpipes)
Peter: When Act 10 was introduced, the entire state
just rose up in anger.
Announcers: We are proud to stand with you,
Wisconsin backers.
(cheering)
First there was 10,000, then there was 20,000,
then there were 30,000, and this thing just sparked.
Protesters: Hey, hey, ho, ho, Scott Walker has got to go.
Patrick: Tens of thousands of people in the capitol.
All protesters: Solidarity forever.
Patrick: As many as 100,00 on the capitol ground some days
and this thing is sustained for days, and days,
and weeks, and weeks.
Dale: It's just hard to express how angry people were.
You know this is a place like Minnesota,
people are basically nice, and suddenly we had
this incredible, polarized atmosphere.
‐ Woman: We are the union! ‐ Protestors: We are the union!
Woman: The mighty, mighty union.
Fred: We were a state that had a strong tradition
of trade unions.
People thought, "What in the world is he trying to do?"
Scott: Hi, this is Scott Walker.
David Koch Impersonator: Scott, David Koch, how are you?
Scott: Hey, David, I'm good, and yourself?
David Koch Impersonator: I'm very well.
Little disheartened by the situation there,
but what's the latest?
Scott: We're actually hanging pretty tough.
You know amazingly there is a much smaller group
of protesters, almost all of whom
are in from other states today.
5,000 to 6,000 state workers
will get at‐risk notices for layoffs.
We might ratchet that up a little bit, you know.
David Koch Impersonator: Beautiful, beautiful,
got to crush that union.
Chris: Just as there were all these protesters begging
this governor to listen to them,
the person who he was willing to listen to
and so eager to please
was an out‐of‐state billionaire.
He talked about coordinating with other governors,
which made it very clear that this is a national plan.
Scott: I talk to Kasich every day,
you know, John has got to stand firm in Ohio.
I think we can do the same thing with Rick Scott in Florida.
I think Snyder if he got a little more support,
probably could do that in Michigan.
This was a test run to see if they could
run over public employee unions nationwide.
Scott: There's a lot of us new governors who got elected
to do something big.
David Koch Impersonator: You're the first domino.
Scott: Yep, this is our moment.
Stephen: Republicans had no fear of losing power
because they could draw districts
to insulate themselves from public opinion.
David: The leadership of the Republican Party
in both the House and the Senate in Wisconsin
are able to tell their members, "It's okay to vote for this.
It might not be popular, stay strong,
we are drawing you a seat you cannot lose."
Peter: While the streets were full of people demonstrating,
hundreds of thousands of people,
what we didn't know was that Scott Walker
and the legislature took the computers
that they were going to use to redistrict
out of the capitol building, and they moved them
across the street to a Republican law firm
by the name of Michael Best and Friedrich.
And in the very back of that law firm they set up
a secret mapping room.
Ari: It's an incredibly powerful and jarring juxtaposition.
You have these two things playing out,
there's all these people protesting
the anti‐union legislation.
Right across the street, key aides to the legislature
are writing, in secret,
the redistricting maps that will determine
Republicans' power for the next decade.
Sachin: Knowing that they had both houses
of the legislature,
they did everything they could to hide
their map drawing process not only from the public,
but even from most Republicans.
Peter: Nobody could even come into the room
unless you signed a secrecy agreement.
And if you'd signed that secrecy agreement
and you managed to get into the room,
which you could only do if you were a Republican,
you were only allowed to see your own map.
State Legislator: So you have before you the various maps
and we have some other members of the legislation here
and we're open for questions.
Sachin: When we first see the maps,
it's obvious that there's some significant bias in them.
Some individual legislators had been drawn
competing districts
that were going to be much tougher for them to win in.
There were these districts that were drawn
to pull Democratic voters into suburban districts
so there would be fewer Democratic districts.
And there were clearly some districts that were going
to be less competitive.
Chris: It was very well calculated.
They knew exactly what they were doing.
Wolf: We're closing in
on the first results in the battle for the White House.
When the results were known on election night
and we had been killed in the election,
somebody said, "Well, don't worry, all is not lost,
the Republicans won 60 seats in the Assembly."
I said to myself
and I said audibly to the people I was with,
"Well, that can't be right,
there's a mistake here somewhere."
And it was at that point I began to realize
that things had changed.
You have several states in 2012
where Democratic candidates
actually won more votes statewide
than Republicans did, but Republicans would win
lopsided majorities.
You had Pennsylvania where Democrats won more votes
and Republicans walked away
with a thirteen to five advantage.
Michigan where Democrats won more votes
and Republicans had a nine to five advantage.
North Carolina.
Wisconsin.
All of these states at either the congressional
or legislative level saw Democratic candidates
win more votes statewide but Republicans
win a majority of seats.
David: Republicans could not be beaten
and they were not beaten.
even when their side got many fewer votes.
And what you immediately see
in all of these gerrymandered states
is the rapid movement of a very conservative agenda
through state legislatures.
Reporter: A new bill being considered in Wisconsin
would allow local school districts
to make sex education
and teaching contraception optional.
Reporter 2: Republicans here called a special session
to pass House Bill 2, more commonly known
as the "Bathroom Bill".
A recent move by the legislature removes one route
to recourse in wage disputes.
It started the moment the General Assembly
went into session.
We're on the 10th order of business,
second reading of amendments and senate bill.
A legislative blitzkrieg would be
the way I would describe it.
Bob: There was anti‐regulation,
anti‐environment.
Senate Speaker: The clerk will close the role,
Assembly Amendment 3 is adopted.
Sachin: Defund public schools.
Sly: Destabling and going after Planned Parenthood.
Concealed carry was another issue
that they fought for a long time.
Democratic governor would veto it,
they were able to put that through.
Reporter: Another gun rights bill
is on the table to protect drivers
who carry their firearms inside their vehicles
and go to work.
If you wonder,
"Why do we see representatives that are doing things
that their constituents don't want?"
"Why are laws being passed that don't seem to reflect
the wishes of the public?"
Gerrymandering is a big part of the explanation.
One legislator stood on the floor and said,
"We are now in power,
and we're going to exercise that power,
and you all can sit back and forget about it."
Protesters: Bring back, bring back,
oh, bring back Wisconsin to me.
Ari: People began wondering,
"Where are all of these laws coming from?"
The fact that Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina,
Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, they're all passing
virtually identical pieces of legislation,
that's not a coincidence, someone is behind this.
Chris: ALEC stands for
the American Legislative Exchange Council
and the goal of ALEC is to push out policies
to maximize corporate profits at the state level.
This has been a goal of the right for decades.
Ari: This is a shadow arm of the Republican party.
You have corporations literally writing bills
in conjunction with state legislators
and then state legislators
introducing those bills to become law.
How many of our Christians have what I call
the goo‐goo syndrome?
Good government, they want everybody to vote.
I don't want everybody to vote.
Elections are not won by a majority of people,
they never have been
from the beginning of our country,
and they are not now.
As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections
quite candidly goes up
as the voting populace goes down.
Reporter: A developing story, a voter ID bill in Wisconsin
is moving on to the full assembly.
The measure would require voters to show
their ID's at the polls.
Ari: I first became aware of ALEC after the 2010 election
when we began to see all of these new voter ID laws.
And it was clear that these voter ID laws
had been written by ALEC after the 2008 election,
because we saw the model bill, we saw the bill
that had ALEC's name on it.
Reporter: Republicans say their intent
is to eliminate voter fraud
by requiring a photo ID from anyone
who votes in Wisconsin.
They have advanced these model bills
on voter identification
by creating this lie that somehow
people are impersonating people at the polls.
Reporter: Republicans say this will cut down
on documented election fraud in the state.
Ari: It's only when you begin to understand
that in fact voter fraud is an incredibly small problem
in American elections.
Then you begin to realize that all of these laws
were passed for an entirely different reason.
It had nothing to do with voter fraud,
it was all about trying to prevent
Democratic‐leaning voters
from being able to cast a ballot.
Gerry: Instead of trying to reach out to minority voters,
they said, "No, now that we've gerrymandered the districts,
we're going to go after
and suppress those voting rights."
Those bills would have never been passed
but for the gerrymandering that took place.
Vann: In the '90s, North Carolina was actually
really progressive when it came to voting rights.
I'm a North Carolinian and lots of my family
were the people that gained the ability to vote.
They liked being able to register at license offices,
they liked early voting.
They loved what's known as Souls to the Polls,
which is early voting on Sunday.
I've talked to people who had that sense of joy,
who've had, for the first time in their lives,
a sense of belongingness.
Anita: The process opened up, more people were voting,
and percentagewise,
African American registration levels
became more at parity with whites.
And we turn to a strict new voter ID law
in North Carolina,
which is putting a spotlight on the broader national fight
over when and where people can cast ballots.
What the new North Carolina voting law did
was it rolled back almost every single one
of those new provisions that had been created
to add more black people to the electorate.
It didn't just include strict voter ID,
but it cut early voting,
it eliminated same‐day voter registration,
it eliminated out‐of‐precinct voting,
it even eliminated Citizens Awareness Month
which the state of North Carolina
ran to encourage people to register to vote.
Jeff: It was all about
suppressing African American vote
in order to give Republicans an extra one to three percent
which is the margin of victory
in all of our competitive races.
So even though gerrymandering has reduced
the number of competitive races to only about 10 percent,
they wanted to reduce it even more.
Ain't going to let no extremists turn me around,
turn me around, turn me around.
Vann: I've interviewed people who say now
they have lost their pride,
they've lost that sense of belonging.
And that's a lot deeper than just the nuts and bolts
of a partisan advantage.
Anita: There was a client that I represented,
she was born at home with a midwife,
didn't have a birth certificate, couldn't get an ID.
She went to vote in person and she was turned away.
It's humiliating when you go and say, "I'm a citizen,
I have the right to vote, I would like to vote,"
and everyone else around you is voting,
and they turn you away and say, "No you can't vote."
It is humiliating.
Stephen: Republicans see their time running out
when it comes to the demographics.
They see that the country is getting less white,
more educated, and overall just more diverse.
David: What they have come up with
is a plan to try and stem that tide.
It starts with gerrymandering, it starts with drawing lines
that give them the ability to win all of these districts.
The second part of this process is voter suppression tactics
designed to make it harder for Democrats
and minorities to exercise the right to vote.
It's not a bunch of disparate parts,
it's not like one voter suppression law here,
one gerrymandering law here, this is part of a concerted
national strategy
by the Republican party
that's being undertaken all across the country
including in so many important swing states.
Brad: We battled to get voter ID on the ballot
for the November '16 election.
How many of your listeners really honestly are sure
that President Trump was going to win Wisconsin
if we didn't have voter ID
to keep Wisconsin's elections clean and honest?
Ari: I absolutely think you can draw a line
line between he voter suppression efforts
and the gerrymandering efforts and election results.
We are seeing efforts
to undermine the very core values
of American democracy.
Nothing is more fundamental in America
than having the right to vote,
and having the right to representation,
and those two core values have been undermined
by this new assault on democracy.
‐ Ruth: Hello. ‐ Bill: Hello, great to see you.
Ruth: You too, how are you?
It looks good, right?
Woman: Hi, Bill.
Nick: Good to see you, how are you?
‐ Hello. ‐ Hi!
Congratulations,
I've been watching your campaign.
‐ Plaintiff: Thank you. ‐ Ruth: That's very exciting.
Hey, Mary Lynne, good to see you.
(indistinct chatter)
I just want to be sure
that everybody gets to know Don Winter,
who hasn't been to one of these meetings before.
These are all your fellow planners, Don.
Emily Bunting, Janet Mitchell, that's a lawyer.
(laughs)
Well one question I had, too, about this election,
about the Supreme Court election‐‐
I've never met an epidemiologist that didn't get nailed!
Nick: Hello.
Hey, how are you? Good to see you.
That's Ruth, that's Nick, Annabelle,
you know the names, I'm sure. Peter Earle.
Nick: We did meet through our involvement in this field.
Our relationship has sort of fueled the lawsuit,
but then at the same time, the lawsuit,
it's sort of a mutually reinforcing circle.
Maybe coming from abroad, I have less
of a sense of the status quo.
So when I see something, like the fact that legislators
are allowed to draw their own district lines,
I'm more easily able to say, "Well why?"
Like that doesn't make any sense.
Can we sit out there so we can look at maps?
I brought all the maps on the wall.
I thought it might be useful to hear from all of you
about your districts
to understand what's wrong with your districts as they are.
So, maybe would all of you feel comfortable,
we have the map at the moment, you're welcome to come up
point and tell me what you like,
and what you don't like, and what you would prefer.
We were taken out of our district
and attached to a strongly Republican district.
I really feel that our vote is a wash.
No matter what I do or what we do as Democrats,
we can't get a representative elected.
We're sort of in exile down in Grant County
and I have these two secure Republicans
who do not bother with me.
This is the district now, and you can look,
like it goes up here a little bit.
You can look at how crazy it is with all these different lines,
but what's interesting, you'll notice,
here's the city of Portage, it goes around the city lines,
the city of Portage.
That's a Democratic‐‐ Excludes it.
It goes right around the city limits.
Here is the city of Compass, this is a Democratic city,
it goes right around the city lines
and keeps it out.
So they took the four largest municipalities
and went right around the city lines.
It's a very good example of gerrymandering.
Ari: The Whitford plaintiffs realized
there was no legislative fix to gerrymandering.
Democrats were never going to be able to win enough seats
under the gerrymandered maps to have any sort of impact,
so they had to attack this in the courts,
and they had to attack it in an innovative way.
Ruth: If you are on the side that you say
gerrymandering isn't unconstitutional...
Ari: But no federal court had ever outlawed
partisan gerrymandering before.
And to succeed,
the Whitford plaintiffs had to show
that Republicans deliberately intended
to deprive Democrats of representation.
Peter: We're trying to figure out,
how are we going to get a case before the court
that could once and for all resolve this problem?
And we saw an avenue here.
We immediately demanded that Republicans
in the Wisconsin state legislature
give us all of the documents from the secret mapping room
related to the redistricting process.
All the emails, all the iterations of the maps,
and they responded to us that, "No, you don't get
this information. This information is privileged."
The court said, "No, you have to give them these documents.
You're required to produce this information,
this is not something you can hide from the public."
Doug: We knew that they weren't being
completely forthcoming in all of the information
they were providing to us.
There were some spreadsheets that were created
by the mapmakers,
but we noticed that for some reason,
we didn't have any spreadsheets in April, or in May,
or I think June, also, of 2011.
And so we hired a computer forensic expert
to look through the hard drives to see
if he could come up with any spreadsheets
from that time frame where they were missing.
Mark: The first thing that struck me
is one of the external hard drives
had screws on the bottom that had a number of scratches.
This lead me to believe
that someone had disassembled this external hard drive.
I also determined that a piece of commercial wiping software
had been downloaded and executed.
And in one hard drive we identified
almost one million deleted files.
Someone did not want us to see what had been
on those hard drives.
Doug: Mark was able to recover dozens of spreadsheets.
And these spreadsheets turned out to be
what we would see as smoking gun evidence
in the case.
Mark: The spreadsheets told a story
about how these maps were being drawn,
and how these were different scenarios
that were being played out.
It was as though they were testing.
Sachin: You look at each successive spreadsheet
and you can see the maps getting more and more biased.
They started at 49 seats at their basic map,
then go up to 52 seats, and 55 seats, then 57 seats,
and 58 seats, and 59 seats.
What they were doing was they're reducing
the number of competitive seats.
They got pretty quickly to 59 seats for themselves.
I think there were four or five iterations
of the map at 59.
Then they take the 59‐seat map and they continue
and they continue to tweak it
subjecting it to this analysis to say,
well what if the Democrats do really well?
What if our candidates lose the argument with the voters?
On that final map,
even under the scenario of the Democrats winning
the vote by the biggest margin they've ever won
in modern Wisconsin history,
the Republicans would still get 59 seats minimum
in the state assembly.
That's an astonishing manipulation of democracy.
I mean think about it for a second.
I mean, people elect their representative
and representatives are accountable to the people
who elect them.
And, um... But if you do this,
if you were able to gerrymander effectively,
and egregiously, and durably for an entire 10‐year period,
there's no accountability.
They can do whatever the hell they want
and that is what they have been doing in Wisconsin.
Peter: Good morning.
I'm Peter Earle and I'm the lead trial lawyer
in this lawsuit which we filed today.
Peter: When one party gains control
of all the levers of government and then stacks the deck
in their favor to keep control
regardless of the will of the people,
the very heart and soul of our democracy is weakened.
There had never been a successful opinion of any sort
in this kind of a case.
I'm always a pessimist when it comes to litigation.
I thought that our odds of winning a trial
were less than 50 percent.
Federal Court rules today
that Wisconsin state voting districts
drawn up by Republicans are unconstitutional.
I remember when it came out, immediately, I called Nick.
She just yelled out, you know, "We won, we won."
I was like, "You have to come right now,
I'm going to buy champagne." (laughs)
(cork popping)
We were absolutely delighted to actually see
a verdict in your favor,
you know, for the first time in 30 years.
It was awesome.
David: This is the single biggest case for the future
of our democracy since Citizens United.
This may be the last time we have an opportunity
to do something about partisan gerrymandering.
If they lose, it's no holds barred.
(trolley bell rings)
Announcer: We'd like to thank you all for joining us
from near and far, crossing the country,
and crossing partisan lines to focus on solutions.
Jamie: We're here at the Unrig the System Summit
and we are mostly just building connections.
That guy you were talking to said he would
introduce us to that funder.
Jamie: We're all volunteers
and we've never done this before,
so we have a lot to learn from people.
‐ Hey, Anna. ‐ Anna: Nice to meet you.
What organization are you with?
What's been really fun about it
is that everybody knows about us already.
We're kind of famous.
I'm trying to be modest about that.
‐ Sachin: Congratulations. ‐ Thank you.
Sachin: Thank you.
‐ On the app or... ‐ Sachin: I'm a fan.
Oh, great.
Sachin: I'm the director in Wisconsin.
Oh, awesome. Can we connect?
Can we first take a selfie?
Yes, please, please, that would be great.
Such amazing stuff just in being all volunteer,
and engaging people, it's really been amazing.
Katie: He is my lawyer.
(Katie laughs)
I wish. (laughs)
So, you got my text?
Katie: What was your text?
It's before you speak, Heather and I want to talk
to you about how to find a way to get a money pitch in.
If you talk about where we're at.
‐ Just, I mean... ‐ Mm‐hmm.
That's how we're starting is "Where are you at?"
Where we're at, quite honestly where we're at
is we're waiting for the Board of Canvassers,
but frankly we're raising money.
I'm Katie Fahey,
I'm with an organization called Voters Not Politicians.
Kathay: One of the things that they're now having to figure out
is how do we go from being
a citizen signature gathering effort
to a campaign?
And how do we start to talk to
a much broader universe of people,
some of whom will be told by the opposition
that this is a power grab
and you should never vote for it.
Yeah.
Fight, oh my god, we know.
Bill: What about
the Voters Not Politicians ballot proposal?
If that gets on the ballot, do you think it's going to pass,
and does that cause a big problem for Republicans
going forward?
I don't think it will pass,
but also when you talked in your intro
about, this is some 27‐year‐old miraculously came up
and organization came together, I don't believe it.
I believe when you peel behind it,
you are going to see that this has all been
constructed by Democrats.
‐ But you think it will fail? ‐ I do.
David: The opposition is being led by Robert LaBrant.
LaBrant gets his start in politics working
for the Chamber of Commerce
and he is the maestro of redistricting in Michigan.
As far as ballot questions are concerned,
I've spent most of my summer trying to work out
a legal strategy to get one of the ballot question proposals
off the ballot.
David: LaBrant understood before anybody else
just how crucial these redistricting fights could be.
Every 10 years we do redistricting in Michigan
and I've kind of made that a kind of specialization.
Democrats tend to cluster in urban cities
and Republicans are kind of more evenly spread out.
In drawing district lines based upon
traditional redistricting criteria,
Democrats have a lot of wasted votes.
I don't think that's a direct result
of Republican gerrymandering, it's just a fact of life.
David: The real intent of LaBrant
and the other Republicans in Michigan
was revealed in a series of emails
exchanged between them during the redistricting process
in 2011.
The emails show that they gerrymandered
the state intentionally.
Nancy: So, for everyone who doesn't know,
we've gotten sued officially.
Um, they have filed a suit with the court of appeals
saying that our petition touches too many parts
of the constitution,
and so it's a wholesale revision and not something
that's appropriate for a ballot initiative.
Jeremy: Any time you want to change something in Michigan,
any time you want to have a citizen‐led effort
to take back control over what's happening
in state government,
you better come with a lot of money
because there's going to be a lot of money on the opposition
funding their lawyers to challenge everything.
This move is another one of those fundamental things
that's wrong with our democracy.
It's one of those things where, like, it's not really right.
Like, we have the right to petition our government,
and gather signatures, and get it on the ballot,
and then they're trying to do, like say that we can't.
Although we knew we were going to get sued,
it's not right that we are.
Hey, everybody, I wanted to do an update.
Normally I do this either on a Facebook Live,
or with an interview group, or a number of things.
You know, like an hour ago I was feeling so good.
Point of pride that I've always had
is that we've done things the way that, like,
you hope that they're done. Um...
I think that with this court case
it's made it feel really real that...
there's a lot of power out there that controls a lot
of things that you don't get to be in control over,
that you can try and work as hard as you can,
but, you know,
a misplaced comma or a word can throw things out.
And it feels really real right now,
the pressure feels on, um, because...
what if something does happen?
What if it's not possible for a group of people
to band together and...
try as hard as they can and...
what if it still doesn't matter?
I don't want to disappoint anybody.
(clicking)
(traffic noise)
Reporter: The U. S. Supreme Court will now decide
whether the maps that determine who you vote for
are constitutional.
Judy: The case on partisan gerrymandering
has the potential to reshape American politics
as we know it.
Hey, Peter.
Hello.
‐ Welcome. ‐ Good to see you guys.
Peter: Hey, welcome.
Ruth: Okay, we'll get the lawyers in now.
Male speaker: All right, lawyers.
Ruth: With you, with you.
Stay, stay, stay.
Photographer: One more, look serious,
like you're trying to save democracy.
(laughter)
This is what democracy looks like.
(camera shutter clicks)
(camera clicks)
Ruth: It's a little weird to have so much
of the world focusing on this.
I got woken up at 6:30 with my dad calling me
saying that he saw Nick, my co‐counsel and husband,
on Australian TV talking about the case.
We've had a countdown on our whiteboard in Chicago.
Somebody rang me and was like, "Oh, don't you have
a case in the next, you know, few months?"
I was like, "It's in five days, now it's four days."
Yeah, we're nearly there.
(indistinct chatter)
Paul: Um, so how about this?
As this case illustrated,
it's now possible to draw a district map
that is so extremely and durably biased
that democracy itself is gravely compromised?
Nick: Paul is the best possible person
in America to do this.
He is one of the country's
best respected Supreme Court specialists
who also has a particular expertise
in election law and redistricting.
Paul: You look at the first election,
you do sensitivity testing,
what does the sensitivity testing
have to show?
Nick: For the Plaintiff to win?
‐ Yes. ‐ Nick: Uh...
That over a plausible range of outcomes...
Paul: I think everybody gets nervous before they argue
in the Supreme Court.
The most important thing is to be extremely well prepared
and know what you're going to say first.
Because once you start talking, it's usually okay.
What you want to do is get to the green light point,
which is basically, "This court therefore has a choice,
either use the standards we've given you
to limit this abusive practice, or give a green light
to the gerrymanderers to have at it."
‐ I like have at it. (laughs) ‐ I do too. (laughs)
Paul: We got very close to winning the Vieth case,
as it became known.
We got four votes to say that the map was unconstitutional.
There were four votes to say
that the issue is a political question
that shouldn't be in the courts at all.
That was the opinion written by Justice Scalia.
Justice Scalia: The basic problem
is that some degree
of political motivation and affect in districting
is not unconstitutional.
Paul: And then there was Justice Kennedy,
who was in the middle.
Nick: Kennedy is telling the legal community
and the social science community,
you know, "I'm interested.
I'm willing to tackle this undemocratic practice,
but I need some assurance that there's a reliable,
workable test."
And so at the moment
fighting partisan gerrymandering in the courts
means coming up with a standard
that would be persuasive to Justice Kennedy.
Sachin: We could not have done more to answer
that call for a standard.
To say, "This is the case, if there's any case
in which you have to draw the line
and say it's unconstitutional and wrong."
(indistinct chatter)
Gerry: There are few times in your life
when you get to particularly be my age,
you look back and you say,
you know, "There were times when I could have made
a difference and did I step up to the plate
and do what I really needed to do
and have the courage to do it?"
And the plaintiffs in this case
stood up for what they believed in.
We are at a real crossroads and I think the window
is going to close on whether or not we can really bring about
this reform
if we don't get it done in this case.
Reporter: All eyes will be on the U. S. Supreme Court
as it hears a Wisconsin case challenging the way
the state's legislative districts are drawn.
Reporter 2: The legal question is,
can we even measure this? Should we get into it?
Is this a political question that we should stay out of?
And can we define what's extreme gerrymandering?
‐ Woman: Rise up! ‐ Protesters: Fight back!
It's a fixed system.
It's a fixed system, that's what gerrymandering
is all about.
Congress will never, ever fix this problem
because they have one interest and one interest only
and this is to stay in power.
Paul: Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the court,
what the state is asking for here is a free pass
to continue using an assembly map
that is so extreme
that it effectively nullifies democracy.
(text being read)
Paul: Hi, everyone, I'm Paul Smith,
I argued the case this morning for the plaintiffs
from Wisconsin.
We hope that the court will see its way clear to say
this is not only a constitutional violation,
it's a constitutional violation for which there is
a meaningful judicial remedy.
Paul: One thing I don't do is come out in front
of a bunch of cameras and predict Justice's votes,
but I do think he understood our position
and that he seems quite concerned
about where the country is right now.
Thank you, everybody.
Ruth: There were some great lines,
did you think of them yesterday?
Just real zingers.
Like the festival of gerrymandering
the likes of which we have never seen.
Doug: Well you heard Justice Sotomayor's comments,
you know, I mean you did this, and then you did this,
and then you did this to really ratchet up
the representation.
That was all based on the spreadsheets
that you had recovered for us on the hard drives.
I'm glad it worked out, fingers crossed, we'll see.
(cheering and applause)
I do want to say that you get to be a star
of the day one day if you're a Supreme Court guy.
But the case is made in the trenches
and this case was really made with all of you,
the plaintiffs, the lawyers.
If we didn't have that foundation,
we wouldn't have been in the Supreme Court.
So hope springs, we're going to do it.
Thank you, everybody.
(applause)
(laughs)
Peter: We have brought together some of the best minds
in the legal community...
and we have studied, so carefully,
the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on this question
and built an evidentiary record
that is so complete that I'm confident
we're going to win,
I'm confident we're going to win.
I'll tell you, the future of our democracy depends on it.
(engines revving)
Ruth: Here we go, somebody says,
"Is there any chance of the gerrymandering cases
being decided today?"
Of course there is.
I mean, so I think we're mentally prepared
for a win, obviously it's fantastic, right?
But we've talked over the loss like so many times
that I think we're prepared if that happens.
9:00 o'clock sharp.
Ruth: Okay, come on.
Nick: Last decision, Washington v. United Sates?
What's Washington v. United States?
Ruth: I don't know, but that means it's not us.
All right.
Ruth: (sighs) We can relax.
Okay, I bet it's next Monday.
I don't know why I'm so calm now that I think about it,
it's going to be very stressful if it comes.
I just think it's not.
I just had a very detailed dream that like,
Roberts announced the opinion, just like, you know,
went after us on standing.
Like ruled against us on every single possible issue.
Ruth: I think it's called a nightmare, Nick.
Second Minnesota Voters Alliance.
Oh, Mansky is reversed and remanded.
Nick: Is that it?
Second and final opinion, oh yeah, we're done.
‐ (sighs) ‐ Woo‐hoo!
‐ Not today. ‐ Nick: That's a wrap.
(all chuckle)
(groans)
Nick: Need more coffee.
(laughs)
I bet this is happening.
Ruth: Ah! Don't freak me out.
But I'm excited, but I'm scared, but I'm excited.
Is Annabelle coming here if there's a decision, just now?
‐ Ruth: Mm‐hmm. ‐ All right.
Oh my God, it's our case, oh my God,
it's Gill from the Chief Justice.
Holy shit, oh my God, look.
(barking)
Look.
‐ (panting) ‐ (barking)
Quiet.
Holy shit, it's ours.
Oh my God, I'm going to be sick.
It is Gill, it is Roberts.
‐ F‐‐‐, why is it Roberts? ‐ What is it? What is it?
Ruth: Okay, it's here, it's here.
Reporter: You know the decision is long and complex,
but a quick read of it tells me that essentially
what the court has said is that these plaintiffs
did not prove that they had standing
and individualized harm to bring the case.
This morning, the Supreme Court not ruling
on partisan gerrymandering, not putting forth a test
as to when to determine
there has been partisan gerrymandering,
and really sort of punting this issue for another day.
‐ Ruth: No! ‐ F‐‐‐ you.
F‐‐‐ you.
"Failed to demonstrate Article 3 standing."
F‐‐‐, damn them.
Really, like that's your f‐‐‐ing decision ground?
Reporter: Now the Supreme Court did say
that the challengers can try again
to see if they can overcome
the legal obstacle of getting through
the courthouse door achieving standing,
showing that they have a particular injury
and this case does go back to the lower courts.
Oh, wait, so it is vacated and remanded.
Oh, it is vacated and remanded?
Yeah, to go back, let's see.
Oh, wait.
Nick: We might be still alive, it might be that like,
"Okay, you have to go back and technically like get
some more plaintiffs with some more allegations."
Barak: So, did you win or lose?
So, the court says that in order to pursue a claim
like ours, you need to identify specific people,
specific voters who live in cracked or packed districts.
It's not enough to just assert exclusively
a statewide harm or a statewide injury.
We have some plaintiffs ready to go,
we are ready to amend our complaint,
and move forward.
So it's not, I mean, it's not a disaster,
it's just frustrating timewise.
Barak: I can't tell, are you disappointed,
are you not disappointed?
This is far from the worst scenario.
Yes, I mean, it's frustrating because we want
to just win, right?
Obviously, we want to just freaking win.
But it's not a loss, right?
I mean we haven't lost, we're still going,
we still have things to say, and it suggests we're going
to eventually win, which is a good sign.
Yeah, I would say, too, that like, you know,
before today, my estimate of our odds
of ultimately winning was below 50 percent.
Now I think it's above 50 percent
our odds of ultimately winning.
Reporter: We continue to follow
that bombshell announcement out of Washington.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is retiring.
The 81‐year‐old was nominated by President Reagan
and served on the country's highest court
for more than 30 years.
Ari: There is really no way to sugar coat it.
The retirement of Anthony Kennedy
was terrible news for those people
that wanted to see the court do something positive
on gerrymandering.
He was the only conservative justice
that was at least open minded
about finding a solution on this issue
and now he is gone.
David: It is now obvious that the Supreme Court
is not going to be our savior on partisan gerrymandering.
We may have to be our own saviors.
People are trying to take back these district lines
that have been rigged against them.
They want a fair playing field.
The hope lies now at the state level.
We are seeing around the country, Michigan, Utah,
Colorado, Ohio, Missouri, there are citizen pathways
moving forward.
These are red states, these are blue states,
these are purple states.
These are states that went for Trump,
these are states that went for Clinton.
This is going to be the battlefield moving forward.
Reporter: The Michigan Supreme Court
is about to have a political hot mess
dumped on its lap.
Reporter 2: The Michigan Court of Appeals
said the ballot question meets the legal requirements
and the voters should decide in November.
Reporter 3: But the challengers now plan
to go to the state Supreme Court.
‐ Katie: Hey. ‐ How are you doing?
Good, how are you?
Good, do you mind if I chat with you
‐ for a few minutes? ‐ Katie: No, not at all.
Reporter: Great, so how do you feel about today?
Katie: We feel good.
You know, it's exciting to be here
at the Hall of Justice.
We had a really strong Court of Appeals opinion,
3‐0 decision saying our opposition's case
is without merit and we have every confidence
that we'll remain on the ballot on November 6th.
I remember distinctly when we were doing our town halls
that one of the top questions I received was,
isn't it impossible to do this?
Like, isn't it‐‐ Aren't you going to get challenged
by the Supreme Court anyways?
So, we don't even have language yet,
we haven't like whatever,
and like the people of Michigan
were already really worried about that
because we consistently have seen
opposition wanting to undermine this process.
Good morning.
This is a special session of the Michigan Supreme Court
to address an emergency election matter.
Katie: The scary part is that the Michigan Supreme Court
is a political body.
Our judges get nominated from political parties.
Five of them were nominated from the Republicans
and two of them came from the Democrat side.
We know that the Michigan GOP is applying a lot of pressure
to let them know how they would like them to rule.
VNP Lawyer: The constitution is very clear
that the people are the source of all governmental power
and they have the ability to define how the government
is going to be set up.
Judge: At the expense of the people having their right
to elect representatives as they've done
for two generations.
VNP Lawyer: I don't believe this infringes that
whatsoever, Your Honor.
It substitutes 13 citizens chosen at random
across this state in place of a process in which
10 million people have a direct participation
in the process by electing their representatives
and senators.
Is that not somewhat consequential?
I suppose the question is whether they decide
that they want the legislature to have this power,
or a commission,
or to do it in some other fashion?
All power in our state and in our nation
is derived from the people, right?
Judge: Are there any further questions?
We stand adjourned.
Katie: Yeah, sounds great.
Reporter: How are you doing?
Logged a big day, eh?
Yeah.
Let's go here with the people...
Katie: Okay, sounds good.
So this is really a fight against
status quo and change?
I believe it is.
Actually, I think it's a fight about whether the people
of Michigan can be trusted
to amend own constitution or not.
I feel like we were fairly heard,
and that we left it on the table,
and I think that what I heard was that our constitution
is enshrined in letting the people of our state
decide these issues.
Thanks, guys.
‐ (woman speaking) ‐ (Katie speaking)
Sit down, sit down.
Oh my God, Jenny, calm down.
(exclaiming, crying)
We have an election to win.
We know that our opposition now knows that we are an army
and that we can apply pressure in ways that they can't.
It is time to make it so that we get
way over two million votes for voting yes
and so that people know what
an Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission
can mean for Michigan.
It is time to knock some doors.
Canvasser: Good morning, I'm a volunteer
from Voters Not Politicians.
Hi, we're volunteers with Voters Not Politicians.
(knocking)
Arnold: I want to congratulate the people of Michigan
for the great choice and the great vote
of the Supreme Court.
So that the people move forward with the initiative
and to have redistricting happening in Michigan
because it's the voters versus the politicians,
that's what this is all about.
We've got to go and vote for the voters,
not the politicians.
(laughing) That's awesome. What?
Reporter: Proposal 2 is on the ballot,
Katie Fahey is supporting the proposal
and of course conservative Republican Jamie Roe
doesn't like it at all.
Democrats lose races in this state
because they have bad candidates,
not because we have bad lines.
This is an unnecessary solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
The people who draw the lines now are accountable to each
and every one of us at the ballot box,
the 13‐member star chamber
is going to be accountable to nobody.
Opposition ad: Proposal 2, deal breaker number one.
Proposal 2 gives 13 new redistricting commissioners
absolute authority in your constitution.
Proposal 2 lets 13 new redistricting commissioners
vote themselves unlimited pay and unlimited perks.
Convicted felons can be picked as commissioners.
It's 3,200 words.
Vote no on 2 or the joke's on you.
Katie: Something that is super bothering me right now
is that robo‐call they did from "Katie" urging them
to vote no on Prop 2 and 3.
Like there is no way you just chose Katie out of a hat.
Jerks.
I'm tired.
(laughs)
(engines revving)
(traffic sounds)
Reporter: You are looking live at democracy in action.
We're seeing huge numbers of voters showing up today
at the polls.
Katie: Are there door hangers for today, we got asked.
They're here.
Katie: Aren't those the same door hangers
we have been using?
VNP Volunteer: No, it says, "vote today".
Katie: Oh, it does? (gasps) Cute.
Reporter: So much more
than just candidates on the ballot today,
we're taking a look at three proposals
that could drastically change
what it means to be a Michigan voter.
Reporter 2: Proposal 2 would create
an independent commission
to draw new legislative and congressional districts
after each census.
Got some info on Prop 2 ending gerrymandering
in our state.
Thank you for voting.
Yeah.
Reporter: It's coming down to the wire.
Reporter 2: About an hour left to go before the polls close
across the state of Michigan in these crucial
midterm elections.
Thank you.
‐ Volunteer: 8:01. ‐ 8:01.
Okay.
That's it, there's nothing else we can do.
We've done everything we can do.
Volunteer: It's almost 10:00 p. m. and you guys are,
it's only 11‐ish percent reporting but you're up by...
Nine, only nine.
That doesn't make me feel good.
I think, I wish we were winning by more.
(laughs)
Just so I feel a little better, but you know what?
That's okay.
I wish they would just be done.
Are you also preparing the we lost?
Is there a good gift for that too?
We lost, oh...
Reporter: Just taking a look now at some
of the election results still coming in right now.
Proposal 2 would change the way
Michigan draws its state house,
state senate, and congressional districts.
And right now the yes votes are well ahead.
Jamie: Do they call the proposals
later than they call candidates?
Who calls it?
Who are we waiting for?
Now that some of the results are coming in,
I'm like, "Yeah, okay.
Okay, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe."
Katie: Who said it?
A bunch of news articles.
Katie: No, Elizabeth, you believed in us
before like almost anybody did.
(cheering)
I just got told we called it.
Way to fucking change the Michigan constitution.
How am I not crying?
How are you guys, I cry all the time, you never cry.
Come here. Come here.
Aww. Okay, okay, we should say something.
I feel like we should say something.
Hey, guys, we won!
(cheering)
We f‐‐‐ing amended the state constitution.
Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
I can't breathe, Kelly.
(cheering)
All political power is inherent in the people!
There were three other states across our country
who were trying to end gerrymandering too.
We had Utah, Missouri, and Colorado.
Missouri has been called,
they have also officially ended gerrymandering,
heck yes!
(cheering)
Utah is almost called, 57 percent reporting
for changing lines.
In Colorado it was at 71.4 percent, 71!
(cheering)
This is not a moment, but a movement.
The people of our country are sick of this
and if we don't come and say that enough is enough,
then nothing is going to change.
But we have proven that you can keep your integrity,
you can make it so that you can invite anyone
to the table, you can operate a campaign
in a transparent way
where we actually trust the people of our state
to make decisions,
and it ends up in a beautiful result
that unites thousands of people and is about to unite
millions of people.
It mattered that you showed up,
it mattered that you knocked doors,
it mattered that you gathered signatures,
and stood in the rain, in the cold, in the heat.
All of that mattered for generations of people.
Your sacrifices have changed our constitution.
The Michigan state constitution opens with,
"All political power is inherent in the people."
We are those people, this is our power,
let's go have
an Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission
that restores faith in democracy.
Cheers.
(cheering)
And I think we're ready to party.
(cheering)
Protesters: (chanting) Respect our vote,
respect our vote,
respect our vote.
All votes matters.
Voting rights are human rights,
voting rights are human rights.
Show me what democracy looks like.
This is what democracy looks like.
Show me what democracy looks like.
This is what democracy looks like.
I believe that we will win, I believe that we will win.