( music playing )
- What's going on? -
Janelle Monáe here,
and I am your special guest substitute.
Are all votes created equal?
In America, some votes are actually worth more than others
depending on where you live.
In order to find out why,
you have to understand a controversial political strategy.
Hey, everyone, I'm Cat Shieh,
my pronouns are she/her/hers,
and I teach History in Los Angeles, California.
And today we're going to study gerrymandering.
Joining me to help teach this lesson,
we have a very exciting guest--
Janelle Monáe!
- Hi! - What?
What? Cat, how are you?
Hey, I'm good. What's going on?
You know, I'm just trying to stay safe.
I'm trying to, uh, shower.
- Yeah. - How have you been holding up?
I'm good. Just trying to shower, too.
- Yeah. Gotta ask. - Yeah.
What is one of the revelations
that you've learned about yourself during this time?
Oh, my goodness. I wish I had something profound.
But I think I learned that time is indeed a social construct.
My Saturdays are my Mondays.
My Fridays are my Sunday mornings.
That is amazing.
Now, our last lesson, which you can check out
any time here on YouTube
focused on the Electoral College.
We're going to go a little more in depth
on another controversial aspect of our electoral process.
Today, I'm taking over your lesson on gerrymandering.
So I know this isn't a math lesson,
but I'm going to start you off with a number.
435. Politically, our country is divided
into 435 sections,
which are known as congressional districts.
Each district has a roughly equal number of people living in it.
And each district gets to select
one member of the House of Representatives.
The borders of these congressional districts change
as their populations grow or shrink,
and this is called redistricting,
and it's not necessarily bad.
It happens every few years in almost every state.
Let's see how redistricting works
using Texas as an example.
As district borders change, there are a few criteria
that states are supposed to keep in mind.
For example, districts should be compact.
They should also be contiguous,
meaning the entire district is connected.
But there's one criteria
that's usually held above all others.
Around the same number of people
should live in every district.
So, who's in charge of redrawing the lines
when redistricting has to occur?
There are three answers to this.
Number one, seven states
have actually never had congressional redistricting
because there's only one district in the entire state.
Number two, another handful of states have an independent
or bipartisan commission to redraw the boundaries.
And here's the third and the most popular,
in the majority of our states, the state legislature,
otherwise known as the state version of Congress,
has most or all of the control.
This is where the flaw in the system comes in.
Whichever political party has the majority
in the state legislature
-
And as you're about to see, this party can maximize
the number of districts it can win.
This is called gerrymandering.
Where did this strange term come from?
Some guy named Jerry?
Actually, it kind of did.
This is Elbridge Gerry,
the former governor of Massachusetts.
In 1812, he changed the boundaries
of a congressional district to benefit his party.
A local newspaper compared
the odd shape of the district
to a salamander.
It was nicknamed the "Gerrymander."
At some point, the pronunciation changed
from "Gerry-mander" to "Jerry-mander,"
but the practice itself
has changed very little over the past two centuries.
Modern congressional districts
have taken very similarly abstract shapes,
such as Maryland's third district,
otherwise known as the praying mantis;
Ohio's ninth district, the snake by the lake;
or Pennsylvania's seventh district,
known as Goofy kicking Donald Duck.
-
Janelle, you know what that means.
Drama club.
For my dramatic monologue,
I will be reading a selection from the 1812 editorial
from the "Boston Gazette," "The Gerrymander."
"Again behold and shudder
at the exhibition of this terrific dragon
brought forth to devour
and swallow your liberties and equal rights.
Unholy party spirit
and inordinate love of power gave it birth;
your patriotism and hatred of tyranny
must by one vigorous struggle
strangle it in its infancy."
- And scene. -
- What? What? -
Now that we've talked about what gerrymandering means,
I want to tell you why this issue
is so important to me.
Gerrymandering isn't just a partisan issue,
it's often a racial issue,
and one of the many ways people of color are disenfranchised.
I was a victim of gerrymandering.
In my district, my area,
it switched before the election to New Renaissance.
And then after the election, it went back to Fulton County.
It was devastating. It was crushing.
I know it's happened to many of you.
We show up. Black women show up.
But there are things like this,
voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering,
that will happen, that will stop us
from being able to vote for the person we want to vote for.
In a recent study, around one in five African-Americans
and one in seven Latinx voters
have said they experienced racial discrimination
while trying to vote or participate in politics.
And to really go beyond the racial discrimination,
there's also prison gerrymandering.
Prison gerrymandering means that prison populations
count in the census and for purposes of redistricting.
Here's the catch.
Prisoners can't vote,
and in most states,
those formerly incarcerated can't either,
which skews the numbers even more.
Think about how so many people
have been told to use their voice and literally can't.
Beyond that, now we know why this issue is so important.
We're going to show you how the practice
of gerrymandering really works.
For this demo, we're going to think about a fictional state,
and this state is going to be made out of pizza.
I was hungry.
This is where everyone lives in my state-- Janellaware.
Every single topping represents a voter
in one of the two political parties--
the pepperoni party and the olive party.
There are an equal number of members of each party--
18 pepperoni, 18 olive.
We're going to turn Janellaware
into four congressional districts
and run an election.
Let's start with the most logical setup
for our voting districts.
They are as compact as possible.
Four squares of nine voters each.
In this example, the pepperoni party
and the olive party would each win two districts.
It's the most fair way the borders can be drawn.
But now let's look at what would happen
if Janellaware were gerrymandered.
What if the olive party
controlled the state legislature?
As we can see,
the olive party has redrawn the lines
in a way that benefits them.
Remember, we didn't change where the voters live,
just where the district boundaries are.
So in this scenario,
pepperoni wins one district by a landslide.
But the olive party
wins all three of these districts.
( cheers and applause )
That means the olive party gets an extra seat in Congress
and more votes for olive-friendly policies.
This tactic is called packing because they pack
the opposition party voters into one district.
Let's check out one final scenario.
This time, the pepperoni party
takes control of the state legislature
and draws the boundaries to their advantage.
The olives only win this one district
with the pepperoni picking up the other three.
So instead of packing,
this tactic is called cracking, with a "C,"
because the pepperoni has broken up the olives across the state,
cracking their influence. You get it?
Packing and cracking, both have the same end result--
minimizing the opposing party's representation in Congress
and gaining a political advantage.
Now that we've seen gerrymandering in action through Janellaware,
let's go back to the question we asked at the very beginning.
Are all votes created equal?
And in congressional elections, I'll just tell it to you.
The answer is not always.
There's a name for this. The wasted vote effect.
And the more wasted votes there are,
the less truly representative our democracy is.
So if gerrymandering exists, then why don't people just move?
Well, a lot of people live where they live
because that's where their friends and families are.
That's where their job is.
That's the place they feel included and welcomed.
And here's the last.
A lot of people don't even know
they live in a gerrymandered district.
All in all, it's not a matter of want to,
but rather a matter of able to.
Our government is supposed to be
by the people, for the people.
But when partisan gerrymandering takes place,
some of those people
are left out of the process entirely.
If nothing else, I hope this can be a reminder
to stay engaged in state and local politics,
contacting your representative
regarding an issue you care about,
getting out the vote in your community
or volunteering for a campaign.
And of course, when you're old enough,
you've got to vote.
Politics are so important,
and if you want to learn more,
check out my lesson about the Electoral College.
If you want to contribute to an amazing cause,
click the donate button to give to Project Isaiah,
a new initiative designed
to tackle hunger-related challenges
brought on by the COVID-19 crisis.
You can visit Isaiah.org for more information.
It's time to take a break from class,
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