fair lines gerry
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">820 an</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">t<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">here’s no question that democracy itself is on the ballot in 2020, </span><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-obamas-full-speech-at-the-democratic-national-convention" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">as Barack Obama argued in his Democratic convention speech</u></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. But it’s not just a matter of getting rid of Donald Trump or appealing to voters “to embrace your own responsibility as citizens – to make sure that the basic tenets of our democracy endure.” Those basic tenets are themselves inadequate. Trump did not come out of nowhere. He was the result of prolonged democratic dysfunction. If that underlying dysfunction isn’t dealt with, an even more destructive Trump-like figure js virtually inevitable in the near future.</span></font><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One glaring facet of that dysfunction is the centuries-old practice of gerrymandering, which was brought to new heights by Republicans in the 2010 cycle, as former Salon editor David Daley described in “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Your-Doesnt-Count-ebook/dp/B016APOCRU/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ratfked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count</u></a>” (Salon author interview <a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/this_is_how_the_gop_rigged_congress_the_secret_plan_that_handcuffed_obamas_presidency_but_backfired_in_donald_trump/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">here</u></a>). Indeed, the Election Integrity Project’s <a href="https://www.electoralintegrityproject.com/peius2018" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">report on the 2018 elections</u></a> stated that its panel of 574 experts judged issues involving district boundaries as “the most problematic issues of electoral integrity in America.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One leader in combating that dysfunction is the <a href="https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Princeton Gerrymandering Project</u></a>, which is “a gerrymandering team the way that cancer researchers are against cancer,” in the words of founder Sam Wang, a Princeton neuroscientist who also founded the <a href="https://election.princeton.edu/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Princeton Election Consortium</u></a>. Wang was speaking at a recent town hall called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osiv-gHcgbU" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Redistricting Moneyball 2020</u></a>.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As with the original “moneyball” concept, made famous by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Moneyball-Art-Winning-Unfair-Game/dp/0393324818" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Michael Lewis’ book</u></a>, the idea is to use smart statistics to identify undervalued prospects as a way of leveraging the power of small donors.</font></p><div class="alt_ad_block true_ad_free story-page-in-content-graph-4" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_msg" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 10px; background: rgb(234, 234, 234);"><div class="header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 5px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER</div></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The original Moneyball concept can be easily translated to elections,” PGP team-member Connor Moffatt explained. “Each baseball team has a limited budget just as each citizen has a fixed amount of time and resources they are willing to invest in politics. Baseball teams are trying to win games whereas in elections political parties are trying to gain governing power.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Next comes an intriguing parallel: “Baseball has superstars that are overvalued and politics has races that are high-profile and overvalued.” The most obvious example is the Senate race in Kentucky between Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democrat Amy McGrath, which as Moffatt says, is attracting more financial resources “than the leverage would warrant.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What does he mean by that? Kentucky is a solid red state and most polls have McGrath well behind. Democrats are pouring money into the race because they dislike McConnell so intensely — but that’s not a smart use of resources. “If McGrath wins,” says Moffatt, “it’s likely that the national save for Democrats is so large they’ll have already flipped the Senate. So the best way for either party to influence whether Mitch McConnell is Senate Majority Leader in 2021 is to invest in seats closer to the majority-control tipping point.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finally, and most importantly, is the question of “undervalued gems,” which in baseball means players whose true value is not obvious. Those exist in politics too, Moffatt said. “There are Texas State House races that have the potential to influence multiple congressional districts over the next decade.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What’s more, those races overlap considerably with the “Texas Nine” congressional districts that political scientist Rachel Bitecofer has highlighted as prime targets for flipping <a href="https://www.niskanencenter.org/negative-partisanship-and-the-2020-congressional-elections/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">in her 2020 forecast</u></a>. That’s not even considering the psychological and strategic impact of accelerating the shift of Texas from solid Republican territory to a purple or even a blue state. Texas, in short, is loaded with undervalued gems in this election cycle.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, the McConnell/McGrath example brings something else to the fore — the passionate, irrational side of politics that can never be eliminated, but only complicated or offset. Visceral hatred for a figure like McConnell — who literally stole a Supreme Court seat for conservatives and has repeatedly boasted of his anti-democratic intransigence — is always likely to motivate some people. All the more reason, then, for those with cooler heads to seek a more rational approach. The moneyball approach also transforms poll-tracking from a passive and potentially demobilizing activity into its exact opposite: An active way to engage in the electoral process, drawing on a key metric of electoral moneyball: voter power.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Voter power is defined as the ability of one or a small group of voters to move the probability of one of three important questions,” Wang explained in an <a href="https://election.princeton.edu/2020/08/09/whats-more-important-than-a-presidential-probability/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">early August PEC post</u></a>. These questions are:</font></p><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 50px; list-style: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 7px; padding: 0px; list-style: square; position: relative; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">President</strong>: providing tipping-point support to get Biden or Trump above 270 EV.</font></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 7px; padding: 0px; list-style: square; position: relative; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">U.S. Senate</strong>: providing tipping-point support to get 50 Democratic-plus-independent seats.</font></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 7px; padding: 0px; list-style: square; position: relative; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">State legislatures</strong>: providing tipping-point support to gain control of one chamber of the state legislature, in states where this would lead to bipartisan control over redistricting.</font></li></ul><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In all cases,” Wang wrote, “voter power tells you where to put your efforts as a citizen. It’s what we are calling the ‘Moneyball 2020’ approach.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, at the time I’m writing this, the U.S. Senate race in Montana, between incumbent Republican Steve Daines and Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, has maximum voter power: It’s a close race in a small state, and if Bullock wins that’s likely to mean Democrats win control of the Senate. By convention, the race with the most voter power is set to 100, with all others calibrated against it. You can see the full list of Senate races, margins and voter power <a href="https://election.princeton.edu/senate-race-voter-powers-by-state/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">here</u></a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The situation with “redistricting moneyball” is quite a bit more complicated. In this case, as Wang told me afterwards, “It depends on the closeness of chamber control, how many voters there are per district, and how close the tipping-point districts are.” But before we explain that any further, it’s helpful to recall why this is even necessary in the first place.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wang came to focus on gerrymandering by accident — through his own mistake, actually. A neuroscientist by day, he’d been analyzing polls since 2004, blogging at the Princeton Election Consortium, but in 2012 he messed up. “I made a prediction error,” he explained in the town hall. “I correctly said that the House was in play. I correctly said that Democrats were likely to win more votes at a national level and then I made an incorrect prediction … that therefore Democrats were likely to take control of the House.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His blog readers “are really smart,” Wang noted — “string theorists, economists, financial traders, social scientists” — and they pushed back.”They said, ‘No, you’re crazy. You haven’t paid attention to the redistricting that happened in 2010.’ They were right and I was wrong.” That led Wang to write a New York Times op-ed, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/the-great-gerrymander-of-2012.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Great Gerrymander of 2012</u></a>,” and from that, the project was born.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“At the time I thought, ‘This is terrible! What are we going to do about it?'” But, he recalled, an early member of the gerrymandering group named Brian Remlinger told him, “Sam it’s really time for us to start working on individual states. It’s time for us to discover our inner federalist,” which led to a third New York Times op-ed, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/13/opinion/sunday/partisan-gerrymandering.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">If the Supreme Court Won’t Prevent Gerrymandering, Who Will?</u></a>” in which Wang discussed a variety of available approaches. (“You can tell that I’m a good academic because I can turn these bad moments into publications,” he joked.) Summing up, he concluded, “Putting all federalist routes together — courts, voter initiatives, laws and elections — I estimate that reform is actually possible in <a href="https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/reforms2019" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">the vast majority of states</u></a>, even without the Supreme Court’s help.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And so the most recent evolution of the project was born. Wang described a number of different paths, represented in a color-coded map of the states — some with independent citizens’ redistricting commissions, some with advisory commissions, some (like Virginia) where redistricting reform is on the ballot, and others where court challenges are possible via racial gerrymandering arguments.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of this Wang referred to as “wearing our white hats … our nerd outfits.” But in other cases, especially where there is divided government, he has called for “a brute force raw political power approach to getting fairness” by getting “as many people as possible to put both political parties at the table” and let them fight it out, whether by donating to races or by volunteering to get out the vote, and so on. Wang’s team identified six states, where this “raw power” approach might work: Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Minnesota, Connecticut and Kansas.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So this is where “redistricting moneyball” comes in. It’s inherently more complicated than U.S. Senate moneyball for at least three reasons. First, there are a lot more seats that could at least possibly be in play, and second, there’s a lot less statistical information available about the much smaller electorates involved. In the town hall, Moffat and another PGP staffer, Jacob Wachspress, explained how a model was constructed to compensate for those problems.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In that first op-ed, Wang offered two proposals to fix the gerrymandering problem. First, “nonpartisan redistricting commissions in all 50 states,” and second, adopting “a statistically robust judicial standard” for identifying partisan gerrymandering. At the time, Wang noted, Justice Anthony Kennedy was on record as being open to that idea, “if a clear standard could be established.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A little over two years later, Wang published a law review article, “<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2671607" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Three Tests for Practical Evaluation of Partisan Gerrymandering</u></a>,” and a second op-ed, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/opinion/sunday/let-math-save-our-democracy.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Let Math Save Our Democracy</u></a>,” explaining how one such standard worked, and arguing that statistical tests in general could be used in a number of different ways to weed out meritless cases or to supplement other mandates such as geographical compactness, or to help balance them with other requirements, such as compliance with the Voting Rights Act.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Others advanced other test methods as well, and Wang co-authored an <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-422/91394/20190308165646674_2019.03.08%20Amicus%20in%20Rucho%20v.%20Common%20Cause.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">amicus brief</u></a> discussing and analyzing some of them in the North Carolina gerrymandering case that eventually came to the Supreme Court, only to be <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">rejected in June of 2019</u></a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This was clearly a bitter disappointment,” Wang said in the town hall.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They began by creating a model to predict the margins of victory in state legislative races — ranging from toss-up (0 points) to safe (>20 points) and uncontested. That data was derived from five factors: statewide election results in each district, incumbent popularity, quality of challenger, campaign finance reports and demographic trends.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They supplemented that model with an “internal foundations model” using four components to predict winning margins: presidential election results within the district, the incumbent’s past performance, 2016 statewide presidential election results and 2020 statewide presidential election forecasts. This internal model has improved the accuracy of the estimates, but modeling individual races — even thousands of them — is only the first step.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Next, Wachspress explained, they modeled the uncertainty around those margins “to find the chance that both parties will have a say in the redistricting process.” There were three sources of uncertainty: the individual district race level, statewide shifts between parties and density-specific shifts. For example, “there’s significantly more uncertainty in the ratings based on whether districts are in rural, suburban or urban areas,” he noted. That model produced, for example, this “heat map” for North Carolina, a state where the governor plays no role in redistricting.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[graf]</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the most likely outcome is Republican control of both chambers (lower left quadrant), and thus another egregious partisan gerrymander. (It was the previous North Carolina GOP gerrymander that the Supreme Court refused to consider.) The most likely remedy is Democratic control of the House (lower right quadrant). So that’s where the project’s attention is focused for North Carolina. Here, raw voter power is the amount that adding one more Democratic vote in a given House race would impact the probability of bipartisan control — and thereby a more balanced redistricting process.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to all the other variables, Wang told me that voter power “depends most of all on how close a chamber is to the edge of control.” In that respect, he sees state legislatures in Texas, Minnesota and Kansas as being “right on the edge.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That shows up in the voter power scores themselves. Texas has the most congressional districts, so it’s not surprising that it’s got the highest voter power ratings. It has 11 State House districts with voting power of 70 or more, compared with just two that are 50-plus in Minnesota, and three in Kansas. There’s a lot more at stake in Texas, simply because of how much more mischief can be done in redistricting the Lone Star State to favor Republicans at a time when its electorate is clearly shifting. The most valuable legislative seat in the country, in terms of voter power is the 112th Texas House district, just northeast of Dallas, with a voter power rating of 100, followed by two more suburban districts, the 26th (outside Houston) and the 66th (north of Dallas) with ratings of 93 and 91.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Democratic candidate for the 112th district, <a href="https://brandykchambers.com/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Brandy Chambers</u></a>, was a participant in the PGP town hall. So, naturally I was interested in her district and her race. She came within two points of winning in 2018, and is running again to unseat five-term incumbent Angie Chen Button. Chambers’ website accused the GOP legislature of being “focused on fringe issues,” and I asked her to elaborate.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“When Texas was suffering a CPS [Child Protective Services] crisis and public school funding was drowning, the leadership in Austin prioritized bathroom bills and laws intimidating immigrants,” she replied. “I’ve talked to people all over our district and not one person said, ‘Please more tax breaks for yacht owners and no to lifesaving and billion dollar saving Medicaid expansion.’ No voters asked for more than a dozen pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“My opponent votes against local control, neighborhood schools, property tax reform, public safety, wage-theft prevention, and private family planning,” Chambers said. “She works for special interest donors. I will work for the people.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While some specifics may vary (“wage theft prevention” is <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">important</u></a>, but probably made Chambers’ list because she’s an employment law attorney), those broad themes surely echo in thousands of other races nationwide, along with other issues her website highlights, including climate change and criminal justice reform. She also includes fair redistricting maps (“Politicians shouldn’t pick their voters”), which as an issue remains more muddled.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Wachspress noted in his presentation, both parties have “announced campaigns to target close state legislative chambers in key redistricting states” and claim that fair redistricting was their concern. But their “choices of targets plainly show that their goals are not so noble”: Democratic targets include Pennsylvania, for example, while Republican targets include Texas. In each case, their own party’s governor — who is not up for election in 2020 — holds veto power over the process, meaning that only one party is in position to potentially draw unfair maps.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If partisans are the only people investing in these races, then there’s just as much organization on the pro-gerrymandering front as on the anti-gerrymandering front,” Wachspress said. “In order to tip the scales toward fair redistricting, people have to be willing to organize for both parties depending on the political landscape of a given state.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That may sound overly noble in these deeply divided times — and it’s not strictly true. PGP, is explicitly nonpartisan and devoted to fighting gerrymandering by either party. That makes sense: A majority of all voters, across party lines, oppose partisan gerrymandering. So PGP enables the ordinary citizen to take a proactive role, but doesn’t tell you what to do — it simply makes the potential impacts clearer and more readily comparable. But since Republicans have been far more organized in their partisan gerrymandering, there are more available targets, with higher stakes, for Democratic activists to focus on.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are other groups out there offering similar guidance, such as the <a href="https://www.futurenow.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Future Now Fund</u></a>, which provides a more broad-brush approach, multi-issue framework for working to <a href="https://www.futurenow.org/states/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">flip or defend state legislatures</u></a>. Or <a href="https://swingleft.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Swing Left</u></a> with its <a href="https://swingleft.org/p/super-state-strategy" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Super State strategy</u></a> (including a focus on redistricting), which I wrote about as part of my <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/02/16/one-blue-wave-was-not-enough-democrats-need-another-in-2020/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">2020 preview</u></a> in early 2019. There are also state-level efforts, such as <a href="https://flipthetxhouse.com/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><u style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Flip the Texas House</u></a>. You can use PGP’s “redistricting moneyball, in combination with any or all of these other guides, or all on its own.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The point is, you have options and you can find information. You can decide what battles matter most to you, and prioritize them on your terms, based on much better evidence and better data than hand-waving promises from politicians and misleading media narratives. And we can all count on the Princeton Gerrymandering Project to keep on developing new tools to help citizens fight for fair representation in the next big wave of redistricting battles that’s just ahead.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/07/02/cmd-files-irs-complaint-against-fair-lines-america-foundation-misreporting-its-2018-income/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/07/02/cmd-files-irs-complaint-against-fair-lines-america-foundation-misreporting-its-2018-income/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"> </span>Thursday, July 2, 2020</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Contact: </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">David Armiak, Research Director, david@prwatch.org</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MADISON, WI – The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) filed a complaint on Thursday, July 2, 2020, with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) against the Fair Lines America Foundation for underreporting its income in 2018.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tax records </span><a href="https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/displayAll.do?dispatchMethod=displayAllInfo&Id=5432374&ein=830626707&country=US&deductibility=all&dispatchMethod=searchAll&isDescending=false&city=&ein1=&postDateFrom=&exemptTypeCode=al&submitName=&sortColumn=orgNa" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">show</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> that in 2018, Fair Lines America Foundation brought in less than $50,000 in revenue. However, research from CMD revealed that Fair Lines America Foundation received a </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">$225,000 gift in 2018 through <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6591977-DonorsTrust-2018-990.html#document/p67/a570366" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">DonorsTrust</a>, the preferred donor conduit of Charles Koch’s right-wing political network, and $12,000 from the <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/263853831/201901689349301210/IRS990ScheduleI" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Legacy Foundation</a>.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It is unclear why Fair Lines America Foundation misreported its revenue in 2018, but it did and it should be held accountable for doing so,” said David Armiak, CMD’s research director.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Fair Lines America Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is led by the Republican Party’s “chief authority on redistricting,” Adam Kincaid. </b>Fair Lines America Foundation’s sister organization, the 501(c)4 Fair Lines America, works to block the creation of independent redistricting commissions in the states, conducts redistricting trainings, and weighs in on redistricting litigation.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kincaid also is the executive director for the <a href="https://www.thenrrt.org/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">National Republican Redistricting Trust</a>, “the central Republican resource to coordinate and collaborate on a 50-state redistricting effort; focusing on the GOP’s redistricting-related legal and data needs.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In May, CMD <a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/05/14/alec-holds-tutorial-republicans-chief-authority-redistricting-amidst-pandemic/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">exposed</a> Fair Lines America’s six-part “Mapping America” webinar for American Legislative Exchange Council (AELC) legislative members and “key redistricting staff.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On June 1, 2020 Fair Lines America Foundation launched “<a href="https://thearp.org/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">The American Redistricting Project”</a> to serve as an <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/500426-gop-group-launches-redistricting-site" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">alternative</a> to the Brennan Center for Justice, which fights against gerrymandering and advocates for nonpartisan redistricting.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A copy of the complaint is viewable <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6979767-CMD-IRS-Complaint-Against-Fair-Lines-America.html" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">here</a>.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></font></font></font></div><div>https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fair_Lines_America</div><div>
</div><div>Fair Lines America (FLA) is a registered 501(c)4 non-profit that works to prevent independent redistricting commissions from establishing in the states, conducts redistricting trainings, and weighs in on redistricting litigation.[1] FLA's executive director is Adam Kincaid, who also serves in the same capacity for the National Republican Redistricting Trust.</div><div>
</div><div>NRRT senior adviser Guy Harrison told Politico of Kincaid’s leadership, “Adam is a chief authority on redistricting within our party, and he has the experience and expertise to meet the Democrat litigation juggernaut head-on.”[2]</div><div>
</div><div>FLA has a sister registered 501(c)3 organization: Fair Lines America Foundation.</div><div>
</div><div>1<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>News and Controversies</div><div>1.1<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>FLA Launches American Redistricting Project Site</div><div>1.2<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>ALEC Holds Tutorial with FLA Amidst Coronavirus Pandemic</div><div>1.3<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>FLA Files Supporting Brief in Case Challenging Michigan's Independent Redistricting Commission</div><div>2<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Ties to the Bradley Foundation</div><div>3<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council</div><div>4<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Funding</div><div>5<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Core Financials</div><div>6<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Personnel</div><div>6.1<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Staff</div><div>6.2<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Board of Directors</div><div>7<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Contact Information</div><div>8<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Articles and Resources</div><div>8.1<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>IRS Form 990 Filings</div><div>8.2<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>External articles</div><div>9<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>References</div><div>News and Controversies</div><div>FLA Launches American Redistricting Project Site</div><div>On June 1, 2020, The Hill reported that FLA launched a new site: The American Redistricting Project. FLA's executive director Adam Kincaid told The Hill, "If you are interested in redistricting and you're a college student or you are a reporter, you end up at the Brennan Center or you end up at a couple of blogs done by college professors, but there's nothing from the conservative movement. What we wanted to do was to fill that vacuum."[3]</div><div>
</div><div>ALEC Holds Tutorial with FLA Amidst Coronavirus Pandemic</div><div>The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) held a six-part training session "Mapping America" for "legislative leadership and key redistricting staff" in May 2020 by "our good friends at Fair Lines."[1] (See ALEC section below for more.)</div><div>
</div><div>FLA Files Supporting Brief in Case Challenging Michigan's Independent Redistricting Commission</div><div>FLA filed an amicus brief in support of Citizens Protecting Michigan's Constitution's legal challenge to the creation of the independent commission following a 2018 vote to create an independent redistricting commission. The measure passed with 61.8 percent of the vote.[1]</div><div>
</div><div>Ties to the Bradley Foundation</div><div>In 2019, the Bradley Foundation gave Fair Lines America Foundation $100,000 to "support start up efforts." Fair Lines America Foundation is also an "approved grant recipient" of Bradley's donor advised fund, the Bradley Impact Fund.[1]</div><div>
</div><div>Bradley Files</div><div>In 2017, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), publishers of SourceWatch, launched a series of articles on the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, exposing the inner-workings of one of America's largest right-wing foundations. 56,000 previously undisclosed documents laid bare the Bradley Foundation's highly politicized agenda. CMD detailed Bradley's efforts to map and measure right wing infrastructure nationwide, including by dismantling and defunding unions to impact state elections; bankrolling discredited spin doctor Richard Berman and his many front groups; and more.</div><div>
</div><div>Find the series here at ExposedbyCMD.org.</div><div>
</div><div>Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council</div><div>
</div><div>The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) held a six-part training session for "legislative leadership and key redistricting staff" in May 2020 by "our good friends at Fair Lines."[1]</div><div>
</div><div>"The first, titled 'Redistricting Basics and the 2020 Census,' gave an 'overview of the tools and skills' needed for redistricting and featured “experts” on the 2020 Census.</div><div>
</div><div>The May 13 webinar on 'Changes in Redistricting Law' again featured 'experts' who spoke on the 'volume and impact of liberal (i.e. Democrats) litigation this decade and the changing redistricting legal landscape heading into 2021.'</div><div>
</div><div>Attendees to the third webinar scheduled for this afternoon, May 14, will hear from 'academic experts and lawyers' on 'The Fourteenth Amendment, Voting Rights Act, and Recent Academic Literature.'</div><div>
</div><div>The fourth webinar on May 19, titled 'Redistricting Data Science,' will delve into the technical resources available to map drawers and how FLA and its Foundation can be of assistance.</div><div>
</div><div>'Commission Litigation and Engagement,' the fifth webinar on May 21, will focus on legal challenges to redistricting commissions and how to 'engage' with them, and the final webinar on May 27 will give legislators the 'tools' to defend their 'maps, push back against liberal redistricting strategies, and go on offense,'" David Armiak reported for the Center for Media and Democracy.[1]</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>FLA and FLA Foundation are not required to disclose their funders. Two major funders of FLA Foundation, however, were found through a search of IRS filings and annual reviews. Here are the know funders of WILL:Funding</div><div>Bradley Foundation: $100,000 (2019)[1]</div><div>DonorsTrust: $225,000 (2018)[4]</div><div>Legacy Foundation: $12,000 (2018)[1]</div><div>Core Financials</div><div>2018[5]</div><div>
</div><div>Total Revenue: $950,000</div><div>Total Expenses: $1,214,731</div><div>Net Assets: $137,460</div><div>Grants Distributed</div><div>
</div><div>Better Jobs Coalition: $50,000</div><div>Citizen's Protecting Michigan's Constitution: $50,000</div><div>Advance Missouri: $50,000</div><div>Michigan Freedom Fund: $50,000</div><div>2017[6]</div><div>
</div><div>Total Revenue: $500,000</div><div>Total Expenses: $97,817</div><div>Net Assets: $402,183</div><div>Personnel</div><div>As of December 2018:[5]</div><div>
</div><div>Staff</div><div>Adam Kincaid, executive director</div><div>Liam O'Rourke, data director</div><div>Bradley Walp, GIS director</div><div>Board of Directors</div><div>Bill Cuthier</div><div>Henry Shelton</div><div>Bill Watkins</div><div>Contact Information</div><div>Fair Lines America</div><div>2308 Mount Vernon Ave Ste 716</div><div>Alexandria, VA 22301</div><div>Phone: 571-482-7690</div><div>Website: https://fairlines.org</div><div>Twitter: https://twitter.com/fairlinesusa</div><div>
</div><div>docs 990</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/07/02/cmd-files-irs-complaint-against-fair-lines-america-foundation-misreporting-its-2018-income/</div><div>
</div><div> Thursday, July 2, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Contact: David Armiak, Research Director, david@prwatch.org</div><div>
</div><div>MADISON, WI – The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) filed a complaint on Thursday, July 2, 2020, with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) against the Fair Lines America Foundation for underreporting its income in 2018.</div><div>
</div><div>Tax records show that in 2018, Fair Lines America Foundation brought in less than $50,000 in revenue. However, research from CMD revealed that Fair Lines America Foundation received a $225,000 gift in 2018 through DonorsTrust, the preferred donor conduit of Charles Koch’s right-wing political network, and $12,000 from the Legacy Foundation.</div><div>
</div><div>“It is unclear why Fair Lines America Foundation misreported its revenue in 2018, but it did and it should be held accountable for doing so,” said David Armiak, CMD’s research director.</div><div>
</div><div>Fair Lines America Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is led by the Republican Party’s “chief authority on redistricting,” Adam Kincaid. Fair Lines America Foundation’s sister organization, the 501(c)4 Fair Lines America, works to block the creation of independent redistricting commissions in the states, conducts redistricting trainings, and weighs in on redistricting litigation.</div><div>
</div><div>Kincaid also is the executive director for the National Republican Redistricting Trust, “the central Republican resource to coordinate and collaborate on a 50-state redistricting effort; focusing on the GOP’s redistricting-related legal and data needs.”</div><div>
</div><div>In May, CMD exposed Fair Lines America’s six-part “Mapping America” webinar for American Legislative Exchange Council (AELC) legislative members and “key redistricting staff.”</div><div>
</div><div>On June 1, 2020 Fair Lines America Foundation launched “The American Redistricting Project” to serve as an alternative to the Brennan Center for Justice, which fights against gerrymandering and advocates for nonpartisan redistricting.</div><div>
</div><div>A copy of the complaint is viewable here.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>=</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div></div>