Make Your Vote Pack a Punch: Sam Wang
February 29th, 2024
“Gerrymandering is indeed an offense against democracy.”
Sam Wang is the Director of the Electoral Innovation Lab and a professor of neuroscience at Princeton University. We discuss how we can better understand the current state of district maps across the US, and how they can be made more fair and representative of their constituents.
Gerrymandering is not only unfair but also anti-democratic. It favors one party over another, effectively shutting out the possibility of accurate representation in a legislative body. The current electoral system forces voters into opposite camps and then rewards them for doing so. For example, primary elections reward a partisan loyalist who is unlikely to represent the views of the majority of voters. But, local and state elections are a hope for the future because voters are less polarized.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Sam Wang
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
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Sam Wang Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:00] Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like us the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/hopeful. All lowercase.
Mila Atmos: [00:00:24] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
It's 2024 and the future of America is in your hands. Democracy is not a spectator sport, so we are here to bring you an independent perspective about the election this year and empower you to change the status quo.
Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating district lines to benefit one group or candidate, and both major US political parties are guilty of this practice. We've all seen district maps that look like dragons or spiders, and we intuitively understand that if you live in a gerrymandered district, it can feel futile to go to the polling station and to vote. And more importantly, it makes clear that voting rights alone don't add up to equal fair representation.
To better understand the current state of district maps across the US and how they can be made more fair and representative of their constituents, we're joined by Sam Wang. He's a professor of neuroscience at Princeton University and the director of the Electoral Innovation Lab. Welcome, Sam, and thank you for joining us.
Sam Wang: [00:01:51] Thank you for having me today.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:53] So let's start with the basics. We know that gerrymandering is used to favor one party or candidate over the other to skew the outcome. But just to be clear, for everyone who's listening, why is gerrymandering bad for democracy? Because it's much more than just being unfair.
Sam Wang: [00:02:14] Well, gerrymandering is indeed an offense against democracy. I think we have this naive view that that democracy should just be people voting, and then we get what we vote for. I would characterize that as being like our faith in markets where we think that markets will take care of things, but actually markets need rules. So just to give a sense of how important it is to have the power to draw lines, you could register every voter of a party or a group, whether it be, say, Black Americans or Asian Americans or Democrats or Republicans. You could register every member of that group. And if the other side or if some side opposed to that group were in charge of drawing the lines, they could draw the lines as if one third of those people had never registered. And so gerrymandering is quite powerful. It can lead to a massive advantage in, say, a congressional delegation or in a legislature. And we've seen some really powerful gerrymanders where any time one group or one party is in charge, they can, in principle come close to shutting out the other side from representation.
Mila Atmos: [00:03:13] Yeah. Thank you for explaining that so cogently. So we already know, right? Like what an unfair map looks like. What is a fair map look like? Because I know it's not necessarily a square box. So I'm curious about how one goes about drawing fair maps. And at the Electoral Innovation Lab you build a science of data driven democracy reform using math, law, and practical strategies. So tell us, how do you construct a fair district?
Sam Wang: [00:03:43] That's right. Well, at the Electrical Innovation Lab, we see democracy as the system of rules. It can be complicated. And as you said in the introduction, I'm a neuroscientist. I use math and statistics in my work. And the difficulty with democracy is that it's filled with these rules that are a little bit arcane. And the question is, how does one make them generate an outcome that's fair to as many groups as possible? In the case of redistricting, redistricting is tough because in our American system, it's a funny system where we have districts. Every district has one representative. Even if we could change that a little bit, there is still the concept of the district where people have to be represented within some territory, and the challenge is how to draw that district fairly. So this is tough. The district should have an equal number of people. That is a principle that's in constitutional law. You might think that it would be great to just draw them a simple shapes, but people don't oblige. People live in cities, they live in rural areas. They have different views in the cities and rural areas. And so right off the bat, you can't have the district say be all the same size and shape.
In addition to that, a community might not oblige if you have whatever it might be an ethnic community, a language community, a partisan community. They live in all kinds of areas. And so drawing fair districts involves finding a way to make the populations equal per district, finding a way to make sure that the political parties are treated equitably, finding a way that communities can get represented in equitable measure. And on top of all that, at least trying to make sure that the cities are not divided, the counties are not divided. And finally, yeah, it would be nice if the districts were not too weirdly shaped, but that's just one of many factors. And it's like Ginger Rogers. It is like doing all the things that Fred Astaire does backwards and in high heels.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:30] So how do you do that with science? How do you do it with math? Do you like run? I don't know, a gazillion number of models. You use a computer and try and figure out a fair way. How can you ascertain that the districts that you're redrawing are going to be fair?
Sam Wang: [00:05:47] Well, you know, I came into this from a physics and neuroscience background, and at one point I entertained the possibility that a formula could take care of this, that one could just apply a measure of fairness. And there are good measures of fairness that my colleagues and I have worked on. And I thought that would be enough. There are ways to use math. One way is to do a massive computer simulation and see what a million simulations would produce, and find out whether a plant is an outlier, and that can be useful in court. But I would say that really coming up with a good map involves having clear mathematical standards, but it probably involves human beings drawing the lines because it's the human beings who say things like, gosh, the town of Hamtramck, Michigan has these different communities, and we have to make sure they're represented. Gosh, there's a watershed in the northern part of new Jersey, and we need to make sure that that watershed has some kind of representation in the legislature. And so the difficulty is, I would say it takes clear standards so that everyone has the same yardstick, and it takes people working together, ideally in a way where different parties and different groups are at the table. And there's a way to make sure they all get represented. Yeah, it would be nice if there were an algorithm to do it. I, you know, I get a lot of calls from people who say, well, why can't a computer program do it? And, you know, I don't know. I mean, can a computer program just decide what your household is going to have for dinner on Friday? And the answer is no, because who would listen to a computer program that just said, hello, you're having sushi on
Friday? You know, it just it wouldn't take into account all the factors that go into a real negotiation.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:21] Right. Well, you're reminding us that we are human and this is the messy work of democracy. We are, of course, interested in talking about the process of redistricting and the practical strategies for change that you have in mind. But before we do that, I feel like it makes sense for us to understand how we got here, because we are in a time that is post the great gerrymander that followed the 2010 census. Tell us about what happened at that time and sort of how partisan gerrymandering became so prevalent in many states. And then we can talk about how we can get out of that, of course.
Sam Wang: [00:08:03] So gerrymandering has been around for hundreds of years. Just the idea of drawing lines to disadvantage or advantage a group. So that's been around for a while. But you're right, something peaked in 2010 after the census, and I remember writing an article. It was really my first dive into the subject. I wrote an article called The Great Gerrymander of 2012, and it was a dive into just how much asymmetry there could be. I wrote that in the New York Times, and people can look it up on their local web browser. But basically what happened after the 2010 census was I'd characterize it as the perfect crime. If you like crime procedurals, there's means, motive and opportunity. And I would say that the means of redistricting is drawing lines and the software has gotten better. The motive is the increasing gulf between the parties. That's really started in the mid 1990s, when there's less and less overlap between Democrats and Republicans and therefore fewer opportunities, fewer reasons to join in coalition with the opposite side. It's sort of hard to remember now, but there used to be more compromise.
Sam Wang: [00:09:04] There's less motivation to do so, and that creates a motive to gerrymander. And then finally, the opportunity is what you said, which is 2010. It was not only a census year, but also a year that was a wave election for the Republicans. And there's been this increasing tendency in the last few decades for redistricting and legislation, state by state, to come under the control of one political party. And as it turns out, in 2010, Republicans were the winners because they had a humongous wave election. And it was really great for them. They came into power in half a dozen states. There were other states they were already in charge in. There are states that
Democrats were in charge in. And what it led to is what a person in the redistricting space, an election rights person named Paul Smith, he refers to it now as a "festival of gerrymandering." And so we had a festival of gerrymandering, basically because of unchecked single party control, state by state. And I would say that gerrymandering, at least at the congressional level, also the legislative level peaked in that year.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:02] Yeah, well it was... Yes, it was a festival of gerrymandering. Things are a lot. Yeah.
Sam Wang: [00:10:07] Festival.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:08] I like that. It makes it sound cheerful. So things are a lot better since then, in part because of your powerful work at the Gerrymandering Project, but also citizen changemakers like Katie Fahey in Michigan, who marshaled the power of everyday Michiganders to demand an end to the practice and to form an independent redistricting commission. So since you have been looking at the actual numbers for some time and analyzing them, how much more competitive was 2022 than 2012?
Sam Wang: [00:10:40] Considerably more competitive. It's nice of you to highlight the work that we've done, but I will say that there is a network of people activists, nerds, government actors, citizen initiatives, all kinds of people working hard on this. And I would say broadly that about if you measured in terms of representational advantage or disadvantage in Congress, gerrymandering is less than half of the offense that it was ten years ago. Maybe it's as little as one third. Now, that's not all because of improvements in the process. Some of it is cancellation of Democratic gerrymanders by Republican gerrymanders and vice versa. But it's been a lot of work. The way I would put it is this: if one party is in control, then they can run away with the process and the way, therefore, to deal with that is to stop their ability to keep themselves in power. And in engineering, we might call that positive feedback. So if you talk into a microphone and the speaker is on, the speaker can then go back into the microphone and create a ringing sound that's positive feedback. And that runaway feedback can create a bad sound at a concert. When you think about it in terms of a party keeping itself in power, they can put themselves in power and keep it going indefinitely. And so the tools are courts and ballot initiatives. About half the states have a way for citizens to bring a ballot initiative directly to a vote. That is one way to change the law, and that's a way that gets
around legislators who, you know, have a preference to keep themselves in power. And so a citizen initiative can block that. A court can do the same thing. And in February 2024, we're seeing courts step in and find ways to hold back mistakes of representation or offenses. One of the big stories this year is Wisconsin, through the action of a court, may finally get what I would characterize as an actual democracy through court action, stepping into a massive gerrymander. So, yeah, courts and citizen initiatives are the major tools. We don't have federal intervention because the Supreme Court stepped back from doing what some would call their duty to democracy. But anyway, five of them didn't think so.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:45] Yeah. Well, I read your paper, your article, "Laboratories of Democracy Reform, State constitutions and Partisan Gerrymandering." That's a big title.
Sam Wang: [00:12:53] Wow. You're one of a handful of elite. Thank you.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:55] You're welcome. I enjoyed it. So you argue that partisan gerrymandering, which you just said can be challenged through constitutional litigation at the state level. And actually, in the paper, I was really interested, you cite the example of Pennsylvania in 2018. What happened there and what are the lessons for other states? How has your thinking evolved now that Wisconsin is going through this process?
Sam Wang: [00:13:17] The Pennsylvania gerrymander was a doozy. It was one of half a dozen Gerrymanders committed after the 2010 census, and it was a gerrymander. I'm certain that I'm going to get the number wrong. Pennsylvania is a 50/50 state, and the resulting congressional delegation, I believe, was 13 Republicans, five Democrats. And there is no easy way to do that. So some people will claim that natural geography will lead to a partisan outcome. And that's true a little bit. And that little grain of truth obscures this big offense, which is that purposeful drawing of lines led to a massive partisan asymmetry in Pennsylvania. And in Pennsylvania, what happened was that the state Supreme Court stepped in and decided that under the laws of Pennsylvania and the Constitution of Pennsylvania, which is way longer than the US Constitution -- it's like this big tome that's dozens of articles long. So this big old thing had within it principles of equal protection and freedom of association. And what they said was that under those legal principles, Pennsylvania was a partisan gerrymander and therefore had to be
undone. And that turned out to lead to a map that was redrawn by the court. It is always better for a legislature to do the job, unless the legislature will not obey this principle, in which case the court can say, okay, we're going to hire a specialist to come in and fix this up for you. And the resulting delegation in Pennsylvania turned out to be nine-nine, which -- I think it was nine-nine. At one point it might have been ten-eight, but it was much more equitable. It was, I would say, close to comparable representation, equitable representation between the two parties. And it set an example for later states to follow, such as North Carolina. Courts around the country have gotten interested in it now. Multiple courts have said that in principle, they can step in. They don't always redraw the map, but they've now found rights that allow them to step in and increase the degree of fairness that's in a, in a local legislative or congressional map.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:12] Um hum. Well, you just mentioned North Carolina, and you also just said that it's better for the legislature to do this than the courts. But at the same time, in North Carolina, they just kind of reversed what the court had said. And now now we're back to.
Sam Wang: [00:15:26] Yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:27] A gerrymander. But tell us a little bit more about how that happened, because I think, you know, when you're observing on the outside, you're like, wait, didn't we just do this or like, how are we here again?
Sam Wang: [00:15:37] I go a little crazy because I get into my own little zone of being interested in just exactly where the pivot point is in each state. And I, I noticed that pivot point and I think, okay, all good outcomes in the next five years will depend on this particular election or this particular issue. And I start jumping up and down and yelling about that. And I find that let's just say, I'm mixed in my ability to get people to notice. But in North Carolina, there was a pivotal Supreme Court election that happened a few years ago, where two seats on the state Supreme Court flipped, and one of them was the one between, I believe, Paul Newby and Cheri Beasley. And I forget the other one, but there were two seats at the same time. And basically the state Supreme Court in North Carolina flipped from a liberal majority to a conservative majority. And that flip completely altered the calculus of whether the court was more oriented towards voting rights and also liberally oriented. I mean, it was, it had two kinds of orientation liberal
and towards voting rights and in both cases of opposite view to the legislature, which is controlled by Republicans. And so there was a case in which the congressional and legislative maps were closely inspected by the court, and in the case of the congressional map had to be redrawn.
Sam Wang: [00:16:50] But after that election, that court flipped. And when that court flipped, they had a very different view about whether they had a role in interfering with legislative redistricting. And they took a much more reclusive role. And they said, or reclusive might not be the right word. But anyway, they hung back and they said, you know, why don't we just leave it to the legislature? And so that's a case where there was a notable advance in redistricting in North Carolina. And I should say, you know, all these little details. Turns out of all the states, North Carolina is one state where the governor has no say. So one of the ways to hold back the legislature is again unavailable. And so North Carolina is just a, it's a tough case. Governor can't do it. The court won't do it. And so because of this somewhat distressing seesaw, North Carolina is now in a state where a whole branch of their government is under the control of one party. And it's going to be tough, because if voters feel differently, it is not necessarily the case that it is possible to vote out that particular party.
Mila Atmos: [00:17:49] Um hum. Yeah. So when it comes to the seesawing, it's not true for every state. Of course, in a place like Michigan, basically because of their independent commission, they can ensure that they're essentially gerrymander free. But in your opinion, and everything that you've seen since 2010, what do you think is really the strongest recourse post gerrymandering? Because also, in some cases, you can't even put in a ballot measure by citizens, right? There are some states that don't allow that.
Sam Wang: [00:18:17] The difficulty is that some places it's harder than others. And so I will have to temper my optimism. I will say I am happy about either bipartisan or nonpartisan progress in states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan, Colorado, California, Arizona, Wisconsin. But yeah, then there's cases like North Carolina that are like, yeah, ahhh, let's think of something to help you guys there. I think the answer is that you have to find the thing that's going to work in your state. In North Carolina, probably the thing that's going to work the most is either statewide office, which is un- gerrymander-able, or local office, where local offices such as city council, county level
offices, those are places where citizens can truly be represented. One long term change, I'll give you an example of an instance in which the legislature did something that I would say resembled the right thing. Virginia was dominated by Republicans, but they were worried because their influence was eroding, and they foresaw a future in which Democrats would be in charge. And rather than be in a position that they themselves were in, they caved and they implemented a redistricting commission. Now, the commission itself ran into some trouble. It ended up in court. And so the court had to settle things. But it is the case that in Virginia, fear of the future ended up being harnessed in a way that ended up, I would say, helping the people of Virginia. And so a place where that might come up is Georgia. In Georgia, the demographics are moving in a way that are kind of like Virginia. Georgia, famously, is a 50/50 state, whether it's for the presidency or for the United States Senate. And it's a state where the demographics are moving more and more in the direction of Georgia being a purple state. And in that regard, I think that there's an opportunity there, maybe to create a change in a positive way. Now, this is me being an optimist, but I think that -- not in every state -- but I think in most states there's something you can do, whether it's at the state level, whether it's at the local level. The difficulty is looking really hard and figuring out where the pivot points are to give people more influence and more power in their government.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:21] So what are the redistricting battles that you're watching right now in the year '24?
Sam Wang: [00:20:29] Well, right now there are some battles that may be important. I would say. Let's see, there's short terms importance for who controls Congress. There's long term importance for a fair representation for the rest of the decade. And there's unexpected importance because it might even affect the presidential election, which is kind of loopy. But there is even a case that may affect the presidential election. So let's see. So as stated, I'm very interested in Wisconsin because that's a case where Wisconsin has what by some metrics at the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, we've identified Wisconsin as possibly the worst gerrymander in the nation, where less than 50% of the vote can elect a supermajority. And it was struck down during the month of February. And that's going to lead to a map where a majority of voters in Wisconsin will likely elect a majority of the legislature. And that's true whether it's Republicans or Democrats. And so a majoritarian government may come to Wisconsin. And I got to say, for over a decade, that's been a real sore point for people who are redistricting
nerds. So I'm watching that one. Michigan, I'm watching because there's a federal case where three Republican appointees noticed difficulties with the use of race. The legislative map there is being redrawn and the difficulty there is, can it be redrawn to represent race fairly and yet still be fair to the two major political parties? And some people would say that's not possible because it's like a water balloon. You squeeze one end and then the other end pooches out. But I think that actually there's a good chance that that will turn out to do everything. And so I'm super interested in that one. And then finally, I'm watching Ohio. People are gathering signatures in Ohio. And there's a ballot initiative which, if it passes, will take away the power of redistricting from state partisan officials. Currently, there's a commission that, by its nature, is usually going to be five members of one party, two of the other, and it's going to replace that with a commission that's more equal and look after the interests of people of both parties, and also this mountain of voters who are not of either party. And so that new commission structure, if it passes this November, will be a big step forward for Ohio. So I think anyone in Ohio should be working for that. So those are those are the things I'm watching. Now that I think about it, they're all in the Midwest. I guess there are other places in the country that I could start listing, but those are three ones that I'm very mindful of.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:45] Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
We are going to take a quick break to thank our sponsor, Shopify. And when we come back, we'll continue with Sam. But first, Venus and Serena. Simon and Garfunkel. But what about the perfect duo when it comes to growing your business? That's you and Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. From the launch, your online shop stage to the first real life store stage all the way to the did we just hit a million order stage? Shopify is there to help you grow whether you're selling scented soaps or offering custom aprons. Shopify helps you sell everywhere. You heard that right from their all in one e-commerce platform to their in- person POS system. Wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify has got you covered. Shopify also helps you turn browsers into buyers, with the internet's best converting checkout 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms. Sell more with less effort thanks to Shopify Magic, your AI powered all star. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the US. It's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Plus, Shopify's award winning help is there to support your success every
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And now let's return to my conversation with Sam Wang.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:03] You just mentioned that there are so many unaffiliated voters and a lot of people don't know, but actually they are together a larger number of voters than Republicans and Democrats combined. There are so many Americans who are unaffiliated, meaning they're not registered as Independent. They're just not registered at all with any party. Do you want to say something to that?
Sam Wang: [00:25:23] Yes, absolutely. The thing about those voters is that there's two views. So I would say political scientists really like to say things don't matter as much as people think they do. But I think there is a question if they don't matter now, but do we have a situation where they could matter in the future? And the thing about independent voters is, on the one hand, they don't express a partisan affiliation. On the other hand, most of them express loyalty to one party or the other. And that's the snapshot of where things are right now in 2024. But the big challenge is that this whole big mountain of voters, I like to think of them as a third mountain of voters who don't quite fit with either major political party, whether it be about guns or abortion or Ukraine or Israel or Gaza or whatever it may be. There's some way in which they don't really feel like they fit. And one of the big challenges I think of, let's call it repairing and rebuilding our democracy or repairing and strengthening our democracy, is finding a way to get ways to represent this third mountain of voters. And so all these things we're talking about fit into one big theory, which is we have a duty, I would say, to find a way to make sure that everyone gets represented. And the thing that I think, I think people feel this is missing in their democracy, and the problem is that the rules are technical enough that one needs to put on the lab coat, turn on the computer and figure out just where is it in each state that needs that help. And it's, you know, it's it's nerdy and technical, but I really feel that getting this third mountain represented is, I think, a big theme for many of your guests, based on who you've had on.
Mila Atmos: [00:26:57] Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm personally also very interested because they're not represented. Nobody is really speaking for them or even to them. I think that they are taking in a hodgepodge of information. You know, that maybe if you were to sit down for, I don't know, half an hour or more, you have to really think that a lot of these things don't agree with each other. And I think to have an informed political opinion on anything takes a lot of thinking and time. And I think in a time where we're taking in information through social media or from friends or from comedy shows, which I also enjoy a lot -- like I really love, you know, John Oliver, for example. But that's a comedy show, right? So it's the kind of thing...
Sam Wang: [00:27:39] Yeah, but comedy shows have to have things that are true. I mean, you got to keep up. Like, like think of the stuff that you have to know in background. I was once contacted by The John Oliver Show to talk about gerrymandering, and I talked to this woman for like an hour about all the details, and he managed to make it entertaining and funny. And, you know, he's got sort of a yelling way of talking about these things, which is, you know, I can't pull off at all. But but, you know, comedy shows in some way make it fun to be informed. And so one of the challenges in democracy is how do we keep people informed? How do we keep them interested? How do we keep them on top of things? How do we get them to connect what they do when they vote with what happens when they go to the doctor or whatever it might be? And so, I don't know, I kind of I feel like comedy is one of our last remaining defenses against misinformation. But I don't know, maybe I'm being an optimist.
Mila Atmos: [00:28:27] Oh, no, I totally agree with you. I mean, I, I watch the show religiously with my, with my teenage son. And so we take in a lot of information this way and we discuss it. And it's very exciting because we're having these discussions about hard things, you know, for example, gerrymandering or unions or whatever it was. Anyway, I wanted to ask you this question because you are a neuroscientist and you were a physics major in college. How did you get so passionate about this? We're always interested sort of in the journeys of citizen change makers like yourself. And I know that you started out with a Princeton Election Consortium, and you did a lot of polling, and you still do some polling, right?
Sam Wang: [00:29:05] I do. At Princeton. Thank you for asking that. Back in 2004, I got super interested in trying to figure out what the pivotal states would be, how the
presidential election would turn out. And I kept myself from going crazy from kind of the pick, pick, pick nature of polling data. You know, at that time it would be Kerry's ahead in Pennsylvania. No, Bush is ahead in Pennsylvania. And it was just like this little tiny drip, drip of information. And I was looking for some way to make sense out of it. And because both physics and neuroscience make use of statistics, I thought, why don't I just do some simple statistical calculations to take all that information and put it into one number that tells us where the race is at. And so I thought that would be a something useful. And it went viral among, I don't know, financial analysts and social science professors and, and some activists. And it was fun. Uh, Nate Silver turned it into 538 a few years later. So, you know, obviously there was a market for it. And it was fun at the time. Kind of fun. I would say politics has gotten pretty serious. I'm motivated to do what I can to help, and I basically went from thinking, okay, I'm on the sidelines watching what's happening, and I thought, maybe it's a good idea for people who are kind of nerdy and have math skills to get down there onto the playing field and do what they can to make the system work better. You know, I've never been a sports fan, including actual sports, and analyzing polls like was a little bit sportsy. And what I really wanted was to figure out where can citizens make the most difference? Where is your vote the most meaningful? And at election.princeton.edu we're still doing that. We're going to be doing it this year, whether it's Ohio or Pennsylvania or Georgia or Arizona or elsewhere. The idea is to use math to help identify where citizens have the most leverage. And so we're continuing that work this year as part of the idea of improving democracy.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:00] So has it changed year to year since 2004, a lot, where your vote is most powerful?
Sam Wang: [00:31:05] It varies. Pennsylvania is still a swing state. Ohio is less so. Georgia is in a way it hasn't. So, you know, the way it works in American politics is that the places that are critical move over time, like Arizona was not considered a swing state ten years ago, for example. The specific states change from year to year, so it's important to keep track of those. The big picture is that for about, since the mid 90s, so I guess that's 30 years. We've, as a nation, we've been on this funny knife edge where we're 50/50 and we have all these close elections where maybe the person who gets fewer votes despite that ends up becoming president. And it's like the first Gilded Age, 1876 to 1896. Six close elections in a row, two of them the person who got fewer votes becoming president. Congress flipped five times. I mean, the Gilded Age was a hot
mess. And we're in some ways, we're in the second Gilded Age. Racial tension, technological disruption, 50/50 votes. It's like this trap. And my hope is that reformers and advocates and people of all groups, that we can make it out of this second Gilded Age and maybe make some progress, you know, in the long term.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:16] Hmm. Well, I always ask this question what are two things an everyday person can do to make a difference? And I kind of want to couple this together. What is one thing that you want every American voter to know, which you think that that people don't really fully understand about our electoral system? And then to that end, what are two things an everyday citizen can do to actually advance and advocate for fair representation?
Sam Wang: [00:32:42] I think the big thing -- if one could come up with something that applies in all 50 states -- the big thing is that there are rules in the system that force us into opposite camps, and that reward us for doing that. And those rules are the game that we are currently compelled to play. And the rules are things like primary elections that reward a partisan loyalist who's often not near the middle of where all voters are, and the other is running in districts and running in elections where the plurality winner, the person who gets the most votes, ends up getting elected, and a third party candidate can be a spoiler. So translating that into action is a little bit complicated. It involves figuring out how to make change where you are. So if making change where you are in a highly partisan district involves the dominant party, then you know you can do tricky things like register to that party and try to pull them towards a more reasonable place. The fact of the matter is that we have to operate within rules of the system, and the difficulty is this gets into somewhat complicated thinking where you have to think, what's the reform that's going to move democracy in a good direction this year and not accidentally in the wrong direction? It may be that I wanted sushi, which I kind of do at the moment. If I wanted sushi, let's say sushi is one mile in that direction. Well, if I start walking in that direction, I'm going to hit a wall and that's no good. I have to do some complicated thing to get there. And the tough thing about fixing democracy is you have to figure out what's going to lead to an improvement locally this year, where this year might be vote for ranked choice voting. And then that gets you to a point where next year you can have a thing like... I'll give you an example, the No Labels movement would love to bring up a third party candidate for president. But I think if you stop and think about the rules. Hmm. Good theory. Probably not the right year to implement it.
And so you can imagine that there could be a really important role for the No Labels idea. But you might imagine that maybe if you try to do it right now, you'd walk through the wall and you wouldn't get any sushi. And so the difficulty is seeing what's strategic this year. And, you know, I'm not 100% sure this leads to a super useful advice for listeners. But the difficulty is how do you find the pivot point in your state? And it's going to vary.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:03] Yes, but I think you made you made a very good suggestion earlier to get involved at the state and local level, because there at least, as we know, that's really where all the legislation gets made that affects your daily lives. And you would hope, I don't know if this is really accurate. I would hope if more people are involved and make this part of their decision tree every day in their daily lives, that this trickles up, right? That when you have good people at the local and state level, that you're going to end up also building a bench for the national level in the process, and have a habit of electing good people.
Sam Wang: [00:35:39] Yeah, I should say that we've been doing data analytics here at Princeton University, where we're looking at ranked choice voting records and to look and see how voters behave. And it is true that state and local elections bring out something in voters where they don't act as polarized. Where it's federal elections, Senate elections, governor elections, the higher you go, the more polarized voters act. And it's exactly as you say. Local and state elections are a hope for the future. There's also a risk involved because if they get more polarized, then we're really cooked. And so generally speaking, I would say the data analytics that we're doing in my group right now point towards the idea of polarization being less severe at those levels, and that being a place for hope for building up. So No Labels, for example, they might be well advised to go state and local. Your thought there, I think is probably what I should have said.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:33] Oh well you kind of did. So, and also it's good advice for No Labels to start there because definitely we don't, we don't need a spoiler this year in '24.
Sam Wang: [00:36:40] It would not be the right year for that.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:42] Yeah definitely not. So as we are rounding out our conversation here today, looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Sam Wang: [00:36:50] Well, what makes me hopeful is that the United States is constantly changing. There are demographic waves, there are new changes in how people think. And I would say that every generation or two, there's a shift in the relation of the two parties to one another. And I think that we've never had more information, even though we have to filter through the misinformation to get to it. We have better scientific tools, better computing tools. And I think that we have a whole generation of people who are independent of neither party. I think we're ready for change. And if we can just get through the next few years, it feels to me like we might have the opportunity in the next decade or so to make some real improvements to democracy in the US. Clearly huge difficulties with climate, with race, with technology. We have to find ways to navigate all those problems. But it feels to me like we might have an opportunity in the next few years. We just have to keep an eye on the ball and be willing to look both short tum and long term.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:52] That is very helpful. I hope you are correct that we can improve our democracy over the next ten years and render something that is really representative for all of us. Thank you so much for joining us on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Sam Wang: [00:38:07] Likewise. This is fun. Thank you so much.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:09] Sam Wang is a professor of neuroscience at Princeton
University and the director of the Electoral Innovation Lab.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Phillip Atiba Solomon, formerly known as Goff. He's the chair and the Carl I. Hovland, Professor of African American Studies and professor of psychology at Yale University. He's also the co-founder of the center for Policing Equity.
Phillip Atiba Solomon: [00:38:37] I think the problem of policing is, in some fundamental way, a problem about how we think about vulnerable populations that experience chronic vulnerability and crises. And we as a society have to decide how
much are we investing in the resources that can prevent those crises, and how much are we allowing for there to be differentiated responses when those crises show up?
Mila Atmos: [00:39:00] That's next time on Future Hindsight.
And before I go, first of all, thanks so much for listening. If you like this episode, you'll love what we have in store. Be sure to hit that follow button on Apple Podcasts or the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app, so you'll catch all of our upcoming episodes. Thank you! Oh, and please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. It seems like a small thing, but it can make a huge difference for an independent show like ours. It's the main way other people can find out about the show. We really appreciate your help. Thank you.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me. Until next time, stay engaged. The Democracy Group: [00:39:53] This podcast is part of the democracy Group.