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Here's An Idea For Redistricting ... Follow What The Founders Intended · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  Speaker 1: Staring at the correct page of the rundown to yours truly,
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  Speaker 1: Preston Scott. How are You? Show five thousand, six hundred
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  Speaker 1: and one of The Morning Show with Preston Scott. He's Oaseia,
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  Speaker 1: I'm Preston, and this my friends is now. I embrace
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  Speaker 1: him as not just a brother in Christ, but as
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  Speaker 1: a friend of this radio program. He's the vice president
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  Speaker 1: of policy for the Heartland Institute. Justin Haskins, Hello, sir.
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  Speaker 2: Good morning.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: How are you are you?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? I'm good.
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  Speaker 1: Are you an early morning person by nature? Or do
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  Speaker 1: you just get up for us?
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  Speaker 2: I absolutely am not. I just get up for you.
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  Speaker 2: I love you that much. Preston.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I was a night owl almost well for
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  Speaker 1: the first forty years of my life, and when I
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  Speaker 1: started doing this show everything changed choice. But to become
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  Speaker 1: a early to bed, early to rise.
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  Speaker 2: Guy, it's terrible.
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  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Do you have to have coffee like to
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  Speaker 1: do this segment?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? Oh yeah, yeah, I have a whole I have
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  Speaker 2: like an IV system.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, look to me. You know, we have spent a
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  Speaker 1: lot of time in the in the last few weeks
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  Speaker 1: talking about the Supreme Court and redistricting battles across the country. Now,
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  Speaker 1: states are taking an active look at their maps because,
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  Speaker 1: as you well know, there are a lot of maps
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  Speaker 1: that have been drawn for racial purposes over the years,
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  Speaker 1: and now those are going to need to be looked at.
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  Speaker 1: But you, I'm sure have your own vision of what's
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  Speaker 1: going on here. What do you see?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think there's some some really important pieces
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  Speaker 2: of information that the average person just does not know
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  Speaker 2: on this issue.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: The first is that, because of the way the system
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  Speaker 2: is set up, and because of Supreme cour or rulings
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  Speaker 2: that have occurred in the past, every congressional house district
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  Speaker 2: has to be roughly the same size. Okay, So you
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  Speaker 2: can't have house districts by same size I mean population.
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  Speaker 1: Wise, okay, okay, But the.
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  Speaker 2: Problem is states don't have populations that are equally distributed
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  Speaker 2: across the state. So the only way to have all
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  Speaker 2: the you know, all the districts roughly the same size
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  Speaker 2: is to draw really weird maps. So you have to
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  Speaker 2: draw weird maps. That's just part of the rules. There's
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  Speaker 2: really no way around it with the current rules that
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  Speaker 2: we have now. So the question is how do you
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  Speaker 2: draw those weird maps? And of course, politicians are going
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  Speaker 2: to draw them in a way that benefits them, and
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  Speaker 2: in places like New England and Illinois and in other
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  Speaker 2: parts of the country that have been run by Democrats
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  Speaker 2: largely for a long time, they've drawn the maps to
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  Speaker 2: benefit them, and that's been going on for a lot
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  Speaker 2: of people are now waking up to realizing that, you know,
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  Speaker 2: over forty percent of the people who live in New England,
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  Speaker 2: where I'm originally from, are Republicans, but they don't have
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  Speaker 2: any congressional representatives. If they're lucky they get one, and
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  Speaker 2: the whole set of states and makeup New England. Why
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  Speaker 2: is that Because they're all gerrymandered districts. And this has
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  Speaker 2: been going on forever, by the way, not just in
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  Speaker 2: New England, but all across the country. This has just
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  Speaker 2: been part of the system. So the idea that the
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  Speaker 2: only reason we're having this conversation now is because Republicans
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  Speaker 2: have been really bad at doing this compared to Democrats
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  Speaker 2: historically in the states where they can get away with it,
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  Speaker 2: and then in other states. The reason they were bad
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  Speaker 2: is because there were laws on the books and supreme
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  Speaker 2: courts that had determined that it was basically racist for
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  Speaker 2: Republicans to try to do what Democrats had already been
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  Speaker 2: doing for a long time. And now that the Supreme
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  Speaker 2: Court has just overturned some of its previous decisions, we
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  Speaker 2: now have a completely different maps, you know, that's going
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  Speaker 2: to be put into place over the next decade. Really,
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  Speaker 2: it's going to take probably a decade to get all
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  Speaker 2: of the maps changed all across the country, and it
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  Speaker 2: is a huge advantage for Republicans, but really it's just
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  Speaker 2: resetting the way things are supposed to be. Now, there
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  Speaker 2: is a solution to all of this, and this is
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  Speaker 2: kind of the unique tape.
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  Speaker 1: Back with Justin Haskins. He's an author, prolific writer, researcher,
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  Speaker 1: and vice president of policy with the Heartland Institute. Our guest, So,
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  Speaker 1: what is a solution to all of this redistricting mess
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  Speaker 1: that we're now going to be thrust into with In
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  Speaker 1: my opinion, justin the threat that if the Republicans don't
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  Speaker 1: do something before they lose power, they're going to pack
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  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court and they're going to do everything that
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  Speaker 1: they can to overturn all of this.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So the first thing is I think what
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  Speaker 2: Republicans are doing is the right thing. To do under
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  Speaker 2: the current rules. But I think the current rules are
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  Speaker 2: garbage and they were created a long long time ago, effectively,
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  Speaker 2: not the people who actually wrote the constitution. This came
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  Speaker 2: along a lot later. The reason we have this problem
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  Speaker 2: is because the original design for the Constitution was that
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  Speaker 2: the House of Representatives would grow along with population growth.
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  Speaker 2: That was the whole idea behind it. It was going
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  Speaker 2: to get bigger and bigger and bigger because as we
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  Speaker 2: have more people, we need more districts in order for
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  Speaker 2: the districts to be accurate, you know, have accurate representation
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  Speaker 2: that for you know, people in Washington that are representing
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  Speaker 2: the people who actually live in the district. Right now,
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  Speaker 2: the district sizes are so large that you have one
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  Speaker 2: person representing you know, seven eight hundred thousand people. Soon
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  Speaker 2: it will be a million people. In some places, they
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  Speaker 2: represent the whole state. They're not really good representatives. This
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  Speaker 2: is not what the founders intended. The district sizes were very,
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  Speaker 2: very small when the country was first started. Just tens
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  Speaker 2: of thousands of people lived in one congressional district. That
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  Speaker 2: was the original plan for the constitution. Okay, the solution
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  Speaker 2: to all of this, which sounds kind of crazy at
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  Speaker 2: first glance. But the solution to all of this is
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  Speaker 2: to significantly increase the size of the House of Representatives.
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  Speaker 2: The Congress in the nineteen twenties, run by Republicans with
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  Speaker 2: the Republican President, passed the law that capped the number
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  Speaker 2: of representatives in the House of Representatives to four thirty five.
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  Speaker 2: That's why we have four hundred and thirty five representatives
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  Speaker 2: in the House, and Congress has never changed it. Okay,
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  Speaker 2: even though we have like three or four times the
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  Speaker 2: population now than we did then, the congressional districts keep
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  Speaker 2: getting bigger and bigger and bigger in terms of the
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  Speaker 2: population size, and we have to constantly have this cherrymandering problem.
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  Speaker 2: You could solve jerrymandering really easily by just having congressions
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  Speaker 2: districts being very small, so that so that they're they're
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  Speaker 2: like the size of they could be the size of towns,
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  Speaker 2: or in more rural areas, they would be the size
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  Speaker 2: of maybe several towns or something like that. Your member
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  Speaker 2: of Congress would represent maybe thirty forty fifty thousand people,
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  Speaker 2: maybe maybe you could do one hundred thousand people something
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  Speaker 2: like that. But running for Congress would be like running
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  Speaker 2: for mayor. It wouldn't be running like it is today,
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  Speaker 2: where you need millions and millions and millions of dollars
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  Speaker 2: and you name recognition, and you need lobbyists in your
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  Speaker 2: pocket and all this stuff in order to win office.
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  Speaker 2: Is what This is what the Founding fathers originally intended, actually,
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  Speaker 2: and we got away from it because corrupt politicians in
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  Speaker 2: Washington realized that if they capped the number, they would
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  Speaker 2: become increasingly more powerful over time, and they didn't want
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  Speaker 2: to add more and more districts as the population was
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  Speaker 2: rapidly growing in the early twentieth century. So my argument
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  Speaker 2: would be that that's a model that if we had
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  Speaker 2: that model where instead of having one representative representing seven eight,
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  Speaker 2: nine hundred thousand people, you had one representative representing, say,
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  Speaker 2: fifty thousand people. You wouldn't have jerrymandering because you couldn't
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  Speaker 2: draw the districts large. The districts wouldn't be large enough
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  Speaker 2: have jerrymandering, and if you did, it would be very
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  Speaker 2: minor and you would get much better representatives than you
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  Speaker 2: have today.
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  Speaker 1: I love this guy. I mean, I mean not just
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  Speaker 1: as a brother in Christ, I just I was just
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  Speaker 1: telling him I have such an appreciation for what he's
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  Speaker 1: doing to try to help our nation be aware, you know,
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  Speaker 1: he and I are in a similar place, and that
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  Speaker 1: we can't make anything happen right. And as much as
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  Speaker 1: we all understand and know God's will is going to
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  Speaker 1: be sovereign when the big and the grandest picture, but
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  Speaker 1: he still gives us the right to be wrong. He
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  Speaker 1: gives our politicians the right to be wrong. He gives
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  Speaker 1: us the free will to elect the wrong people, and
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  Speaker 1: we've done a lot of that justin Are there any
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  Speaker 1: as you look at this idea of how to redo
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  Speaker 1: Congress in a broad sense, are there any potential downfalls
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  Speaker 1: to this where it could get really messy and ugly?
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  Speaker 2: You know, I think that there's downsides to every kind
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  Speaker 2: of system. I think a lot of people would argue
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  Speaker 2: that what I'm proposing, which is essentially to create thousands
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  Speaker 2: of new districts across the country, because if you had
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  Speaker 2: a representative ratio like the one that we started with
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  Speaker 2: in this country, where you had, you know, one representative
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  Speaker 2: for say fifty thousand people roughly around that, you're talking
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  Speaker 2: about having thousands of members of Congress, not four hundred
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  Speaker 2: and thirty five well, it's.
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  Speaker 1: Not unlike the Parliament in the UK.
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  Speaker 2: Well, there are states in our country that have systems
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  Speaker 2: that are more in line with this, and this is
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  Speaker 2: part of the reason why I spot about all this
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  Speaker 2: so much as I come from New Hampshire. That's where
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  Speaker 2: I'm from. For those people who don't know, New Hampshire
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  Speaker 2: has four hundred members in their House of Representatives, their
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  Speaker 2: state House of Representatives, for a state with about a
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  Speaker 2: million and a half or so people. So the average
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  Speaker 2: district size at the state level in the House is
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  Speaker 2: thirty five hundred people in New Hampshire. So every small
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  Speaker 2: town in New Hampshire has their own state representative, and
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  Speaker 2: they're regular people that get paid almost nothing, and there's
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  Speaker 2: very little corruption in New Hampshire and very low taxes
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  Speaker 2: and a lot of freedom that even though there's a
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  Speaker 2: lot of people who vote for Democrats, that's still the
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  Speaker 2: way the system works because they're regular people who run
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  Speaker 2: for office. And so I really do think that this
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  Speaker 2: model is the model. And by the way, just so
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  Speaker 2: that people know, the original Bill of Rights first ten
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  Speaker 2: amendments to the Constitution of the United States was actually
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  Speaker 2: twelve amendments. Most people don't know this Congress passed twelve amendments,
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  Speaker 2: but the states did not ratify all twelve of them.
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  Speaker 2: One of the two amendments that they did not ratify,
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  Speaker 2: it's called Article the First. This amendment, this very first amendment,
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  Speaker 2: is the what was an attempt to do exactly what
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  Speaker 2: I'm saying. It was a trying to create amendment to
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  Speaker 2: the Constitution that required representative ratios to grow at a
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  Speaker 2: certain pace and then eventually make it so that Congress
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  Speaker 2: could had to have a representative ratio like the one
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  Speaker 2: I'm talking about, so that you couldn't have these mass
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  Speaker 2: congressional districts. And the only reason it didn't end up
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  Speaker 2: being ratified by the states, even though Congress passed it,
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  Speaker 2: is because the people, the scribes who were writing this
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  Speaker 2: down botched it and when they sent it out to
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  Speaker 2: the states, the language was screwed up, the mathematical formula
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  Speaker 2: was all messed up, and some of the states realized
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  Speaker 2: it was messed up and didn't ratify it. And that's
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  Speaker 2: the only reason that it didn't happen. So this was
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  Speaker 2: the intention. This was the plan, and I think it
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  Speaker 2: was a good plan. And since then, because that didn't happen,
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  Speaker 2: we've ended up with all this cherryman nonsense, with a
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  Speaker 2: Congress that doesn't care about the people with corrupt in Washington,
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  Speaker 2: d C. I think all of this could be solved
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  Speaker 2: by having thousands of members of Congress who are regular
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  Speaker 2: people who don't get paid very much money, but are
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  Speaker 2: doing it for the right reasons, and then you wouldn't
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  Speaker 2: have to worry about Jerry manderin. You would have people
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  Speaker 2: who really do come from the communities that they're representing.
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  Speaker 1: So this would require then a complete overhaul of, at
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  Speaker 1: least on the House side, the math on what these
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  Speaker 1: people are paid to serve, and they would have to
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  Speaker 1: become part time politicians, yeah, or people.
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  Speaker 2: Who get paid very low amount of money. Yeah. I
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  Speaker 2: think that's how it works in New Hampshire. They get
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  Speaker 2: paid I think it's like less than five thousand dollars
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  Speaker 2: a year to do that job in New Hampshire. There's
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  Speaker 2: no reason why we can't have plenty of people who
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  Speaker 2: would be in Congress. You're not going to have trouble
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  Speaker 2: finding people who want to be in Congress, and they'd
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  Speaker 2: be there for the right reasons, and you couldn't have lobbyists.
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  Speaker 2: Just think about how hard it would be to be
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  Speaker 2: a lobbyist who's trying to buy off four thousand politicians.
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  Speaker 2: That's a lot harder to do than to buy off
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  Speaker 2: just a handful of swing votes. So this whole system,
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  Speaker 2: I think all it would require, by the way, is,
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  Speaker 2: and that is a law from Congress that changes how
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  Speaker 2: many members of Congress there are. Congress could do this
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  Speaker 2: at any time. Now, I think this is the path forward.
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  Speaker 1: Now, you and I both know that such an idea
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  Speaker 1: is a remarkably heavy lift, right, yes, unquestionably. So realistically,
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  Speaker 1: what do you think is going to happen in the
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  Speaker 1: next ten years.
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  Speaker 2: Realistically what's going to happen is the House is going
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  Speaker 2: to stay the same size four thirty five. They're not
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  Speaker 2: going to listen to Justin Haskins, that is for sure,
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  Speaker 2: and they are going to become increasingly more partisan. You're
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  Speaker 2: going to have everybody jerry mander the districts all across
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  Speaker 2: the country in every single state to the best of
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  Speaker 2: their ability, and Republicans will probably end up with a
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  Speaker 2: light advantage over the Democrats, but it won't be as
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  Speaker 2: big of an advantage as it's going to be this
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  Speaker 2: particular election season, because once Democrats have enough time to
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  Speaker 2: further gerrymander their districts. They'll eat away at some of
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  Speaker 2: the advantage for Republicans. But I think it's just going
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  Speaker 2: to create this sense just like we have continuously, this
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  Speaker 2: has been we've been moving into ditrection for a long time.
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  Speaker 2: Americans feel that the system is rigged, that Washington doesn't care,
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  Speaker 2: that Congress is not listening to them, that and everyone is.
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  Speaker 2: This is just going to solidify that idea in people's minds.
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  Speaker 2: And you know what, I think for a large to
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  Speaker 2: a large extent, it's true. And the most ironic part
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  Speaker 2: of all of it is the House is really not
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  Speaker 2: the reason why things don't get passed anyway. It's the
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  Speaker 2: Senate that's the real problem. They're not doing anything related
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  Speaker 2: to that.
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  Speaker 1: Ah. Yes, Kat Camick, Us, Congresswoman, that's our guests from Florida.
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  Speaker 1: She said it. The Democrats are the opposition party. The
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  Speaker 1: Senate is the enemy.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's one hundred percent true. The Senate
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  Speaker 2: is designed to not get anything done. We're not going
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: to get anything done until we change the filibuster rule
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  Speaker 2: in the Senate, which is a whole different conversation. But
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  Speaker 2: I think that that's something that needs to happen.
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  Speaker 1: Justin, thanks as always for your time. I appreciate you
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  Speaker 1: getting up early for us on the Left Coast and
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  Speaker 1: blessings to you and your family.
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  Speaker 2: Same to you, brother.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you. Justin Askins with us this morning on the
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Morning Show with Preston Scott