>> a look at voting rights in redistricting. we are from former federal election commission chair trevor potter, democratic political consultant bob shrum, and leslee sherrill, former vice president of abc news. the university of southern california institute of politics hosted this event in los angeles. first let me introduce our panelists, ralph neas, he's run dozens of national campaigns with bipartisan majorities to strengthen and protect civil rights laws during the reagan and bush presidencies, has been very active since then and is been a friend of mine for about 37 years. lesleeee sherrill is on presidet of abcgh news, a fellow of the unruh institute of politics and is working on a nonpartisan initiative, the democracy project, which focus on electoral reform with ralph. she formerly worked as a white

house staffer andml at the manhattan institute for policy research. pete peterson is that dean and senior fellow at pepperdine university school of public policy. usaa 2014 republican candidate for california secretary of state.n had he run in another state he might have succeeded. trevor potter, the former chairman of the united states federal election commission, the former attorney for senator john mccain and president george hw bush. i i still notor at the same tim. the founder and president and general counsel of the campaign legal center, which is working in areas of campaign finance and elections, political communication and government ethics. i have a superb co-moderate, adam grushan, vice president of unruh institute, our student group, a standalone student group that we're very proud to be associated withna him. he's a senior at the university of southern california and is going to kick it off with the first question, which all of g u

can take a whack at. >> first off, thank you for being here. i think we all really appreciate it. a student hearing from you guys and hearing your expert opinions and thoughts on such an important issue. what i'm interested in is the fact that we've tried to reform the electoral college for over 60 years. we proposed i think over 700 amendments, and they have all failed. is this tenable? can we reform the college? what are your thoughts? >> who wants to go first? >> do you want me to take the initial crack? >> sure. >> first of all i do want to thank everybody involved. this is an extraordinary opportunity and i think all of us are trying to get ways to address the extreme partisanship and the extreme polarization unfortunately in this country right now. this first question is related to that. there's no question there's a

strong bipartisan majority that wants to do something about the electoral college. the problem is and i was in law school the last time there was a significant effort to abolish the electoral college and have direct vote, and there were two presidential candidates in favor of it. there was bipartisan majorities in the house and the senate. the problem is our checks and balances, and unique filibuster proof in the senate on something that controversial, and it takes two-thirds ofm both houses and three-quarters of the states. that's a virtual impossibility on any issue i can think of right now in the united states, passing the kind of constitutional amendment. that does not mean however that we can't try to reform the electoral college in the sense of how the electors vote, and there are many ways of looking at this and i don't want to filibuster because we can go through all of them, but many of us would like a direct vote. we can't get it and i don't

think we can. we can do maybe the national popular vote compact which 11 states have already adopted, totaling 165 electoral votes. what they are saying is there passing a law in the states that if there is a candidate, and would be that it's got the most votes, they will commit their electors to that candidate to us the most votes. >> whether or not they carried their state. >> exactly took once to get to 270 their state laws would become active because 270 is how many votes are needed in the electoral college. there are other ways of doing this. for example, proportional representation and a lot of us feel strongly that would be a great way to go. if you get 45% of presidential candidate in a particular state, you get 45% of the electors. the problem with that and it would increase voter participation, i think would help with respect to

polarization and partisanship, but it can be gained. for example, if california was proportional representation and 45%, 85%, whatever it might be but texas decides not to do it and all of the votes in texas go to a particular candidate, then the democrats in this case would be at a disadvantage but you can turn it around, and texas as proportional representation by california doesn't, and then the democrats in california are at a disadvantage. those are two of the ways. others will be discussed but we should continue to talk about reform of how these electors come about, and there have to be ways and to think a simple ways and we will discuss them later to what i talked about that could work. >> i am very hopeful, despite all of the efforts that are gone and successfully in the past. i think when you end up with an

election where the popular votd electoral college don't meet, perhaps the climate is right. people will be ready to make a change. i agree with ralph, constitutional amendment is just not realistic or feasible, but the states can do something. all the power with what happens to those electoral college votes are in the hands of the state. most of the states have turned them over to their political parties. i tried to call both parties to get a list of who voted on my behalf from the state of california and i could put on hold and transferred around and sent back to the secretary of state. to which i said that's fine but you pick these electors. i would just like to see the list of names of people who voted on my behalf. i could not get the list except from wikipedia. i cannot get it from the state party. the republican party does have a posted but when asked to are they, could not answer my question. so it is really a hall of mirrors but it doesn't have to be that way. if the voters are educated enough to realize they have

ceded all of the power in their state electoral votes to the political parties on their behalf, i think they can take that power back a and pass ballt initiatives and reforms that will make those votes in the state more representative. i think about is ours. i i think we are americans, i don't think, we can change your destiny somber helpful. >> having been involved in this i have to know, i can tell you these people are. these people are people that you are absolutely certain will be faithful and will vote the way you want them to vote, if you happen to carry the state. >> i know who they are. i just did itit as a test, pretended i was your average voter and i wanted to know. i got put on hold an awful lot. >> i would agree with ralph and also that it is a virtual impossibility that should have a constitutional amendment to overturn the electoral college. it's also important to take a step and say why we have an

electoral college. this is one of the many checks and balances which understands we are not america. we are the united states of america. if we are the united states of america there will be parts of the system, whether it's to senators per state or the electoral college that really are not democratic in the peer sense of that term. there are filters by which small states, smaller states in being part of this larger compact of the united states of america, this constitution, are seeking only somewhat equal representation. i think there's something to be said for that proportional division of votes. but to your point there would have to be a compact along those terms. i would not support a compact as related to what's known as the national popular vote in the sense that you might have state and its electors decide to prevent its voters did, even if that was different than the

national vote. but if you're able to pass something of a compact that incorporated disproportional representation, then i could foresee if you set the limits to say you're going to get to 45 or 40 states that going to sign onto it, in certain states whether it had to be california and texas would sign onto it, you could get something there that a think would be more representative. >> i think there are two things to note. one is the electoral college bears absolutely no resemblance and its functioning to what the founders intended. they did n not design what we ae using. they had i believe three elections we had at the beginning of this country. the first two for george washington and the second for john adams where it worked as intended, which is to say that the leading citizens of every state selected by the legislature got together and decided who they thought to be

president, aside from the legislature, , aside from any votes by citizens, it was, the point was it was an outside group that would select the president. that stopped after the third election to we ended up with political parties. you at jefferson versus adams and then on you at a totally different system which is now one would be electors are selected, depending on the popular vote in every state. i'm not saying that's wrong but i'm saying it's important to remember that what we have was designed for a different system and a different country than where we are here the second point,te i agree that despite tt everyone is now sufficiently invested in what we have, of the reasons have risen to retain it, the small states feel that they are, they are overrepresented in the college compared what it would be if it was the popular vote.

you also have the country all rights are many issues, them has become the electoral college versus the popular vote because there was nobody in the 20th century who was elected without winning by the electoral college, without winning the popular vote. we've had to in the 21st century, george w. bush and donald trump. one effect of that is the republicans support for the electoral college has risen, because they like the result and they see an attack on as an attack on the legitimacy of those elections. so i think i agree with the view that says we are not going to be able to get rid of the electoral college by constitutionall amendment. we are sufficiently polarize that that does not have a chance. however, i believe we can still fix the electoral college, and are two things iel would do to x it. i think those could be by

constitutional amendment because i don't believe either would be controversial or seen as partisan. one is we have a problem referred to earlier of what's called a faithless elector, which means the state goes for candidate x. electors vote and the don't vote for ex. it was pressure this time on trump electors not to vote for trump. in the past there been an electors who cast protest votes report for a third-party candidate, and that's clearly ironically it's what the constitution says because he goes back to the idea the electors would be wise citizens, but estop the way works now and we would be outraged as a country in a faithless electors were to chip and election to the other side. so my proposal would be to get rid of the electors. leave the electoral college and there's no reason to have whatever it is, to some people

from california actually casting votes. you could simply say california has asked him about electoral college. they shall automatically be considered cast for the winner of the popular vote in that state -- x number. you could get state-by-state. you don't have to physical electors for al time bomb waitig to go off. the other which i personally think would be sufficiently supported by both parties to work is the idea of proportional representation, where you say that the votes cast by the state will be in proportion to the citizens vote in that state. i don't think it works for a compact because you wanted to get problems of what happens in some states join and some don't and it's not really something that is easy to enforce. but if you had a constitutional amendment that said that, you something but all the states into play. california and texas get treated

equally. the democrats get votes out of texas. the republicans get votes out of california. it seems to me that might be something that would solve and underlying political problem while still leaving then smaller states with representation they have. i think that might be worth looking at. >> ralph once a brief comment he has told me, and then i get a quick follow-up and then we will move on. >> one point ally to underscore about someoneking who does not get a majority or t folks don't get it together . with respect to the electoral course, we want to maximize system which is patient and we want candidates to campaign in all 50 states are as many as possible.0 and the 2016 presidential election, the general election, donald trump and hillary clinton, 70% of their campaign appearances were in six states.

94% of their campaign appearances were in 12 states. that means about 40 states were ignored by the presidential candidates in the general election. that's not something we want to continue. we tpa t want to have been out e in his many states as possible and getting as many citizens as possible involved in voting. >> a quick follow-up, at a don't want to spend a lot of time on it. it has occurred to be when i thought about this electoral compact and if you have 270 people sign up to it to a vote for the winner of the popular vote. wouldn't you then, to make sure that you don't have people fooling around with the voting processes in very states in a closeh election, wouldn't you have to have some kind of uniform federal standard for the voting for president? otherwise you could have an election like 2000 where

everybody knows it's going to be very, very close and there's aws huge incentive for people to try to cheat. but that was what was supposed to happen, to help america's vote act which was passed to you after the 2000 election was really supposed to standardizeas that. what you found, i know this is a former secretary of state candidate, is that california, for example, was the last date night of the statewide voter roll. the implementation of hava which was intended to get much more standardize on voting equipment, the condition of voter rolls and of those kinds of things was really not well enforced. >> you would agree you would have to have something like that on a national level in order to make sure that the votes were honestly cast and counted? >> i wouldn't agree it was necessary to do that. i would support it because it's right. >> anybodyup else? >> i think for whatever the 12 states in play now, there's huge

incentive already to play with those numbers. i don't think that is occurring. i think our election system is by and large not subject to fraud. it may be subject to incompetence as we found in florida in 2000. and i agree that i think congress has worked since then to try to improve the voting systems at least. >> i would also say onnk this ne as one of three republicans who live in santa monica, that the people's republic, that one of the positive externalities of looking at this, whether it's proportional representation or looking at reform in the arab electoral college, is i know on presidential election cycles my vote really doesn't count. and the impact of that for a lot of other people, i will anyway because that's what i do and a lot of people do, but what happens in the down ticket races

that underneath that presidential, that ticket, i thinkat we don't yet know what that would be. what would it mean for democrats in texas to understand that, you know what, actually your vote may have an impact at the top of the ticket and now you're going in and your 15 other things to vote for, how is it going to impact that? one of the things in california that it think really is worth observing is as we have greater, and larger conversation around what does it take to get more people to turn out, please understand that and a lot of these landslide states, which you to look at the 2016 election all the landslide states had the lowest voter turnout because people like me understood that, quite frankly, there was no purpose to casting vote for president if it wasn't going to vote for the democratic nominee. >> that's the proportional idea of splitting the electoral college votes by boat in the state really radically changes about. >> either of these v would.

quite interesting, for example, the hispanic turnout in texas is pretty low for democrats don't put as much effort in as they might to get that turnout of because they don't think they will carry texas so that may change over the next eight years. if every vote counted, people would put a lot more effort into grievous folks out. speaking of every vote being counted and every voter being able to vote, i will turn this back to adam. >> i'm wondering if we need federal protections to encourage people to get people out to vote? is any prospect that a law like that could be passed that is bipartisan? >> well, we have the voting rights laws already passed in the 60s to ensure that people can vote, regardless of the race because that was the original issue in the 60s where states

attempting to discourage or prevent minors from voting. that's an open battle today, many people say that's what's happening in some of the southern states that have adopted these draconian one-sided voter id measures where, in texas, for instance, you have to have photo id to vote, and then there's a a lisf what's acceptable photo id and the legislature in its wisdom decided that a concealed weapon carry permit will was impermissible voter id, but a photo id issued either state of texas to its university students was not. that is designed i think fairly to make sure that students vote at a lower rate and the people who are in or a members vote at a higher rate. that's a problem, not photo id per se but a system that is designed to discourage some

blocs of voters from voting. those are in the federal courts now. they've been struck down a number places. the answer to the question is we have laws that should ensure that people are treated equally. we just need to make sure we enforce those. >> ralph, you were involved forever in the voting rights act. i remember working with you on it. what do you think of that? do we need a stronger voting rights act, a restored voting rights act? >> is that was the first issue you and i worked with senator edward kennedy back in 1981 and 1982. and thanks to his leadership with strong bipartisan support the voting rights act was extended for 25 years and subsequently extended for a while and 2006. a strong voting rights act. what happened, however, and trevor did reference this a bit, with respect to the shelby county case in 2013, a chief

justice john roberts who is fighting is that the time when he was at the department of justice on the voting rights act basically gutted the section of the voting rights act with respect to the department of justice jurisdiction over states who recovered because of their past history of discrimination against african americans and latinos and others. there iscr legislation in the house, in the senate. unfortunately, i'm pretty sure that lisa murkowski, republican from alaska, might be the only republican in the senate and representative jim sensenbrenner, from wisconsin, who is an absolute you are back in 1981 and 1982 are the sponsors. you cannot pass legislation these days or at anytime really with two republican sponsors and votes for it. i'm not optimistic with respect to federal legislation at this timeim to overturn that supreme

court decision. will it happened someday? i hope that the political dynamics want to change and we will have to do a massive havoc education work on that. sonata in the short term. >> anybody n else? okay. i have a bit of an off-the-wall question i want to ask. there's something called ranked choice voting. could you explain what it is and you think it's a good idea? >> ranked choice voting, which is now in about ten cities across the country affecting about 2 million voters is getting traction, , not just in these ten cities, in the state of maine with respect to congressional races. there's ranked choice voting. essentially what it is, is that voters get to rank their candidates in order of their preference. so let's just say there are four candidates in the general

election, and you rated them one, two, three, four. once someone of those for gets a majority of the first-place votes, that person is the winner. a majority vote which is something i i think most of us- >> you might get to a majority by having second third preferences. >> this is how it works. this is exactly how it works. so what happens if there's not a majority, the person who finished last is eliminated and that persons second-place votes are redistributed to the other three candidates. and if you have a majority winner, at the end of that ballot, then that's it. but the process continues of eliminating the last-place finisher and redistributingavav votes. so that's how you get to someone who is getting the majority of the votes and gets all those electors. what's important about it, itot

encourages the candidates to be civil to one another, to reach out not just to your base, but you got toea be civil and much less negative advertising because you want to be the second choice of those people to vote for another candidate. so it encourages pragmatic electedid officials, people who will reach out to an expanded base. it's more civil. it costs less. there's a lot to be said about. we have not yet taken a position but we're position ourselves a vigorous debate and my guess would be the opiate lots of support as more and more people find out about this because it helps eliminate that political polarization, extreme partisanship. it's got a lot of merit. i think we're both looking forward to that debate. >> it's an interesting notion. it can be very confusing to the voter. >> not just confusing by theo way. i'll just throw that out there. >> so that's a bit of concern because you don't want to discourage voting.

you want a plan that is very clear, very easy to understand. >> you arenn telling me under te system i would've cast a vote for donald trump? >> no, you could've gone for -- but perhaps somebody like bloomberg would've gotten in the race and maybe more people would've picked him as number two. i think a positive aspect is you were voting for someone as opposed to against them which would be the positive way to look at it. the question is, is it just to a woman for the voter, they interviewed people come out and he said it wasn't so bad. i would love to see a physical ballot and see how it really looks when you come out of the voting booth. this notion you're voting for someone is a positive idea as opposed to voting against. so those are the pluses and minuses but i do think it takes a lot of explaining. >> it does, and i would just, with a lot of these electroformed issues, there are

things we can make a a decisioo move forward on it because you believe it's the rightou thing o do, the most representative of the resultant of the things you are doing to hopefully also increase participation. at least what be seen thus far in the cities that it used it is were not seeing a great uptick in participation. we are talking about cities like oakland and others that quite frankly you are still looking at 20, 25, 30% participation in my oral races. another question then becomes how far down the ballot do you go? i'm lucky if i know three of the five judicial appointments not have to vote on every cycle. it has been i think confusing but i do see it as something that's gaining some momentum and we will see at least of the municipalities sign-on to experiment with it. >> trevor, you want to say something on that? we have another question that a think adam is going to ask you. >> the question i have on ranked

choice voting because i told ralph before we start looking forward to hearing the explanation because of still trying to understand it, is what you do in a race where there is republican and democratic candidate and that it? you don't use it and i take it? >> in effect you would not have to, right. what if it d is going to get a majority. >> but the more likely thing, for example, in that situation it encourages other people to run. i.e. michael bloomberg for example, in 2016 under ranked choice voting might very well have run. >> this audience and among these panelists, it addresses the spoiler issue. you can vote for who you want to vote and not feel that i i casg a vote for bloomberg or for some other in a normal election you are having the possibility of someone you really opposed being the beneficiary of your vote because the spoiler effect. this eliminates it because in

the end there would be one person who gets a majority of the votes. there are no spoilers. >> adam has a a question for trevor and then we would change the topic a little bit. >> directed toot you trevor. our political system is drowning in money. we see the super pacs spending numbers, and just as a layman and interested is this a good or bad thing that so much money is in politics these days? >> in all due respect, this is not a criticism, i will say think that's the wrong question. because it costs money to run, it costs money to communicate. it costs money to buy what is facebook ads or television time or consultants. so yes, we're spending a huge amount of money in elections. it's much more than we used to spin. republicans who oppose campaign-finance reform will say yes, but we spend more buying popcorn or potato chips or something. that's why think if you get sidetracked on the issue of is her too much money or too little

and then you say but who's the government to tell you how much you can spend and so forth? you end up in an unproductive conversation. it seems to me the conversation needs to be a couple things. first, where is this money coming from, and how do officeholders, what did he have to do to get it? is the system becoming corrupt? if so, how do we fix it. assume everybodydy needs money o communicate. does that come from a tiny handful of donors? doesn't come from a broad base of fiber support? were used of a public funding system for thee president to election in this country. ronald reagan ran and won under that system. so it's not anti-conservative, but that's gone now. instead we have reports that members of congress are spending 40% of their working time fundraising in the booths dialing for dollars, trying to

figure out how to get enough money to run their campaigns. and we have what you of reference, which is the new world of super pacs where a result of a couple of course decisions including the supreme court's citizens united, we have ended up where instead of having contribution limits on what can be given to candidates and, therefore, spent, we have a world with no contribution limit to the super pacs which are therefore funded literally by a handful of people picky to look in the last election, 70, 80% of the money to the super pacs came from about 100 americans. and those become the major players. so it seems to me what we need to be looking at is how to diversify the funding, how to make officeholders, candidates and officeholders less reliant on the whims of a couple rich people, and instead find a way to finance those elections from

a much broader base and provide alternative sources of money to compete with the millionaires. >> i was just a tee off on that. the point about where the money comes from. .. after never having run for office before but the difference between individual contributions and at 1.during the campaign during the general election cycle to show about 80 percent of funding in those kind of organized fundraising groups and 20 percent coming from individuals so i think if we were to have this conversation before the 16 cycle it would be different. everybody in this room

probably knows to the penny what the exact average donation was for the bernie sanders campaign. $27, right? so i think nobody had any qualms and i certainly didn't with bernie sanders raising tens and millions of dollars but they were coming in these $27 to snippets so one of the things i propose during the campaign was even if we were to report during jthe campaign, if the media media were trained to report every fundraising total that was put in parentheses how much came from individuals and how much came from associations, i think at least we'd have a better awareness of where this money was coming from. i'm sure most people in this room are not committed familiar with something called the third house. the bird house in sacramento if you're a californian

dominates the campaign cash for any california legislative gubernatorial candidate and if you don't know that that's where a lot of that money is coming from, you don't have a sense of pulling some of the levers politically in the state of california. there's things we can do from a transparency or reporting perspective that people wouldn't care if a candidate raised $100 million if it was in $27 amounts versus one candidate getting 80 million from a rather shadowy super back and a much smaller and that and that coming from individuals any prospect for campaign-finance reform? >> i think there's a prospect at the national level and at the state level along the lines of what we were talking about, these transparency and disclosure laws. if these would go into effect as peter said, that would be

consequential. enforcement of existing laws, that as the fdc former chair would be the first to not only acknowledge but make an emphatic point that we can enforce the laws.another thing is how do you get those $27 average donors.there's good proposals whether it's tax credits or rebates, matching funds, there's a lot at the state level that would facilitate a little person or the average person getting involved in a much more significant way and the bernie sanders campaign would not be the exception to the rule. we could have a local and state and national leaders doing that in terms of their support. >> just to add on the disclosure side, that is important . what's changed in these elections is that we now have significant sums of money, hundreds of millions of dollars of money being spent without disclosure. ever since the 1970s, the one guarantee is the money will be disclosed at the state level and federal level. we now have groups that are

not disclosing their donors because they say we are not political committees and we don't have to. we are under the tax code, 501(c) four's or sixes and therefore they are able to step in without anyone knowing who's doing the spending. they don't tell anyone they are paying for these ads so you see these ads and it says paid for by better america. no idea who that is. the latest iteration which came out this week and is california-based is the facebook scandal. this discovery by facebook that they were selling advertisements to russian front entities and they have announced that they have now found today's announcement was it's not just advertising but it was all sorts of media groups that were able to use the facebook apparatus to come up with protests over immigration and other issues.

more money is illegal in us elections but what we are told is there's no disclosure. facebook isn't telling us any of the details and they're not showing us the ads that were paid for and watched. the estimate is that up to 70 million americans would have seen these ads that we are now being told we can't see. i think the whole disclosure issue is an important one. >> i want to turn this over to the audience in a minute but i want to go over one other issue. redistricting as a form of gerrymandering seems to profoundly influence representation, balance of power in the electoral process. there's a case challenging the gerrymandering before the supreme court in wisconsin. what's the argument here is the case likely to be decided on a partyline vote of the supreme court justices and if the court doesn't do anything, is it likely that more and more states might

try to politicize redistricting as arnold shorts and anger did in california? >> the short answer on the wisconsin case because that's the one brought my bike group , we argued in wisconsin before the court next month is that is a challenge to overly partisan, what's called gerrymandering, drawing lines to favor one party and make sure that the other doesn't get a majority. it has been illegal for some time to district lines to hurt minorities. but it has not been considered unconstitutionalto do so to hurt the other party , so what you have is people in government ensuring their party maintains control by choosing their voters. rather than the voters choosing the candidates. and california has had reform and nonpartisan redistricting

. the case out of wisconsin comes from a state legislature, in this case it was the republican party that did it but in illinois the democrats do exactly the same thing in my view this is not a partisan issue, this is a basic government rights issue, our right to be able to elect representatives without having those districts hand-picked and drawn. the short answer in wisconsin is this was a republican gerrymander. they used computers and they came up with the most republican legislature they could think of drawing these lines and the resulting 2012 is that 49 percent of voters in wisconsin voted for republicans and the legislature that was elected by that 49 percent was six percent republican. so they got a result through gerrymandering that they did not get at the polls and it happened exactly the other

way in illinois, maryland, massachusetts has not had a republican congressman in 20 years. 30 percent of the state votes for republicans. so this is a problem that i think needs to be addressed by the supreme court. i'm hopeful it will not be a so-called partyline vote as kennedy is the swing justice and he has indicated that he thinks overly partisan gerrymandering is wrong, but he said we need a test so that we are not being subjected when we look at it. and our goal in the wisconsin case is to see that there's a test, the numbers that i've described are an example of how you can prove that this was overly partisan n so this case will be argued in october, decided next spring. i'm hopeful we will be able to change the standard nationwide.

>> the california redistricting commission has shown a way, there's something that i'm in support of. it gets a little modification, it wasn't nonpartisan, it was multi-partisan. the members were of that , 30,000 citizens applied to be on the commission were divided by republicans, democrats so there was equal representation, even more so than party representation. more equal representation for someone like myself as a republican and you would find elsewhere, certainly in the legislature so i think those kind of processes which were being shown and that has withstood many court challenges and they are still today.ps we are using that does provide a model for other states. >> i would add when looking at electoral reform in maine and nebraska where it's a congressional district model, that begs for more gerrymandering so when you're

looking at various reforms, the congressional district model unless the gerrymandering is fixed will only continue to breathe a gaming of the system. to get back to trevor's point of eliminating the people and dealing with the numbers, you could sidestep the gerrymandering and i don't know that you'll ever completely get away from it but that's one way around it, certainly. >> point of personal privilege, having been a citizen of massachusetts trevor, ralph knows this too. if you gave the republicans complete control of the legislature and the governorship, they still gerrymandered the state because the republicans tend to be rather evenly spread across the state. >> i think we are all looking for non-bipartisan, it's important in the last month there's been significant bipartisanship by automatic voter registration which i'll talk about in the q&a put on your case trevor, i think it's important for me to

acknowledge what you have done with your allies in terms of former republican senators, governors, republican governors and also in the congress. i'm a conservative, nancy pelosi a liberal and mark meadow, the chairman of the house freedom caucus, one of the most conservative numbers of the house of representatives signed on in support of your position so that's something we could acknowledge and applaud. hopefully we get more of it. >> we have atradition which is going to be a port held . we were going to turn this over for the last 15 minutes to the audience. if anyone has a question, raise your hand and because of the lights, i can't see very well if someone here has a microphone, okay. >> hi folks, my question for you is your talking a lot about the rules of how elections are run and inputs into the election and my

question is if you do all those kinds of changes as you rule in your fantasy world, the ideal situation you would see, would it change our voter r participation rate from say 20, 30 percent, 40 nk percent to 80 or 90 percent and if not, how do you get to 80 or 90 percent? are we talking about rules or something bigger and how dowe address those bigger things ? >> you get rid of winner take all you will have bigger voter participation and california is a good example. i know many democrats who never bothered to go to the polls, a lot of republicans didn't bother. same is true in texas or oklahoma but if people thought they had a shot at being represented, you had 12 states this time where neither candidate got 50 percent but they got 100 percent of the electoral

vote. that is not representative. we have a representative form of government and anytime something doesn't get 50 percent but 100 percent of the electoral college, it's everybody knows it's just not right so i think the number one voter suppression is winner take all for sure so i would venture to guess people would be fighting tooth and nail to get a chance to vote if they thought it mattered more i slept in automatic voter registration a few minutes ago, hoping it would come as a question from the audience.if we have automatic voter registration which means when you go to the department of motor vehicles, you can be automatically registered. another kind of state agency, 50 million more americans will be registered if we had automatic voter registration. 10 states in the last two years, as recently as august, at the other bipartisan success.the republican governor of illinois signed into law unanimously, automatic voter registration. number two, it would be nice

to get those tens of millions of americans who are independents able to vote in primaries. and we need to figure out a way to preserve the party system but also get people who are going to be affected by those nominees of the parties involved in the primary somehow. how about a voter participation holiday? maybe it's veterans day. every time there's an election, presidential election, there is a federal holiday but we don't have to create a new one. veterans day happens to be the week before the vote. that would mean convenience and that's what so much of this voter participation is, how do you make it easier for people, not just voter suppression but an incentive to vote and giving people the time to vote and making it easier to register. that would make an enormous difference in getting that 60, 70, 80 percent over time as people get more comfortable.

>> ralph, i was ready to agree with you on everything but i have to push back a little. many of these levers that can improve registration don't necessarily improve voter turnout. those are different and at least some of the science research, a friend of mine eric mcgee who's at the institute of california did research in 2014 looking at some of these measures that are meant to increase registration, do they increase turnout whether it's same-day registration or an extended period by which absentee ballots are submitted or extending the period from election day earlier to which votes can be cast and on these measures you're looking at one, two, three percent effect. i think some of the bigger issues are what you are talking about about thinking about at least on presidential election years whether the votes of people in these landslidewinner take all states are going to have impact . i think that can play a role in tchanging voter turnout but i also think there's a bigger

issue that's being dictated by the number of especially millennial's for not registering for either party and their registering no party preference. and that, looking also at that demographic and overall at no party preference voters, you're seeing voters turnout at lower levels than registered voters. those those two things together a bigger problem of the soul of the voter. i think there's a growing sense that our politics are becoming disconnected from the people and i think when that begins to happen, when people think politics are parties and parties are bad and the whole system is corrupt and it's an insider game, that's going to have a much bigger impact on turnout when you're looking at an election which even in the

2016 race, one of the larger turnouts in the last two decades, 60 percent of voters turned out. what about the 40 percent. and a lot of these issues we're looking at making these two or three or four percent changes and we're losing sight of this 40 to 50percent large group of eligible voters who i think in many ways our voting . >> another question. >> we will take one more. >> my name is michelle rizzo, i'm proud to serve on the board and my work during the day is to instill voting for young people while they are still in school and unfortunately there's not a lot that's helping our case. i'm thinking about election night when we are all glued to the tv and the results start rolling in. often results come in so loud and strong before us west coasters polls are closed and then there's hawaii and alaska. does that vehave any impact on voter nturnout?

>> i can address that as somebody who worked at a network and we had criticism for that. we got pulled in front of the congress to discuss that issue because during the reagan carter race, it was over before california's polls were closed and they had told the election. so what they do now is they put them in a decision room, the doors are closed, no one is supposed to know what their modeling is showing as the districts come in. they will never call an election before the last hole has closed in hawaii, that's the rule. however as the tallies come in you sense a momentum. in a close election where people are waiting on michigan like they were this time around, pennsylvania, other states it's more of a cliffhanger. i don't know whether that affects the west coast so much but there's little you can do once the polls close to tell them they can't report those numbers. they will no longer call those elections and in 2000

was also another issue where florida went home and it was pulled back. those decisions are now supposed to be kept secret from the anchors so they've done things from a media standpoint to try to avoid it but it is difficult to do and the exit polling comes out and those are not supposed to be leak until the polls close but a lot of that information doesget out. i don't know whether it suppresses votes necessarily or has people saying why bother, it's over.at least not calling it until the last hole is close . >> not sure the hawaii alaska standard for my experience, california. anotherquestion hopefully from a student . >> my name is katie, i'm a sophomore, a student at usc. i'm calling about the media and you think any of these issues of electoral reform and gerrymandering got more

media coverage, they're not as exciting as breaking news alerts but if they did and people got more invested, citizens got more invested in these issues and saw the impact that the type of voter suppression has on their day-to-day lives, you think that could fuel legislative motion into getting yourideas into place quicker ? >> i think the media will only pay attention if it's noisy and loud so the voters have to be noisy and loud and say they are fed up. look at all the free media donald trump got in this election. he didn't have to buy any ads because they go to the noise and i do not mean to disparage my fellow journalists but i also know cnn has never made more money in their life. it's the first time they've been in the black in a long time so it has to be a grassroots effort. like bernie and the $27 voter, it caught everybody's by surprise. there was momentum, it has to

start with voters saying they had enough and people are apathetic at low voter turnout and that's part of the problem but peter people have got to get angry.>> it does demand somebody pushing the issue on the inside of the system. if you look back at the citizens redistricting, it was led by governor schwarzenegger. the phrase, i remember schwarzenegger saying so many times while he was campaigning for the proposition which was we are supposed to be the ones as voters picking our politicians, not the politicians picking the voters so he was able to distill what was a complex measure. if you look at the way in which the citizens redistricting commission was put together and how people n applied and how they were vetted, it was very complex but governor schwarzenegger was able to distill it down to a simple, populist message. which is we are the ones that

get to pick our politicians rather than they choosing us. i think a simple populist message driven by somebody on the inside is loud enough to get the presses attention and it can change the way we do things i would agree, i think strong, visible leadership on any of these issues is the ticket to success. and you can't sit here and pr say the press should cover this more or that more. most of us who are in the field and our days trying to figure out ways to get press attention or how toexplain the story in a way that is not traditional . nontraditional, social media, we use that to explain what's at stake and what the issues are, but if you are going to try to push for change whether it's electoral college change or campaign finance, i think you've got to have somebody like governor schwarzenegger who,

by the way has been strong nationally on this issue. but you have to have someone like that in the congress or the state to raise it up to a level of visibility so people hear about it. >> i was going to say the first shall be last, do you have a last comment? >> i want to make the point of bipartisanship but what you've heard in the last few minutes is you got to be in the states . in the beginning, it's important to have national leadership and state leadership. we have to all of us hold an election reformmovement. we have to organize in the states , i think about the spirit of houston in texas and louisiana in response to the hurricanes. people of all colors and political persuasions working together in a common purpose. >> that's what we need with respect to election reform movements. we are a resilient and great nation, we can take on this

challenge when people understand our democracy is at stake . >> i have to have one last comment in terms of what you are saying. the president won the networks observed during 2016, donald trump be good for america. he's very, very good for my bottom line. >>. >> these issues of opening up the process, many more people will actually if we can ever get there will give us better results. i don't mean democratic or republican results, better results across the board if more people participate, that's the idea of democracy. i want to thank ralph, leslie, pete, trevor, adam grushan and the students at usc who are engaged, interested, stimulating, terrific people and i like being a teacher here very much. i want to thank the staff of the institute which does a

fabulous job after week. we will see you next week to talk about the shrinking middle class. thanks everybody. >>. [inaudible conversation] >>. >> consumer watchdog bring brief members of the security of the nation's credit bureaus. is part of the city's ongoing look into the data breach that affected more than 145 million consumers. live coverage at 10 am on c-span. also attend representatives of the prescription drug industry testified before the senate health committee. they are looking at the causes of rising prescription drug costs live on c-span three. all it is live on the free c-span radio. >>.

>> it's always been identified as a war over slavery. folks on either side didn't give a damn about the slaves area they were fighting for other reasons in their minds. others thought they were fighting the second american revolution. and that held true through the whole war. except some people were absolute partisans on both sides. >> for the past 30 years, video library is your free resource for politics, congress and washington public affairs. whether it happen 30 years ago or 30 minutes go, find it in c-span video library. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. >> over the weekend the washington post published the story on the drug enforcement administration and the opioid crisis. they write as representative, reno's district was reeling

from the opioid crisis, they sponsored a bill that current and former officials say undermine their efforts to stop the flow of pain pills. congressman reynaud was recently nominated by president trump to head the office of national drug control policy.yesterday on the senate floor, minority leader tumor and utah senator or in addressed the article and the marino nomination. under schumer's remarks start with comments on health care and tax reform. >>. >> vacuum and president. last week first on the issue of healthcare, last week president trump made a to ask of pointless sanitized to our nation's health care. he signed an executive order that was