under age population. because latinos tend to be young younger than other groups in the state of california, you have larger group that is under 18 and ineligible to vote. you have a combination of factors driving these differences. there is also a gap, a significant gap in registration rates particularly among latinos and asian-americans that keep them from having a voice in the electorate at the same level that they would given their population numbers. and so in these ways, and the things i would like folks to think about is that the electorate is a political product. so we've been talking about the structures. it was alluded to in the first panel how the redistricting process makes people see the legislature, have a sense of their own political power, how that's led to term limits and other things. it also does lead people to not engage in the process. we have that disengagement affecting different groups of people differently which then

affects the qualities of decisions that policymakers are making. to say that i think -- sometimes when we talk about redistricting, the voting population is seen as kind of static. it's there and we have to draw lines around it. in fact, part of what you're doing with that process is, in fact, creating that voting population through our politics. the nice thing about this poll is they actually interview infrequent voters and people who are not registered which is usually not the case in polling. again, this is just for the state of california. these are 2011 numbers compared to census data from 2010. we see among infrequent voters you have overrepresentation of nonlatino whites. you latinos still even among infrequent voters not voting at their population rate. and again, asian-americans. you can see we have many african makers are not likely vote evers. they vote, but they vote

infrequently. finally if we look at the nonregistered in the state of california, it's almost the flip of what we saw in the first slide, the unregistered in california tend to be latino and asian-american disproportionately to either nonlatino white or african-american. finally i want to talk about what are the potential political implications of this? why should we care whether or not people are actually voting at the rate that they should given their proportion of the poch lags. one of my colleagues eric shikler and others have written at least at the national level that if everybody voted, elections wouldn't be very different. but seoully hodge gnaw from ucsd came out with a nice book looking at local elections and said if you would change at the local and state level, it would have a very strong impact on the types of policies that happen because you have a large enough number of people to actually impact the policy making process. we get some sense of that from this slide if we look at just

party identification among likely voters verses infrequent voters. again, who is a likely voter is racialized in this context. we have to remember that. much higher independents. for those of you who aren't from california, these are the kind of people who don't claim a political party. in fact, independence is the fastest growing party identification among latinos in the state of california and nationally. that is a really important factor that i think much of the redistricting conversation doesn't capture when we think about part zen ship. the fact that you have large portions of this new electorate that are not identify being the current structure and don't really know where to go and what that means in terms of both affecting their turnout since we know partisanship has a strong impact on turnout, but also how

engaged they feel in the system. when we talk about voters i think in the national race, again, seoully hodge nall just came out with a book called why americans don't join the party where they talk about the fact that independent voters are much more likely to be of color than white even though i think the perception in the national media is sort of soccer moms and you have middle class white folks that are in the middle of terms of sbg disasterist when, in fact, you have a lot of voters of color who, in fact, either are centrists or don't feel tremendously attached to either party because the parties aren't necessarily speaking to their interest. there's the cyclical process where you're not identified, not voting. therefore, policymakers aren't responding to your needs and so, therefore, you remain detached. thinking about the electorate is part of our politics rather than something that is fixed is a way to start this conversation. thinking about noncitizenship,

we talked about the idea of moving toward citizen voting that would have a tremendous impact in the state of california. in fact, we just got access to some really nice data from the office of immigration statistics where they gave us the legal permanent resident data and nationalization rates by county across the state. usually you can't get that level of geographic detail from that agency. we found that half of the mexicans in the united states who are eligible for citizenship, people who have been legal permanent residents. just to think about the scale of the problem in terms of the number of folks who are out of the process who are noncitizens, basically because they just haven't submitted themselves to the $675 charge all the legal requirements it takes in order to naturalize. if they were to naturalize, you could have changes in the size of the electorate.

our lech tart is not reflective of the people who live here who use government services and have an interest in what government does. i want to spend a couple minutes talking about what we can do about it. i had the proif of being part of a really unique project which ann was one of our partners in. the james irving foundation launched the california votes initiative which was designed to change the electorate in the state of california. they hired three academics, i was among them, to val late the voter mobilization work in southern california and the central valley try to motivate low propensity voters and to come up with a set of best practices as to what works with these populations. these are folks that normally -- political campaigns don't mobilize because the presumption is it's a waste of honey and they weren't turn out and vote anyway. at the time when this initiative

was launched it wasn't clear that door-to-door efforts or the things we know work with other voters would, in fact, work with these communities. the good thing was that, yes, if you invite somebody in person or either by phone or on their doorstep to participate in the process, even if you're a low propensity voter, those voex will turn out. that's important to know for campaigns that this is something that needs to happen. we had interesting findings that, if you run phone banks. they ran phone banks in nine languages. they deserve a tremendous amount of applause for just the logistical process involved in there. it's complicated. but they did. if you ask people in the first round whether or not they're going to vote and they say yes. there is a small group of people who say no. if you foc who said yes which one would assume they have aclity, some

disportion toward voting, you get double digit increases in turnout. that is, in fact, a really important finding. so i think just to try to close, i think the important things to think about in terms of what the electorate looks like and what it means in terms of public policy, in places like california you don't have entities doing that kind of on the ground door-to-door work at the scale needed in order to change these numbers that i've shown you on these slides, and that part of what's going on with the idea of -- how many votes does it take to win a district? the fact of the matter is, a political campaign only needs 50.1% of the vote, whether it's 12 people or 24 people doesn't matter to them. what matters to them.

the fact of the matter is they have very little structural incentives to do so. in the state of california, we have hundreds of thousands of new voters that come into the system. neither the democrats or republicans want to touch them because they don't know if they will vote for them. that's what matters to a political party. i think thinking about how do we build structures into the system so when we have the redistricting and the potential for representation, we work to create an electorate that is reflective of the population that those lines are drawn around. with that, i'll turn it over.

thanks so much. so i'm going to start with a brief presentation of asian-american pacific islander demographic krigs ticks and then discuss how these dynamics shaped our involvement in the past statewide redistricting process. as of the 2010 census, there were nearly 5.6 million asian-americans, about 290,000 pacific islanders in the state of california making up about 15% and one percent of the state's population respectively. asian-american and pacific island communities in california are growing proportionately between 2000 and 2010, the state's asian-american population grew by 34%. pacific islanders grew 29%. by comparison, latinos, a healthy rate of growth, 28%, native americans at 15, african-americans at 17. in contrast, the nonhispanic white population decreased 5% over the past decade.

so while asian-americans are geographically disbursed throughout the states, they're more concentrated in urban centers. over one quarter of california's asian-american population, nearly 1.5 million foekts, live in los angeles county alone. yet asian-americans in other counties are growing at much faster rates. among the ten counties with the largest asian-american pom lagses, asian-americans are growing fastest in places like riverside, sacramento, contra costa, orange and san diego counties. while asian-american communities in los angeles and san francisco continue to grow, those peripheral urban centers are growing at much faster rates. historically growth in asian mary khan communities has been due to immigration. this means disproportionate numbers of asian-americans are foreign born.

asian-americans are the only racial group whose population is majority immigrant. by comparison 39% of latinos and 21% of pacific islanders were born outside of the united states. only 10% of native americans, 9% of nonhispanic whites and 6% of african-americans were foreign born. asian-americans are ethnically diverse. while filipinos and chinese americans together make up roughly anti half of all asian-americans living in california, the asian-american community includes a multitude of ethnic groups speaking dozens of languages, while rates of growth are high within nearly every ethnic group. the fastest growing are south asian with indian, pakistani, sri lankan and bangladesh she communities in california growing dramatically. with that ethnic diversity comes social and economic diversity. poverty is one of many

indicators that illustrate that diversity as you can see looking at this chart, filipino, indian and japanese americans, have pov very difficult rates equal to or lower than nonhispanic whites. southeastern asian-americans exceed those of african-americans and latinos. that's a quick demographic overview of the api community. how did these demographic features impact our involvement in california statewide redistricting process? because most asian-american and pacific islander communities engaged in redistricting statewide, couldn't rely on a legal hammer. organizing was a critical tool, given the concentration of asian-american and pacific islander communities in several population centers. throughout the state it was necessary to develop a statewide

network to organize our community's involvement. we call that state white network capafr. metro l.a., san diego valley, orange county and san diego. we served as the lead agency providing legal research mapping. >> a local partner convened a coalition of community stakeholders to establish regional priorities and testify before the citizen's redistricting commission. stakeholders were mostly representatives from community based organizations and interested community members. while some local elected officials participated, members

of congress, state assembly, state senate, their staff, those closely tied to partisan politics were prohibited from participating. eej regional coalition held four meetings to educate stakeholders about redistricting, identify communities of interests, floor mapping scenarios and decide on a map. regional coalitions also identified members to present testimony rarding their priorities to the commission. the geographic dispersion of an ethnic diversity within asian-american and pacific islander communities presented challenges. often our regional meetings failed to draw stakeholders from more remote areas and changing locations. still meant stakeholders from different parts of the region didn't see each other face to face as often as we would have lixd. a related problem with trying to solicit input from a variety of

ethnic groups meant targeted outreach and one on one communication sometimes between leaders that had no prior relationship. so clearly these demographically driven community dynamics impacted our organizing. how they affected our ability to use the law to protect asian-american pacific islander communities. here i'll discuss the ability to draw majority asian-american districts. latino districts sometimes affected small asian-american communities and racial lip molar rised voting. growth in the asian-american community which you saw was dramatic, resulted in california's first asian-american district in the san gabrielle valley of loss angsless, state assembly district 49 on your screen. this area is home to the mainland united states's first majority asian-american city, monterey park, and surrounding majority or near majority

asian-american sit teens including el ham bra, rose meade and san gabriel. interesting, this region of l.a. is also very latino. in fact, it's crate ld by a majority of latino districts. state assembly districts 51 to the west, 58 and 57 to the south and 48 to the east. so establishing it as a protected district and demonstrating how it could be drawn was a major achievement. growth in latino population over the past decade also prevented new opportunities for greater latino influence. one area in which advocates were exploring possibilities was in the central valley where you see on your screen, where adjacent section two and section five seals for latinos were already in place. so while advocates here were looking to protect the voting

rights of growing latino communities among americans in fresno were looking to maintain the integrity of their community which you see outlined in green there. sorry, rather small. i wanted to make sure you got the big picture here. the community argued it shared much in common with the latino community, similar poverty rates, unemployment, educational attainment, language barriers and the two should be drawn into a majority latino district. ultimately neither latinos got what they wanted demographic changes here in the central valley certainly created the potential for conflict between latinos and asians as something that we were largely able to

resolve in our organizations. okay. so those are two examples of how demographic changes shaped dynamics in areas where asian-americans and latinos both live in large numbers. obviously racially polarized voting must also be proven to trigger section two protections. here diversity in asian-american communities can pose challenges to demonstrating that kind of political cohesion. we only commissioned an rpd analysis in the west san gabriel valley region which you saw, where majority asian-american district could be drawn and the asian-american community was more ethnically homogenous. in his analysis of about 11 contests, professor matt ber rare rose showed asian-americans voting for asian-american candidates and nonasian-american voters voting against those

candidates. the question, would that be the case in areas like fremont, milpitas and bare es is a where asian-american communities with becoming more diverse. it's a question that should be answered as wed move into 2021. given limitations the supreme court has placed on the use of race in redistricting and the fact that we could really only draw one reasonable majority asian-american district statewide, demonstrating communities of interest was particularly important. obviously the question is isn't this difficult when you have kind of a community of communities with so much social and economic diversity. to identify communities of interesting, we convene stakeholders in each region and led them through an exercise in which they talked about the problems facing their communities and the ties that bind them. in every region stakeholders talked about tim grant character of their communities, about

language barriers, about educating english language learners in schools. certainly there were regional differences, folks in fresno talked about the extreme poverty facing the mole land american community while folks in santa clara talked about the high tech industry. more often than not such social and economic diversity wasn't as prevalent in contiguous areas that could reasonably be drawn into the same district. just to give you a sense of the type of data that we presented to the commission, here is a table we submitted in support of testimony in san diego which included population characteristics that reflected communities of interest identified in our regional meetings there. folks in san diego were concerned with immigrant issues and problems with language access in particular. those in the north county were also concerned about the power that wealthier folks in

fairbanks ranch and rancho santa fe would wield if they were drawn in the same district that they represented. san francisco is a great example of how one of our regional coalitions chose to prioritize the needs of low income immigrant communities of interest over the possibility of drawing a majority asian-american state assembly district in san francisco. here you can see the purple area in the eastern part of the peninsula is that kind of low income community of interest. asian-american in parts, latino in the mission. to the west we've got sunset and richmond hiring asian-american communities. to the south, the beige area is daly city and south san francisco where there are a large number of filipinos. certainly in some courses

there's pressure to create -- try to maximize the asian-american population in those districts. certainly our coalitions recognize the limits of the lawk was informed by the kinds of priorities that they had and the work they were doing where folks were really -- felt like low income, asian-american immigrants would be better served by being included or drawn into the same district as low income latino districts. so these were districts that were adopted that more or less resemble the proposal that we had submitted to the commission. so hopefully that gives you a sense as to what's we did and how changing demographics impacted our work. as we look to 2021, we expect -- i don't know if i'll be here.

we expect greater geographic dispersion and ethnic defensive tersity, possibly majority asian-american state assembly districts in san francisco and the fremont milpitas area i mentioned earlier and hopefully greater influence. certainly more opportunities and challenges as we work to represent fair representation for our community. it'st i'm going to try this again. good morning. >> good morning. >> right on. thank you so much. i've been asked to comment on

kind of a different track. a lot of my comments are going to be centered around a lot of the particular trends in the laws. i'm going to have a few framing comments around that. i think they'll harken back to some of professor gadd ifrmts's comments on the voter suppression activity and circle back to the core and tie it out at least to some degree to redistricting and i think you'll see some of the other comments that we started out today sort of mirrored. so from my perspective, i'd like to say i'm a lawyer by training and an organizer by birth. that's kind of where it came from, where it started from. my father took me to community organizer meetings when i was too young to know what was going on. it is something that is incredibly important to the

communities. so as we think about maximizing fairness within the practical application of power, i think is a lot of taking a lot of the redistricting, a lot of the voting work and putting it into a practical frame. so as part of that we at brennan center, myself, are litigating, i will be waiting for south carolina to file and expect to be intervening in that case. mystified by mississippi's section 5 submission although they haven't passed the enabling legislation that goes along with it. we're seeking to comment but don't know if we'll have anything to truly comment on. so on that sort of cryptic note, let's talk a little bit about the fight for the vote. we talk about 2012. am i not -- what am i pointing at. >> it's the other one. >> registering poor people to

vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. it's precisely why barack obama supports registering welfare recipients to vote. these comments really go to the idea as a privilege, that we're really elevating the privilege. it's not a right. in the battle in new hampshire, house speaker william o'brien voting as a liberal. you know, that's what kids do. they don't have any experience. they just vote their feelings. this had a lot to do with the legislative debate in terms of what laws are being passed and really concentrating on students voting. we see those attacks continuing in those areas. my first favorite from john stossel. if you're not paying attention i think it's your patriotic duty

to not vote. that's the frame that we're seeing a lot of legislation being passed and using that sort of approach an mentality thinking about voting rights. so very quickly, you look at demographic shifts. from 2011 to 2031, 10,000 people per day will reach 65 years of age. for those 80 and over, the growth is twice that of those the age of 65. we talked already about growth population rates. and i think these are important to think about as we frame these comments going forward. as we look at new voting restrictions, we look at photo id restrictions, we've had so far seven laws passed. we have additionally constitutional amendment in mississippi, three documents new cases of citizen, 13 introduced. laws making voter registration harder. making it harder to restore voting rights. we talk about the photo id laws.

in most cases we're talking about the no photo no vote requirements. we saw 34 states introducing laws to require some form of government-issued photo id in order to vote. i will note now that some of these states have included affidavit exceptions or other qualifications around photo id admissibility. however, most of them are fairly illusory. i'll give you the example of texas's affidavit exception that says that if your id was lost in a natural disaster declared by the state or federal government, within 45 days of the election, you may then at that time execute an affidavit and be excused from the voting requirements. so certainly these affidavit exceptions exist. let's be honest, they're not far reaching and they aren't doing anything in a meaningful way to ge