Earlier this morning, ProPublica's Lois Beckett was a guest on Democracy Now! to discuss her recent co-written report on redistricting, The Hidden Hands in Redistricting: Corporations and Other Powerful Interests.
In the segment, Beckett explains how redistricting works, the new tools being used in this process, and how benign-sounding groups are using corporate money to ensure that the people in power, stay in power.
"What's really interesting right now is that there's very sophisticated technology that allows you to look at maps down to the single census block and understand not only registered Democrats and Republicans, but also voting history of those individual people," Beckett says. "So it's possible, with this technology, for you to draw very particular maps...And so often state legislatures, which have the power over this in 37 of the states, have discretion over the lines and do it very cynically just based on who they can elect and often on protecting incumbents so what we see is not only partisan politics but really people in power drawing lines that will keep them in power, drawing people out of their districts, and drawing voters in that will vote for them."
Watch the full interview below.
