1 00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:03,360 Yeah, so the difficulty here is that technically speaking, gerrymandering 2 00:00:03,520 --> 00:00:04,400 is already illegal. 3 00:00:04,400 --> 00:00:06,080 The problem that we face is that it's difficult and 4 00:00:06,080 --> 00:00:08,640 expensive to challenge uh the districting in court. 5 00:00:08,640 --> 00:00:10,480 We have seen a few times in cases where this 6 00:00:10,480 --> 00:00:11,520 has worked in the United States. 7 00:00:11,520 --> 00:00:14,720 For example, in Wisconsin, they recently overturned uh a district 8 00:00:14,720 --> 00:00:16,240 there for being unlawful. 9 00:00:16,240 --> 00:00:19,280 However, whether or not a court case is successful in 10 00:00:19,440 --> 00:00:23,600 rejecting a district depends on the metrics legally bound to 11 00:00:23,600 --> 00:00:25,360 the districts and their thresholds. 12 00:00:25,360 --> 00:00:28,480 For example, in Texas, on the redistrict website, you can 13 00:00:28,480 --> 00:00:31,520 find that race and population are two metrics that are 14 00:00:31,680 --> 00:00:33,280 recorded for each district. 15 00:00:33,280 --> 00:00:33,680 Right? 16 00:00:33,680 --> 00:00:36,960 In Texas, basically there's a rule that says each district 17 00:00:36,960 --> 00:00:39,520 must roughly have the same amount of population as other 18 00:00:39,680 --> 00:00:40,240 districts. 19 00:00:40,240 --> 00:00:44,560 So, for example, for state house uh districts in Texas, 20 00:00:44,560 --> 00:00:47,600 the population has to be around 200,000, and for a 21 00:00:47,600 --> 00:00:50,400 Senate districts it has to be around 900,000. 22 00:00:50,400 --> 00:00:54,880 Uh however, uh whether whether or not a district setup 23 00:00:54,880 --> 00:00:57,280 can be considered legal or unlawful is based upon how 24 00:00:57,280 --> 00:01:00,640 far away the proposed district's population is off from those 25 00:01:00,640 --> 00:01:01,200 numbers. 26 00:01:01,200 --> 00:01:04,640 And sometimes, unfortunately, the thresholds for how far off the 27 00:01:04,640 --> 00:01:07,440 population can be can be can be quite lenient and 28 00:01:07,440 --> 00:01:09,440 thus gives a lot of power to those who want 29 00:01:09,440 --> 00:01:11,120 to draw a lines in the sand. 30 00:01:11,120 --> 00:01:14,160 Now, in order to fix the problem of gerrymandering in 31 00:01:14,160 --> 00:01:16,800 Texas, uh, we need to tighten these thresholds, right? 32 00:01:16,800 --> 00:01:18,640 As well as I think uh we need to look 33 00:01:18,640 --> 00:01:20,640 at and tighten other thresholds as well. 34 00:01:20,640 --> 00:01:23,120 For example, we see a lot of uh black and 35 00:01:23,120 --> 00:01:26,320 brown communities being divided up into uh two and sometimes 36 00:01:26,320 --> 00:01:28,160 maybe even three different districts. 37 00:01:28,160 --> 00:01:29,520 Uh that needs to be tightened. 38 00:01:29,520 --> 00:01:31,360 In addition, I think there's another metric that we should 39 00:01:31,360 --> 00:01:32,480 be looking at as well. 40 00:01:32,480 --> 00:01:35,520 And I'm gonna bring up uh this metric called uh 41 00:01:35,520 --> 00:01:39,920 looking at the standard deviation of land ownership. 42 00:01:39,920 --> 00:01:42,000 Now that might sound a little bit confusing, but let 43 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:44,960 me let me try to paint a picture like this. 44 00:01:44,960 --> 00:01:48,640 Draw a bar graph on how many acres of land 45 00:01:48,880 --> 00:01:53,360 everyone owns in that district, and then add another bar 46 00:01:53,360 --> 00:01:56,960 there for how many people uh have apartments or simply 47 00:01:56,960 --> 00:01:59,920 live in a residential uh family home. 48 00:02:00,040 --> 00:02:03,000 Now, if you do that, you'll find that in district 49 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:06,200 64, for example, there are a lot of people from 50 00:02:06,200 --> 00:02:08,920 UNT, there's a little bit of suburb, and a lot 51 00:02:08,920 --> 00:02:09,720 of farmers. 52 00:02:09,720 --> 00:02:11,640 Now, the farmers, they're very rural. 53 00:02:11,640 --> 00:02:14,200 Now, right, they they own a lot of land mass. 54 00:02:14,200 --> 00:02:18,120 But again, we're batching in all of UNT, all those 55 00:02:18,120 --> 00:02:20,280 students there, and a little bit of the suburbs, for 56 00:02:20,360 --> 00:02:24,440 uh particularly uh northwest Denton County, and then uh HD 57 00:02:24,440 --> 00:02:28,920 64 reaches far out to its western uh neighbor county. 58 00:02:28,920 --> 00:02:31,960 So what you can tell from a human standpoint what 59 00:02:31,960 --> 00:02:34,520 they're doing there is they're trying to mix the farmers 60 00:02:34,520 --> 00:02:37,880 with UNT to try to you know uh weaken the 61 00:02:38,120 --> 00:02:40,840 vote uh from those college kids out there and the 62 00:02:40,840 --> 00:02:42,440 suburban people as well. 63 00:02:42,440 --> 00:02:44,520 But if we were to establish a rule where we 64 00:02:44,520 --> 00:02:46,520 had to look at the metrics of saying, hey, look, 65 00:02:46,520 --> 00:02:50,520 if you have a wide standard deviation of land ownership 66 00:02:50,520 --> 00:02:52,760 like that, then that would take care of this problem. 67 00:02:52,760 --> 00:02:55,080 Because if we said if we establish a rules saying, 68 00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:58,280 hey, look, the standard deviation cannot be that high, then 69 00:02:58,280 --> 00:03:01,720 essentially that would force all the those kids in UNT 70 00:03:01,720 --> 00:03:04,440 to be districted into the same district to the same 71 00:03:04,440 --> 00:03:07,800 areas as those immediate suburbs and would not be able 72 00:03:07,800 --> 00:03:10,200 to reach out to the more rural areas, and vice 73 00:03:10,200 --> 00:03:12,360 versa, because in the end of the day, these districts 74 00:03:12,360 --> 00:03:17,640 are supposed to be uh really drawn around uh cultural 75 00:03:17,720 --> 00:03:20,280 uh cultural similarities, right? 76 00:03:20,280 --> 00:03:22,840 So you would expect those in rural areas to be 77 00:03:22,840 --> 00:03:24,760 part of their own district, you would expect those in 78 00:03:24,760 --> 00:03:27,160 city areas to be their own district, you would not 79 00:03:27,160 --> 00:03:31,880 see districts reaching back and forth between ultra-rural and ultra-suburban, 80 00:03:31,880 --> 00:03:34,440 andor even like college kids near city life. 81 00:03:34,440 --> 00:03:36,920 You you wouldn't see that if the lines were drawn 82 00:03:36,920 --> 00:03:40,440 fairly, and I think the only way to establish a 83 00:03:40,440 --> 00:03:42,360 rule or a law to make sure that that is 84 00:03:42,360 --> 00:03:46,240 actually upheld is absolutely to look at the standard deviation 85 00:03:46,560 --> 00:03:51,440 of land ownership and how many acres each uh each 86 00:03:51,440 --> 00:03:56,880 individual owns versus those who live in a residential 87 00:03:56,880 --> 00:03:59,280 home versus an apartment.