Katie Fahey On How The People Can Beat Gerrymandering [10-03-19]

This is Larry Lessig and this is the third season of the podcast Another Way. The subtitle for this season POTUS 1. Our effort to frame a commitment to fundamental reform and to get the candidates for president at least to accept it. And I am so incredibly happy today to welcome a real hero in this movement for reform, the 20something Katie Fahey, who, as you'll hear in this episode, launched an incredible citizens movement in Michigan that against all odds succeeded in amending the Michigan Constitution to require nonpartisan districting by a commission that is formed by ordinary citizens selected from across the state of Michigan. In it is an incredible story and it's a real inspiration to our movement. She is the topic of this episode. Stay tuned for this incredible story. So, Katie Fahey, thank you so much for talking with us. As you know, we have been trying for a long time to get your story onto our podcast. You know this, but the podcast listeners don't. We actually recorded this once only to discover that the technicians, not the technicians we have right now, but the technicians, forgot to record your side of the story, which of course is the only interesting side of the story. So it's taken us a couple months to be able to reschedule to make it possible to tell this story. But it is so important to the podcast that we have to hear this story and to make this story well known because it is one of the very few incredibly inspiring stories of success in the reform movement that we have and that we can share. So thank you so much for barreling through with us and trying to make sure this story gets spread. As I said in the introduction, this is a story about what sounds like a very boring topic, the question of gerrymandering in Michigan. Not that Michigan is boring, but that gerrymandering might be boring. And you came to this struggle over gerrymandering in Michigan. Not professionally. You were an environmentalist, or I guess sustainability expert after graduating from college in 2011, but after the election of 2016. You've told me before your frustration with where things were and how people were responding to that election and that inspired you to take up this fight. Why don't you help us down the path of that story and let's see if we can get it out.

Yeah. And I'm very grateful to be talking to you again. Always happy to. So I did not really have a political background, although I was passionate about voting, including in local elections. The 2016 Kent County Drain Commissioner race was very riveting in Michigan. But the really interesting thing that was happening on the ground was a lot of my friends and family who normally don't wanna talk about polit politics, aren't really engaged or following who's running, were actually really motivated and excited. And that was around two different presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and President Trump. And what was really interesting to me was how much policy research people are doing and how passionate they were about these candidates. Again, when some of them weren't even registered to vote. And before the election, it was still kind of pretty good, but right after the election, everybody kind of turned into, you voted this way, so you're evil. You voted that way, so you're evil. And I tried to think about, you know, I wonder why these people in my life have finally gotten motivated in general. And it really seemed like the core messages of Drain the Swamp and the political revolution were resonating really strongly. And I was thinking about going to Thanksgiving dinner, and I was pretty nervous, too. Didn't really want to, based on what I was seeing online. And I thought, you know, you can vote for, for candidates who can talk about reform, but we also can take action ourselves too, to fix some of these systemic problems, to drain the swamp or to really have a revolution on our political system. And one of the things I remembered learning about in school that always kind of bothered me was gerrymandering. So I made a Facebook post, not thinking it would lead to a political campaign or movement that said something along the lines of, I'd like to take on gerrymandering in Michigan. If you'd like to help, please let me know. Smiley face. And from there, it turned out that those friends who were motivated by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump didn't necessarily know what gerrymandering was, but a lot of other people did. And my message got shared into a lot of different political Facebook groups and kind of around the Internet. And suddenly I had my inbox full of people saying, hey, I want to do that too. Let me know how I can help.

So in Michigan, why was it that you think, I mean, you yourself were not either a Trump supporter or a Bernie Sanders supporter originally. Right. You were a Clinton supporter. So what is it you thought about that election that was resonating in Michigan with this common idea around reform?

Yeah, I mean, I think people were really frustrated. I think in Michigan in particular, we have not had our politicians passing laws that are in line with what the people want. We had the Flint water crisis going on, which was related to a bill that the people of Michigan actually tried to repeal. And then our newly gerrymandered in Senate and Congress reinstated, which then later led to those decisions being made. And I think people were just really frustrated, and they felt like no matter who they vote for, it doesn't matter. It's just a continuing cycle. And so I think the Bernie Sanders political revolution and the Donald Trump drain the swamp messaging was really getting people excited. They wanted somebody to tear down the system because they were so frustrated with how it didn't work.

So when you say that there was a bill that got reinstated, it was reinstated after there was a referendum to change it. Is that right?

Yes. Yeah. So the people actually gathered signatures and repealed it. Voted for it overwhelmingly. And then I think it was the first act that the new legislature did was they found a loophole where they could basically ignore the citizen veto and reinstate the bill with a slight few changes.

This power that citizens in Michigan have through the referendum process. Do you know about the history of this referendum process in Michigan? Is this something that comes from the progressive era, or how important has it been in politics in Michigan?

It's been really important. I do know that it came about from one of the last constitutional conventions that our state had where they really tried to implement a lot of new changes. And basically they said that all political power is inherent in the people. That's Article 1, Section 1 of the Michigan Constitution. And they go on to explain that, you know, people should be able to, if they. If they are very concerned and they feel like the legislature is not dealing with what they'd like, they can write constitutional language, gather a lot of signatures, and then put it up for a vote in the general election. And it's been used over the years a couple times. We have the bottle bill in Michigan where you can return recyclables for a deposit that you put in on them. You've had some special interests come in and try and pass different laws, too. But it really has been this direct democracy asset to our community that not all states have, which is pretty special.

Yeah, I mean, it comes in pretty late in the history. I think it's in the mid. I think it's in the early 60s that it comes. And that's surprising because all of the real referenda provisions across the country, which turn out to be some of the most important tools that we have for reform, were produced by progressives at the turn of the last century, not this century, because they were trying to empower the people against the incumbent bosses. And that's apparently what we need to be doing here again. So let's get back to this story, which is so incredibly inspiring about this power. You see frustration at the fact that all of this political energy has now been channeled into divisive politics, Whereas before the election, it seemed all on the same channel of, how do we get fundamental change into the system? And you want to. It's almost like you're trying to take the energy and steer it away into a productive project, which is to try to get gerrymandering reform. This Facebook post you put up surprisingly generates a large number of responses from people who said, yeah, they want to try to do something.

Yeah, it was really exciting because I had what's interesting. And I didn't know this at the time, but apparently a couple of years earlier, there's time hop on Facebook that shows you what you posted before. And I posted almost the exact same Facebook post, but there wasn't a smiley face in it, which is why I'm convinced that smiley faces are the key to saving democracy. But nobody had even liked it. I mean, I really was feeling kind of alone at the frustration around the system and knowing things like gerrymandering or campaign finance reform were needed. I think I knew that a presidential candidate couldn't do that, or not as easily. And then seeing so many people in my state saying, hey, I've cared about this for a long time, too. I didn't know we could do anything about it. What's the plan? How can I get started? Started? It was really exciting. I mean, I think from once I started seeing that it was picking up steam, I right away was just like, this is something special. This is something that a lot of us care about. And really, I just had a sense of, like, it has to come from the people, too. Like, the people who are looking out for the actual citizens of Michigan right now. The actual residents seem very far and few between. And so I knew that I had a little bit of extra time, I could try and do something with it. And there are a couple other people who had a little bit of extra time, and we wanted to try.

Well, but you first start this as part time. I mean, it's not your job. But then you quit your job to take this up full time, Is that right?

Yes. Yeah. And I paused my mba, which I haven't restarted yet, but actually, I didn't end up fully quitting my job until about a year and a half into the process, really, because, yeah, we. We were all volunteers, just doing what we could. Plenty of late nights. And the power of the Internet was when any of us had free time we could be working on stuff, and we used a lot of collaboration tools that way, but. Yeah, and lots of vacation time. Used to go try to amend the Constitution, too.

Okay, so this conversation starts immediately after the election, but I think it's in March of 2017 where you begin to organize these town halls to recruit people across the country to the idea and also to solicit ideas about how best to do that. And I think you did something like 33 town halls in 30 days beginning in March, is that right?

In 33 days. Yeah.

Yeah. And those town halls are all across the state of Michigan.

Yeah, we have 14 congressional districts in Michigan. And one of the things we saw really early on just from the Facebook group, is we had members of our. Our Facebook group who lived in more rural parts of the state who said, you know, we never get asked our opinion on any of these ideas. And we are Michiganders too. We count, too. And I really hope that this group is going to be different. That really stuck with me. I mean, it wasn't like, again, it had ever been my job to go around and talk to my neighbors about political policy or anything like that, but I understood how they felt. And so we wanted to make sure we were doing at least two town halls in every community congressional district, as well as some online. And we started with those communities that are often left out first. We went there first to ask people what they thought. We talked about, what is gerrymandering? What is redistricting? Again, just doing a refresher. What does it look like specifically in Michigan? What does it look like in states that aren't doing it the way Michigan is doing, where politicians are directly drawing their own lines? And the most important part was a conversation as well as a survey on and what do we want in a solution? What are the values we think are important? Important. What do we think the qualities of a solution absolutely have to address? And it was amazing because we started in the. Pretty much still in winter up in the upper part of Michigan, very rural, and we had standing room only, even though we were a Facebook group that nobody had heard of because people were really hungry to participate. And I think also talk about real solutions that were going to actually lead to a more accountable government.

So you really just advertised these meetings, these town hall meetings about something esoteric like gerrymandering just through Facebook groups. That's the only way people heard about these things?

No, no, we actually. So some of our. One of the things we did really early on is anybody who is volunteering, we just asked them about their background. What do you do? What have you done? What skills do you have? And we actually had a decent amount of retired journalists or people who had been in a new newspaper industry who were willing to help us write kind of a press release and call up local media stations across our state. So we did that. We got on the radio. It was really interesting. Right after the 2016 election, a lot of people thought we were talking about the Electoral College. When we weren't, we were talking about redistricting lines. So that was kind of an Intro to Media Training 101. And we did this other thing that I don't think was necessarily super effective, but I'm really glad that we did. We actually looked up every township supervisor or mayor of a town that had over 3,000 people in it in Michigan. And we all took turns writing letters to those representatives, especially because most of those positions are completely nonpartisan. And we let them know where the closest meeting that we would be holding was going to be. And we said, hey, we really would love for you to come, but also you probably know your main constituent groups who's really important and might have a say in this. So please let them know that we're holding these meetings. And we also tried to reach out to any other kinds of political clubs or good governance groups that we knew maybe would have some folks who are interested in attending.

So these meetings, what was the feel like? I mean, did these meetings have people who said, this is great, this is going to happen, or was there a lot of skepticism or a lot of just ignorance about what could happen in these conversations?

What was really interesting to me is for most of the meetings, the majority of the audience didn't know what the heck gerrymandering was, or maybe it kind of sounded familiar, but they were either being dragged there by a friend or another really interesting thing that happened is that we had a lot of families who were politically divided that were coming together, maybe a Democrat father and a Republican son or vice versa, who came to these town hall meetings saying, you know, we think that we both care about this, but we're not sure. One of my favorite things to do at the beginning of the town halls was actually say, why are you here? Turn to your neighbor and just let's talk about it for two minutes. And the room would always erupt in conversation. And you could see the passion on people's faces. I think there was a good amount of skepticism when it came to, can we actually pass this? That was one of the things I wasn't expecting I got a lot of like, well, that's a lot of signatures you have to gather and you guys don't have a bank account yet. And you know, can't be legislature just undermine what the people do anyways. And I think it was a really big concern, not only from the repeal of the emergency manager law, that one I was talking about earlier, that ended up impacting Flint and people working so hard on it and then having it overturned anyways, but also there had been other efforts where the legislature had continued to undermine really what the people wanted. And so I think a lot of people were feeling kind of hopeless in that sense, and they felt like, you know, I'm not sure if this can happen.

Yeah. So. But what's striking about these conversations, even though there's lots of skepticism about whether it's going to work, is there's a lot of creativity about exactly how you're going to solve the problem. I mean, you didn't go into this with like a simple plan for solving gerrymandering. Right. I mean, you crafted something pretty, pretty creative in the end, that must have come from these conversations completely.

I mean, that was the really exciting part is a lot of people, again, just kind of getting up to speed about what is the reminder of what's the current process and what do other processes look like, but with a lot of passion and ideas on what can representation actually look like. How could we make sure our community actually has elected representative who is going to visit us besides just right before election day? How could we make sure our concerns are going to be heard in Lansing, our state Capitol, as Well as Washington D.C. people were really fired up about that. They were extremely excited to actually be a part of the process. And the other cool thing is they really wanted to listen. I mean, I think when we started the meetings, a lot of people would be like as a Democrat or as a Republican, and they were kind of skeptical of each other, but you got into it about 10, 15 minutes later and people were really in listening mode and trying to find compromises of, yeah, well, I think maybe we should have political affiliation, but it should be balanced on the members who will be actually writing, drawing these lines, those kinds of things. It felt like what I had always pictured democracy should feel like. And I think a lot of other people felt that because after those town halls, we suddenly had kind of a mini army of people who are ready to go and do this, even if they felt like maybe it's not 100% guarantee. I think a lot of people understood that nobody else was going to come in and do it for the citizens of Michigan. And also that there were a lot of us who really did feel this way.

So what is the basic architecture of what you came up with through this incredibly collaborative process across the state of Michigan?

Yeah, so I think gerrymandering or redistricting reform legislation has three main parts. Who's going to draw the lines? How are those lines being drawn? And what process is followed by for the. The lines to be drawn. So who draws the lines? We wanted an independent commission, and we meant independent from the legislature as well as independent from political influence. And so there'll be 13 regular citizens, four from the majority party, the party that receives the most votes, four from the minority party, and five other or third party voters. What that'll likely look like in this next election is four Democrats, four Republicans, and five independent or third party voters. Michigan has about four, I think, third or minor parties in the state. And those people cannot have previously served in the last six years a partisan political office. They can't be registered lobbyists. Really. We're trying to make sure that those with the worst conflicts of interest were not able to directly be holding the pen, because that's a big part of the problem that we have right now. They can still go and give testimony, but they aren't the ones making the direct decision. And then how the lines will be drawn, I actually think is one of the most important parts, especially because this will actually be in our constitution. So if the lines aren't drawn that way, then a lawsuit can be brought, and the lines will have to be drawn that way. That I think, you know, we have input from the community being able to be made. And one of the most important things is we actually make gerrymandering, which is a political party being able to favor themselves over another political party. When drawing these lines, which we make that illegal, we say that cannot be done. There cannot be a disproportionate advantage or disadvantage given to either political party or any direct politician. And that was a really exciting part for us, as well as making sure that the lines are taking into account existing boundaries. They're somewhat compact so that a legislator could actually hopefully navigate their district in a successful way. And then the process for how those lines will be drawn looks extremely different. So right now, those lines were previously drawn in Michigan basically behind closed doors by one party who was ushering out the census tracts right before a vote for people to vote on them, not even with, like a picture of a map. And this new process will actually require these 13 people to go around the state much like we did, gathering input, talking to people about what their concerns are and how they would define their community and how they want to be represented. They have to actually do that before they start drawing the lines. The other, I think, most important part is that any data used in this process has to be made available so that we can actually see how. What are all the different versions of the maps that are being drawn? What are they? What do they look like? What are the criteria that are being used, as well as this commission cannot meet without the public being notified or without the public being invited, which is just something that doesn't happen in Michigan, but we're really excited for too, so that hopefully they're there, being honest, being held accountable from the people who are watching.

So the people serving on this commission do it voluntarily.

They will be compensated because it will be about a two year process or about a year and a half process. They should be able to still maintain a day job, but it will be traveling around the state. And the other kind of cool thing I think is when we went around the state, the number one thing we heard in those town halls is that people wanted this group of people to actually look like the people of Michigan. They wanted an actual representative body. They wanted older folks and younger folks and people from Detroit and people from northern Michigan and different types of jobs.

And.

And so the application process is pretty open to folks. And it actually will be a random assigned lottery where that matches up with the demographics of the state as well as those political ideologies. And in order to make sure that you actually could have people serving on all ends of, especially an economic income scale, we wanted to make sure that they were compensated as well.

So you've become, you know, something of a national expert on this gerrymandering process. Have other people looked at what you have put together here and tried to copy it elsewhere? Or how close is this to what you've seen in other states around the country?

We definitely learned from other states too. We wanted to make sure we were doing our research. The Brennan center was actually really key in helping us just understand what do these different criteria mean? What do they end up doing to different maps? There's plenty of unintended consequences that can happen, but thankfully, there are other states across our country who had passed something beforehand that we could learn from. So we took, I think, little bits of best practices from a lot of other states. There was a couple states like Alaska and Arizona, where they only have five people on their commission and they really thought that that isn't enough. And it puts a lot of pressure on whoever the independent is. So having a bigger 13 member commission was informed from that. There's a rule where at least two of the Democrats, two of the Republicans, and two of the independent voters who are on this commission will all have to agree before any of the maps are adopted. Making sure that you kind of have buy in from all sides. That was another thing that we saw in a couple of other states, including California. And there have been other states who have looked at what we've done, which I'm pretty excited about. It looks like there's maybe three or four different redistricting reform campaigns going on that will hopefully be passed before 2020. And I really think that this is a movement. In 2018. When we passed ours, there were actually four other states who all also were reforming their redistricting process. So I think this is a frustration that's shared across the country.

So one of the issues that we've been talking to presidential candidates about is gerrymandering. And obviously a number of presidential candidates believe fundamental reform with gerrymandering is essential to creating a representative government again. And there's been proposals under the Constitution to deal with the federal districts, at least by mandating in Congress processes for assuring that the districts are fairly drawn. Have you had any contact with the presidential campaigns about what you did that might help them think about what they want to do at a national level?

I have not, actually, although I love the opportunity. I think what's exciting about that is there are so many states that do not have a referendum process. And so if they're going to change some of those laws, they're depending on their existing legislature who would have to basically act outside of their own self interest to give themselves less power to change how those lines are drawn. But I do think that in Michigan, we had a tailored approach that we crafted together. And some of those things that were really important to our state might not be important to every single other state, but should also be taken into account in whatever type of solution is passed. And I think also it's just really exciting to know that people are talking about that because it's a huge issue. And I think the other really important thing to note is, I mean, these lines are getting drawn no matter what in 2021, and they will then impact the next decade of elections. So if they're drawn in a way that is purposely trying to make a Democrat or Republicans vote count less or count more, than it should. Those citizens are then participating in a process where their vote is diluted for 10 years. And you wonder why people are frustrated or have lack of trust in the system. And I think that is fundamentally why. And even being able to make sure that we're talking about the processes that will be followed and how does citizen engagement actually look like in those processes is so key and depends so much on strong leadership from the top and somebody who's going to try and set that tone and also enforce it, no matter which political party is trying to do the tinkering.

Yeah. So that picking this up at the presidential level might be helpful to drive that process around the country. If only we could get them to pay attention to this issue in the same way that they pay attention to

even from an awareness standpoint. I mean, so many people, I think they kind of remember learning about gerrymandering or redistricting, but especially because it only happens once every 10 years. Especially because it happens often behind closed doors where politicians don't want the public paying attention. We need somebody helping remind people that this is a process that impacts them and is about their representation and how much they can hold their own officials accountable. And I hope that somebody who is leading our country would take that really seriously.

Okay, so you had this incredible, maybe unprecedented crowdsourced process for putting together what turns out to be one of the most interestingly unique processes for drawing districts. That's a proposal. It becomes a ballot proposal which you first have to get approved by. Is it the Secretary of State who has to approve it before it can even appear on the ballot?

There's a board of state canvassers in Michigan that YES will approve it so that it can then get its proposal number assigned and go up on the ballot.

So I think it's in August 2017 you finally get approval. It's a delayed process to get that approval, but you get the approval of your ballot proposal, allowing you to then go out and collect signatures.

Yes. What was normally told to us would be a two to three day process ended up being 53 days before we got our approval. And one of the things that was pretty well known about us is that we were not planning to be pay for signatures, which is very rare in Michigan. Oftentimes these campaigns have people who are paid to stand out on the street and talk to people so that they could get enough voter signatures to qualify it for the ballot. And in Michigan, we have pretty harsh winters. And so as our summer was disappearing, I think there was a lot of anxiety on Our end, But we were very excited to finally get it approved. And really we're ready to hit the ground running on. On talking and going out to every county to then start gathering those 315,654 registered Michigan voter signatures.

So did you ever figure out why you were delayed for 50 more days than you should have been to get this proposal on the ballot?

I don't know that we got anything official. I mean, I do think that our proposal trying to redo the redistricting process is more comprehensive than a lot of other constitutional amendments. We back actually, when the Michigan constitution added in the ability to have a ballot initiative process, they actually tried to have an independent commission. It didn't work. Because of a federal law. They. They did not have equal population within their district. So then it ended up basically being ineffective, and the legislature decided to give themselves that power back. But it was a little more complicated than that. The other thing, though, that became pretty apparent to me is being regular citizens, we didn't know who to know. Politics is definitely an industry, which I think I knew, but never fully understood or appreciated until tiptoeing my way into it. And nobody knew who we were. And I think a lot of other people are trying to figure that out. But it made it a lot easier to just kind of delay us and not have to arrange summer schedules to make sure that they were having a meeting because people are on vacation rather than making sure the citizens of Michigan could actually have and follow their constitutional right to petition our government. And it really is a thing that still sticks with me is the amount of people who do not take you seriously or give you time of day. If you don't have those validators in the political realm who can vouch for you. But unfortunately, it shouldn't be that way because we had written constitutional language, we had been doing this for a while, and we do have a time limit for how quickly you can gather those signatures.

Yeah. So you had 180 days to collect 315,000. You said 654 signatures.

Yes.

You had an army, I think, of 4,000 volunteers, and you exceeded two months ahead of schedule was something like 425,000 signatures.

Yeah. And the other really exciting part was in 40 days, we had already gathered signatures from all 83 counties in Michigan. And we haven't been able to completely verify it. But the signature gathering, there's a verification process, and the verifier said that they had never seen that done before. And to me, that was really exciting because I think it Meant that it actually mattered that we did. Those town halls, it actually resonated. We actually had people on the ground in their communities, making sure that this was a solution for all people of our state, not just people who live in big cities.

And so then these signatures are then evaluated by the state to determine whether they're valid or not. You had an incredibly high proportion that were actually valid signatures compared to the ordinary process where people get paid to collect signatures, Is that right?

Yeah, I think it was. 91% of all of them were accurate. And the ones that weren't accurate were mostly just voters being confused on which county they lived in. Or if you don't remember which, maybe if you moved and your address is different and it's not the one that you're registered under, then those signatures get thrown out. But it was extremely high. I mean, people really took it seriously and wanted to do this. Right.

Okay, so you've done two steps, which are extraordinary, each on their own, but together is really unprecedented crowdsourced process which then has these volunteers that collect 25% more signatures than you actually needed. They have the highest percentage of approval rates that is recordable in these ordinary processes of pulling together this kind of referenda. And then you've got to shift into the campaign mode. But then before you get to the campaign, there's a fight, a legal fight about this.

Yes. So, and this is like, mind you, like, already a year about. Just about, because our signatures got approved. Then after we had turned up, we turn them in in December and they get approved a couple months later. So it's about a year after we've started that town halls, we are so ready to finally just be able to talk to voters about voting yes to pass this and why they should, or what this actually means for the state. And not unexpectedly, because before we even had language, they were trying to say it was unconstitutional constitutional language. But the chamber of commerce at the state level in Michigan brings and files a lawsuit saying that, yes, the people of Michigan have the right to petition their government, but not on something as complicated as redistricting reform. And we should not be able to bring this because it is far too complicated for the voters to be able to understand and cast a solid vote on.

But the chamber of Commerce can understand that.

Right.

So it's extraordinary idea that in a democracy, you would say the people aren't capable of understanding their constitution. I mean, this is the antithesis of the idea of a constitutional democracy.

Yeah, it was really insulting. And I had never really sat in on A Michigan Supreme Court hearing before our attorney general at the time was actually running for governor and sent kind of the lieutenant attorney general, but basically came in and made the same exact argument. And when you see such a public figure coming and saying, you know, the voters cannot be thoughtful enough and do not have enough information to possibly understand how complicated this is, it was really eye opening, especially when our constitution opens so strongly saying all political power is inherent in the people. And especially because I had personally as well as other people in our campaign, gone around the state and had these conversations about, yes, a system that isn't simple, but with thousands of people. And we had been with over 425,000 people who did get it and who did know that they wanted something else.

And so this process in the courts, we're talking about the election in 2018, this is, begins in March 2018, that you're having this kind of fight. How long does the struggle in the courts go on before the courts finally resolve in favor of yes, the people are allowed to decide whether the people rule.

So we get a court of appeals hearing pretty quickly, three judge panel. And it is so strong. It is like, this is a frivolous lawsuit. Don't waste our time. It was beautifully written and that gave us a little bit of hope, even though we, we knew that we were probably going to end up going to the Michigan Supreme Court. And then by the time our Michigan Supreme Court hearing comes around, I believe that was in July of 2018. And yes, and so this is almost before the election. And one of the big things I would have never known, so, so we did great crowdsourcing fundraising, but we actually had over 14,000 individual donors who gave to our campaign, which was over 33 times more than any other ballot initiative in our state. But even at that, that was only about $2 million and one week of TV in Michigan, we had a very busy ballot in 18 was about $1 million, $1.1 million. So we are. And we had already had to pay for lawyers and even printing petitions is like $40,000. Like this is, this is a lot of, of work and a lot of, you know, we had some interest from some pretty large donors, but none of them wanted to really put in money before there was, you know, if, if the one thing about I, I should back up for a second, if the Supreme Court says it agrees with the people bringing the lawsuit against us, there's no appeal. We are off the ballot. All of the work we have done, all of the signatures we have gathered are gone. And we start from scratch and there's no way to really do that before the 2018 ballot. So there we have some potential funders who want to fund us, but really want to wait and make sure that we're going to be on that ballot first, even though we again are already in it. And we need to start talking about what the heck is gerrymandering with the rest of our state now. And we get a Supreme Court decision then in August. That is where.

Wow. So you've got three months before an election and you've got to convince or explain to the people of Michigan what gerrymandering is and why they should be voting on your ballot in favor of your referendum. And at this point you get some significant support from people across the country who are eager to see reform on this area and really excited about what you've accomplished. And so that money makes it possible for you to run a bunch of, I guess digital and television ads that you've produced, which are.

And radio stations.

And radio. Yeah.

You have a wonderful collection of everybody's favorite yard signs.

Yeah. The group that you started, voters, not politicians. I at least found a bunch of these ads on your YouTube page. I'm sure they're archived someplace. But these were really, really well done explanations of a complicated question in a way that would make it understandable and compelling to people. The total campaign. How much did it cost to advertise all of that? In the course leading up to the final days of the election, I believe

we spent over $11 million on just purely advertising alone.

So $11 million on your side. There's a lot of money on the other side.

Yes, our. And we knew that that was going to happen. It's a pretty. If you looked at any. How any other campaigns are run, it's a pretty standard tactic that the opposition will wait till the very end and try and overwhelm the TV stations and the radio ads and confused voters as well as sending out mail. We have a pretty partisan Supreme Court. So we heard a lot of talk about how they were convinced that we were going to get thrown out there. Thankfully, there were some very stand up judges who made their decision based on the law and not a political party favor, but our opposition where there's about 15 days before the end of the election and they disclosed that they've gotten $4 million out of nowhere and they had spent I think about two up into that point that then they sent out a bunch of mailings and some ads that actually directly lied about our campaign that we got Some of taken down before the election, even though we had only 15 days to do that, trying to confuse voters and really trying to paint it as partisan, which is really eye opening to me. From day one, we were extremely nonpartisan. I was not doing this because I wanted Democrats or Republicans to be favored. I was doing this because I wanted to actually have a system that my friends and family trusted in and wanted to vote in all of the time, not just when there were candidates that were talking about tearing the whole system down. And we had created a solution that no matter which political party any Michigander voted for, they would be treated the same. It would not matter which party you vote where you still are, just a. You're a Michigander first. And to see that and then see how the people of Michigan reacted to feeling like we were maybe somehow partisan was really kind of heartbreaking because, I

mean, people were believing the characterization that you were partisan. Is that what you mean?

Yeah. They sent, like, mail with pictures of, like, Obama and Eric Holder with, like, money raining around them. Yeah, that kind of thing. And then also saying that, like, so somehow Democrats could steal the Republican seats on the commission. And just some really outlandish stuff that I think we do expect from political ads. But being the one who has created it and knew absolutely every fact about the campaign was just a whole nother level of explaining the dirty aspect of politics.

Yeah, but when you collected 4,000 volunteers, those were 4,000 volunteers who were committed to the idea that this was something more than just Republican or Democrat. This was something fundamental about trying to make democracy work in Michigan. That was the theme, right?

Completely. And by that time when they had done those ads, we actually had 14,000 volunteers as well as all of those signatures. I mean, people really did love being able to participate in a political campaign that was just about creating a fairer system for everybody, not about needing to one up or screw over somebody else. I think we really struck a chord for that reason, because people wanted to be able to stand up for an America they believed in. And they felt like this solution was more reflective of what they hope America is.

I think that people are so desperate for a way of engaging in political struggles that doesn't feel like it's just a political partisan fight that, you know, that we feel so frustrated that our democracy is not working, and yet it doesn't quite feel good enough. Just to fight that as a Democrat or to fight that as a Republican, to be able to fight it as, like a citizen trying to make it work better seems to be inspiring. All across the country. But Michigan's such a great example of this. A kind of energy that we've not

seen involved in politics 100%. And I think in Michigan especially, I mean, we're a purple state. Like, we have about 50% of our voters who vote Democrat, about 50% of our voters who vote Republican. And some years, some more turn out either way. And we've repeatedly refused to identify how we vote. We don't register for a party here. And we have a lot of families where people within that family vote different ways. And I think maybe that's why it extra resonated here. But it really was a hunger. One of the coolest stories that I met some of our volunteers, and there were three sisters, one a Democrat, one a Republican, and one an Independent. And they said, we don't agree on anything. And here's the one thing that we're actually volunteering on and working together on. And within my own family, I saw that, too. The one yard sign that we all had November 6th was a yes on two, which was our proposal number sign. And to be able to actually have that positive instance where we could focus on the values that we shared and the type of future that we wanted together was so heartwarming. And you saw it across the state, and you saw it. I heard story after story after story from people who really had a political campaign, transformed their lives just by being able to participate and be a part of something that was bigger, standing up for something that was bigger.

Yeah. I've listened to you tell this story a number of times. I think there are three themes that are really fundamental for me. The one theme is exactly that. The amount of energy that gets unlocked if you can just find a way to talk about our democracy, which doesn't feel partisan. So that's the first theme. The second theme that's really inspiring is the way that you invited everybody to contribute what they could contribute. Like, everybody had a skill, whether it's an accountant or I think you had to have basket with weavers or something like that involved in the process.

Wood carvers.

Wood carvers, right. And you, in a very creative way, would find a thing that everybody could do that they could feel like they were contributing to. And that, again, is about inspiring people to step up and to do something that they otherwise would be so easy to avoid. But the third thing that I think is so critically important and so unusual is that when you started this after the 2016 election, there's no way you could have imagined that you were going to succeed. I mean, you could succeed, but you didn't get into this having calculated that this is something that's going to work. I mean, you just did it because you thought it was right or something that had to happen. And so much in politics is done as a function of can we be confident this investment is going to prove worthwhile. And of course, the incredibly big gains are never going to happen if you calculate like that. I think jumping in without a clear plan of confidence about victory is what's going to be necessary if we're going to do these fundamental reforms.

I completely agree, and I do think that that is how it felt being from that perspective. I know I talked a little earlier about how I started to understand that politics was an industry. That's the biggest thing that I saw. The other people in the room with me were making calculations based on how much money could they save or could they guarantee their next paycheck, which are reasonable things when your job depends on that. But I was looking at how do we prevent another Flint water crisis? How do we continue to go to work every day knowing that our state poisoned children and families and we're okay with that and nobody's taking accountability for that. How do we finally add this in? Because if we don't, something worse is gonna happen. There's no doubt in my mind. And I think there were a lot of other people who. That's why they made the sacrifice of their time and their energy and their money and all of those other things. I mean, we were all working so hard 247 for this, but because we felt like we had no other choice. And I think it's so absent from the meetings that I was in where regular citizens who are impacted by these decisions weren't present, where we had really thoughtful thought leaders, where we had really thoughtful, maybe business people or nonprofit organizations who are doing great things, have done great things and contributed great things, but are lacking that urgency. And I don't exactly know why. I don't know if it's because there's so many fights or there's been so much time or there's been so much under funding in this space, but I hope that in the future organizations and people with like minded wanting to make sure that we're fixing and reforming our system. I think they, I hope they open their arms to the citizens who are so eager for these solutions and who are so willing to step up and, and do something, but just want the chance to be able to also be in that room.

You won on the election day, obviously we wouldn't be telling this story if it weren't a story of victory. What were the percentage in the end?

It was a significant 61.1%. And the really cool part about that is some really early polling that we had gotten had showed that 40% of people even knew what redistricting was, let alone whether it was good or bad. That was just the awareness of the issue of likely voters. So to go from that to then 2.5 million people voting yes was incredible. As well as we had almost every single county vote yes to whether they were rural or urban, which in Michigan, you don't have to have every county vote for you in order to win. We have a couple counties with huge populations. Wayne county has like a third of our population in it. So to get. I think it was 68 counties to all vote yes was also just very exciting because it means that now that we have an independent Citizens Register Commission, you have people on the ground who are going to know what that is and want to participate in it. And that is why we made this change, so that we actually have a process that people can participate in.

61.1% means there were Democrats, Republicans, and independents who supported you. This was not a partisan victory.

Yes.

So in the night of your victory, the quote I have is, the thing we proved tonight is that we are our own saviors. We the people can save ourselves. That must have felt incredible to be able to say that to the hundreds of people that must have been at the celebration of your victory.

It did. It was so powerful. And I think we had just been doubted so much for the year and a half of that campaign. I mean, everybody just kept telling us how silly it was for citizens to try and do this, that we didn't know what we were doing, and that we didn't have enough money and we didn't have enough this or that. And everybody pretty much kept trying to point to whoever the savior was supposed to be. Well, it's the legislature. Well, it's the president. Well, it's the governor. It's the whoever. Whoever was supposed to be taking care of these issues but had continued to fail to, which is why we were in the process to begin with. So to be able to then finally have that moment and know that we had done something in the way that I hoped politics would. There are plenty of times we could have sold out and not actually been nonpartisan or done things in a way that made decisions for the people of Michigan instead of inviting them into the process. And we had stuck to our guns. And we believed in the power of people, which I think is fundamental to our democracy, to our democratic republic, Actually allowing for a conversation of ideas and trusting that we want and can work together towards the betterment. And to be able to feel that and celebrate that, as well as seeing those other victories in Utah and Missouri and Colorado, was just incredible. It really, really was. And I think for so many people, it. It meant that all of their hard work, even if we had lost, it wouldn't have been for nothing. But all of their hard work actually paid off. And fundamentally, to me, that meant our democracy was not dead. Our democracy still was there.

2018 was an incredible year. There were more victories for reform than at any other point in American history in that single year. So even in the progressive era, there weren't as many projects around the country trying to change the system to make it better in any one particular election year. This was an incredible victory, and yours was one of the most inspirational. You've been doing a lot of work since. What's the net? What's the next great victory, Katie? Because we have a lot of problems we got to solve in the project of democracy.

Well, I think that role of people and that absence that I was just speaking about on how I feel like so infrequently are people invited into this process, so infrequently is policy made where legislators actually go and talk to their constituents before saying that they've already figured out the right solution. That's what I'm saying. Focusing on with an organization called the People. And actually a lot of the lessons that we learned, too, we had to create so much from scratch. There's, like, not nonpartisan vendors out there even for. How do you go and knock on doors? There's only the Democrat option or the Republican option or website vendors, all those kinds of things. And we had to build a lot of that from scratch. And the cool thing about accidentally starting a political movement with the Facebook post is that when you do get great media opportunities, a lot of other people realize that they're passionate about something and they want to start something. So I had tons of people reach out to us and say, hey, can you help me figure out how I can start something? And now that's what we're focused on, is trying to help people do this in a nonpartisan way. That's about fixing the system for everybody and hopefully bringing Americans together to have a powerful experience like we were all able to in Michigan.

Could it be done at the federal level? Could it be done in the context of like these current presidential elections, or do you feel like that just is too inevitably partisan for the kind of effort or reform that you're talking about?

I think it possibly could. I think the thing I most. So there's some really big consequences, especially with gerrymandering, where it's going to impact people's lives for the next 10 years no matter what. And I think the sooner we get a fix to try and make that more fair, the better. The thing I don't want to have happen though, is that we fix some of these policies without actually fixing the system failure. That people don't have a place at the table anymore. That the people at the table are the think tanks and the special interest groups and business and the politicians and the political consultants. But the actual people on the ground only get their opinions asked through polls, which are not actually engagement, which is not actually inviting them into a solution process or letting them know that they can be a part of that solution. And I think that the higher up in government you get, the more federal that unless those solutions like campaign finance reform allow for. For solutions which there are some that I've seen where people get more of that voice where, where the incentives go to actually making time where not only do you can you go and visit your constituents, but you kind of have to or that you see that it's to going critical to your success to do that. I think if they don't include that element that we're going to have to do this in another 20 years again.

Well, this is a really important point that people can carry back to their own candidates. We've got a lot of people listening. I get emails from them who tell me that they are working for one campaign or they're supporting somebody else. The point you've made about the fact that in 2021 the lines are going to be drawn that will determine democracy for a decade really critically points to the urgency of getting candidates to push hard for fundamental reform. About a bunch of issues, but about gerrymandering in particular. This subtitle for this season is POTUS 1. That's a riff off of HR1, which was the big reform package that the House passed this year. And in that reform package there was gerrymandering reform. So if people listening to this incredible story you've told Katie can tell their candidates that they need to listen to this story, they need to listen to the incredible energy and excitement that you were able to inspire. I think that could begin to percolate up so that the politicians who are actually going to determine what happens in 2020, one can recognize just how important and how much potential is out there that they could leverage. You know, I think this. The world should know. I think this. You are an incredible inspiration, Katie. You are what will make this democracy succeed. And I'm so honored to have a chance to support you and your work and to talk to you yet again. And I'm pretty confident I'm getting a signal from my. From the technicians that we actually have it recorded this time, so. So we'll be able to share it on the podcast. Thanks so much, Katie Fahey.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And I hope everybody else makes their own Facebook post to change the world.

You can hear in the last words I gave to Katie just how important. I think what she did is. I hope you hear as well how important it is that we get these candidates to understand this energy. I fear that we have at the federal level a real challenge because it's so hard to build the kind of movements at the federal level that Katie was able to inspire in Michigan or that have happened in Utah or in Maine and so many other states. But we have to do that. We have to find the energy that she was able to inspire to drive reform at the federal level. I continue to be both so inspired and so frustrated in this election season. Inspired because this is the first time since Watergate that we have had so many candidates who have made. That's it for this week. Form send to what they're talking about. At least four candidates have said that the first thing they're going to do when they are elected president is to take up fundamental reform. And I believe by the time this season comes to the end of this year, 2019, we're going to see every major candidate who has committed to taking up fundamental reform. And then the question is, what does that reform include and what. And we've been leading a conversation in this podcast and everywhere we can to try to make sure that reform includes the elements that would make it possible for this democracy to work again. You have a role in this. You have a role not just to listen and to understand, which I'm grateful for, but also to help spread this idea, these ideas, this message, or at least a feedback to those candidates who you might be supporting. We've reached out to every single candidate to include them on these podcasts. And though there's polite promises of schedules in the future, there are still some critical candidates we've not yet had the chance to speak to. And I'm incredibly eager to hear Bernie Sanders make the commitments for reform in the words that convince everyone that this is really fundamental for him. My friend Elizabeth Warren has come very close to every single thing we think is critical. Michael Bennett has agreed to be on this podcast, and I've just finished his really extraordinary book about his experience in the Senate, and I think he is a real reformer in this campaign. But there are so many people who need to step up and make clear what they're going to do, because if we don't define reform as fundamental in this election, then reform won't be fundamental in 2021. These podcasts are produced by EqualCitizens. US. You can find us on the web at EqualCitizens US and you can find this podcast at that website. There's a place there to share the podcast to give us your feedback and your ideas. Please do both and please share this broadly. We can't make this change happen unless more are involved in spreading this word. So this podcast is a small contribution to the work that's being done by so many, but it is a contribution that we invite you to make sure more can share. Many of the ideas discussed in this season of Another Way are discussed in a new book I'm publishing this fall. They Don't Represent Us. The last chapter includes conversation with Katie, Katie and two other extraordinary reformers. It's inspired by these three reformers. You can pre order that book right now@hc.com represent us. That's HC for HarperCollins. Not Hillary Clinton, but hc.com representus. I hope you will. HarperCollins hopes you will. The word in the book is hopefulness. Because never in the 12 years that I've been in this fight have I felt like we are closer to getting what we need past. This is the first time, it seems to me, even within the realm of the possible. And we need to leverage that exciting point because if we can get the commitment we need from the next president, we can get the democracy America deserves. Thank you very much for listening and stay tuned for the the next episode of Another Way.