MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump pushed Republican-controlled state legislators last year to change their congressional maps midcycle to boost Republican chances in the midterm election. But as the election results show, that effort did not work as planned, as Democrats won in several congressional districts that Republicans had redrawn. One of the people who'd been working to help Democrats respond to these efforts is Eric Holder. He's the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He also served as attorney general during the Obama administration. He's with us now. Good morning, Mr. Holder. Thanks for joining us.
ERIC HOLDER: Good morning. How are you doing?
MARTIN: I'm good. So how - why do you think it is that these redistricting efforts didn't pan out as expected?
HOLDER: Well, I think that we have to first understand that the redistricting efforts that they had didn't just fail. They were dismantled. We went after them. We challenged them in court. There was a strong Democratic response, for instance, in California, with a reconfiguration of the maps. And then we had people in grassroots who went to the legislatures, for instance, in South Carolina and in Georgia and did it very peacefully but made clear to people in the legislature that if you do these midcycle redistricting, we will hold you politically accountable, and they backed off. And so I think it was the dismantling of that which they tried to do, as opposed to the failure of the effort itself. It didn't structurally fall down. We pulled it apart.
MARTIN: Do you think that, in part, it was that voters were angry at these efforts or that this was a motivator for some to go to the polls just 'cause they were offended, I mean, at this effort to kind of manipulate their votes?
HOLDER: Absolutely. And I think, you know, we'll have to look at the numbers, but my sense is that we saw a huge turnout of African Americans, Latinos in response to their efforts by the Republican Party to dilute their power, to take away power from those communities. I'm looking at Shomari Figures, for instance, in Alabama, where he won in a seat that was specifically drawn to exclude him from a suit that we won for him in connection with a lawsuit brought under the Voting Rights Act. A huge Black turnout there, I think, is what propelled him to victory. But I also think that not only African Americans and Latinos, but white folks were offended by the attempts by Republicans to put their thumb on the scale and to have - put in place a system where they simply couldn't lose. And I think there was a lot of reactions, a lot of negative reactions to that.
MARTIN: You know, the Democrats' efforts to respond were not without controversy. As you know, pointed out, that in Democratic-controlled states, that there were efforts to redraw the maps there. And, you know, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, who is a person who had been outspokenly against gerrymandering, said, opposed these efforts. He's saying, you know, two wrongs do not make a right. So what do you say to that?
HOLDER: Well, I was - interesting. I worked with Governor Schwarzenegger as we tried to, you know, oppose gerrymandering and did a whole variety of things with him - op-eds, you know, public appearances. And I think the question people have to ask is, once Trump and the Republicans did what they did, what were Democrats supposed to do? Do nothing - you know, me come on NPR, write an op-ed, clutch my pearls - or respond in a way so that we met the moment, always focused in the end on fairness, so, you know, save our democracy now and then heal it later. And that's, I think what we tried to do, and that's, I think, what we're going to be in position to do. We stopped what they tried to do. And with the power that we have, we'll now try to put in place systems such that this doesn't happen again. For instance, by having a national ban on partisan gerrymandering, a national ban on midcycle redrawing.
MARTIN: How does that work? Do you need legislation for that? How would that work?
HOLDER: Yeah. You need legislation, but, you know, the Constitution is clear that Congress has the ability to determine the manner and means by which elections are held. And so Congress could simply ban, you know, partisan gerrymandering. We already have a bill that we have drafted, one that people on the Democratic side have had - leadership on the Democratic side have had a chance to look at. And our hope would be that that bill will be introduced relatively soon in the new term.
MARTIN: Beyond that, though, I mean, you've been very clear about the fact that voting rights protections, as had been in place for decades, have essentially been eviscerated by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. I mean, the kinds of things that Republicans were able to achieve would not have been possible under previous frameworks because they would have been required preclearance, for example. If it had the effect of suppressing the votes of specific constituencies, those would not have been permitted by the Justice Department. What do you do now that those kinds of protections have been struck down?
HOLDER: Well, I think we go back and look at those Supreme Court decisions and come up with new measures to put in place those protections that no longer exist. You know, the one that took out the ability to preclear was based on the fact that the coverage formula was not up to speed, up to date. And so, all right, let's come up with a new coverage formula, a new way of determining where these preclearance requirements might be put in place. And I think there are - if you look at the Callais decision, for instance, the court did not say Voting Rights Act, Section 2, was unconstitutional. A whole variety of other reasons why the court went at that section. So I think there are legislative responses that can be done to Supreme Court edicts.
And people need to understand that that is, in fact, the way it is always operated - we've always operated in our countries. Only recently that we've simply deferred to the Supreme Court without the legislature, the Congress, ultimately determining whether or not there should be a way in which you modify, change or even overrule a Supreme Court decision, which you can do, as long as the Supreme Court doesn't say its ruling is of constitutional dimension.
MARTIN: Before I let you go, I have to ask you a question I asked Stacey Abrams in an earlier hour. There are those who look at these - extraordinary Black turnout across the South and also turn out to other constituency groups in other states and say that this is evidence that it doesn't matter that these voting rights protections were eviscerated, were eliminated or were substantially weakened. They say, look, see, the system worked without these protections, without this kind of legislative support. What would you say to that?
HOLDER: Well, I'd say that I'm glad at the results that we got last night, but this is of generational - this is a generational election. Maybe not since the post-Watergate election have we seen anything like this. And I'm not sure that you can draw, you know, results or draw conclusions based on a truly, truly extraordinary election. I think there is still the need for those protections, and the protections are based in fairness. And I think that's what the American people want to see - contests based in fairness, where we're focusing on ideas, for instance, with regard to gerrymandering, as opposed to who can draw the lines the best.
MARTIN: OK. That's Eric Holder. He's chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a former United States attorney general. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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