came out two weeks ago latinos and the voting rights act:the search for racial purpose. both of these deal with the same phenomenon. the rapidly growing latino population of the united states and the way the population impacted politics. according to census figures in 2000 the latino population, in 2010, it is 16.3% and projections that it will be 25% by 2015. matchbook looks at the impact of the growing population and through polling determines what latinos at thinking about politics and why people are voting and what they're not voting. henry's book looks at the response to this phenomenon, the efforts, to dilute and suppress the effects of the latinos surge through redistricting, voter id laws and challenges to the voting rights act in 1965. we had democrats in texas and elsewhere saying the time is on the democratic party's i'd, and joy on the other hand republicans saying latinos are socially conservative and the famous ronald reagan line latinos are republicans, they just don't know it yet. in your polling what have you determined when it comes to that kind of question? >> thank you for that and the opportunity to be here to talk about this work. henry flores has been one of my long time mentors and trusted colleagues in political science. a number of us latino political scientists and in texas, when is the transformation, the long game, we lay out some of that data in the book talking about the future of texas and what will that transformation look like? we saw some effort, slowly start to change the demographics of the electorate. the electorate have not changed nearly as quickly for a lot of reasons henry has talked about for voter suppression. there has not been an investment a real investment in reaching out and talking to and understanding the perspective of the latino community in the state of texas, we have found there are 2 million citizen adult latinos eligible to vote who are not registered, not on voter rolls. 2 million. that would dramatically change the politics of this state so some sort of effort needs to happen. why aren't they registered? why aren't they participating? in surveys we conducted we found a sense of distrust of the political system. when we call people for political surveys often they say no one has ever called and asked my opinion about politics. no politician has ever come and asked me to vote or get involved. i think there's a real desire for people to get involved but they have to think the political system is responsive and wants them and as that happens we see both parties begin to make an investment or play for the latino vote. latinos told some positions that are socially conservative or would look to be more conservative than their voting trends suggest but what we found again is these issues, these conservative issues tend to be private, personal at the family level and not projected into politics republicans have not made a strong connections so far. >> is that a surprise to you looking at that. >> we talked to people over the years. the social conservatism that comes from catholicism and latin america is in grain, part of the latino community but as i said not something directly connected and projected into politics or voting and people are able to identify someone who's very conservative but they vote more for the democratic party because why are you voting? what are the issues bringing you to the election? more bread and butter issues, jobs, economy, good schools and more and more today in the debate over immigration so those in things that matter on to things like abortion rights or same-sex marriage and so those are less overtly political. >> what are your thoughts on that issue for the democratic destiny or the democrats or hispanics or republicans, where do you see that? >> i want to thank the organizers of the book fair for having this panel and having our work, thank you for coming this morning. mack and gary have done something that has been very much needed as far as study of latino politics is concerned. we never had very good polling data or survey data the targets the latino community until these two guys came along. now they are getting good information out there for the first time ever. thank you very much for that service. i said that very -- i want folks to hear it. i agree with what matt has to say and interestingly enough, and have discovered, what led to my writing the book is the republican party the folks behind it have been quite aware that for decades, have been planning a whole series of sorts of tactics, long-term strategy to maintain their position of power by insuring that they get to the polls or the voters will support what they do end voters that don't support their particular positions on various policy issues are suppressed or diluted by using various mechanisms. what i discovered in my book, it came to i started doing this as matt said, my first case was in 1986 against the school district in the hole country and my last two cases where the congressional redistricting lawsuit waiting right now at the fifth circuit for its current edition. this section 5 challenge on the voter id case was heard at the westchester court in washington d.c. that will against the state of texas but shall be decision came down and immediately and lieutenant governor at said we will put the voter id law in now because that is the way it is and so what i discovered was through a series of redistricting lawsuits it came out in a series of e-mails so we were able to extract from the texas legislature, surrounding the planning for the redistricting process and in there was a very specific e-mail that said this is what we are going to do with hispanic voters, we're going to create these metrics and put these metrics in to play as we draw these district lines, that we can are arranged districts. >> one e-mail exchange between attorneys representing the speaker of the house talk about this technique which was new to me and i was fascinated by this optimal hispanic republican voting strength and as you could explain what that is, it is a really thought out technique for diluting the impact of latino voters. >> if i may for a second, i was showing this e-mail to mack before we started and he went well. i have the e-mail in my book. it included the collection of several datasets including total hispanic population, ratio of spanish surname for a stew citizenship voting age population and it goes on and on and on. if we put these data together and create this metric, what we can do is create congressional districts that appear, hispanic majority congressional districts that they don't perform as hispanic majority congressional district because the precincts we are going to include are the ones with low hispanic turnout but high hispanic population numbers and the first district that they did this to was district 23 which is a big swing district. they went along the entire border and i did it too, i followed their trail along the border, wind the entire district 23 from maverick county on the south of to here to el paso and looked all the little neighborhood a slice out. we have technology to magnify these things to literally you can move people's homes around and i notice how they were excluding and including certain precincts all on the border and i mapped out those precincts to see exactly what characteristics were causing them to be included or excluded in the district and that is when i realized how they were doing this, this metric came out. i said there they are. putting it away, excluding hispanic voters because the new hispanic voters don't support their particular policy position on a lot of issues. >> it worked. we hear a lot about the beginning when you talk about the unregistered latino voters in the state and wheat here a lot about the latino voter bloc, a sleeping giant in american politics and tends to turn up and be smaller than the other groups, what is your sense the polling you have done and assessing this issue what do you think is causing that? what factors? >> we are finding strong evidence when we do focus groups or surveys or in depth interviews with those people who are not participating very strong sense of distrust of the political system. the political system doesn't represent them. one of the things henry talks about in his book is the idea of representation and why is important to have these districts that are performing well you can elect mexican-americans to office because there's a higher level of trust from the public when they see people like them embodied in public office and pushing issues that they care about and so when we talk to folks they have this very strong sense that the political system is not for them. no one is contacting them the extent they hear about politics is very negative. we need to change that. if we don't change that will be difficult, we could have the same discussion that there's a lot of potential it could be a swing state, things could change but if you don't get that group of folks into the political system and the beating that their vote counts they are going to always be on the outside and on the edges and there's very little rate of contact. one thing we found in our analysis of the 2008-2012 elections were that latinos were twice as unlikely whites and blacks were twice as likely, latinos were only have to be contacted by campaign. registered voters. >> where do you think they went? >> they are looking at, and people voted in the last election creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. the cycle where not many people voted last year so i am not going to dispatch people to knock on doors or send my mail verbage i will send it to more suburban districts where there are a lot of voters i can count on but if you don't invite somebody to the election of make until integrated they are going to continue to feel isolated and alienated from the system so there's a very low level of contacts. one of the things we know is once you get contacted and a candidate visit you and talk steel and makes you feel -- the rate of latino voting is equal to all other groups if you get contacted. a big problem is campaigns are not doing the out reach or investing to send bilingual by cultural people who look like as into the community and as a result we have low turnout. typically you say what is wrong with hispanics why aren't they voting? we try to flipped a script on that and say why aren't people engaging us in order to cultivate that? >> in texas we have seen the emergence of a group called battleground texas which came into texas and consciously tried to do what you point out has not been done which is to reach out to people who don't have a history of voting or registered to vote. in 2014, results were not necessarily very favorable for battleground taxes but i wonder if you can -- looking at short-term and long-term impact. >> there needs to be -- i hope they are not discouraged because it is a long thing, not something they're going to turn the entire state in one way of especially in a gubernatorial wave which has lower turnout. you need to make multiple years of investment and historically what has happened is someone might invest and save these people don't care so they pull all the money and resources and go somewhere else. is a multiple year process by which voters you are serious you want their vote. when battleground texas came here one of the things they found was it was much more difficult for them to do their work in texas, to register people, event in any other state and one of the issues is those folks, those volunteers the recruit to go door-to-door or go to tears and festivals and sign people up to register those people have to be from the same county in which they are registering people land in order to do that they have to have to update you can a elaborate, they have to pass the county exam or training session. those training sessions are only available once, and at 2:00 p.m. on wednesday and in other states you can get volunteers and college students and other people to help to push them out and the forms have to be authenticated and everything else but here there is a very extensive set of rules about who can do the registration and what their credentials ought to be and it makes it very difficult to -- it is not entirely saying they did not bad job. there were a lot of hurdles. >> i don't know if you have seen the same thing. that made it difficult for them to implement their work. they said in some counties the couldn't find someone from the county had enough time to devote to give to their group who could attend so they couldn't register any more. >> i don't know about that but speaking of a couple points or a couple points of which you were saying earlier, in those areas where you have latino communities have a long history of political activity and action such as bonds the south side, a very rich history of activity elected officials in a cohesive community but they did the redistricting process dividing the community into a three part putting the 31 congressional districts and other in another congressional district in a third congressional district and literally split of the latino vote so if you know they are not going to support you just spread them around a little bit. the second issue is what you were speaking about, the long term prospects. my work in this book is based upon the two case studies of the recent congressional redistricting and the id case but it began in 1991 when i worked for the republican national committee in the 91 redistricting realm and the reason i did was because in 1991, a single member district for the first time we're going to be applied and the legislature and house and senate and the republican party was -- the latino community trying to champion minority congressional districts and the reason was ever going to follow a strategy of packing into more districts so they could be elected and what they would do would create more intense suburban districts to life republicans and run out the democrats from the state legislature and senate. what you are seeing is representational system we have in austin in the house and senate. the decades have gone along, i see this long range planning coin. if you want to get hispanic voters out it takes a long range strategy to do this but the republicans have been implementing a long-range strategy for decades now and they have a couple other initiatives out there that are astonishing to a lot of folks. i was speaking to a congressman this morning about one of the man he said that is very interesting. they think ahead of time because in the long run the republican party realizes demographically speaking, they are on the verge of not being a national political party and they will lose the ability to elect a president in that white house well into the future and frankly i think if redistricting were restructured they would lose the house band and next time around they may have trouble with the senate. >> you were talking earlier to the 2013 shelby county case supreme court case, which has really weakened the voting rights act and will have some long-term implications for american politics. could you go into an explanation of what the supreme court did and the practical impact you think it will have? >> the shelby county case was interesting. i put it in the book because from not theoretical point of view, this will be interesting to political theory guys more than the public but i saw the show--shelby county case as what i call racial shield. was a decision or pronouncement that on the surface appears non-racial but really is deeply racial and has deep racial implications for the electorate. the shelby county case was a travesty of justice. in my book i said constitutional scholars -- don't even call it bad law. i put it on the same level as the dread scott decision or plessey versus ferguson because of what it did essentially what they did was engaged -- negated the entire requirement that plaintiffs need to meet to force jurisdiction to be covered under section 5 of the voting rights act. they did it by saying look. the data you used in the congressional hearings to off a rise this was old data. all data is old. particularly census data. it gets old 24 hours a day. people are born, they die, american society is extremely mobile. you could use that argument all time, and frankly that is just part of the shield for me. the second part was the whole issue of the tenth amendment which i will save for a little later because the tenth amendment is one of my favorite amendments. that and the second amendment. i really love this week to because there figments of people's imagination. shelby county was interesting. shelby county was recruited to sue under the voting rights act by an organization that goes around the united states with its sole purpose of trying to challenge the voting rights act, affirmative-action, and other sorts of civil rights laws that have been passed historically. they recruited by the way amy fisher, the young woman who sued the office on affirmative-action, the same guy who recruited her recruited shelby county to bring this lawsuit. kind of a concocted lawsuit in the first place. shelby county, 86% white and it has also been the subject section 5, objections over in this year's. for me in relationship to what i'm speaking of in my book the travesty is this, the supreme court there probably are some, to navigate big federal law, the most important federal laws out there, it affected all jurisdictions involved, and in the b r a. and the decision on the door race theory. african-americans and whites. on the east coast, on academic circles outside latino intellectuals we view race relations as black-and-white. essentially making the history of latinos and our presence in the united invisible. the supreme court didn't even think about that. what they should have done if they wanted to make a decision was to what legal scholars call narrow tailoring. made a decision to shelby county not generalized to the entire population or subject of the voting rights act. with that particular decision they cause all kinds of problems across the country. that is why i call it the bad law. what i did in here was i call, i recommend to the courts that if they are going to look at cases the deal with latinos they need to talk about our history they need to talk about our type of discrimination and the way we are treated in the jurisdictions not how black people are treated. that is two separate types of population two types of treatment and need to look at our evidence or history when they make their decisions and they didn't do it in shelby county. >> look at proposition 187 and the impact it had in california. proposition 187 was a ballot initiative that enables local law enforcement to turn in to state and federal authorities someone who violated immigration laws and also denied government services to undocumented immigrants in california. taco bell about the impact, california had been a republican state for a long time leading up to that and it certainly has slipped since then. the impact that it had, if you see parallels between california and what is happening in texas. >> one of the most interesting possible points of comparison is where we were in the mid-1990ss and as you said california had been a fairly reliable republican states through 1988, seven of eight. the senate delegation had been split. one republican one democrat. republicans control the congressional delegation out of california through the midnights and a round the midnights you started to see that large population growth driven by immigrants and there was this reaction really a precursor to what happened in arizona in 2010 and the precursor to what happened with the tea party. these sorts of groups started developing in california and what we think happened is they overplayed their hand, went from being conservative to targeting and isolating anybody with a spanish surname, calling an end to all programs for immigrants, saying school children born in the u.s. cannot go to aftercare programs if their parents weren't citizens causing school teachers to have to check so this created an a lot of frustration, anxiety and anger in the latino community in these years. if we follow the day after 1994 california followed with two additional propositions. won out law affirmative-action and one out law bilingual education in the last week elections. you see tremendous growth, almost a doubling in less and ten years, doubling of a number of latinos voting in california and when they came into the electorate they were registering democrat by a 4-1 margin because they had associated the republican party with this republican governor who backed these initiatives and try to get these issues cast into law. california looks like what we are talking about in texas. imagine people having this discussion when will california be competitive? when will democrats have a chance? will they ever be able to mobilize latinos. now look back and california is one of the least competitive states because of that transition. now if you have it to what is happening in texas, why did that happen in texas in 1990s is something we get asked a lot when we write about, it is funny california with such a progressive identity has a more conservative identity but at the time it was california in the 90s that had a governor who was very anti-immigrant and pushing anti-immigrant legislation. in texas regardless of what people thought about the policies of them governor bush on immigration issues and hispanic issues he was quite understanding and moderate. compared to many democratic governors around the country at the time. would that it wasn't insulated any sort of wave. there was no frustration. people did not necessarily love him but he was not a pete wilson type governor that creating very and frustration among latinos. >> rick perry in the 2012 presidential election in the debate got some flak from fellow republicans for not being toughening up. >> that continued that continued generally at least until the most recent years it continued generally under rick perry. .. >> you see the lieutenant governor dan patrick, ran on a platform that emphasized a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment. it's not racialized sentiments in terms of some of the statements he made about the primary in the valley. and now you see efforts to try to repeal the in-state tuition dream act, etc. and so if that continues and then you get groups like battleground texas or others mobilizing people, it now becomes more urgent. it becomes salient because now you're talking about your livelihood or your parents' livelihood or your siblingings. and there's a possibility if that continues california could provide some sort of history that, you know that registration could just get triggered and double in the span of ten years. >> well along those lines i can't help but ask both of you and i'll start with you henry there's billion a lot of talk and -- there's been a lot of talk and it's intensified about our former mayor julian castro, who's now the secretary of hud possibly being on the democratic national ticket next year. i think eleanor cliff has a piece this week in the daily beast, kind of profiled the hud secretary and talking about how it would -- it's almost certain that he's going to be someone who's going to be seriously considered for the ticket. what do you make of that? and, i guess, i'm curious to get both of your thoughts on how likely that is and what impact that might have to energize the latino voter base. >> gee. i haven't spoken to julian in a while. [laughter] i wouldn't know, and hillary hasn't returned my calls. [laughter] >> mine either, so don't feel bad about that one. [laughter] >> i think, i don't know. your guess is as good as might mine. he has been getting a lot of good publicity and play in washington, d.c. and nationally. and he has been meeting with them, apparently having dinner with the clintons in the evenings, and all of them have gotten quite close. which are all signals to everybody that he is going to be considered seriously and i don't doubt that. what his chances are, i don't know. i do know this, though, that from an electoral or an election point of view, i do know that the democrats need to do something to counter what the republicans are doing as far as hispanic initiatives in the electorate itself. you know, the republican party's got this what's it the libre initiative out there that the koch brothers have been funding to large amounts of money to try to move just a certain percentage of latino voters over to their side to win the national election. and so the democrats are going to have to do something to counter and maybe placing julian up at the top of the ticket with hillary may be an effort in that regard. i think they're thinking about it. they have to do something sure. >> he has a lot of popularity not just in the state of texas. we've asked about favorability ratings on julian castro at least three or four times in some of the surveys we've done. certainly, he's very well known here, has a generally positive image and favorability rating among latinos in the state of texas. but he's slowly starting to become known nationally. i think his cabinet-level appointment, you know, will help grow that. and i think people are looking at that information. if you have, you know, folks on the other side like a marco rubio who himself has an immigrant story that he might want to share as he campaigns if you look at someone like jeb bush who has a mexican-american wife and mexican-american children and speaks a little bit of spanish and converted to catholicism, there are candidates who can at least attempt to do outreach to latinos. >> i think it was latino decisions that might have looked at this. correct me if i'm wrong, but did you all look at the latino vote with regard to ted cruz? because my memory is he didn't do particularly well. each though he won his senate -- even though he won his senate election. >> yeah. and we've thrown ted cruz in the mix, and i didn't mention him in the same breath as rubio and bush because he has not performed well with latino voters including with latino voters in texas. in our last poll just right on the eve of the 2014 election, we asked people and his highest negative ratings were in the state of texas. of anywhere. he was a little bit more favorable in some other places where maybe he didn't represent them or he didn't -- he wasn't as known. [laughter] and he had a little bit more -- >> that's where i'm generally more liked too. [laughter] >> but no, he has not been sort of the one to carry that banner. but among all of those names of that sort of next generation castro has a lot of very high favorabilities. very high favorabilities. i don't know if he's going to be in the mix this year, but i city certainly he's someone as -- but i think certainly he's someone who has a lot of potential. >> henry, in the book you talk about this trend we saw, and it really seems like a concerted effort. i think you said 35 states since 2003 have created some form of voter id law. can you talk a little bit about what you see? i think the most generous interpretation of these voter id laws would be to say this was a solution in search of a problem. i don't think there have really been documented history of problem with voter fraud at the polling sites. but do you think that there's a real concern about have we been able to tell so far what kind of impact voter id laws have had on turnout? >> this is an interesting situation because i did i did get a confidential phone call from someone in austin whose name i can't really reveal and i couldn't include in my book, i certainly couldn't use it in the trial that who had overheard three of the sponsors, republican sponsors on the voter id bill very explicitly saying they were going to use this bill to help suppress the hispanic vote. this is part of what they were going to do. and what was interesting to me, i tried to figure out well, how do i get to that? and i -- so i started looking through all the documentation. there were no confidential e-mails because the attorneys had managed to put a block on that, and we couldn't get the e-mails out, the perform e-mails of these individuals -- the personal e-mails of these individuals. so i just started looking at as much public documentation as i could, and to me, the march 23, 2011 house journal was just amazing. i did a i gathered some empirical data from out of the journal, and i put it in my book about who sponsored which amendments. i discuss in quite great detail the discussion that went on that particular day. there were several instances when latino house members and african-american house member who's now a congressman tried to get the sponsors of the bill to talk about the racial implications or the, whether or not the voter id bill would violate the voting rights act and every time they brought up those particular topics, somebody would make a motion to table the entire thing and the discussion would be cut off. nobody wanted to talk about it. nobody wanted to talk about race nobody wanted to talk about vra violations. matter of fact, one representative -- and i mention her specifically in the book -- made this comment, she said something to this effect, um, that that's one of our business -- that's none of our business here. the courts have to tell us if we violated the law. we shouldn't be worried about violating the law. it's like, you know, i'm not going to worry about committing the crime until somebody tells me i violated a law, you know? [laughter] it was just really interesting to me to listen to that kind of language that was going on and on and on. but then when they, when you look at the record itself and look at what the object of the bull was -- of the bill was, it was to, when they first submitted the bill, it was to prevent all legal votes from being cast by undocumented -- by illegal immigrants. that was the initial intent of the law. it's in the public record. by the time the laws passed they changed that language to really pass a law that would protect the integrity and the security of the ballot. all references to immigration or immigrants or illegals has been removed from the public record. and the way they -- just the types of id cards that are acceptable to me were incredible because some of them can be easily forged. there's actually counterfeit mills in the united states that can produce this kind of documentation for anybody, so they probably increased a lot of by for those folks along the line. [laughter] documents that can be used to get a voter id can be obtained by people that aren't citizens. thicks like the military -- things like the military id card. you can use that card to get a voter id card here in the state of texas. they didn't even think about that. and the other issue they didn't think about was two other things. one was there's no -- the area that's really weak in our electoral system is ballot by mail. you want to talk about being able to cast an illegal vote, you can do it there easily. nobody checks, no id cards required. you do it all through the mail like okay, we're going to accept everything on faith. this is good stuff. that issue was raised in the legislature on that particular day. they didn't want to talk about it. they didn't want to hear about it they didn't consider it. you look at the final passage of the law, it's not even mentioned. >> is it because of the trends? i mean, does the mail vote, does the trend in one direction or another -- >> i, i really don't know. they didn't even talk about it. >> didn't bring it up? >> didn't even bring it up. and finally the last thing that they this came up in the trial in d.c., in the section five hearing, it came up in the house hearings on the bill. the whole issue about whether there's in-person fraud. there is none. it's minuscule. they probably caught five people over the last five years trying to do something like that. and they even had one person come into the courtroom and testify say look if somebody wanted to cheat, do in-person fraud, one they'd have to find out first the perp they're going to cast -- the person they're going to cast a vote, if they're registered to vote, i don't know how they're going to figure that one out. secondly, figure out whether or not that person did cast a vote, and, third, they have to have the documentation to catch the fraudulent vote in the first place. you know, that's almost impossible to do. and that evidence kept getting thrown up, and the other side was saying, well, we didn't know that. they wouldn't discuss it. so why -- there i am as an investigator looking at all this stuff. if you're not going to look at real data logical arguments if you not going to -- if you're not going to look at facts, then why are you passing this particular bill? race oh, no, we don't want to talk about it, we'll table that discussion. just an interesting whole interesting -- it's like a murder mystery practically. [laughter] >> matt, i wonder in your polling with latino decisions have you all been able to determine whether voter id laws have actually reduced the turnout or had a an impact on that? >> yeah, no, we've looked generally at that issue nationally in national samples of adult citizen latinos and compared -- and we've also looked at it specifically here in the case of texas. after the voting rights act, as henry just explained, was struck down section five, if you all remember the texas voter id law was enjoined. it was stopped by the federal government. but the second that the voter id law was then struck down it went forward. and so in the subsequent trial in corpus christi, in the federal trial gabrielle sanchez and i collected some data on that exact point asking people across the state of texas -- not just latinos, blacks whites, everyone -- whether or not they had these types of documents that henry's talking about. and we found very, very large discrepancies. ten points in some cases. that anglos were ten points more likely than either blacks or hispanics to have a driver's license or a hunting license you can have. and these other sorts of things. [laughter] if you have a federal or a county employment card, which many minorities work in these sorts of -- those things don't count. if you have a student id -- but if you have a hunting license, you could use that to vote in the astronaut of texas. and a gun -- in the state of texas. and a gun permit. excuse me. and we did find -- we have found not just in the state of texas, but elsewhere that there are very very large discrepancies in who has these types of documents that they can present on election day to vote. so there's absolutely a suppressive element here. there's no question about that. the only place where there's any debate and there's not even any debate there is on the front side if there's any fraud. and there has not been any as henry alluded to, and it was presented in the texas case, any in-person documentation of voter fraud in the state of texas. >> i'm going to turn it over to members of the audience but i wanted to ask one last question before we do that. matt, in your book we sometimes hear that, you know, immigration is overplayed, or it's magnified to the too great a degree when people assess what latinos are thinking and what -- how they'd make their decisions in the polls. and i thought it was really interesting when from your polling that immigration maybe is even a bigger issue that people realize. >> yeah. you know, one of the things we found is if you go back before 2006 if you look at the early 2000s, immigration was always an issue that latinos cared about, were sympathetic to wanted to see good treatment of immigrant, but it was never in the top five of issues when we would poll what do people wallet, more jobs, better schools, access to health care. and then somewhere else somebody would say, well, we need to -- and in 2006 the house passed -- in 2005 december of 2005 the house passed h.r. 4437 which was the sensenbrenner bill which would do nationally what the arizona bill did, it would call for the immediate deportation of everyone who didn't have papers. if you helped in any way anyone who was undocumented, you could be charged with a felony. in the spring of that year of '06, we saw all these massive immigration rallies across the united states including one of the largest ones in the country in dallas. and that put immigration back on the issue. suddenly everyone realized that there was a growing number of immigrants who were working, who were living, who had children here who needed to be incorporated. and from there because the congress did not resolve the issues and you started to see more negative policies being passed in the states like in arizona, like in alabama georgia and kansas and a number of these other states, it started to elevate and become an issue. it started to get talked about every single night by jorge ramos and jose diaz ballart on tv. it doesn't mean it's only issue people care about. there's still jobs, access to health care, good schools. but because this issue has been there and it's been so politicized in a negative way the way that people talk about immigrants today it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. so we're finding very, very strongly in the polls that when we ask people, they're very sympathetic to immigrant rights and want to support positive treatment and incorporation of immigrants into this country. and until the republican party addresses that, it's going to be this constant thorn in their side that makes it very hard to reoutlatinos. recruit latinos. >> we're going to take questions from the audience and we have someone with a microphone. so i'd just ask if you could wait until the microphone gets over to -- yes sir. we'll get a microphone over to you. >> there's something called jr.ly mappedderring, and -- gerrymandering, and i think it used to be illegal. i'm just curious if it's still a crime and that kind of thing. [laughter] >> jr.ly handerring is actually the slang testimony for redistricting. [laughter] it's, you know certain types of it are illegal yeah. and it's very technical. you have to look at 'em. you can't, for instance, racially -- you can gerrymander using race up to a certain point, and then -- >> it can't be the only, right? >> it isn't be the only, right. it's got to reach a certain threshold before the court will say this is unconstitutional. it's technical. >> if you look agent the composition of crickets, you can -- of districts, you can still find today districts that are not at all contiguous and -- >> oh, yeah. >> it's still very popular. >> oh, yeah. there's some funny districts out there. one of the funniest ones is a republican district up in north-central texas that just looks like a oh, i don't know, like one congresswoman once mentioned a disease kind of spreading all over the map. [laughter] >> sir i saw you with your hand up. we have a question over here. >> okay. to the extent the socioeconomic status and educational status affects voter turnout, voter registration, could one make the argument then that the opposition to school finance reform, for example, the suppression of group identity in the schools and so forth so on also contributes to this problem? i mean, isn't it a large or -- larger terrain that we're talking about? i think, you know, people may not necessarily be opposing school finance reform because they want to keep mexicans undereducated which would mean a low voter turnout. that may not be -- i think in some cases it is a conscious attempt. but isn't there a correlation between that kind of conservative thought and action in the area of education and low voter turnout? >> thank you for your question. >> you know, one thing i do in my final chapter is i try to get to the core or the heart of what makes people think this way. i mean, why would they, why would the guys that i mentioned in the e-mail speak the way they speak about hispanics? that's why i said our history is very important to be in these lawsuits. you're an historian so you'll appreciate what i'm about to say. someplace deep in the heart of culture is a racial thread that is embedded in our history is embedded in our curriculum, is embedded in the way we view the world. and sooner or later we're going to have to come to grips with that particular notion and deal with it. and it's got to be brought up in a courtroom. and that's why when i saw the shelby county case, i think that thread was kind of weaving its way through the brains of some of the justices that were making that decision. >> i'll just say a very quick -- say very quickly i mean, the data is exactly clear on that point that you suggest. socioeconomic status, in particular level of education is one of the highest correlates of voter participation. and so as you see underfunding and underinvestment in educational opportunities whether it's copps or not it will absolutely -- it's conscious or not it will absolutely have an impact to see who can connect those dots to have their voice heard. >> suppression of identity also is very important as you're indicating henry. to deny us our group identity undermines the possibility of using a base effectively to elect people to speak on behalf of our communities. >> in arizona, talking about arizona as one of the sort of fore fronts of this effort in 2010, they passed a series of bills, s.b. 1070, which 'em bold ped -- required, didn't embolden, required state and local police to do immigration checks. they passed other bills as well. one of them was to outlaw any latino or chicano or mexican-american studies in public high schools. that they couldn't have that anymore. and they had another bill that also outlawed any public schoolteacher could not have an accept. [laughter] an accent. and the person who sued and got it overturned was a british woman. [laughter] >> i was going to say a british accent, for instance? >> because they had written it in a way that was open, you know, to apply to anybody that had a foreign absent i think -- accent, i think, was what it said. it was an effort to say that you can't even have immigrants teaching in these immigrant-heavy classrooms. and so i think arizona is probably the best example of a lot of that. >> yes, sir. >> i have to chuckle. he asked a question about gerrymandering and british accent, talk about anti-gerry, which is anti-irish. that's where that comes from. but on the 2nd of february -- [inaudible] the united states signed a treaty. my question is why is this never brought up in these discussions? because, ultimately, until about the '20s all mexican knows had the right of travel speech bilingual -- everything was equal under that treaty. now they're saying you speak spanish, you came from mexico, hey, you're violating the treaty to start with in my opinion. why is that not brought up? >> it's a good question. >> yeah, you know, i actually mention that in my book and there's very specific sections that you speak to because that -- citizenship is our right based upon that treaty. and that's never each spoken b -- never even spoken to. and that's part of the very specific history that i think we need to bring up in these lawsuits. one of the reasons i wrote the book was i was tasked to put together research on racial intent. and there's never really been a technique to do that. and i was given this supreme court decision to as a guideline. so in the book i put together a rough framework which future political scientists are going to take apart and redo and refine it, and it needs to be done because mine is kind of the first draft of what it would look like. but a part of that would be to include our history which is the treaty of guadalupe how we're incorporated, how race relations started in the astronaut of texas in -- in the state of texas when steven a. austin came across into the state of texas and how we were treated down to president day. sure absolutely. >> >> a couple of points, gilbert. you were write about the vote by mail that does skew older now and it has been skewing republican. the other thing is we're much more insid yous about the voter filtering even than you intimated, henry. even if you get into a neighborhood where you're registering to vote, you will skip doors if there is an indication that that person does not participate. and it gets more insidious in primaries. but my question is a couple of things. in your polling to me i cut my teeth in the new mexico politics beginning back in the '60s, moving forward. and i found out very soon that there was a realty very generals of opinion -- divergence of opinion between those north of i-40 and those south of i-40 in that north of i-40 considered themselves ancestors back to the conquistadors. very spanish. if you call them mexican, they were offended. south was different. in texas i found the difference between the way texas hispanics relate to cubans, nip cans -- dominicans, puerto ricans. is that prevalent throughout? and the other question about religion and so forth there's a movement i've seen from catholicism to evangelicals. and did you poll that, and what significance was that in terms of the display of conservativism by hispanic voters who, say, made the move from catholicism to evangelicals? a lot of stuff there but that's kind of what i'm interested. >> quickly because we have a chapter on religion and politics in the book. look at that. in 2004 when you didn't have immigration as a wedge issue and you didn't have the republican party associated with anti-immigrant rhetoric, george w. bush was able to use his religion and his religiosity in a very, very effective outreach to evangelical latinos. he achieved over 50% of the vote within that subgroup who perhaps were more socially conservative and could relate to him on that issue. and so that was a very, very effective strategy. in 2008 and 2012 those same subgroups of folks were voting under 30% almost in line with the same group. and so there was a huge loss for the republican party among property -- protestant and evangelicals, and that was because the politics had become so racialized and nasty that each if you agreed with their opinions on some conservative issues, you were still upset about some of the statements mitt romney had made about immigrants, etc. on your first point of identity, i'll try to answer that briefly. we juiced to see a -- we used to see a lot more divergence. you have the same thing in southern colorado, they identify in the same capacity, and the denver area identifies differently. but we have seen since '06 since those rallies when you had five million people on the streets across the united states, we've seen more shared commonality in our survey responses that we didn't used to see in the early 2000s or the late 1990s. it doesn't mean that people don't still have their own identity or very specific whether it's national origin or even state or region, but they are now starting to see -- possibly because if you're driving down the street you get treated the same. the state or federal government doesn't stop to question your identity before you get pulled over and asked to show your proof of american citizenship. and so as a result, we think that's creating more opportunities for shared commonality among -- across latino subgroups. >> well, unfortunately, we've run out of time. and i apologize to anyone who had a question, but matt and henry will be upstairs signing books, and i'm sure they'd be glad to talk about any of these issues. thank you so much. please help me thank matt barreto and new hampshire arely flores. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> and now from the annual san antonio book festival, a panel on american novels. [inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everyone. and welcome to the san antonio book festival and to c-span's booktv. my name is michael soto, i am the moderator for this morning's really promising discussion about a two fantastic american novels. i am on the english department faculty at trinity university where i teach courses in american literature and cultural history, and i have to say "the great gatsby" and huck finn are two of my favorite novels so i'm very excited about this morning. it's very rare these days for literary scholars to write books on the topic of the more than novel. of the american novel. when larry buel published his dream of the great american novel last year, it was hardly a surprise that both huck finn and gatsby were prominently featured in that book. back in the day when scholars wrote about the american novel on a regular basis huck finn and gatsby were always a part of that conversation, and i think the reasons are obvious as to why. they should become even more obvious after this morning's panel. i am pleased to introduce maureen corp. michigan whose voice you may recognize. she's regularly on our radio, part of npr's fresh air broadcast, and she's also on the hutture faculty at georgetown university. go hoyas. [laughter] and andrew levy is the chair and professor of english at butler university -- go bulldogs -- [laughter] and i've asked them if i could put them on the spot to start things off. i've asked them to choose a favorite passage from gatsby and from huck finn and to read that passage for us and to ec plain why it's -- explain why it's significant to them and why it should be significant to us.

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