thanks again. turning now to the fight for voting rights ahead of next year s mid terms. a vicious partisan and legal fight is already underway over redistricting. these are headlines about redistricting lawsuits from just last week regarding suits filed in five states including texas where the justice department accuses gop lawmakers of violating the voting rights act with their new proposed map. joining me now, eric holder who served as attorney general of the united states during the obama administration. he s now chairman of the national democratic redistricting committee. welcome back to the sunday show. good to see you, jonathan. you brought witt and wisdom to sunday mornings. good to see you. thank you. thank you very, very much. so the last time we were here we didn t have maps to talk about. we knew redistricting was going
and i think that the redistricting battles to come are going to illustrate that beautifully. you know, just a few years ago, the supreme court adopted this presumption of legislative good faith in redistricting lawsuits. i call it a presumption of white innocence. the conservative majority said we re just going to assume that state legislatures aren t racist even when they produce really racist maps. that is not a rule that comports with the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. that is a rule that partisans device to ensure that republican legislatures can keep diluting the voting power of minorities. texas is exhibit a right now. i would hope before commissioners release their final report they take a look at this battle and think twice about whether the supreme court is sterling and non-partisan today. i was going to say i couldn t agree with you more. and history is the greatest lesson in all this. our supreme court throughout the history of the country has made horrible
academic lens, it s very easy to say look it s worked okay so far, we ve decided to become white still standing and were still abide by its decisions, how bad could it be? the answer is really bad. and i think that the redistricting battles to come are going to illustrate that beautifully. you know just a few years ago the supreme court adopted this presumption of legislative good faith in redistricting lawsuits. i call it a presumption of white innocence. the conservative majority said that we are just going to assume that state legislators are races. even when they produce really racist maps. that is not a rule that comport with the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. that is a rule that partisans devise to ensure that republican legislators, can keep diluting and losing power over racial minorities, texas has exhibit a right now. and i would hope that before the commissioners released their final report, they take a look at this battle and think twice about what the supr
legislature boundaries for drawing the maps and the republican legislators completely ignored those regulations put on them by the voters and passed what was then later determined to be an illegal map. and in fact, four of the nine seats that democrats picked up in the house in 2016 were because of redistricting lawsuits that overturned illegal republican maps including in florida. and we know that when that happens, democrats do better, democrats normally pick up more seats when the process is more fair, democrats do better, and that s really our goal. and that s what we ll stay focused on. right. you re almost getting a the fact that just a return to a more majority rule system would be beneficial to the democratic party and defensible to those thinking about it ethically if it idemocratic and not sort of rigged. kelly ward, interim executive direor of the redistricting committee. it s a mouthful. it sounds more boring than it is important, yet i think we ve discussed why it is imp