Gerrymandering

Two of the stories we track in Gerrymandering made the news: 

California’s ongoing budget woes.

Fair Districts Florida’s petition drive continues to garner good press.

We’re now in our third week of editing, and as things get busier over here in the office, I’ve got a lot less time to blog about redistricting news, general thoughts, etc.  Hopefully the feed we’ve set up on the Gerrymandering homepage is proving useful.

As far as the edit goes, Sam works really quickly - I just watched a rough forty minute assembly of stuff from California yesterday that felt really good as a leaping-off point. That we’re already there after just a few weeks has me feeling pretty confident, but not enough so that I’m not occasionally petrified that we’re not going to pull this off. Wavering between utter terror and supreme confidence probably isn’t a bad place to be.

And we’re still shooting!

Day 44: After a late Sunday night drive to DC with the gear, Susan and I met up Monday morning to shoot a redistricting conference at the Hudson Institute. The usual suspects were there: Les Francis who worked on Prop. 11, Ellen Freidin from Fair Districts Florida, Gerry Hebert of Americans for Redistricting Reform who was intimately involved with the Texas redistricting in 2003, Randy Ford from Congressman Tanner’s office, and scholars Bruce Cain and Michael McDonald. There was a lot of spirited debate about reform measures, and the panelists managed to touch on almost everything we’ve covered in the film thus far. Afterwards, we knocked out a quick interview with Joe Rich, former Head of the Civil Rights division at the DoJ. Then, a flight to Des Moines, but not before spending a bunch of time marching up and down the halls of the Institute and bumping into the likes of Scooter Libby and Douglas Feith…

Day 45: We’ve heard a great deal in every state we’ve shot in about the “Iowa system,” so we decided that we had to go to Des Moines and see what the Iowa system is all about. Turns out the much vaunted “Iowa system” is Ed Cook and Gary Rudicil, two very nice guys who indulged our cinematic whims for the bulk of an afternoon. This interview and demonstration should be one of the lighter sections of the film. We finished with them around 6:30 and then embarked on a nine-hour jaunt to Tahlequah, Oklahoma to look at redistricting and democracy in the Cherokee nation.

Day 46: After the worst, longest drive I think I’ve ever been on (I was literally hallucinating by the end), we go up early to head over to the Cherokee Heritage Museum where we had a great tour of the Ancient Village, and completed a few interviews with staff. After that, we did a little bit of shooting in downtown Tahlequah.

Day 47: Susan and I left the hotel early to complete a few man-on-the-street interviews and then returned to interview Clifton Adcock of the Tulsa World about recent happenings in Cherokee politics. Then, it was back to the airport for the flight home…whew.