What happens to a representative democracy when one party is no longer committed to the foundational notion everyone must be represented, equally? This is one of the questions  David Daley addresses in his latest book, UNRIGGED: HOW AMERICANS ARE BATTLING BACK TO SAVE DEMOCRACY.

David Daley is a senior fellow for FairVote and the author of Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy, which helped spark the recent drive to reform gerrymandering. Dave’s second book, Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy, chronicles the victories and defeats in state efforts to reform elections and uphold voting rights.

He is the former editor-in-chief of Salon.com, and the former CEO and publisher of the Connecticut News Project. He is a digital media fellow at the Wilson Center for the Humanities and the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, New York magazine, the Atlantic, the Boston Globe, Rolling Stone. When writing for the Hartford Courant, he helped identify Mark Felt as the “Deep Throat” source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Some articles by David Daley or pertinent to this interview: 

How Ohio Republicans dodged court rulings to keep gerrymandered maps https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/21/ohio-republicans-gerrymandered-maps

Minority rules, children die: Our broken political system has lethal consequences https://www.salon.com/2022/06/02/minority-rule-our-political-system-is-broken-and-children/

Our Fourth of July nightmare: A republic in the tightening grip of minority rule https://www.salon.com/2022/07/01/our-fourth-of-july-nightmare-a-republic-in-the-tightening-grip-of-minority-rule/

Crowded primaries are here to stay. Changing how we vote could protect majority rule   https://www.salon.com/2020/08/16/crowded-primaries-are-here-to-stay-changing-how-we-vote-could-protect-majority-rule/

Georgia’s Voting Fiasco Is a Warning. The November Election Could Be Chaos   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/11/georgia-election-chaos-november

Wisconsin Proves It: Republicans Will Sacrifice Voters’ Health to Keep Power   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/10/wisconsin-primary-coronavirus-republican-voting-by-mail

How Trump’s Election Has Fueled a Diverse New Generation of Politicians   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/15/millennial-politicians-unrigged-excerpt-david-daley

America Needs Ranked Choice Voiting – Here’s Why  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/22/america-needs-ranked-choice-voting-why

‘This is a war’: Republicans ramp up bid to control election maps for next decade      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/22/republican-dark-money-groups-2020-election

What I Learned Talking to Fourth-Graders About How to Design Elections https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/07/31/kids-ran-elections-race-schools-voting-rights-501774