Gerrymandering has become an immensely powerful weapon of partisan advantage, creating an unresponsive and unaccountable government. But ahead of the 2020 elections and a new round of redistricting, voters are fighting back. With exclusive access to influential, citizen-led activist groups, as well as the legal team that brought the most important voting rights case in a generation to the Supreme Court, the film chronicles the civic grit that is turning the tide in the battle.

"Nicholas Seabrook, authority on constitutional and election law, and expert on gerrymandering, begins with the earliest gerrymandering (pronounced with a hard 'g'!) before our nation's founding with the rigging of American elections for partisan and political gain and the election-meddling of the colonial governor of North Carolina (George Burrington) in retaliation against his critics. The author writes of Patrick Henry, who used redistricting to settle an old score with political foe and fellow Founding Father, James Madison, almost preventing the Bill of Rights from happening and of Elbridge Gerry, the Massachusetts governor from whom the naming of gerrymander derives. Seabrook writes of the Supreme Court's 20th century battles to curtail gerrymandering, first with Felix Frankfurter, the court's most outspoken advocate of judicial restraint, who fought for decades to prevent the judiciary from involving itself in disputes over the drawing of districts, only to see his judicial legacy collapse before his eyes; and Byron White, professional football player turned Supreme Court Justice who tried, and failed, to convince his colleagues to put a stop to partisan gerrymandering before most Americans were even aware that it was happening . . . One Person, One Vote explores the rise of the most partisan gerrymanders in U.S. history put in place by the Republican Party after the 2010 Census. We see how the battle has shifted to the states with REDMAP, the GOP's successful strategy to use control of state government and rig the results of state legislative and congressional elections for an entire decade. Seabrook makes clear that a vast new redistricting is already here and to safeguard our republic, action is needed before it is too late"--

Here's something true for almost every American. The democracy you live in today is different, completely different, than the democracy born into. Since 1980, the number of Americans legally barred from voting has more than doubled. Since the 1990s, odds of living in a competitive Congressional district have fallen by more than half. In the twenty-first century alone, the amount of money spent on Washington lobbying has increased by more than 100 percent. Meanwhile, new rules in Congress make passing new bills nearly impossible, no matter how popular or bipartisan they are. No wonder it feels like representatives have stopped representing the people. Millions of Americans now recognize that democracy is in trouble and that the trouble goes beyond Trump. But too often, they are looking in the wrong places for solutions. Voter suppression is real, but Voter ID laws aren't tipping elections. Getting rid of bizarrely shaped districts won't end gerrymandering.

"Narrated by Jeffrey Wright, Rigged chronicles how our right to vote is being undercut by a decade of dirty tricks - including the partisan use of gerrymandering and voter purges, and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. The film captures real-time voter purges in North Carolina and voter intimidation in Texas."--Amazon.com.

"A revelatory account by the best- selling author of Ratf**ked that will give you hope that America's fragile democracy can still be saved. Following Ratf**ked, his "extraordinary timely and undeniably important" (New York Times Book Review) exposé of how a small cadre of Republican operatives rigged American elections, David Daley emerged as one of the nation's leading authorities on gerrymandering. In Unrigged, he charts a vibrant political movement that is rising in the wake of his and other reporters' revelations. With his trademark journalistic rigor and narrative flair, Daley reports on Pennsylvania's dramatic defeat of a gerrymander using the research of ingenious mathematicians and the Michigan millennial who launched a statewide redistricting revolution with a Facebook post. He tells the stories of activist groups that paved the way for 2018's historic blue wave and won crucial battles for voting rights in Florida, Maine, Utah, and nationwide. In an age of polarization, Unrigged offers a vivid portrait of a nation transformed by a new civic awakening, and provides a blueprint for what must be done to keep American democracy afloat"-- Daley charts how activists-- ordinary citizens across the nation-- have taken up the mantle of freedom and fairness in battles against gerrymandering, against discriminatory voter ID bills, against felon disenfranchisement, and other methods that share one goal: rigging elections. He introduces a blueprint for protecting our democracy in 2020 and beyond. -- adapted from jacket