Why “Go Vote” is not enough an animated short about stuff they didn’t teach you in Texas civics class

Political parties, celebrities, non-profits, and prior generations have only one message for members of Gen Z: “Go Vote.” It’s not bad advice, but it doesn’t acknowledge the realities of voter suppression and gerrymandering in Texas, nor does it help young Texans understand why their votes never seem to make a difference. Worse, civics education in Texas schools is intentionally designed to conceal how and why Texas’s voting laws and systems, such as winner-take-all ballots and redistricting, maintain minority rule.

I have created an animated short called Bop or Flop, whose humorous game-show format is designed to fill important gaps in Texas civics education and alert Gen Z Texans to how gerrymandering shapes political outcomes in Texas. "Bop or Flop: Old vs. New Gerrymanderers" highlights the lunacy behind America's continued use of a system created two hundred years ago by contrasting the moral and technological evolutions made in other dimensions of American life with the systems politicians use to draw redistricting maps, which have stayed largely the same. With the explicit intent to connect with young Texans, “Bop or Flop” shows how issues that Gen-Z voters care about (e.g., women’s autonomy, LGBTQIA+ rights, the environment, etc.) are affected by Texas’s redistricting process, and satirizes the “values” of legislators who deliberately subvert the principle of majority rule by redrawing districts to maintain their hold on power. I envision this segment as the first in a series of animations highlighting how structural and systemic inequities in the Texas political process negatively impact young Texans’ lives.