This is Saint Dominic. I'm an assistant managing editor at the New York Times. Our Newsroom has been empty since March. Oh, we've been busier than ever before the pandemic has changed how we work, but it hasn't changed what we do. This is why we became journalists
to bring to light real
verified information when the stakes couldn't be higher. We
can't do this work without our subscribers.
If you'd like to subscribe.
Please go to nytimes.com / subscribe and
thanks.
This episode is brought to you by US Cellular. Let's talk about your cell phone carrier. When you think about your plan does what you're getting feel fair when it comes to staying connected. Don't settle when you switch to US Cellular. Not only do you upgrade to fair. You're also joining a reliable Network. You can trust to have your back. No hidden requirements. No activation fees now. That's fair. Learn more at US Cellular.com.
I understand why you don't vote. I completely understand it. But I will tell you that if the choices Vote or not vote not voting will guarantee that nothing changes voting at least gives you a one more bite at the Apple and the more people we can get into the system the more powerful your one vote becomes.
Hello and welcome. Mr. Pancho on the VOX media podcast Network tomorrow. The election is tomorrow. The election is tomorrow go vote. I mean, if you take nothing else from this episode go vote go vote on your own behalf. Go vote on the Futures behalf and importantly if it's if you live in a place where
Easy to vote go vote on behalf of those who don't go vote on behalf of those who are being kept from voting go vote on behalf of those who were rejected at their polling place or I'll have their mail in ballot cancelled if it is easy for you to vote and you are just busy then vote as an act of solidarity with those who are trying really hard and are going to be turned away go vote go vote, which is also a lead into this episode. What is on the ballot in the selection?
It is not just Joe Biden and Donald Trump and not even just down ballot candidates. It is I've been arguing on the show for some time. It is democracy itself. It is democracy itself. We are in a space as Ganesh Sita Rama and argued here a couple weeks ago. We are in a space of transition. There was an equilibrium that dominated after the Civil War. There's an equilibrium that dominated after the New Deal. There's arguably a Reagan post break in equilibrium. And right now it is unsettled what kind of political system we are going to be what the rules
Of competition are going to be what the the settled ideologies are going to be and importantly I think the fundamental question here is whether or not we are going to become some kind of multi-ethnic democracy. And if you say we're a republic not a democracy all I just want to say this because I have to then all you are doing is showing you have no idea what the founders meant when they said Republic or democracy. Nobody is talking about an Athenian democracy and nobody's even really talking about a
Ian democracy, we are so far from that that it's it almost defies belief, but there is a question about whether or not we are going to be a country where a changing diversifying nation is able to translate its voices into power and its desires to some degree with protections for minority rights and constitutional limits into governance or whether we are going to become some kind of Bastion of minority Rule and this is now
Um sadly a partisan fight the Republican Party far beyond Donald Trump in something that unites even a lot of the never Trump has factions has become a party that increasingly understands democracy as inimical to its interests and I have a bunch of quotes in this episode about showing that that's true but it is true. Right Donald Trump says it he says that the Democrats won't levels of voting that would lead to no Republican ever being elected again, George Will talks about it from the perspective of Supreme Court and
Judicial review Mike Lee talks about it. I mean it is everywhere in the Republican Party the fear of democracy itself and slowly and response to democratic party is beginning to understand that at the core of everything it wants and everything. It believes will have to be a commitment A Renewed commitment a deeper commitment to democracy itself. This is incomplete on both sides, but it is the nature of the fight and who wins it it will decide what kind of parties we have in the future. They will decide the rules of politics in the future.
Sure, so I do think we are in a fight right now to decide not just who wins but what kinds of parties will win in the future how they will win in the future do they win by appealing to a minority and powered by certain rules of electoral geography and laws that make it harder to get your vote counted or do you win by pursuing an agenda that appeals to most of the people most of the time those are profoundly different systems profoundly I was saying about who I wanted to have this.
This final pre-election conversation with and there was actually for me only one choice Stacey Abrams ran for governor a couple years ago. She'd historic remarkable campaign. It is too simplistic to say she lost but she did not win and she did not win under very sketchy circumstances circumstances speak to the difficulties of having many of our elections governed by a party that does not believe in making it easy for people to vote and often sees
It's future assured by making it hard for people to vote. But she's also just a politician who is thought about democracy at a deeper more serious level. She has written a great book about this. Our time is now she is the CEO of fair fight action and a number of other organizations trying to sure everything from the right to vote to a fair census. She understands this deeper fight about American politics in a way. I think very few political figures do and she's worth listening to on it and I hope others in the Democratic party will also listen to her on it.
As always my email is Ezra Klein show at box.com here Stacey Abrams.
Stacey Abrams welcome back to the
show. Thank you for having me. So the
other day Senator Mike Lee the Republican from Utah. He tweeted that democracy isn't the objective Liberty peace and prosperity. Are we want The Human Condition to flourish rank democracy can thwart that Frank democracy. What do you think of that? What did you what did you hear when you read that?
I heard the quiet part out loud about the 21st century version of Republican party that has
Abandoned its pretense of changing minds and instead they intend to manipulate rules what he was saying is that if we have reached a stage where our ideas can no longer Garner sufficient votes to elect us, then we just have to do what we must to ensure that our vision of prosperity and Liberty is the prevailing Vision regardless of whether the people want it or not. What do you
think right?
Democracy means
I actually thought it as an insult. Typically when someone uses the term rank what they mean is the most pure oil the most base the least cultivated and the absolute bottom of opportunity. And so for him it is it was very much a disparaging term this notion that the populace the lowest of the low get to make decisions for themselves through
this act called democracy that to him was
revolting What I Hear in that is some version of the these old ideas of mob rule. Your book is very eloquent on this question of one of the central issues in the fight over democracy being who counts who gets seen as a mob and who doesn't I think is really important here. But one thing I also notice in this debate is people will used the word democracy in many different ways. So what do you use it to meet what what defines democracy to
And what makes that important and worth fighting
for you having studied political science and law we can go and you certainly you are well-versed. But I saw a very succinct description of what I'm talking about and what the you know facile argument made against it is look a republic means you don't have a monarch and a democracy means the people get to have a voice and so in the most basic of
Of understandings. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how the people get to participate directly in certain questions and through representatives and other questions, but it's the people getting to decide the vision for policy the vision for government and the rules through which we will operate
one of the things that I keep hearing in this and what they want to try to do in this conversation with you because we're going to talk a lot about voter suppression efforts and and this bigger
Next if the election is try to draw out what the rights argument is here the argument they're making to each other and I George Will on the show a while back and he wrote this book last year called the conservative sensibility and and in it. He talks about James Madison's catechism. I'm actually not clear on saying that right of popular government and he called it. He says that is at the core of the conservative project and he rides what is the worst result of politics tyranny to what form of tyranny is democracy, prey.
Ray tyranny of the majority and when you read Republican thinkers on this this is sort of the argument they make that democracy is a trampling of the rights of minorities by the majority Alias Shapiro who's director of constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. I wrote a piece about democracy and he replied on Twitter. So you want majorities to violate the rights of minorities and individuals because that's what pure democracy is. I'm curious what you think when you hear this sort of anti-democratic impulse in American Life.
Justified in terms of the protection of minority
rights. It's such unabashedly. I use the word facile again because it is this attempt to twist something that is so not just anti-democratic but anti-civil rights and to try to shape it and form it into something that seems Noble which it is not but the second is it's a cry of loss. It's
this recognition that their ideological underpinnings no longer have salience and they can no longer lean on this majority that they created because that majority is Now quickly becoming a minority and embedded in this argument as a fear that what they have visited on others through the trampling of civil rights through the trampling of Human Rights through the exclusion of so many communities. There's this deep fear that what happened.
Two others at their hands will now be visited upon the Republican party and upon conservative thinkers. But before getting to that, I think there is this very basic misapprehension or misapplication that they're using because what democracy has garnered for the last 243 years when it has been appropriately applied has been the expansion of access to rights for minorities the expansion.
Of inclusion and their argument is that that inclusion has become too effective. And in order to preserve their ideological constructs that inclusion must be thwarted and they are then trying to use James Madison and his arguments to undermine the entire experiment because the entire experiment, you know, the outcome of the experiment as we have seen it no longer caters to their ideological.
Belief systems.
So in your in your book as you tell the story the election of Barack Obama is a central part of the narrative about particularly the attack on voting rights. What did the 2008 election and his presidency do here? What what did it set off
much like the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Obama election was the proof of fruition of the 65 Voting Rights Act, which was when coupled with the
other civil rights act it was the embodiment of the protection of the rights of the minority. It said you will be able to participate in your governance for the first time and those who would intercede or block you will be restrained from doing so and it took 50 years, but in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected it was among the most
Div elections we've ever had in that communities that had long been denied access who had long excluded themselves because they did not believe they were welcomed who had never been engaged or even invited into participation because of the nature of his campaign because of the nature of his election and yes because he was a black man who represented so much of what had been done wrong in America and could be made right? His election was emblematic of
what democracy could achieve and what Republicans thought in that moment was the worst nightmare of a party that refuses to meet the moment and try to adapt to a changing populist. They are still governing from a space of paucity and a space of irritation that anyone else would dare to think their voices matter. And so what we saw following from his election was
The retrenchment immediate retrenchment on almost any right that could be pulled back and pulled away from Minority voters because their participation at such numbers such a numbers to create this sea change in what it meant to be a president of the United States was untenable and Mitch McConnell said it very clearly and while he may not have used race as his frame what he was responding to.
To was the most diverse community of Americans to ever participate in the selection of a leader and he could not countenance it nor could his parties and
so one of the things that your book emphasizes and way I really appreciate because it forms some of how my understanding of politics has evolved over these past couple of years is that there is a connection between demographic change in this country groups. Also attaining the power.
To not just have a voice but to exercise power in our democracy and in the rollback of voting rights, and that what's sort of Happening Here is a lag a really really important disjuncture between the power of this Rising generation can hold and the geography of this country as it exists. The way elections are actually run as exist. The way things are distributed across state legislators, and of course the Supreme Court and so you put some real emphasis on the Shelby V holder.
Decision gutting much of the Voting Rights Act and how that set the stage for a really different equilibrium around voting rights and we had even 10 years ago. So can you talk a little bit about that case? I think people sometimes know it in Broad strokes but not not in its details and not in what it actually allowed to happen
to understand the impact of Shelby you have to first understand the nature of democracy and the right to vote in America. The Constitution has never granted an affirmative right to vote.
What we look to in the Constitution through the 15th Amendment the 19th Amendment and the 26th amendment are moments. Where as a populist. We have decided that we would no longer exclude certain persons from their participation. So in the 15th Amendment black men were granted the franchise and the 19th Amendment ostensibly white women were granted the franchise and before we get to the 26th Amendment which expanded the franchise to those 18
221 we had this reality that the right to vote doesn't does not exist as an affirmative opportunity. But what does exist in the constitution is the delegation of Authority for the administration of Elections to states which sounds very benign Until you realize that often the preclusion to accessing the right to vote has come from the states and so for most of American history.
Voter suppression has been almost entirely the constructive States what the Voting Rights Act did in 1965 was shatter the impermeable nature of states to say who could could not vote. And so with the Voting Rights Act said was you could not use race and by 75 you could not use language as a way to preclude access to the right to vote. And this was transformative because even though
Paper these rights existed the Fifteenth Amendment didn't disappear with Jim Crow. It was simply subverted by Jim Crow because the Jim Crow laws that permitted an apartheid state to exist in the South said that while you could not stop a person from voting because they were black you had no affirmative obligation to ensure that that right to vote was real and when you add in women of color particularly black woman, it wasn't until 1965 with the Voting Rights Act that said that states could not
take these proactive steps to block the right to vote through poll taxes through literacy tests through the closing of polling places essentially any action taken by the state that would interfere with the right of people of color of people who spoke English as a second language to stop their participation in the right to vote. Those could not be countenanced without having the Department of Justice say it's okay and only certain states were included because only certain States had
Long and storied history of blocking right to vote. So when you fast forward to 2013 what we had was this extraordinary success where the Voting Rights Act not only increased the number of people who were participating in our elections. It also increased the number of people of color who were being elected to higher office. And as that happened as it got more and more aggressive as more people were added to the roles were able to exercise the franchise you saw this diversity of leadership.
It this diversity of democracy and from it's very beginning. There were attacks on the Voting Rights Act because it was seen as too interventionist. It was seen as taking away states rights to discriminate against who could participate in elections and so in 2013, the final evisceration of the Voting Rights Act by the gutting of Section 5 because of the change in the formula that's in section four what we had was
Lee a get out of jail free card for states that wanted to discriminate only what was different this time is that it was no longer relegated to those states that have participated in the Confederacy and participated in voter suppression through Jim Crow or if you were in the southwest through, you know restrictions on Latino and Native American voters and in some parts of the country on Asian-American voters, what you had was this proliferation across the country of voter suppression techniques that had been prohibited
clearly by the Voting Rights Act that were now permissible and that's why you saw the rapid shutdown of polling places. That's why you saw the expansion of restrictive voter ID laws. That's why in the in 2020. We are seeing so many cases that essentially challenge state laws that are designed to restrict who has access to the right to vote. And the reason those rights are no longer being protected is because we no longer have them
Rights act that gives citizens through the Department of Justice the right to demand access to the right
to vote. I want to draw something out that that you touched on there is something you're suggesting that what the Voting Rights Act is built to deal with was voter suppression do function to racism voter suppression due to an explicit desire to continue white supremacy, but that in its current Incarnation now that the Voting Rights Act has been gutted.
did but also the parties have polarized in different ways that this anti-democratic impulses in a way enlarged that while there's obviously race and racism tied into American politics that now it's the Republican party with a broader set of partisan incentives using these approaches stratagems Etc to Corner democracy to try to make democracy less of a threat to them and so in a weird way that we're actually dealing with a broader attack on voting rights at least in its intent
Now that it has become party. Why did not just kind of Southern and
racist agreed. I mean one of the reasons I always include the 26th amendment in my litany is that we often just sort of lighted we talk about the 15th in the 19th. But let's remember that one of the most aggressive attacks on voting rights have targeted young people young people are the least likely to have the type of IDs that are required young people have faced restrictions.
Jean where they're the IDS that they do have can be used and the most popular example, of course is in Texas where you can vote with your gun license that you may spend, you know, 2050 $100 on but you cannot vote with your student ID, which you spend thousands of dollars on and the reality that happened in New Hampshire where this year or in 2019. They attempted to restrict the domicile of
Students because they knew students have an impact on their elections in Florida where they removed early voting locations through legislation because too many students voted in the last election. And so yes, what began as an attack on largely African Americans, but we cannot excuse ignore what happened for at least another decade in Arizona often under the leadership of William rehnquist, which was the attack on Latinos and Native Americans people color.
ER have always been the Target and you layer on top of that young people and poor people and in that you see a coalition that has long suffered from oppression under conservative ideology. And therefore would be much more likely to access good policy and good decision-making if their ability to participate in rank democracy was real
music launch. I'll be back after a short break.
This is Mark
Lacy National editor at the New York Times as we head into a pivotal election. It's our mission to find answers to the questions you have. That means analyzing what the candidates are saying, but it also means looking deeply at the issues from an economy under stress to a national Reckoning on racism every day. We do the research so we can help you make an informed decision. None of this work would be possible without our subscribers if you'd like to subscribe to the times go to nytimes.com.
This is Advertiser content. We now have 2.3 million people incarcerated in
America less than seven percent of them are incarcerated for violent
crime. That's attorney Jeffrey Robinson director of the ACLU trone Center for justice and equality his work inspired the making of who we are a podcast by Ben & Jerry's and produced by Vox creative who we are a Chronicle of races.
Um in America is hosted by Peabody award-winning journalist Carvel Wallace,
surely you knew this was a racist countries. What does that mean for us today?
The prison population in the United States has increased seven hundred percent since 1970. Black Americans make up almost 40% of it. We didn't get here by accident.
I didn't know these
things because I hadn't been taught them.
And then the question is why wasn't I taught them because this information
it may be hidden, but it's hiding in plain sight who we are takes historic look at the disease of racism in America and traces it back to its tipping points. This includes the Tipping Point. We're at today.
I think Americans are watching and thinking and looking at this issue in ways, they never have before
and that's why I say this.
Is our last best chance because if we don't get it right this time we're
America is headed is someplace. I don't think anybody wants to go. How do we make our last best chance count Listen to Who We Are a podcast by Ben & Jerry's and produced by Vox creative now streaming wherever you get your
podcasts.
Something that this brings up that that I worry about a lot right now is what I've taken to calling the do Loop of democracy, which is your Republican party that increasingly does not win power through winning majorities of the of the vote or even plurality is of vote. So the president of course was the runner-up in the election from voting perspective and the Republican majority in the Senate represents. I think it's 15 million fewer people than the Democratic minority in the Senate then they appoint Republican appointees to the
Court even as we've been speaking over these past couple days have been a number of decisions lay down by the Supreme Court, which now Amy Coney Barrett has joined to make it harder to count votes make it less likely the vote that absentee ballots it come in a day or two late will be counted. And so you have this situation where as a party that wins power undemocratically has that power. It uses that power to then make it easier to win undemocratically setting off the loop again and again and again and the
That can really lead a country and it deeply undemocratic election because if you win the rule if you rewrite the rules of the game, then ultimately the other party is no choice, but to follow them how serious of a risk do you think that is if Republicans are able to keep winning this way.
It's absolutely the risk that we face is so one of my dear friends William Dobson wrote a book called the dictators learning curve and he actually uses this approach as one of the examples of how
you authoritarian populist become dictators how they gradually accrue power its by using the systems to their benefit and when the system is no longer benefit them manipulating the externality is of those systems to give themselves a permanent power in the United States what we're watching through gerrymandering but also through trying to restrict access to absentee ballots during a pandemic creating laws and rules that
by their own admission are intended to limit access to democracy. It creates to your point this Loop where you can keep using the system to strangle democracy until you to miss appropriate Grover norquist. So you can make a small enough that you can drown it in a bathtub and the challenge is that as long as they can maintain a certain degree of power even the overwhelming majority of Americans.
The numbers are insufficient given the structure of our system to guarantee that democracy works. I mean, that's the challenge of the Electoral College. Its Genesis was grounded and racism and classism but it's you longevity is grounded in this notion that this is the Last Vestige of a type of system that will permit Victory not to those who can win the greatest number of votes but to those who can manipulate the system to their benefit
Yeah, it just had one more thing to that that the reason I think people sometimes underestimate it as a loop is it is you win more power in some of these places or some of these institutions you can do different things. So right before Amy County Barrett was confirmed. There was a case coming out of Pennsylvania where Pennsylvania Republicans tried to get a stay to keep the Pennsylvania electives from being able to count ballots that came in or need to be counted after election day in a 4-4 Deadlock.
The Supreme Court was not able to do anything with that. But now that the center of gravity on the courts right and see if it's 6-3 conservative majority. Maybe you win that case where you didn't before and so as you get more power new things become possible and that to me is the one of the really scary pieces of this because you simultaneously have a party that is when these properties becoming more desperate.
Well the other example, I would use is what we saw happen to governors in Michigan, North Carolina and
Wisconsin that when Republicans won in 2010 and and successive elections, they gerrymander maps in 2011 to give themselves super majorities and state legislatures when they finally lost power when popular votes finally elected Democratic Governors rather than concede that their victories have now been lost they changed the rules for what Governor's could do. They use the last gasp of power to change the rules so that the new
We could not use the powers to reverse their behavior and instead these Democratic Governors were hamstrung. Sometimes to the point of losing Constitutional Powers that had existed for more than a hundred years. And so again that Loop is using the power that you have to not simply constrain power but to constrain the ability of the electorate to leverage the power that they thought they had when they went to go and vote. They elected these leaders for exactly this reason.
And in the moment of sore loser Earnest the Republican majorities in these states use their legislative powers to strip the gubernatorial executive powers of its full force
and I want to build on that and all way because this is why I started our conversation and I write so many pieces now about the building of a genuine anti-democratic ideology and Republican and conservative circles. This kind of thing is hard to do if
Is in too much conflict with your rhetoric or it's in too much conflict with what the people in your party believe. I mean when gerrymandering comes on the ballot it often loses. You've seen red States move towards independent commission's there are a lot of like ordinary Republicans who have pretty small D Democratic ideas of how government should work. But as the party's Machinery becomes more committed to an actual anti-democratic ideology, then what seems reasonable to do to pick up on something on some of the examples you just gave becomes very different if part of
Of your point as a party is to not allow rank democracy to overturn the rights of the minority by which you mean your rights as a political minority who's losing elections to stay in power. Then these things become necessary, right? You're waging a noble war against the mob and it's the way these things combined right? The the power grab here. I think is actually driving the ideological change, but the ideological change ends up over time justifying everything.
More extreme versions of the power grab that would have been shocking to people say 10 years ago.
We know that what is being couched by Mike Lee and others as nobility and protection is nothing more than fear and it I mean calling its or loserdom underwhelming Lee describes what's happening. We know that the demographic shifts in the United States portend.
And a very dramatic shift in the allocation of resources and Power in a nation that is becoming more and more diverse and part of that is the fact that for so many years. These communities were denied access to those resources deny that access to that power and the responsible retort is to then do what you need to do to invite these new persons into the sheer power structure. That is our democracy. That's the right thing to do and there is absolutely a
Creation that should happen about how fast and what ways and what the remedies are two challenges but instead of engaging in that dialogue, which is what should always animate a democracy Republicans have decided that the answer at the macro level is simply to refuse to play the game fair now to your point. We do have at the individual level and often at the city and county level a more robust debate about what should be because
Does the effects are more Amplified the closer you get to actual lives at the city and county level it's when you get to the State Legislative level and the federal level that we start to see the most aggressive iterations of this but we also have to remember that in Florida 65% of Floridians restored the rights of ex-offenders to give them the right to vote. This was not done by Wim. It was not done by happenstance and it was not done along party lines. It was a bipartisan solution to
A problem that was grounded in slavery and racism and yet because it was going to cost them elections. The will of the people was absolutely ignored by a republican governor Republican legislature and then by conservative control of our court system the moment the architecture of the Republican Party decided that it could not win based on Exley meeting people where they are and do
doing what the people needed to have done especially to correct past inequities when they decided that the only way to win was to rig the system and and I hate that phrasing because it you know, unfortunately has been I think overused but when they decided to rewrite the rules of the system and when they decided that they were going to instead undermine 243 years of a commonly held belief in our nation.
That Democratic processes are a native good that desperation has I think done more damage to the longevity of the party. Then it has to almost anything else. I've seen them do in recent years.
Yeah. I think there's a lot of a lot of wisdom in that. I'm just gonna add one more just quick thing for on just how deep this has gotten Mike Lee is among a number now of Senate Republicans and elected Republicans who has argued the 17th amendment should be repealed.
Ending the direct election of US senators. And of course, the reason for that is it Republicans are much stronger and state legislatures and they are an actual Statewide election. So that would give you just looked at the way the legislators are broken down now Republicans at least 58 seats in the US Senate and so the the thoroughgoing nature of the move away from democracy. I just think it's bigger than people recognize but I want to sit in this tension a little bit between how much Republican Elites have begun to turn against democracy.
C and the degree to which it actually still conflicts with the way people understand America and and fair elections. So how things get couched something you write about really eloquently in the book. Is it voter suppression takes new guys's now it has to cloak itself in a new language and in particular it often does. So in user error that there are a lot of things done now to say that the reason your vote is getting rejected it because we didn't want you to vote but because you screwed up if you talk a bit about
that.
So when I decided not to concede the election, so I like to be really clear and I talked about this in the book. I acknowledge the legal sufficiency of the numbers. I challenge the system that permitted those numbers to be the tote board and I challenged the legitimacy of a system that could permit voters to be denied their rights not because they weren't eligible but because they had failed some Phalanx of
Rules and bureaucratic restrictions and part because the Insidious nature of voter suppression in the 21st century is that it no longer uses the blunt instruments of law enforcement as obstacles to voting or the literacy test the things that have become reviled in their native form instead. You see the poll tax, but the poll tax is now making returning citizens pay fees and fines. They're also poll tax and making people stand in line.
and for hours on end, when you live in most States, you do not get paid time off for going to vote which means that if you have to spend what essentially amounts to a day's worth of pay if you're in Georgia and then some in Texas standing in a tower line, you have lost those wages and you have threatened or jeopardized your job, but when people look at it from the outside they say oh yeah, that's enthusiasm, but they also say that will you
I made that choice. Well, it is it is not a choice that should be foisted upon any American to decide between keeping your job and casting a vote but we make it the personal responsibility of each individual citizen as opposed to questioning A system that works with extraordinary fluidity and wealthier parts of a community and in wider parts of the community and works with the pace of a snail in black and brown communities another example, is that of when
polling places close down the argument as well. Just you know, if the polling place is closed down if you really wanted to vote you would make your way to vote. Well, if you live in a community where because of the voting structure, you don't have a populist that could demand public transit and the one or two polling places that were near you were two miles or five miles and now they're 10 or 15 miles away. You physically are precluded from being able to exercise the right to vote, but that's often attributed to your
Your to plan and then with voter ID. That is it's the most aggressive pseudo logic that I've ever heard. Number one America has always required that you prove who you are to vote that is always been a requirement and our state's what is different today is not that you have to have ID. It's the form of ID you have to have and it's the impossibility of ID or the extraordinaire Ali hard ability to access that.
A tidy that gets alighted and people get treated as though they're just too lazy. They're willing there. You know, they'll have the idea they need to get on a plane or buy a beer but not to vote which is completely untrue. We have what happened to North Dakota in 2018. When Native Americans were told they had to have a voter ID with a residential address, but the residential address had to be granted by the city or state that refused to grant them a residential address and the Supreme Court said well because
Americans are not the majority of the population even though they are disproportionately and directly harmed because they're not the majority of the population. It's okay. Those are examples of how bureaucratic rules take on both the veneer of logic but have the most heartless effect because it distracts from the responsibility of the state to engage in providing the right to vote.
Out but it also convinces citizens that either too hard or they were not they were not worthy enough and that they didn't work hard enough and when you do that you not only block or you not only discourage their voting you often discourage entire communities from voting because those stories become Legend and that Legend becomes truth and communities decide. It's not worth it because it's just too hard and it's not that they didn't try.
Is that the barriers to access were nearly impossible and why keep beating your head against a stone wall and there's a something you
point out in the book that I think it's a really important point is that this also operates in a feedback loop with an increasingly minority Therrien and and unresponsive system. I mean, let's say that you're a voter and you fight your way through this obstacle course, right and you end up waiting in line on the day when you've got parenting
he's an occupational responsibilities and you know, you need to take out the dog, but you wait three hours and 50 minutes to vote and it was hot and you just sat there and then even so you vote for somebody and even though they win the majority they don't actually get put into office or they do but you can't do anything in politics anymore because of the filibuster and everything else. So nothing changes for you and you
did all this for nothing
or lesson nothing to just be disappointed and so it becomes very irrational after that one.
How much is being asked of you to vote and to little comes back from your vote to begin to dissipate attach and detach from the system exhaustion is a very powerful tool of voter suppression.
Absolutely exhaustion and despair are both incredibly legitimate reasons for not participating when people ask me how you know, I'm talking to my teenager or I'm talking to someone who just refuses to vote. How do I convince them that they need to vote? Because
someone died for the right. I appreciate the instinct to call on the history of pain and the legacy of suffrage but I remind people there's a legitimate reason to feel this bearing if you've lived in intergenerational poverty and every time you've attempted to participate in the system, the response has been not simply to make it difficult but to make it worthless.
Then you are not going to make any Headway. If you don't acknowledge, the legitimate disdain that is held for this system. But the solution isn't to harangue someone into voting it is to do what you can to mitigate those obstacles. But also to acknowledge the legitimacy of their pain, I begin by saying yeah, I understand why you don't vote.
I completely understand it. But I will tell you that if the choices Vote or not vote not voting will guarantee that nothing changes voting at least gives you a one more bite at the Apple and the more people we can get into the system the more powerful your one vote becomes and I think that's the place where the crafty nature of the current Republican party has been situated for 20 years. They can count and they know that we have reached a demographic inflection point that
No longer simply one of numbers. It's numbers that now have power attached to it. It's the ability of these numbers to Aggregate and to communicate in order to leverage the changes they want which is why it is no longer feasible to Simply use the traditional means of voter suppression. The sort of nuclear option that has been employed is designed to try to meet a moment that has been predicted for 30 years, but his only come to real
Fruition in the last
decade, what would a system that wanted people to vote look like
Oregon. I mean we're going to Washington State do it pretty well, although their challenges in both States, but number one automatic registration and not this notion of automatic registration when you go and get your driver's license, it's been there's now this popular notion that because you can get it at the DMV. It's automatic registration know you're still making it a condition of suffrage that you
I have to go and get an ID. That's should not be your birth as a citizen is your guarantee of suffrage in the United States that should be it. And therefore it should be the government's responsibility to register you to vote automatically and it should be your option to take your name off of the list, but it should not be the option of a bureaucrat to decide that you are not a voter number two same day registration. There is a legitimate requirement that people who are voting on an issue should be around.
To participate in the decision but also the consequences and so you should have to register when you get to a new place, but you shouldn't have to time your move to figure out the deadline for showing up. You should be able to register on the day you go to vote and be able to demonstrate that you are who you say you are and you live where you say you live. We should have automatic mail-in voting. We should have automatic access to early voting and of course same day voting.
We should have voting centers. You should not have to rely on a Precinct based system because what early voting proves in every single state where it is active is that you don't have to actually go to the school house down the street from you in order to cast her ballot. If they have we have the technology to permit you to vote in any voting system any voting Center, then you should be able to do that throughout the election including on Election Day because we are to mobile population during the time of human contact where we need voters to be able to
All days exactly voters to be able to vote where they are and we have the technology to make it. So we also should have voting as a holiday. But that holiday is not in lieu of it should be in addition to making certain that every person gets paid time off to go and vote and the reason both are necessary the holiday recognizes that the majority of the people are probably going to take election day is the day they cast their ballots, but we have
Populations including those who are caregivers to the disabled who will need to be working on Election Day. So the disabled can go and vote you have entire populations that cannot meet a single day of opportunity. And so we need to provide paid time off to go and vote and we need to have systems. That means that you don't have to give someone 8 hours of time off to go and vote because the systems should be Equitable not equal equal says you need this exact same thing Equitable says we meet you and your needs where you are and often
For communities of color namely black communities. The challenge is that they are still resource at their pre-engagement level and at the last level of any attention being paid so they have fewer resources. They do not account for surges and voting and they often have substandard equipment. So those are the major pieces to it. There is a lot more that I could go into in which Sly include chapters book, but those Basics transform our elections.
Because the architecture of voter suppression is can you register and stay on the roles? Can you cast a ballot and does your ballot get counted same day registration automatic registration takes care of the first early voting centers and making sure that people have time off in all of those pieces take care of the second and the third is making certain that we cuz we now have uniformity in the ways. We vote. We then diminish the likelihood of votes being cast out and that's the most important piece that if you
Make it through this Gauntlet your ability to be secure in the fact that your vote will count should be real
physical and show will return after a quick message from our
sponsors.
Support for this episode comes from just egg a better egg for you and for the planet it takes over 50 gallons of water to produce a single chicken egg. So just exit out to reinvent conventional eggs with mung beans for a delicious environmentally friendly alternative. Look I'm a big fan of just a guy. I actually do eat the stuff. I like the scramble version. I like the Patty version for breakfast sandwiches. There's a bunch of to say on the environmental side of this. There's a bunch to say on The Taste side of it, but I will just say that
Something people often underestimate and this particular true when they go vegetarian is it egg-laying chickens are treated really cruelly and the capacity to come up with something better The Taste is good that is healthier that is better for the environment. It could prevent so much suffering and there are now increasingly Technologies to make a better just egg being I think the foremost among them just tag is also just healthier. It's protein-packed it's cholesterol free and because it uses 98 percent less water and significantly reduces it
Carbon footprint of your breakfast you can feel good adding it to your diet whether you a hundred percent plant-based or otherwise, you can join me and try just egg. It is available Nationwide on Amazon Prime now instacart and Whole Foods or at your local grocery store or co-op in the egg aisle or the frozen section. Just egg a better egg for you and the planet. Thank you for sponsoring this episode.
Support for this episode comes from Alex Rider and IMDb TV original series what happens when a British teenager is recruited by MI6 in the wake of his uncle's killing turns out in ordinary teen can be an extraordinary spy based on the novels by Anthony Horowitz this action spy Thriller follows Alex Rider as he puts a spy skills to the test to find out why his uncle was killed unraveling a much larger Global conspiracy. You can start streaming Alex Rider for free beginning November 13th.
On Fire TV or anywhere Prime video is available IMDb TV is a streaming service offering premium movies and TV series for free no subscription required IMDb TV always entertaining always free.
We've been talking here about the way the Republican party has become the party of anti-democracy the way they become ideologically committed to that. We become somewhat creative in trying to make that more of a reality has the Democratic party become the reverse. They passed HR 1 which is a big package of voting reforms through the house in 2019. HR 4, which is an attempt to restore the Voting Rights Act are those sufficient do you think the party is committed to this at the in the way the Republican party's committed to its opposite?
I think we are and I think it's because the composition of the democratic party is antithetical to the composition of the Republican Party the Republican Party by nature or by nurture is now and has been for many years predominantly white and that means that typically almost everyone else so non-whites and then those with more Progressive values or even moderate values and the 2020 versions of Republican party are
Democrats and because we largely have two-party systems. That's what we have. So it's a matter of survival. I think for Democrats to actually pay attention to the nature of how democracy should work. One of our challenges has been that for many years though. We knew voter suppression was real we have been coached into not calling it allowed because the fear was if you spoke it allowed it would have the effect of dissuading Voters I grew up in the south.
Voter suppression has the effect of just waiting voters. So my willingness to call it out comes about because whether you say it or not, we are experiencing it and we have the responsibility to actually name the enemy so we know what we're fighting and we can argue for and agitate for an advocate for Change. And so I do think that HR 1 HR 4, which is the downloads footing rights advancement act but also run widens Bill Amy Klobuchar has Bill we've seen
good bills that have come out during covid that I think move us further than even hr1 did because I believe automatic absentee balloting mail in balloting needs to become the law of the land in every state and every state should have uniform rules. We should not have 43 cases being waged to determine if you make a mistake do you get to cure it? Do you have to find a witness in the midst of quarantine to get your ballot in do you have to have a notary public who is not
Do you have human contact authorize your absentee ballot? So we should use our learnings from covid to make certain that no matter where you live in America. You have the same Base Line access to democracy. We should be able to make it easier for State wants to do something to make it easier. They should be able to but no State should be permitted to make it harder
if Democrats win the house and they win the presidency and they win the Senate HR 1 and H are for will pass the house again, and they will die do a
ER immediately there's absolutely no chance. It will get through a filibuster. They can't go through budget reconciliation. One of the most striking things that happened this year and potentially one of the more important I thought was when Brock Obama stood up at John Lewis's Memorial and he told the assembled Democrats that if they wanted to honor John Lewis, they should pass these bills and if the filibuster stop them they should get rid of the filibuster or because it is always been used to stop voting rights civil rights and Racial equality in this country. What do you
Think about the filibuster and in part to the Senate Democrats who say they are committed to democracy, but worry the getting rid of the filibuster would be would undermine the political system and the comedy and compromise needed to make it
work. I would refer them to the statement that opened this conversation. Mike Lee was saying the quiet part out loud, I believe in a filibuster because if we can guarantee permanent access to the right to vote in the United.
Dates, we will have the obligation at the federal level and the Senate level to actually negotiate in good faith. I was a state legislator for 11 years. I lived under a supermajority in the Senate and was always in the minority in the house and yet I was able to negotiate and secure bills and funding and all of the good things that you're supposed to try to do when you're in the legislature. We were also able
to block bad and we did so not because we had the majority but because we have a common responsibility to get reelected and we knew we'd have to get reelected by people who knew what we were doing and could decide to go with someone else and the more competitive we became as a state the more often we saw compromise and negotiation as opposed to Fiat and you know, an obliteration of the rights of others current governor still has a problem with all that but
but one of the reasons you tend to see more comedy in state legislatures is that they have this obligation to keep working together because you have to pass a budget and there's certain things you have to do and when you put aside the basic ideology, there are other things that require a commonality of need that will get people to work together. The filibuster has been a useful tool but it was only useful when people actually believed in and abided by
The basic rules of the system the Republican party has shown itself incapable of following rules. It does not like and we cannot get to a nation where citizens get to participate in the selection of those Senators. If we do not eliminate the filibuster to create the very Base Line democracy that we require for this time.
I'm going to touch on that a little bit because one thing one thing paint me there, which is it. The Republican party has been unable to follow rules. It doesn't lie.
Like and what I think is interesting about the Republican party is that ended up kind of party for that matter is they will follow the rules. It just turned out the rules created a minority and path to power of minority and path to obstruction and one of the places where I end up in a lot of disagreement with people in some of these issues is it I think you get the political parties and the political system that your rules will deliver. And so if you can block everything as the minority party you will
If you can to the maybe you have to compromise to get things done because having your hand and finger prints on the bill is better than endlessly being useless in out of power. And if you can't win with 46% of the to party voters Republican party did in 2016, then maybe you'll pick standard bearers who might win 51 percent of the two party vote because you need to win more more votes. I think we've become very I don't know mythological about our political system. We have an invented history as if like what we're doing.
Now goes all the way back to the founders as if the founders themselves are somehow infallible as if we were built for political parties of this nature and we've somehow I think just lost this idea that you you want to create rules that are going to give you the kind of political system and competition that you want to end. Its maybe my one piece of optimism about the Republican party. I think if they had to compete for votes they would is just that they don't the rules
don't make them and so they don't you know, that that's exactly my point about state legislatures.
This notion of the filibuster to your to your point. It is a romanticized idea that this is what gives the Senate nobility no gives the Senate deniability. They get to pretend that they couldn't come to a decision because they couldn't get 60 out of a hundred. Number one. We haven't always had a hundred Senators. We also have not always had the filibuster and what we do need we've got to restore the building blocks of our democracy, which is that we've got to make certain America's Americans can vote which is why
in my mind and the mind of President Obama, if you have to destroy a made-up rule to save the basic notion of who we are as a nation a republic that elects its leadership and democracy that determines how that leadership takes shape it is worth doing and if in doing so, you also create a competitive nature at every level of government so that we have to talk to one another
And negotiate with one another to get what we need. Then that is the truest example of who we are supposed to be as a nation.
We've been talking so far about the political aspect of democracy the access to the to the political system itself, but I want to in the time we have left talk about a couple of the other components and and what is the economic dimension of it? We've talked about the political party incentives here, but we also live in a time of extreme income and wealth inequality and we also live in a time when
when a lot of people have very very little they don't have a job. They don't have Medicaid in many states that have not expanded the the Affordable Care Act and their ideas of democracy that go well beyond the political aspects, but that argue that there's a certain amount of sufficiency needed and then also a quality needed in order for there to be a bear level of democratic equality and relations between people I'm curious how you think about that that economic dimension of it and and what it does or doesn't demand of us that
is
What animates me as much as anything else so when I did not become governor, I had some time. I created fair fight to focus on protecting access to democracy and protecting the franchise itself. I created fear count because the US Census is the least understood and most powerful instrument of strategy planning and investment in this nation, and I created the southern economic advancement.
IT project because the reason we need the right to vote and the reason we need a fair and accurate census is that the policies that govern our daily lives particularly those economic policies determine the quality of life that we get to live I believe in democracy because I think it is the best system available for governments. I believe in voting not because of its mythical or Mystic power as an act but because voting is how we get
To the things we need and for me the pragmatism of a fair democracy and an act of democracy and enabled democracy is that the only way we can tackle these intractable issues of income inequality wealth and equality but also lack of access to healthcare education system that is entirely predicated on your zip code and your race these challenges cannot be met if we do not have an active and engaged democracy.
That includes the voices and the lives of those who suffer most when we do not make the best choices. And so yes, the economic Dimension to me is the motivating factor. I grew up Working Poor in Mississippi. And in many ways my parents were able to either abrogate the effects or work around it, but people aren't born into the world with my parents and so my obligation my commitment my drive
Is grounded in this idea that our economic well-being is entirely premised on our access to democracy
you did you tell a story in your book that is that was wild about a colleague of yours Republican colleague during a debate over spending on education pulling you aside and saying is if I'm remembering this correctly that will look you didn't have any of this and you turned out fine. So can you just talk about that for a minute? Because I think that speaks a lot to a lot to the dueling ideologies around this.
Particular question.
Yes, so he was a representative from Fairly. He was from wealthy and he was from wealth and he represented two counties one. That was a very wealthy white County and the other one was a poorer and majority County of color. And so his in this debate about investment in education. He was he was just befuddled by why I would argue for pouring more resources into communities.
In his mind had simply refused to educate themselves and he said to me William Stacy you're you turned out fine. Why would we need to do this? And my answer to him was what I said but not everyone is born with my parents. My parents figured out the cartography of Gulfport, Mississippi to get us zoned into the best school possible while we still lived on the poor Street imaginable in that side of town and that was before GPS.
Family should not have to do the type of navigation manipulation and prayer that my parents had to do to guarantee opportunity for their children. That is antithetical to who we hold ourselves out to be as a nation. I believe that there is no guarantee of a quality of success, but there should be a guarantee of equality of opportunity and there should be no dueling notion of economics if we are doing our systems are situated properly.
You're doing our work, right? Then we can achieve an equality of opportunity and we can achieve an equity of outcome that meets what people are willing and able to put into the
system's one of the things I was thinking about after reading that story with something Jared Kushner just said because it's easy to think. Well, this is stuff going on and we're did you know like State Legislature somewhere because lots of stories come out of state legislators, but he just said on Fox and Friends one thing we've seen a lot of in the black community, which is mostly
it is a President Trump's policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they are complaining about but he can't want them to be successful more than they want to be successful come in time covid this coming at the time of gigantic levels of unemployment. I think the theme of this conversation apart and it animates a lot of the Republican party's attack on Democracy itself is that there are no power differentials people just want an unfair hand up if you don't win the competition. It's on you if you can't navigate.
The election system it's on you and all the time. They're thrown up barriers to that. I'm just curious how you read the election from from from that perspective. And if the actual and if Joe Biden the Democrats win, if you think that will actually change in a way that people notice in their
lives. I think that that animating dynamic in the Republican party is real it is pervasive and it is unlikely to be eliminated in a single election cycle or three I do not
Not believe that we elect saviors. I am hopeful that a Biden Administration will approach these questions with not just an empathy with but with an actual understanding of the historical impediments that are not long ago history. These are very real very current very modern examples of the challenges, but they are born of things that have been happening and didn't stop until maybe the six 70s.
Early 80s, I mean we have to remember the Voting Rights Act when it was reauthorized in 75. That was the first time it actually took care of Native American and Latinos who were still being subjected to literacy tests by the man who went on to become the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court that the inability of blacks to build wealth through housing is directly related to federal policy. And so there is a either Miss.
Understanding of history or a deliberate refusal to acknowledge the connections of the laws and policies that have guided the lives of so many who have been oppressed or under invested in for so long in this country. I think the by Administration will understand that because if you read the build back better plan, if you look at what is in their racial Equity plan, it is an incredible acknowledgment of what remains to be done and it is still not enough.
and that is why democracy in its fullest form is so important because we need people who wake up and believe that they get to vote for a mayor for a governor for a president but that if they also get to vote for school board members who do not run on the proposition of eliminating access to their education and when you have a robust democracy that is fully engaged and that is fully accessible to those who are eligible what you then see our actual
ages because they'll outcomes of wives in part because again, there are more of us than there have been before the demographic inflection point isn't simply a change in who votes for democrat or republican. It's a change in who can participate and force those changes to be permanent and that I think is what's the most terrifying part of this Evolution that we face for Republicans. It was one thing to try to block communities from participation and it was quite convenient that certain communities.
Sentence simply didn't participate because of past history that was not actually, you know, they're direct fault in 2020, but they've enjoyed it. But the reality is whether it is a Democrat or Republican or a federalist who imposes voter suppression. If we as a nation can finally break those barriers and create opportunity for participation. I believe that we can make the changes we need and it will
Will not happen in a single by the administration it will not happen in a decade, but we can lay the foundations and we can make aggressive progress because the most important part of the demographic changes. We are seeing that they're not going to stop I
think that is a great place to end. I know you've got other important work to be doing. So let me ask you was always our final question here, which is what are three books that have influenced you and you would recommend to the audience.
I would recommend Ida by Paula Giddings It's a Wonderful biography of I to be walls
I would recommend charged by Emily bazelon if you want to understand why Criminal Justice Reform has to be broader and deeper and Incredibly localized I would read her book. And then one of my favorite fiction works is the intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. It's
just a beautiful book
that examines race and class and does it through a woman who inspects elevators using intuition versus
empiricism. I will read anything by Colson Whitehead, so I'm going to pick that up.
Stacey Abrams, thank you so much. Azra. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Thank you Stacey Abrams for being here to all of you for being here to raise your karma for researching Jeffrey geld for producing go vote go vote a vote because our conscience VOX media podcast production.
This is Sam's olenick. I'm an assistant managing editor at the New York Times. Our Newsroom has been empty since March. Oh, we've been busier than ever before. The pandemic has changed how we work, but it hasn't changed what we do. This is why we became journalists
to bring to light real
verified information when the stakes couldn't be higher. We
can't do this work without our subscribers. If
you'd like to subscribe.
Please go to nytimes.com /
subscribe and thanks.
Hi, I'm Neil Patel co-founder and editor and chief of The Verge and host of decoder a new podcast from The Verge in the VOX media podcast network of a big ideas and other problems for over a decade. I've been interviewing leaders from the worlds of Technology business and policy about how they run their organizations make decisions and consider policy changes that could fundamentally alter entire Industries like Senator Ed Markey on the future of connectivity in America. Broadband has become the equivalent of
of water or electricity for people AMD CEO. Dr. Lisa Sue on building the next generation
of processors, you know, the idea was technology is you have to make a set of choices three to five years in advance Google and alphabet
CEO Sundar pichai on the current crisis and adapting to it cold. It is blurred the lines between consumer and Enterprise and people are using products in all kinds of contexts and Neil Young on. Well his feelings the MacBook Pro. It's a piece of crap. Are you kidding with decoder? I'll be
during these conversations with a diverse cast of CEOs policymakers and innovators some you know, and some you wouldn't expect we'll talk about how they're
navigating and ever-changing
Landscape what keeps them up at night and what it all means for our shared future. We're gonna ask some tough questions. We're gonna break some news and we're going to have some fun. So look for a decoder with nilay Patel in apple podcasts
for your favorite
podcast app.
