Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: America's basic cable elections are coming up in November, which
Speaker 2: is just five COVID waves away, So now's as good
Speaker 2: a time as any to check in on how America's
Speaker 2: elections are shaping up. In our ongoing segment Vote Gasm
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two Voting it's what makes America the greatest
Speaker 2: democracy in the world. And if you don't like American democracy,
Speaker 2: America will come invade your country to show you in
Speaker 2: person how good choosing for yourself is. And as we
Speaker 2: approach the twenty twenty two midterm elections, Republican led states
Speaker 2: across America are busy fine tuning their voting processes to
Speaker 2: make sure that they're even more perfect. Take Texas, for example,
Speaker 2: During the last election, people were so frustrated by how
Speaker 2: many voting options they had. They could vote in person,
Speaker 2: they could mail it in, there was drive through voting,
Speaker 2: Too many choices. It was so annoying. So now Texas
Speaker 2: is saying, don't worry, We're giving you fewer options so
Speaker 2: you don't have to worry about choices anymore. Oh and
Speaker 2: in Georgia, voters were complaining about how many convenient ballot
Speaker 2: drop boxes were cluttering the streets. Well, thankfully, there's going
Speaker 2: to be a lot fewer of them, and they're going
Speaker 2: to be a lot harder to find. This November. In Iowa,
Speaker 2: they're reducing early voting and closing the polls earlier on
Speaker 2: election day, which we can all agree is great because
Speaker 2: who wants to vote after work? I mean, that's prime
Speaker 2: Netflix time. Baby, democracy can wait. Now, all of these
Speaker 2: changes have just affected the process for voting, but some
Speaker 2: of America's most respected leaders also trying to fine tune
Speaker 2: the process for counting votes, and they're doing this to
Speaker 2: make sure that the votes are counted the right way.
Speaker 3: Allies of Donald Trump are trying to move some of
Speaker 3: the guardrails that prevented him from overturning to twenty twenty election. Now,
Speaker 3: according to The Post, Trump and his supporters are pushing
Speaker 3: a plan to place loyalists in key election posts, from
Speaker 3: poll watchers and precinct judges to county clerks and state
Speaker 3: attorneys general.
Speaker 4: We have to be a lot sharper the next time
Speaker 4: when it comes to counting the vote, is a famous statement.
Speaker 4: Sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate,
Speaker 4: and we can't let that ever ever happen again. They
Speaker 4: have to get tougher and smarter.
Speaker 2: Is that a famous saying? There's a famous saying that
Speaker 2: the vote counter. I've never heard that saying in my
Speaker 2: entire life. I know I'm going to get a lot
Speaker 2: of flak for saying this, But Trump is totally right.
Speaker 2: He's right about being tough. You got to count those
Speaker 2: votes hard. You show any weakness, those ballots are going
Speaker 2: to take you girl. And for Trump to say the
Speaker 2: vote council is more important than the candidate, I mean
Speaker 2: that just shows you how committed he is to ensuring
Speaker 2: the democratic process goes the way he wants it to.
Speaker 2: I mean, think about it. Donald Trump said, stop thinking
Speaker 2: about me so much. It's unprecedented. So that's just some
Speaker 2: of the admirable work Republicans have been getting up to.
Speaker 2: But the Democrats have been trying to make changes of
Speaker 2: their own. And if you ask them, everyone should be
Speaker 2: able to vote with barely any effort, which would be
Speaker 2: crazy because then everyone would vote, including Bill Cosby.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: So they've been pushing their own laws in Congress, and
Speaker 2: last night they almost got their way.
Speaker 6: We're going to begin with a major setback for Democrats.
Speaker 6: On Capitol Hill. What would have been their landmark voting
Speaker 6: rights bill failed fifty two to forty eight in the
Speaker 6: Senate last night, with two Democrats joining all fifty Republicans
Speaker 6: in opposing a rules change to push it through.
Speaker 7: To those surprise, it was Senator s Kirsten Cinemon Joe
Speaker 7: Manchin who helped Republicans kill hopes for filibuster reform and
Speaker 7: voting rights. Eliminating the filibuster would be the easy way out.
Speaker 6: Wasn't meant to be easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Joe Manchin is rights, Everything in the Senate should
Speaker 2: be as difficult as possible. If Democrats want a possibile
Speaker 2: Chuck Schumer should have to carry it through a stage
Speaker 2: of American Ninja Warrior first. But yes, Republicans were able
Speaker 2: to use the filibuster to block the Democrats voting rights
Speaker 2: bill with the help of Democrats Joe Manchin the Curson Cinema,
Speaker 2: because you see, those two do support the Democrats voting
Speaker 2: rights bills, they just don't support making sure that they pass, which,
Speaker 2: when you think about it, is actually it's so inspiring,
Speaker 2: you know. Joe Manchin and Curson Cinema believed so strongly
Speaker 2: in the power of voting, that they used their vote
Speaker 2: to block voting rights for the entire country. They were unvoting,
Speaker 2: voting by voting. So it was the right thing for
Speaker 2: Mansion and Cinema to do. And basically everyone loves them
Speaker 2: for it. But as usual, there are haters out there
Speaker 2: who just don't get it.
Speaker 7: If you think this bill makes sense, and if you're
Speaker 7: worried about the future of American democracy, and if you're
Speaker 7: prepared to vote for the bill, so why are you
Speaker 7: wasting everybody's time and not voting for the rule change
Speaker 7: that allows us to pass the bill? You know, it's
Speaker 7: like inviting somebody to lunch, putting out a great spread
Speaker 7: and say you can't eat.
Speaker 2: This is why people shouldn't debate on an empty stomach.
Speaker 2: If we're not gonna pass this bill, can someone at
Speaker 2: least pass me a goddamn sandwich. But this is just
Speaker 2: classic Bernie Sanders Man. He thinks just because those two
Speaker 2: Democrats say they support the bill, they should vote accordingly. Really, Bernie,
Speaker 2: it's called politics, not logic tics. See what I did there,
Speaker 2: changed it with politics, and I made it. Maybe if
Speaker 2: he had spoken off to lunch, Bernie would have understood
Speaker 2: how much sense. This makes because what Joe Mention is
Speaker 2: saying is I want to help you out of the water.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna throw you a rope, but I want
Speaker 2: to throw you the rope, and any drowning man would have.
Speaker 2: It's the thought that counts, Isn't that right? Droning matter
Speaker 2: can't hear what he's saying, but he agrees. So for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, the right to vote has gotten people very
Speaker 2: passionate on both sides. In fact, it's become such a
Speaker 2: big deal that they even woke up Joe Biden so
Speaker 2: that he could weigh.
Speaker 8: In with the voting rights push hitting a dead end,
Speaker 8: President Biden was asked whether this year's midterms would be
Speaker 8: fairly conducted and legitimate after many Republican led states and
Speaker 8: acted new voting restrictions.
Speaker 2: All depends on.
Speaker 7: Whether or not we're able.
Speaker 5: To make the case to the American people that some
Speaker 5: of this is being set up to try to alter
Speaker 5: the outcome of the election.
Speaker 6: It's never good for an American president to sow seeds
Speaker 6: of doubt in the legitimacy of American elections. The language
Speaker 6: is being used is clearly concerning.
Speaker 9: I thought that undermining our election results is a threat
Speaker 9: to our democracy.
Speaker 5: The last thing you wanted to hear was to hear
Speaker 5: from President Biden that there are questions about the legitimacy
Speaker 5: of the elections. You needed the president to say, now,
Speaker 5: we've got the best electoral system in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Joe Biden needs to step up and
Speaker 2: say that not a single other country in the world
Speaker 2: has a better electoral system than America. People in Denmark,
Speaker 2: they wish, they wish they could spend all of election
Speaker 2: day sweating in a high school gym. I mean sure,
Speaker 2: that's why most functioning countries actually have the elections run
Speaker 2: by non partisan, independent commissions, you know, to make sure
Speaker 2: that politicians can't twist the voting laws for their own gain.
Speaker 2: But I mean that would just be ridiculous. I mean,
Speaker 2: think about it. You want the people in charge of
Speaker 2: the election to have some skin in the game, right,
Speaker 2: That's how you know it's fair. Imagine how stupid it
Speaker 2: would be if a basketball game had a separate group
Speaker 2: of people on the court just to enforce the rules.
Speaker 2: That would make no sense. That's why instead, the strongest
Speaker 2: teams get to the site for themselves, whether they committed
Speaker 2: any fouls and that's why, my friends, America's electoral system
Speaker 2: is still the best, and why nobody should ever say otherwise,
Speaker 2: because it's not true, and also because even if it was,
Speaker 2: it will be really uncomfortable to hear. Yesterday, the US
Speaker 2: Supreme Court upheld a law in South Carolina that requires
Speaker 2: male in voters to have their absentee ballot witnessed by
Speaker 2: one other person, which, in these days of pandemic isolation,
Speaker 2: is going to make it hard for some people to
Speaker 2: vote at all. It turns out, though, South Carolina isn't
Speaker 2: the only state making it more difficult for people to
Speaker 2: vote by mail. And you're asking how that can be, well,
Speaker 2: our very own Roywood Junior has more.
Speaker 1: The RONA election is upon us, and vote by mail
Speaker 1: is the only way people will be able to vote safely.
Speaker 1: But not all the states are making it easy.
Speaker 5: The Supreme Court approving a request from South Carolina to
Speaker 5: reinstate a law requiring absentee ballots to have a witness's signature.
Speaker 3: The process of notorizing your absentee ballot in Missouri has
Speaker 3: also been closely watched by local civil rights groups.
Speaker 9: Voters in Texas are confused about what exactly is allowed
Speaker 9: in our state.
Speaker 10: If you put on your application that you want to
Speaker 10: vote by mail because of COVID, that application must be rejected.
Speaker 2: Damn.
Speaker 1: States like Texas and South Carolina really are actively limiting
Speaker 1: absent tee voting. To find out more, I spoke with
Speaker 1: miRNA Pariz, an expert in American voting rights. Madam Pariz,
Speaker 1: bring me up to speed real quick. Where are we
Speaker 1: with voting by mail in this country right now?
Speaker 11: We're going to have some glitches, but every state in
Speaker 11: the country has a vote by mail process. We have
Speaker 11: been using vote by mail since the Civil War. But
Speaker 11: we still have a handful of states that are going
Speaker 11: to put barriers in front of the ballot box, forcing
Speaker 11: people to choose between their health and exercising their fundamental
Speaker 11: right to vote.
Speaker 1: Why are some states like Texas making it so hard
Speaker 1: for people to vote by mail.
Speaker 11: I think there's no other explanation other than they're worried
Speaker 11: about how their own voters are going to vote.
Speaker 1: Makes perfect sense. The people in charge of voting making
Speaker 1: sure that people can't vote feels very American to me.
Speaker 1: And what a surprise. Turns out most of the states
Speaker 1: pushing back against vote by mail are controlled by Republicans.
Speaker 1: But maybe I'm not giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt,
Speaker 1: because if you ask them, they'll say there's a perfectly
Speaker 1: good reason for limiting absentee ballots.
Speaker 11: President Trump has warned for months that expanded voting by
Speaker 11: mail because of the pandemic, will lead to massive voter fraud.
Speaker 10: There will be extraordinary confusion and chaos in the aftermath.
Speaker 6: It is open to fraud and coercion.
Speaker 2: A postman in a fairy Republican district, for example, could
Speaker 2: throw out every ballot that he gets.
Speaker 1: There'll be no ramifications for that. We all know that
Speaker 1: rogue mail men can be dangerous, But do these claims legit.
Speaker 1: Kim Wyman, one of the ogs of vote by Mail,
Speaker 1: says her state system it's proof that voting by mail works.
Speaker 5: Our state votes entirely by mail, and we have since
Speaker 5: twenty eleven. So we mail every voter that's eligible a
Speaker 5: ballot about twenty days before election day, and then they
Speaker 5: get to vote when it's convenient for them.
Speaker 1: Why should I trust your process? Wat should the other
Speaker 1: forty nine states trust what you're doing?
Speaker 5: Because we have spent about twenty years really fine tuning it,
Speaker 5: building in the security measures, so when people attack it
Speaker 5: and call it into question and say there's fraud, we
Speaker 5: can demonstrate that it's secure, and we can show how
Speaker 5: it really empowers everyone to participate.
Speaker 1: Have you told your Republican colleagues and other states about this,
Speaker 1: because they don't seem too interested in expanding vote by mail.
Speaker 5: Well, we've been working with all fifty states, and certainly
Speaker 5: different states are in different places in terms of technology
Speaker 5: and their capacity for mail and voting. But you know,
Speaker 5: I think every one of my counterparts wants to empower
Speaker 5: their voters, give them options to be able to choose
Speaker 5: to vote at home or vote in person, and I'm
Speaker 5: confident by November they'll be ready.
Speaker 1: You say your office is been in contact with all the.
Speaker 7: Other states, Yes, we have.
Speaker 1: Would can you talk to Texas one more time? I
Speaker 1: think they sent you to voicemail check with Texas? I
Speaker 1: will whyman a Republican insists this should not be a
Speaker 1: partisan issue, and yet it seems like it is. Colorado's
Speaker 1: Secretary of State Jenner Griswold, has another word for it.
Speaker 9: That is voter suppression, trying to make it harder for
Speaker 9: Americans to use the best way to vote during a
Speaker 9: pandemic is voter suppression. We shouldn't be forcing Americans to
Speaker 9: risk their health to cast a ballot.
Speaker 1: A lot of Republicans don't like vote by mail, and
Speaker 1: they use the argument of ballot tampering. And you know
Speaker 1: you can take the ballot and throw them out in
Speaker 1: the trash somewhere. So what do you say to those critics.
Speaker 9: I'll tell you Colorado shows the opposite. In two out
Speaker 9: of our three last general elections, more Republican voters have
Speaker 9: used the mail ballot than Democrats.
Speaker 1: Wait, so Republicans are fighting to stop something that bistically
Speaker 1: has worked to their advantage in some states.
Speaker 9: You know that's totally true.
Speaker 1: I would call that biting the hand that feeds you.
Speaker 1: But it seemed like Republicans just ate the whole damn all.
Speaker 1: So it's voter suppression, plain and simple. But with only
Speaker 1: weeks left until the election, is there anything we can
Speaker 1: do to ensure people's ability to vote? Listen, Matim, Secretary,
Speaker 1: what you are doing is amazing. You have my full support.
Speaker 1: It's just too bad that there's nothing I could do
Speaker 1: to help. But good luck.
Speaker 9: The good news for you, Roy is that you can
Speaker 9: actually sign up to be a pull worker.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, you mean work at the What day is
Speaker 1: election day? That's a Tuesday, November first Tuesday. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not open. I'm sorry, but it's okay.
Speaker 9: Roy, we have early voting. Are you available on October nineteenth?
Speaker 2: Got right?
Speaker 9: Know you're not frozen. How about November.
Speaker 1: I'm frozen. I'm frozen. I'm frozen. For the love of God,
Speaker 1: make sure you check with your states to vote by
Speaker 1: mail this year.
Speaker 8: My guest tonight.
Speaker 2: My guest tonight is the chair of African American Studies
Speaker 2: at Emory University and a New York Times bestselling author
Speaker 2: whose latest book is called One Person, No Vote, How
Speaker 2: voter suppression is destroying our democracy. Please welcome Carol Anderson.
Speaker 6: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 10: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: It's so wonderful having you here. You wrote a book
Speaker 2: called White Rage, which was a New York Times bestseller.
Speaker 2: You spoke in depth about how America is dealing with
Speaker 2: an issue that it really hasn't dealt with completely, which
Speaker 2: is the rage that many white people feel at what
Speaker 2: appears to be America changing. This book is I guess
Speaker 2: based in some way off of that, and yet is
Speaker 2: a completely different topic. One Person, No votes, voter suppression
Speaker 2: destroying our democracy. How bad and how big do you
Speaker 2: believe voter suppression actually is?
Speaker 10: I think it is massive. We have had millions of
Speaker 10: people blocked from voting. We have had millions perge from
Speaker 10: the roles who had been on the voter rolls. The
Speaker 10: purging and the voter suppression has been so intense that
Speaker 10: we have Donald Trump in the White House right now.
Speaker 10: That's the power of voter suppression.
Speaker 2: The numbers in the twenty sixteen election, especially in and
Speaker 2: around the black vote, were really interesting. You saw in
Speaker 2: key states, in swing states where voter dropped from it
Speaker 2: may have been like seventy eight thousand people turning out
Speaker 2: and dropped to below fifty thousand or you know, you
Speaker 2: saw drastic drops. Now, some people have argued that that
Speaker 2: was because Hillary Clinton did motivates black voters to come out.
Speaker 2: But you've looked at the data, You've analyzed a lot
Speaker 2: of the information, and it seems like there's been a
Speaker 2: systematic efforts to remove people of color from the voting
Speaker 2: roles White people of color.
Speaker 10: Though, it's because that after the two thousand and eight
Speaker 10: election with Barack Obama. Barack Obama brought fifteen million new
Speaker 10: voters to the polls with that incredible ground game, they
Speaker 10: were overwhelmingly black, Latino, young, poor. And with that, then
Speaker 10: the Republican Party that has moved further and further to
Speaker 10: the right and has become more and more white, and
Speaker 10: their policies have become more right wing. They don't have
Speaker 10: policies that resonate with the growing diversity of America. And
Speaker 10: so instead of thinking about how do we reform this
Speaker 10: party so that it resonates with America, that our policies
Speaker 10: are really strong and talk about benefiting more Americans, instead,
Speaker 10: what they decided to do is to suppress the vote.
Speaker 2: Now, the argument the other way from people like Chris Kobuk,
Speaker 2: you know, from Donald Trump and his team, has been
Speaker 2: we're protecting democracy. That's why we scrub people of votes roles.
Speaker 2: If they've died, if they no longer respond to male,
Speaker 2: then why are we keeping on keeping them on the
Speaker 2: VOTU roles? How do you respond to that?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 10: And I respond to that because one of the ways
Speaker 10: that this works in the why is so effective is
Speaker 10: that they're able to use that cover of being reasonable.
Speaker 10: You know, we're just keeping the voter rolls up. But
Speaker 10: when you really look at what they're doing, is that
Speaker 10: those the people that they're scrubbing. They're not scrubbing people
Speaker 10: who have moved or who have died. Overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly who
Speaker 10: they're scrubbing are people who are African Americans, people who
Speaker 10: are young, people who are poor. And they're doing it
Speaker 10: by the characteristics say, oh, we don't want black people
Speaker 10: to vote, because there's still this thing called the fifteenth Amendment.
Speaker 10: Although the Voting Rights Act got gutted by the Supreme Court,
Speaker 10: there's still this thing called the fifteenth Amendment. So what
Speaker 10: they do is they go after the characteristics of a people,
Speaker 10: societally imposed characteristics. They go after those things like if
Speaker 10: you move a lot, and we know that people move
Speaker 10: a lot, particularly if you're poor, you don't stay in
Speaker 10: the same house, right That moving then becomes a reason
Speaker 10: to knock people off the rolls.
Speaker 2: Is there anything people on the ground can do, What
Speaker 2: can people do to protect their votes?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 10: Absolutely so. There are several things. One is you have
Speaker 10: to register to vote, and there are organizations that are
Speaker 10: on the ground helping people get the identification, get the
Speaker 10: documents they need in order to get the identification. Organizations
Speaker 10: like vote writers that are doing that work. Also, when
Speaker 10: you're registered, check the Secretaries of states voter registration page
Speaker 10: to make sure you're registered to vote, because they are
Speaker 10: notorious for purging people off the list, even well closely
Speaker 10: close to an election. So you think that you're registered
Speaker 10: to vote, you go in to vote and boom, your
Speaker 10: names nowhere there, and then you're getting the run around.
Speaker 10: I say, I think the other thing is really important
Speaker 10: is to help others, so that you're volunteering, you're you know,
Speaker 10: you've got election poll workers, and you're you're paying attention
Speaker 10: to what's happening at the polls when somebody is getting
Speaker 10: the run around. I think that that is really important
Speaker 10: as well. In there are organizations like the Lawyer's Committee
Speaker 10: that's doing that incredible work. So that's what we can
Speaker 10: do and register. The deadline is coming up in early
Speaker 10: October registered to vote, because we cannot be part of
Speaker 10: the solution if we're just sitting there and not participating.
Speaker 9: We've got to do.
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