Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Josh and for this week's select, I've
Speaker 1: chosen our episode from May twenty seventeen on voter suppression.
Speaker 1: Once in a while, we do a topic where, no
Speaker 1: matter how hard we try, it just turns out to
Speaker 1: be a one sided thing. We don't pick those topics
Speaker 1: because they're one sided. They just turn out that way
Speaker 1: despite our best efforts. So take a gander at this
Speaker 1: episode and see what you think about all that.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast me. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Jerome Rowland.
Speaker 1: You put the three of us together in a room,
Speaker 1: shake it up, pick out some of the chess hares.
Speaker 1: You got stuff you should know?
Speaker 3: All right? That was gross.
Speaker 1: I thought you'd like that.
Speaker 3: You ready to get angry on this one.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to keep it cool, man. I woke up
Speaker 1: yesterday and said, I really want to tick off a
Speaker 1: significant portion of our listeners. So what could what topic
Speaker 1: could we do? And I thought voter suppression perfect.
Speaker 2: Well you know what, man, I've been trying to think
Speaker 2: about the why this bugs me so much voter suppression
Speaker 2: obviously bugs me because it's not right. Sure, But what
Speaker 2: really bugs me, I think is that if you're in Washington,
Speaker 2: DC and you're in government, like everyone knows about this
Speaker 2: stuff and everyone talks about it frankly when the microphones
Speaker 2: aren't around, right, Like, do you watch the show Veep?
Speaker 1: I love it. I've only seen season five, but man,
Speaker 1: it is so good.
Speaker 3: Like supposedly, that's kind of how it is.
Speaker 2: Sure Like, when the microphones aren't around, they all talk
Speaker 2: about politics in very frank terms. But as soon as
Speaker 2: you get on television or in front of a microphone,
Speaker 2: you have to tell the party lines on both sides
Speaker 2: with this rhetoric crap, and it ends up you can't
Speaker 2: even really talk about the things.
Speaker 1: Well no, but plus also, I think one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that that is the way it is is because
Speaker 1: you got to feed the sheeple like a certain like
Speaker 1: you said that company line or that party line, because
Speaker 1: if you really talked about what was really going on,
Speaker 1: some of the people who agree with your BS would
Speaker 1: otherwise disagree with the actual thing that's going on.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, Well, yeah, and let's just
Speaker 2: go ahead and say it. And this one on voter suppression. Historically,
Speaker 2: the Republican Party has purposely done things to try and
Speaker 2: keep certain people from voting because they probably vote Democrat, right,
Speaker 2: And they can't just say that, so they say, no,
Speaker 2: it's really about voter fraud, right, that's a big problem.
Speaker 2: And Democrats want those votes, and they say it's because
Speaker 2: they just want a very inclusive democratic process us, but
Speaker 2: that's not true. They want those votes because they're probably
Speaker 2: going to be Democrat.
Speaker 1: Votes, right, and Democrats will do anything, including voter fraud,
Speaker 1: to get people to the polls or to get those votes.
Speaker 1: That's the current, that's the argument that's going on right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know what I'm saying, though, like neither
Speaker 2: one of them can say those things, so they have
Speaker 2: to stand behind these two kind of bogus reasons, and
Speaker 2: it's just infuriating.
Speaker 1: Right. So the reasons these bogus reasons, ostensibly bogus reasons,
Speaker 1: are that if you take measures to make it a
Speaker 1: little difficult to vote, what you're going to do is
Speaker 1: protect the integrity of the electoral system. Right, This is
Speaker 1: the Republican's viewpoint. If you do that, then there's going
Speaker 1: to be a couple of things. One, you're going to
Speaker 1: cut down on fraud, which again, the Democrats are just
Speaker 1: total fraudsters when it comes to voting as far as
Speaker 1: Republicans are concerned, right, And then it's also going to
Speaker 1: in some cases, sure, it's going to make it a
Speaker 1: little difficult for some people to vote. But the Republican
Speaker 1: way of thinking is, if you really care about voting,
Speaker 1: you're going to do whatever it takes to get to
Speaker 1: that poll and register and vote. And if you don't,
Speaker 1: if just a couple of simple barriers will keep you
Speaker 1: from doing that, then nuts to you, man, I don't
Speaker 1: care about your vote, Yeah, and ts for the Democrats
Speaker 1: who you probably would have voted for. That's like, that's
Speaker 1: the that's the argument in public that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: that you're saying is bogus, when it's really these people
Speaker 1: who are having access issues to voting because of the
Speaker 1: laws that the GOP is putting up are more likely
Speaker 1: to vote for Democrats. So hence these are these are
Speaker 1: targeted attempts to block people from voting for Democrats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the reality of it. Allegedly, we should say,
Speaker 1: chuck like there's just calling it voter suppression. Is kind
Speaker 1: of controversial in and of it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, no one likes to use those words because
Speaker 2: on the one side, like you said, they there's like
Speaker 2: it's not about voter suppression, it's about like, you know,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with having to have an ID to go
Speaker 2: cast a vote?
Speaker 1: Right? I mean on its face it makes sense. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know, they say you have to have ID to
Speaker 1: buy alcohol. If some clerk decides that he wants to
Speaker 1: see your ID, you have to show it to him
Speaker 1: or you can't buy alcohol. What's the problem with that?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: Right, and then you go to some parts of Texas
Speaker 2: and they say, well, you can use your your gun
Speaker 2: license to vote, but don't use your student ID.
Speaker 3: That doesn't count.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, like it's the fact that they're all very targeted,
Speaker 2: and everyone will see as we go through this, it's
Speaker 2: very targeted. Like and we'll bring up specific cases where
Speaker 2: you know, they find out like oh Man, leading up
Speaker 2: to the election where Barack Obama's first elect president's election,
Speaker 2: we saw a surge and increase in black voters in
Speaker 2: this county. So let's go to that county specifically and
Speaker 2: introduce some legislation that's going to make it harder for
Speaker 2: them to get to the polls specifically there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like so it's maddening, Oh it is.
Speaker 1: It's infuriating. Even I was reading kind of the other
Speaker 1: side on this by a guy named David French who
Speaker 1: writes for the National Review, and he was saying even
Speaker 1: he was like, if that happens what you just described,
Speaker 1: it should be vigorously litigated that that there's no excuse
Speaker 1: for that. For anything that's that's specifically targeting like minorities
Speaker 1: or the elderly, or making it difficult for any group
Speaker 1: that to to like purposefully making it harder for them
Speaker 1: to vote and targeting people like that, then yeah, it
Speaker 1: should be litigated and those those rules should be thrown out.
Speaker 3: Well, and that happens.
Speaker 2: It is liticated, litigated, and quite often reports do say
Speaker 2: like you can't do this, and they say, all right, well,
Speaker 2: we won't do it again.
Speaker 3: But it worked on this election.
Speaker 1: Right Well. One of the reasons why this we're currently
Speaker 1: in the midst of a really massive wave of voter
Speaker 1: suppression laws that are sweeping the country right now, and
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why it's being allowed to go
Speaker 1: on is because just like in Citizens United, the Roberts
Speaker 1: Supreme Court said, you know what, things are fine. We're
Speaker 1: just going to get an important provision of the Voting
Speaker 1: Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. And we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that in a minute, but it
Speaker 1: basically said, you, these states, in these specific districts in
Speaker 1: these states have a history of voter suppression, and we,
Speaker 1: the federal government, are going to keep an eye on
Speaker 1: you so much so that you can't make any changes
Speaker 1: to your voting procedures without the federal government approving it.
Speaker 1: And in twenty thirteen, I believe, the Supreme Court said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we're fine, we're post racial. We had
Speaker 1: a black president. We don't need that anymore. And they
Speaker 1: overturned that provision of the Voting Rights Act, and it's
Speaker 1: allowed again this this massive wave of voter suppression laws
Speaker 1: to be passed in this country.
Speaker 3: Man, we're already riled up.
Speaker 1: It's tough. It's tough not to be. You know, what,
Speaker 1: were you gonna say, should we take a break?
Speaker 3: No, not a break. I was gonna say it. Should
Speaker 3: we just go back and talk about history a little bit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's man, because the history is much easier to stomach.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, Okay, So and you put this article together
Speaker 2: with our own article and a bunch of other good stuff. Yes,
Speaker 2: nice work, thanks, But you point out that very astutely,
Speaker 2: that it's not in the constitution the right to vote.
Speaker 3: This has been.
Speaker 2: Left up to the states over the years, even though
Speaker 2: we've had you know, amendments since then that obviously allowed
Speaker 2: certain people the right to vote. It wasn't just originally
Speaker 2: included like, hey, everyone can vote. Everyone has the right
Speaker 2: to vote in this country.
Speaker 1: Right and no. Originally the only group that the that
Speaker 1: citizens of the United States could vote for was the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives, the Senate, and the president and the
Speaker 1: president still this is the case, were elected by an
Speaker 1: electoral college, right correct. So eventually they added Senate seats
Speaker 1: for people to be able to directly vote for. But
Speaker 1: in the first presidential election in seventeen eighty nine, the
Speaker 1: one that where George Washington won and was elected to
Speaker 1: the presidency, the first presidency of the United States, like
Speaker 1: six percent of the population in the US at the
Speaker 1: time were eligible to vote. And that was it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was only white men and freed African American
Speaker 2: slaves in just four states.
Speaker 1: I saw six six states. I was really surprised to
Speaker 1: see that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, who owned property?
Speaker 1: Right, that was a big one.
Speaker 3: Right, So that left like eight guys.
Speaker 1: Right they were allowed to But yeah, you had to
Speaker 1: own property, and that was the big division at first,
Speaker 1: even apparently more so than by race. It was by
Speaker 1: whether you were a landowner a property owner.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, and you had to be twenty one.
Speaker 2: There were certain religious restrictions too, So, like you said,
Speaker 2: that ended up six percent, six percent of the population
Speaker 2: could vote.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm going to cut them a little slack
Speaker 2: on the first election, say that they were trying to
Speaker 2: get it together. But six percent is an alarmingly low number.
Speaker 2: But they probably thought that was the six percent of
Speaker 2: people that mattered, right.
Speaker 1: I guess it's more inclusive than the one percent, but
Speaker 1: it's still pretty pretty low. We're in the single digits here,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: But like you were saying, it's a class distinction. Distinction
Speaker 2: was really kind of the biggest deal. And that changed
Speaker 2: a bit when war veterans who fought for independence from
Speaker 2: Britain stepped up and said, hey, a lot of us
Speaker 2: are not landowners and we helped free this country.
Speaker 3: Can we vote?
Speaker 2: And little by little states said all right, you know,
Speaker 2: you don't have to own property.
Speaker 3: It's eighteen fifty.
Speaker 2: And let's just say all white males can vote in
Speaker 2: some African American males, but definitely not women.
Speaker 1: Right, not yet, Just give us another seven decades or so. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're just trying to keep our heads from spinning over
Speaker 1: letting people who don't own property vote exactly. So in
Speaker 1: that bizarre did you know that the first group to
Speaker 1: agitate for voting rights was white men who didn't own
Speaker 1: land or veterans? I didn't know that either. So something
Speaker 1: really big happened in the middle of the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: that changed things as far as voting went. And that
Speaker 1: was the Civil War, Yeah, and the Thirteenth Amendment that
Speaker 1: and in slavery, followed by the fifteenth Amendment that granted
Speaker 1: suffrage to all men in the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Speaker 1: But again it's not women.
Speaker 2: Right, And it should have said dot dot supposedly, because
Speaker 2: that fifteenth Amendment is what unleashed sort of the first Like.
Speaker 3: Before there was just voter suppression.
Speaker 2: They were like, no, you just can't vote, and now
Speaker 2: they said, well, you can vote, and so they had
Speaker 2: to be creative with their voter suppression, right.
Speaker 1: And at first there was a period of reconstruction in
Speaker 1: the South after the Civil War where federal troops they
Speaker 1: I guess it was led still by General Ulysses Grant
Speaker 1: if he wasn't president by now, where federal troops were
Speaker 1: occupying the South under martial law, right, and they were
Speaker 1: enforcing the fifteenth Amendment and other laws that had come
Speaker 1: into effect after the Civil War, and it was like
Speaker 1: black people could hold office, they could vote, they could
Speaker 1: live in this transition period from slavery into freedom, and
Speaker 1: they were doing it on the auspices of the Union Army.
Speaker 1: But then the Union Army with drew pretty prematurely, I
Speaker 1: think in the eighteen seventies early eighteen seventies, and it
Speaker 1: went from the reconstruction South, which ended up lasting just
Speaker 1: a few years, to what became known as the Jim
Speaker 1: Crow South, which was basically slavery by any other name
Speaker 1: than slavery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's when the Dixiecrats, which were conservative Democrats, I guess,
Speaker 2: conservatives of the day, that's when they started to get
Speaker 2: creative and said, all right, well, we have this new
Speaker 2: fifteenth Amendment, so let's try and think of a lot
Speaker 2: of ways. Even though the law says that black men
Speaker 2: can vote, that we can keep them from doing so.
Speaker 2: So how about a literacy test, and not only just
Speaker 2: a literacy test, but maybe one only in English, so
Speaker 2: that way there's no way an immigrant can vote if
Speaker 2: they can't read English.
Speaker 3: Or maybe some.
Speaker 2: Poll taxes where you have to pay a dollar to
Speaker 2: register to vote.
Speaker 1: But in like twenty sixteen money that was like eight
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Actually looked it up, it's nine thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: In the early nineteen hundreds, I looked up like taxes,
Speaker 2: it was a dollar fifty to register and that would
Speaker 2: be like forty three dollars today. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 2: for a poor person who you know is maybe waffling
Speaker 2: on whether or not to bother voting, sure, charging them
Speaker 2: forty three dollars is probably going to seal the deal.
Speaker 2: And George actually had accumulative tax apparently for many years
Speaker 2: where every year, like if you were forty years old,
Speaker 2: every year from the age of twenty one that you
Speaker 2: weren't registered to vote, you would have to pay per
Speaker 2: year when you first registered to vote. Oh wow, So
Speaker 2: that was clearly targeting like a freed slave in his
Speaker 2: fifties would then have to pay a cumulative tax from
Speaker 2: the age from twenty one up to fifty. And you know,
Speaker 2: and again that just basically meant no one was going
Speaker 2: to register.
Speaker 1: Well, there were a lot of Grampa the clause laws too,
Speaker 1: which basically said that if you were registered to vote
Speaker 1: prior to the fifteenth Amendment, or your grandfather was registered
Speaker 1: to vote prior to the fifteenth Amendment, you you were
Speaker 1: eligible now under these Jim Crow laws. But most black
Speaker 1: people in the South were not registered to vote, nor
Speaker 1: were their grandparents prior to the fifteenth Amendment, so that
Speaker 1: basically just stripped them of their voting rights automatically as well.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned the literacy test too, Chuck, did you
Speaker 1: look into those at all?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean some of them.
Speaker 1: Some were like like recite the US Constitution. Some of
Speaker 1: them some were like that twenty pages long. And they
Speaker 1: would be administered by white Democrats. And again Democrats at
Speaker 1: the time were the party of Conservatives. We should do
Speaker 1: an episode on that on when the parties switched.
Speaker 3: Yeah, names, we've chatted about that before.
Speaker 1: So it would be left up to this poll worker
Speaker 1: who was administering the literacy test. It would be left
Speaker 1: up to their judgment whether the person passed or failed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it was up to them. It wasn't an objective test.
Speaker 1: It was a subjective test.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so the end result of this is in nineteen forty,
Speaker 2: nineteen forty, not eighteen forty, these suppression campaigns worked so
Speaker 2: well that only three percent of eligible voters African American
Speaker 2: Southerners were registered to vote by nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's probably one of the worst parts
Speaker 1: about that is that I'll bet in nineteen forty that
Speaker 1: the average white person considered black people politically disengaged in
Speaker 1: this country because of statistics like.
Speaker 3: That, Oh right, say, like, oh, they don't even vote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't even care about politics. I mean three
Speaker 1: percent of them are registered to vote even, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And this wasn't limited to the south, kind of up
Speaker 2: north and nationwide there were things going on.
Speaker 3: Notably, there was a for naturalized citizens.
Speaker 2: It was very long residency requirements basically to try and
Speaker 2: keep immigrants from voting for a long time.
Speaker 1: Especially the Chinese. Apparently did you know that I did not.
Speaker 1: There was an eighteen eighty two law. It's pretty on
Speaker 1: the nose. The Chinese Exclusion Act, and it said, if
Speaker 1: you're Chinese and you're an immigrant, you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: become a citizen, which meant they couldn't vote. And this
Speaker 1: is on the books in the United States until nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this stuff is in ancient history. That's why it's
Speaker 2: so shocking, you know. Yep, So nineteen twenty comes along
Speaker 2: and women were finally given the right to vote thanks
Speaker 2: to the Nineteenth Amendment, And you mentioned the Voting Rights
Speaker 2: Act of nineteen sixty five, which finally got rid of
Speaker 2: the Jim Crow voting laws officially in the South. But
Speaker 2: that didn't mean that suppression intimidation didn't still go on.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: You know, like whenever the federal government decided that it
Speaker 1: needed to lend a hand and assist the black population
Speaker 1: of the Southern States in gaining their citizenship, that there
Speaker 1: would be a huge backlash to that. And initially it
Speaker 1: meant the formation of the Clan, and then after the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Act, the clan again experienced this huge resurgence
Speaker 1: in popularity and membership, and acts of white terrorism just
Speaker 1: became the norm. And now that we're looking back on it,
Speaker 1: you know, we think of like the Civil Rights movement.
Speaker 1: When I think of that, I don't think of it
Speaker 1: as actually agitating for civil rights. I think of it
Speaker 1: as agitating for full citizenship and equal treatment under the
Speaker 1: law and everything that makes up civil rights. But you
Speaker 1: don't think of it as like, really, at the basis,
Speaker 1: what the civil rights leaders were agitating for were things
Speaker 1: like protection of their voting rights, access to the polls
Speaker 1: just says any white person would enjoy. And that march,
Speaker 1: that very famous march from Selma to Montgomery. Did you
Speaker 1: see that movie Selma?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I saw.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1: It's a great movie. Have you seen either thirteen or Thirteenth? Oh?
Speaker 3: No, I'm dying to see that one too, Dude.
Speaker 1: That one that's amazing. It's just amazing. It's really well done,
Speaker 1: and the stuff they're talking about is just so eye opening.
Speaker 1: It's great. Like it's one of those ones you'll watch
Speaker 1: more than once, I'm sure. Yeah, but that march from
Speaker 1: Selma to Montgomery was a march for voting rights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it actually helped usher in this Voting Rights Act
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty five because the Alabama State Patrol I believe,
Speaker 1: I'm like horseback with batons and whips and night sticks
Speaker 1: and tear gas just ruthlessly beat these unarmed, peaceful protesters
Speaker 1: in the street of Selma, and it was all captured
Speaker 1: on national television in broadcasts, and it really changed the
Speaker 1: mood of the nation as far as that goes. And
Speaker 1: it actually was supremely counterproductive to people who were against
Speaker 1: black voting because it helped protect black vote by the
Speaker 1: federal government through the Voting Right Tech to nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another thing that came with that act was an official
Speaker 2: ban on any quote test or device in quote to
Speaker 2: qualify voters on the basis of literacy, education or.
Speaker 3: Fluency in English.
Speaker 2: And then it took all the way till nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: six until poll taxes were banned, which was kind of
Speaker 2: way later than I thought.
Speaker 1: Well, it was like the next year.
Speaker 3: Well no, I mean just period.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, No, those Jim Crow laws were basically done
Speaker 1: away with after a century. Yeah, as they were around
Speaker 1: for a century in one form or another.
Speaker 3: Unbelievable. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then finally during Vietnam, they finally lowered the age
Speaker 2: voting age to eighteen and nineteen seventy one post Vietnam
Speaker 2: because veterans were like, hey, I can be drafted and
Speaker 2: shot and killed for my country, but I can't vote.
Speaker 3: And they all went, yeah, it's a good point.
Speaker 1: That is a good point to argue that one.
Speaker 2: You want to take a break, Yeah, man, all right,
Speaker 2: we'll be right back and talk about the eleven voter
Speaker 2: suppression techniques as why.
Speaker 4: Sk as tough.
Speaker 2: You should note, all right, we're back, and before actually
Speaker 2: we move on to some of these eleven techniques. My
Speaker 2: question for you, sir, at the basis of all this
Speaker 2: is voter fraud. Is what the argument is for a
Speaker 2: lot of these, especially with IDs, So is that, like,
Speaker 2: is voter fraud real?
Speaker 1: So, I mean everything I came across that strike me
Speaker 1: as legitimate, although I'm not sure how legitimate, like say
Speaker 1: a conservative might find it, but like the Brookings Institution,
Speaker 1: to me, it's definitely left leaning. But I would also
Speaker 1: say that it's quite a legitimate think tank. Right, But
Speaker 1: the studies that I've come across, I'll say, no, it's
Speaker 1: not really a thing like the It's basically a specter.
Speaker 1: It's a potential possibility, but it's in actuality it's not
Speaker 1: a thing. And one thing I saw was that this
Speaker 1: came I'm not sure where this one came from. But
Speaker 1: eighty six convictions. I have three hundred million votes cast
Speaker 1: in the last few elections. I would say that's probably
Speaker 1: about ten to twelve elections. There's only been eighty six
Speaker 1: convictions for voter fraud. And the other issue with this, specifically,
Speaker 1: specifically with voter ID laws is that most of those
Speaker 1: cases of fraud where people have actually been convicted of
Speaker 1: voter fraud were mail in ballots, and so like a
Speaker 1: voter ID card is not going to do anything for
Speaker 1: that because you don't produce ID to mail in a ballot.
Speaker 1: So the idea that there is a big problem with
Speaker 1: voter fraud is ostensibly not real, although of course Trump
Speaker 1: is going to he's carrying out an investigation and he's
Speaker 1: formed a commission, so I'm very curious to find out
Speaker 1: what they find. But even if it were a real thing,
Speaker 1: from the pattern that we're seeing, the voter ID laws
Speaker 1: aren't going to help anything anyway.
Speaker 2: So so far as it actually makes a difference in
Speaker 2: an election outcome, it is negligible.
Speaker 1: No, And I have to say there are It's not
Speaker 1: like the people who are who say, especially rank and
Speaker 1: file GOP members, right, not necessarily like high elected officials,
Speaker 1: but just like the average GOP party member. It's not
Speaker 1: like they're lunatics for believing that there's such a thing
Speaker 1: as widespread voter fraud, right, Like this is a big
Speaker 1: dram that's beat on the conservative side in conservative media,
Speaker 1: But there's also like instances in the past that can
Speaker 1: be pointed to saying like see, see, this is what
Speaker 1: they do. Like Acorn definitely didn't help anything. Acorn was
Speaker 1: a community organizing group that had been around since I
Speaker 1: think the eighties, and they were dedicated to getting lower
Speaker 1: income minority people who traditionally had trouble accessing the polls
Speaker 1: or voting, getting them registered and getting them to vote right.
Speaker 1: So they were very much aligned with the Democratic viewpoints
Speaker 1: of universal access, universal participation in elections, and they were
Speaker 1: very much a left leaning organization. They were associated with
Speaker 1: Obama very famously, and then equally famously, they were this
Speaker 1: disgraced organization because they were accused of voter fraud, a
Speaker 1: voter registration fraud to be specific. And the way that
Speaker 1: this happened was they would send out people to canvas
Speaker 1: neighborhoods and they would give them a quota and if
Speaker 1: they met their quota, then they would say, get paid
Speaker 1: a bonus or something like that. Right, So these Acorn
Speaker 1: workers were given and these were just the same people
Speaker 1: who were also maybe on the next Tuesday coming by
Speaker 1: your house to see if you wanted to donate to
Speaker 1: the Sierra Club too. Right, they were given an incentive
Speaker 1: to create fake registrations, and a lot of them did they.
Speaker 1: And when these investigations were launched in multiple states into
Speaker 1: Acorn and voter registration fraud, it was found that these
Speaker 1: people weren't trying to pave the way for fraud at
Speaker 1: the polls, but that they were creating fake registration forms,
Speaker 1: very frequently duplicate registration forms for the same person to
Speaker 1: get paid for work they hadn't done to get paid
Speaker 1: from Acorn. That was the extent of it. So Acorn
Speaker 1: ended up disbanding, but they left a huge, huge blemish
Speaker 1: on the argument from the liberal side saying we don't
Speaker 1: engage in voter fraud. Well, you're crazy for even thinking that.
Speaker 1: Now forever, conservatives, especially people who aren't who are let's
Speaker 1: just say conservatives, can point to Acorn for the rest
Speaker 1: of the tourney, the rest of the time and be like, look,
Speaker 1: you guys did that. So, yes, there is such thing
Speaker 1: as voter fraud in my mind, and you can't persuade
Speaker 1: me otherwise. And as long as there's that kind of division,
Speaker 1: you're not going to be able to persuade anybody if
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as voter fraud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point, all right. Should we talk
Speaker 2: about the eleven techniques?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty tired, man, I don't know, Yes, all right?
Speaker 3: Number one, number one on our list. Voter caging?
Speaker 1: Who was that? Was that? Your carson? Oh?
Speaker 3: No, sort of a casey case I mean here the
Speaker 3: top forty guy.
Speaker 1: That was pretty good.
Speaker 2: Did you ever hear that great outake when he had
Speaker 2: to read the dead Dog letter?
Speaker 1: Pretty wonderful that that taught me to just shut up
Speaker 1: when a micst Was it?
Speaker 3: Dead dog? Was that it?
Speaker 1: But it was? It was a pretty funny out take.
Speaker 3: Man, God bless him? All right.
Speaker 2: Voter caging is when uh, you send mail on unford
Speaker 2: forwardable mmhm, that's really a mouthful mail which cannot be forwarded.
Speaker 2: Uh send that mail to an address uh that is
Speaker 2: on the voter rolls, and when it's not, when it's
Speaker 2: return undelivered. Basically, they challenge and say this person no
Speaker 2: longer lives at this address, so they can't vote.
Speaker 1: Right, which in and of itself is not scientific. It's
Speaker 1: not illegal. It's when you target, say Democrats, I think
Speaker 1: specifically minorities, it becomes illegal. You can't target any minority group,
Speaker 1: but I believe you can target the opponent's party like
Speaker 1: registered party members. But the whole point is you're saying
Speaker 1: this person doesn't live there or else they would have
Speaker 1: gotten their mail, and because they don't live there, their
Speaker 1: vote can't count. They should be purged from the roles.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Very famously happened in nineteen fifty eight when this literature
Speaker 2: was sent to eighteen thousand registered Democrats, and then again
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty one when Republicans sent thousands of letters
Speaker 2: to minorities blacks and Latinos in New Jersey.
Speaker 3: And that one actually calls.
Speaker 2: Such a stir that the RNC got together with the
Speaker 2: DNC and said, you know what, I'm going to consent
Speaker 2: here with a consent decree, and we're not going to
Speaker 2: do it anymore. Right.
Speaker 1: They didn't just do that out of the goodness of
Speaker 1: their hearts. The DNC sued the RNC for that nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one election because there was a lot of dirty stuff.
Speaker 1: And to this day, the RNC, if it does any
Speaker 1: if it undertakes any voter suppression techniques, wants to create
Speaker 1: any changes in voting regularity, it has to get approval
Speaker 1: by the courts first.
Speaker 2: Correct, But that doesn't stop it from happening because now
Speaker 2: it's just third party groups can do it now, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because they're not part of the RNC officially or the DNC, right,
Speaker 2: and so it still happens. Yeah, what about these flyers.
Speaker 1: These so these kind of fall into a larger category
Speaker 1: of misinformation campaigns, right right, you got flyers, you got
Speaker 1: robo calls.
Speaker 3: These are just so brazen.
Speaker 2: They really are, like literally robo calls that say, hey,
Speaker 2: you're your Democratic candidate has basically already won, so you
Speaker 2: just stay at home and relaxed tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't forget to vote on November fifth, Latino voter,
Speaker 1: even though election days November fourth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so And you know, I was about to say,
Speaker 2: how do they get away with it? But it says
Speaker 2: right in here, who is it, the co director of
Speaker 2: the voting rights group Advancement Project. It says, basically, you know,
Speaker 2: they're usually anonymous, So like, how do you how do
Speaker 2: you go after someone you wait around at mailboxes?
Speaker 1: You could arrest the mail carrier.
Speaker 3: I guess, oh, I mean you think about that.
Speaker 2: I was thinking that they were just dropped in the mailboxes,
Speaker 2: but I guess they are mail.
Speaker 1: These guys with these like handlebar mustaches and like black
Speaker 1: capes come in hand deliver these things.
Speaker 2: So basically there's no way to trace this stuff. So
Speaker 2: as a as a minority in a minority neighborhood, you
Speaker 2: might get a flyer and a robo call saying a
Speaker 2: wrong date like you said, or don't bother your candidate's one,
Speaker 2: or you know, mail your absentee votes to this address,
Speaker 2: which is incorrect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is like really really underhanded stuff, super
Speaker 1: illegal stuff. But again you can't unless you can trace
Speaker 1: it back to somebody who specifically and purposefully carried out
Speaker 1: this campaign. Yeah, that you can't do anything about it
Speaker 1: except go public and say no, no, no, don't listen
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, because what happens is you get a Hispanic
Speaker 2: voter on the nightly news that says I got a
Speaker 2: call that said I could vote by phone, and half
Speaker 2: the people watch and that probably think well, I like,
Speaker 2: this guy probably didn't even understand that phone call, so
Speaker 2: it's chalked off as that when in fact he really
Speaker 2: did get a phone call saying he could vote by phone.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, yeah, that happened in Nevada in two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight.
Speaker 1: I think that it's sor ry Nevada. It'll always be
Speaker 1: Nevada to me. I'm sorry, Nevada. I know it tries
Speaker 1: you guys, bat poop, but it's true. Nevada, Nevada. What else, Chuck,
Speaker 1: This is a big one. I got one. You're ready. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fell any disenfranchisement, fell in disenfranchisement.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there used to be apparently the Greeks are the
Speaker 1: ones who came up with this, but it was really
Speaker 1: codified in the West through medieval Europe, where if you
Speaker 1: were a convicted bad guy, you would would undergo what
Speaker 1: was called a civil death right. Yes, so much so, Chuck,
Speaker 1: that you could be murdered by another person and you
Speaker 1: were no longer protected by the laws, so the other
Speaker 1: person would get away with it, Scott free right. One
Speaker 1: of the things that you lost was any kind of
Speaker 1: representation you might have or being able to participate in
Speaker 1: any kind of community processes right that carried over to
Speaker 1: the United States, but it really started to gain ground
Speaker 1: over the right after reconstruction, during the beginning of the
Speaker 1: Jim Crow period, where a lot of state legislatures enshrined
Speaker 1: in their state constitutions that if you were convicted of
Speaker 1: a felony, you lost your voting rights, and in some
Speaker 1: cases you lost them forever. You had to appeal to
Speaker 1: the governor to restore them. Some states said you lost
Speaker 1: them while you're in prison. Other states said you lost
Speaker 1: them after, say, if you were parolled, whenever your sentence
Speaker 1: was fully finished. But to some degree felon's lost their
Speaker 1: right to vote and it's stuck around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I got the current stats here.
Speaker 2: Okay, there are only two states right now that allow
Speaker 2: an incarcerated felon to vote.
Speaker 3: Do you know what those are?
Speaker 1: One is Vermont? Yeah, is the other? I want to
Speaker 1: say New Hampshire, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: That that would be an obvious guess. But Maine.
Speaker 1: So close? Crazy maners, It's that Canada rubbing off on.
Speaker 2: Voting rights restored automatically upon release, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana,
Speaker 2: New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, in Utah.
Speaker 1: You like the FedEx guy from the.
Speaker 2: Eighth Rights restored automatically once released from prison and discharged
Speaker 2: from parole, probationers can vote California, Colorado, Connecticut, New York
Speaker 2: restored automatically upon completion of sentence, including prison, parole and probation.
Speaker 3: In a bunch of other ones.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 2: How about this everyone, but these last two Okay, Voting
Speaker 2: rights restored dependent on type of conviction or outcome of
Speaker 2: petition to the government Alabama, Delaware, Missippi, neb Outa, Tennessee, Wyoming,
Speaker 2: and only restored through individual petition to the government Florida, Iowa, Kentucky,
Speaker 2: and Virginia. So the ones that you did not hear
Speaker 2: were upon completion, including prison, parole, probation.
Speaker 1: So people might say, don't do the crime, right, sure,
Speaker 1: so if you like, on the one hand, it makes
Speaker 1: sense like you've given up some sort of civil liberties
Speaker 1: because you did commit some horrible, heinous crime. Other people say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: maybe once you've done your time, you should get your
Speaker 1: rights back. The problem is in the United States there
Speaker 1: is a racial disparity between people who are convicted of felonies,
Speaker 1: who are black, and everybody else. Right, Yes, So overall
Speaker 1: seven percent of the United States African American population as
Speaker 1: a whole does not have the right to vote because
Speaker 1: of a felony conviction. For the rest of the United
Speaker 1: States overall, just one point eight percent. That's including all
Speaker 1: every other race. Right, So there's out of the gates.
Speaker 1: There's disproportionately more convicted felons among the African American population
Speaker 1: in the United States than everybody else. Right. But then
Speaker 1: when you start boiling that down to voting rights on
Speaker 1: a state level, it becomes painfully clear that this certainly
Speaker 1: seems strategically targeted. These laws. In Florida, one in four
Speaker 1: of Florida's black residents in twenty sixteen couldn't cast a
Speaker 1: ballot because they were disenfranchised for being felons. Yea, one
Speaker 1: in four.
Speaker 2: Florida was one of the ones that one of the
Speaker 2: four states where you had to have an individual petition
Speaker 2: approved by the government.
Speaker 1: Right. So one quarter, and that's not saying one quarter
Speaker 1: of the voting population of African Americans in Florida, that's
Speaker 1: the whole population, right. And since African Americans have traditionally
Speaker 1: voted Democrat. Any law that says you're a felon you
Speaker 1: can't vote right, you can just leave it at that
Speaker 1: and make your own your own surmises about it.
Speaker 3: Right surmises.
Speaker 1: So word now sirmationians sermations. That's what I was looking for.
Speaker 3: Voter ID laws.
Speaker 2: That's sort of obviously a big one because it's probably
Speaker 2: when you hear most about in the news. As of
Speaker 2: this year, thirty two states have laws requiring or requesting
Speaker 2: ID when voting. West Virginia is coming in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: so that would make thirty three states.
Speaker 3: And we mentioned Texas earlier.
Speaker 2: That's one of the states where they say like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you can use your gun permit, but you can't use
Speaker 2: your college student ID, even though the state has issued
Speaker 2: both of those.
Speaker 1: Right, because if you're a student, you're possibly more likely
Speaker 1: to vote Democrat. If you are a gun owner, you're
Speaker 1: probably more likely to vote GOP right.
Speaker 2: And if you're talking nationally, eleven percent of Americans don't
Speaker 2: have current state issued photo IDs. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: reasons why. Maybe you're elderly or disabled or both and
Speaker 2: you can't drive, so a you don't need a driver's license. B,
Speaker 2: you have a hard time getting to the DMV just
Speaker 2: to get an ID like a non driving ID, state
Speaker 2: issued ID, sure to vote. And once again, historically these
Speaker 2: people might be more apt to vote Democrat. So it's
Speaker 2: hard to not look at it along those lines.
Speaker 1: Right, And a lot of people say, well, there was
Speaker 1: this commission back in I think two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: American University sponsored a bipartisan commission to look into voter
Speaker 1: ID laws, right, whether they suppressed voting, whether they would
Speaker 1: prevent fraud. And it was led by former Reagan Chief
Speaker 1: of Staff James Baker and former President Jimmy Carter, Right.
Speaker 3: Two opposite sides of the coin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but two statesmen, you could make the case. Sure.
Speaker 1: So what they found is that both groups concerns were valid. Yes,
Speaker 1: voter ID could prevent voter fraud. Yes, voter ID laws
Speaker 1: would suppress voting. So they suggested the government minorities specifically, Yeah, minorities, women,
Speaker 1: the elderly, and the disabled are who are most likely
Speaker 1: to be affected by voter ID laws. And the poor right, Yes, sorry,
Speaker 1: the elderly, the poor, women, the disabled, and minorities. Yes,
Speaker 1: all five of those groups tend to vote Democrat. Two
Speaker 1: so voter ID laws could be enacted to prevent frauds
Speaker 1: of this commission. But if you're going to do that,
Speaker 1: you need to basically give out IDs, and you have
Speaker 1: to make access to these IDs extremely easy. And so Texas,
Speaker 1: who has a very strict ID law you have to
Speaker 1: show a photo ID to vote and only specific ones
Speaker 1: said okay, well, then we'll undertake this. We'll give away
Speaker 1: free IDs, but you've got to produce some documents to
Speaker 1: get the ID. So, for example, you might need to
Speaker 1: produce a birth certificate. If you don't have your birth certificate,
Speaker 1: you have to go get a copy of it. And
Speaker 1: if you were born before nineteen fifty, then you have
Speaker 1: to go to wherever out whatever county you were born
Speaker 1: in because they're not computerized records. You have to go
Speaker 1: to the county clerk's office, get it, pay forty two
Speaker 1: dollars for the copy, and then come back and get
Speaker 1: your ID. And hopefully you also remember the other two
Speaker 1: pieces of documentation that you have to bring with you
Speaker 1: to get this free ID. And this investigation, I actually
Speaker 1: think it was a court case found that in the
Speaker 1: fifteen months leading up to the twenty fourteen midterm elections,
Speaker 1: Texas's free voter ID registration drive managed to issue just
Speaker 1: two hundred and ninety seven IDs for the entire state
Speaker 1: over a fifteen month period.
Speaker 2: Well, and this whole thing with you have to go
Speaker 2: to the county where you were born, if you're basically elderly, right,
Speaker 2: like you've ever driven across Texas.
Speaker 1: Well, Plus, if you're poor, remember that poll tax. You
Speaker 1: calculated the dollar fifty poll tax in Texas. It came
Speaker 1: out to be about forty something dollars. Well, it costs
Speaker 1: forty two dollars to get a copy of your birth
Speaker 1: certificate to get that free ID. Some people say that's
Speaker 1: a modern poll tax. Almost down to the penny, that's
Speaker 1: a modern poll tax. If you are poor, if you're broke,
Speaker 1: if you have trouble making ends meet, forty two bucks
Speaker 1: is a lot. Yeah, And if you're on the fence
Speaker 1: about voting, like you really want to.
Speaker 2: Vote, and that's what you can get there to begin with. Right,
Speaker 2: so you was born in Lubbock, but I live in
Speaker 2: San Antonio.
Speaker 1: Right, and I don't have a car. So all of
Speaker 1: these things like these are to a person who believes,
Speaker 1: if you really want to vote, you're gonna you're gonna
Speaker 1: make it through hell and high water to vote. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of these excuses that we've just thrown out are
Speaker 1: just falling on deaf ears, right. Yeah, but if you
Speaker 1: really step back and put it into context and really
Speaker 1: think about it from a realistic point of view, like
Speaker 1: these are hardships, This is tough stuff, and if you're
Speaker 1: a voter and you really want to vote, it could
Speaker 1: dissuade the average person from doing that. And from everything
Speaker 1: I've read, it is really easy to overlook how difficult
Speaker 1: it can be to get an ID. For people who
Speaker 1: already have an ID and use them every day and
Speaker 1: have probably had one ever since their parents took them
Speaker 1: to the DMV when they were sixteen to get their
Speaker 1: first driver's license, it's really easy to act like it's
Speaker 1: not a big thing to get an ID, when in reality,
Speaker 1: the poorer, the more disabled, and the more minority you are,
Speaker 1: the harder it actually is.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There was a study in twenty fourteen by Rice University,
Speaker 2: and not to pick on Texas, but this, you know,
Speaker 2: to Rice University.
Speaker 1: I think Texas brought this on themselves.
Speaker 2: In the University of Houston, Texas's twenty third congressional district
Speaker 2: found that twelve point eight percent of registered voters who
Speaker 2: didn't vote cited lack of required photo ID, so almost
Speaker 2: thirteen percent didn't vote, and they said this because I
Speaker 2: don't have the proper identification And only two point seven
Speaker 2: percent of those people actually didn't have the right identify occasion,
Speaker 2: so a full ten percent had the right ID and
Speaker 2: didn't vote because they didn't think they did, which and
Speaker 2: you know what, we'll take a break and talk about
Speaker 2: it after this. But the reason that's not happening is
Speaker 2: because of things like billboards and poll watchers and other
Speaker 2: intimidation techniques.
Speaker 3: So we'll talk about that right after this, as w.
Speaker 4: Y s K As you should know, all right.
Speaker 2: So I set that up with the study from Rice University,
Speaker 2: thirteen percent in the twenty third congressional district in Texas
Speaker 2: did not vote because they didn't think they had their
Speaker 2: right ID, even though ten percent of that thirteen percent
Speaker 2: did have the right ID and just didn't vote because
Speaker 2: they were I don't know, misinformed by a billboard and
Speaker 2: scared to go to a polling place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, has that ever happened? Sure, it's happened. There's been
Speaker 1: plenty of billboards that have like prison bars or something
Speaker 1: on them. It says like voter fraud is a felony.
Speaker 1: And apparently these billboards that are sponsored by dark money
Speaker 1: groups that have no direct ties to say like the
Speaker 1: GOP or the campaigns of a candidate, are they sprout up.
Speaker 1: They tend to sprout up in poorer neighborhoods, minority neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: neighborhoods that are more likely to be intimidated by billboards
Speaker 1: like that, rather than just laugh at them and flip
Speaker 1: them off. It's apparently the jury's out on whether they
Speaker 1: have an effect or not, but it is it's intended
Speaker 1: to be voter intimidation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they use threatening language, like you said, like someone
Speaker 2: behind bars and all of a sudden, let's say you're
Speaker 2: a newly naturalized citizen or you are are a felon
Speaker 2: that's now out and cleared your parole and everything, and
Speaker 2: you see those bars and you're like, well, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to take a chance, right and going to vote
Speaker 2: because I might be locked up.
Speaker 1: And again, the disingenuous argument number eighty ninety two is well,
Speaker 1: if you're not a criminal, you got nothing to worry about, right,
Speaker 1: which just completely disregards the psychological impact that something like
Speaker 1: bars and crime Fellon have on a person seeing a
Speaker 1: billboard that's shouting that at them.
Speaker 2: If you actually are you know, fight your way through
Speaker 2: that and say, you know what, I'm going to vote anyway.
Speaker 3: I'm not scared of the billboard.
Speaker 2: And you might show up to your polling place to
Speaker 2: find what's known as a poll watcher, who are there
Speaker 2: to scout out potential voter fraud what has generally in
Speaker 2: many cases amounted to intimidation squads kind of right there
Speaker 2: at the front door.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you remember I said that the RNC got
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble for the nineteen eighty one
Speaker 1: election for a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this is another one.
Speaker 1: One of the things that they had in this nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one I believe New Jersey election was called the
Speaker 1: National Ballot Security Task Force, and it was basically off
Speaker 1: duty cops wearing guns, wearing blue armbands, patrolling polling stations
Speaker 1: who were basically ostensibly looking for voter fraud, but they
Speaker 1: court sided with the DNC's contention that they were meant
Speaker 1: to intimidate voters who were likely to vote for Democrats.
Speaker 3: Well just because they were there with guns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you don't want some dude just walking around
Speaker 1: like looking at you, watching you, you know, what are
Speaker 1: you doing here? Kind of thing like, No, it's not
Speaker 1: what The polling station doesn't belong to one group. It
Speaker 1: belongs to everybody, and no one should be made to
Speaker 1: feel like they're a threat or they all are not
Speaker 1: welcome at this polling station. It's not that guy's polling station.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have any right to walk up and down
Speaker 1: with the gun, intimidating people. What a despicable thing to
Speaker 1: do with your time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, how about this. The Conservative group True
Speaker 2: the Vote, their national elections coordinator was he was, you know,
Speaker 2: talking about pole watchers. He said that he wanted voters
Speaker 2: to quote feel like they are driving and seeing the
Speaker 2: police following them.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's not how you're supposed to feel when you
Speaker 1: go vote no at the polling presecs like that's a quote.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he wanted them to feel scared.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't nineteen eighty one. That was from the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen election.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, that got an old one.
Speaker 1: No, so it's not. It hasn't just been say GOP
Speaker 1: leaning voters who have done poll watching. There was a
Speaker 1: very famous case in the two thousand and eight election
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia where the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, which,
Speaker 1: as we pointed out in our Black Panther episode, is
Speaker 1: not affiliated with the Black Panthers. They're kind of like
Speaker 1: this new offshoot group that took over the name.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I think they were arrested for voter intimidation for basically
Speaker 1: doing the same thing but with the police baton rather
Speaker 1: than say a gun. Yeah, yeah, I don't care who
Speaker 1: you are, what side you're on, don't intimidate voters at
Speaker 1: the polls. No. I don't know if I could if
Speaker 1: I said that clearly enough. Yet that's a disgusting thing
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: Josh is going to come after you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm watching you.
Speaker 2: Early voting is one thing that you say and you're
Speaker 2: writing here that I agree with that. Like, who could
Speaker 2: argue with early voting because it works. People love it,
Speaker 2: voters like it, elected officials like it. It's been a
Speaker 2: really big success in the states that do it like
Speaker 2: a lot. I think almost a third of this past
Speaker 2: election people early voted me included, right, So like everyone
Speaker 2: should love this, right, sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it really really works. It gets voter participation
Speaker 1: up and like you said, the lines are not long.
Speaker 1: There's not like long waits on election day. And yet
Speaker 1: despite that, despite everybody basically loving early voting, there have
Speaker 1: been cutbacks since twenty eleven in eight states. Rather than
Speaker 1: this decades long trend which had been leading up to
Speaker 1: know the I think two thousand and eight election, which
Speaker 1: is when it really came on, there's been cutbacks rather
Speaker 1: than continuing forward with getting early voting out there. And
Speaker 1: these eight states are, except for West Virginia, GOP governored states.
Speaker 1: And the reason why people who are critics of these
Speaker 1: laws or changes to the rules point out the reason
Speaker 1: why that these are being done is because in the
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight election, this early voting was used
Speaker 1: by far and away more by African American voters who
Speaker 1: voted for Obama and the Democrats than white voters, and
Speaker 1: specifically white GOP voters. Right, something like seventy percent of
Speaker 1: early of African Americans in the two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: election voted early, compared to like fifty percent of white
Speaker 1: voters in the two thousand and eight election. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what the breakdown was for Democrat to GOP, but
Speaker 1: I'm quite sure it was lopsided in favor of the
Speaker 1: Democrats in that right. So that happened, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the midterm elections of twenty ten were
Speaker 1: just a blood bath for the Democrats and swept GOP
Speaker 1: governors and legislatures into power. And as a result, early
Speaker 1: voting was cut back under new laws that were introduced
Speaker 1: in these new sessions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Sunday voting was a big deal too. Historic
Speaker 2: Black churches have had a great success story in organizing
Speaker 2: this campaign called Souls to the Polls, where they would
Speaker 2: get their church members to the polling stations on Sundays
Speaker 2: to vote.
Speaker 3: It's been a big success.
Speaker 2: And so what happens when there's a big success for
Speaker 2: a minority group organizing and getting registered is states pushback.
Speaker 2: Ohio and Florida specifically banned voting on Sunday, the Sunday
Speaker 2: before the election, sorry, not just any Sunday. And that's
Speaker 2: when these the black churches had organized to vote for
Speaker 2: the Souls to the Polls campaign, and it made a
Speaker 2: big deal. More than eighteen percent of Floridians who voted
Speaker 2: on the last Sunday of early voting in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight did not vote at all in twenty twelve
Speaker 2: because well maybe not just because they weren't allowed to vote,
Speaker 2: but that right was taken away from them, And so
Speaker 2: eighteen percent didn't vote in twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: So you do the math.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I mean that's that's a significant amount
Speaker 1: of voters in Florida alone.
Speaker 2: And again it's it's targeted like that. They do the
Speaker 2: research and they find out the data on where these
Speaker 2: votes coming from, when are they being cast, who is
Speaker 2: casting them? And now let's put in as many laws,
Speaker 2: let's bend the law however we can to try and
Speaker 2: keep those people from voting. Yeah, like like there have
Speaker 2: been there was who was a gun. There was a
Speaker 2: legislator in Pennsylvania that was that bragged during the Romney
Speaker 2: election like, hey, our voter suppression techniques are going to
Speaker 2: give this to Romney.
Speaker 3: Right, this is a legislator.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true. So you know it's funny to some
Speaker 1: people listening right now, we sound paranoid. So early voting
Speaker 1: is suppressed and as a result, it can it can
Speaker 1: lead to voter suppression as well. Right, you've also got
Speaker 1: voter registration. We already talked about acorn registering people, but typically,
Speaker 1: voter registration drives like the soul of the polls campaign
Speaker 1: have an effect on Democrats' votes, so curtailing those can
Speaker 1: lead to can lead to a suppression of votes among
Speaker 1: Democratic voters. Right, Yes, And we've been picking on the
Speaker 1: GOP basically this whole time, Dude. I went all over
Speaker 1: looking for instances of Democrats doing robo calls and using
Speaker 1: intimidating billboards, and I didn't find it. They're just not
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 2: If they are specifically robo calls deliver misinformation.
Speaker 1: Right or send out deliberately misinforming flyers, or supporting laws
Speaker 1: that and early voting, I didn't find it anywhere. This
Speaker 1: all seems to be, at least in this current incarnation,
Speaker 1: a GOP led wave of voter suppression laws. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is one type of voter suppression that Democrats do
Speaker 1: favor though, basically across the board and around the country,
Speaker 1: and it's called off cycle off cycle election scheduling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's when if you may notice that they'll they'll
Speaker 2: be an election and you're like, what, there's an election
Speaker 2: coming up, Well, why haven't I heard anything about it.
Speaker 2: It's because it might be for the city council or
Speaker 2: the local you know, it's it's very much local, locally based,
Speaker 2: and Democrats they know that those are not very heavily voted.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a very low voter turnout for that.
Speaker 2: So if it's a referendum on like something that has
Speaker 2: to deal with the teachers or specific union or something,
Speaker 2: they know about it and they're really going to turn
Speaker 2: out to vote and basically have that one in the bag.
Speaker 1: Right, And and teachers' unions in city workers unions and
Speaker 1: basically any unions typically are democratic leaning, right Democrat leaning.
Speaker 1: So through this off cycle election scheduling, by cutting down
Speaker 1: on voter participation, they're increasing the impact that these Democrat
Speaker 1: leaning groups have on that vote. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because everyone wants consolidated elections, like you pull people,
Speaker 2: you pull people, sure, and it's like what everyone will say,
Speaker 2: you know, I'd kind of really rather just vote on
Speaker 2: everything all at once.
Speaker 1: Right. But this, this idea of controlling local elections, especially
Speaker 1: local school boards, leads to accusations of controlling developing minds
Speaker 1: of America's children. Sure, so Republicans have taken notice of
Speaker 1: this strategy, and this is from this great article from
Speaker 1: Eton Hirsh from five thirty eight, and he talks about
Speaker 1: a political scientist named Sarah Anzia who who was studying this,
Speaker 1: and she found that between two thousand and one and
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, over two hundred bills aimed at consolidating elections
Speaker 1: getting rid of off cycle elections were floated across the country.
Speaker 1: Half of them specifically on focused on moving school board
Speaker 1: election dates, but only twenty five became law. Most of
Speaker 1: the time the bills were sponsored by Republicans and killed
Speaker 1: by Democratic pushes. Yeah, so there is definitely voter suppression techniques,
Speaker 1: and apparently the Democrats will say, well, you know what,
Speaker 1: people who aren't that informed aren't going to turn out
Speaker 1: for these off cycle elections anyway, that's good. And people say,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, wait a minute, that's the same criticism,
Speaker 1: the same justification that the GOP uses to justify their
Speaker 1: voter suppression techniques, and you're using it for yourself. So
Speaker 1: you know, that really sucks when people do that. What
Speaker 1: is that called hypocrisy?
Speaker 3: I think that's a word.
Speaker 2: So you know this this is all still happening. I
Speaker 2: mean a lot of these examples are kind of throughout history,
Speaker 2: but this is still going on, and especially after the
Speaker 2: two thousand election.
Speaker 3: And this most recent one.
Speaker 2: It's it's pretty clear that like a few thousand votes
Speaker 2: can swing in swing an election.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so this stuff matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to fight it and whoever's trying to suppress votes,
Speaker 2: it can make a difference.
Speaker 1: Right, and so specifically, well, there's this one study that
Speaker 1: found after that huge surge, so you remember after the
Speaker 1: fifteenth Amendment was passed where.
Speaker 3: Oh I remember, so.
Speaker 1: The the the black population of men at least suddenly
Speaker 1: had the right to vote. It threatened the status quo.
Speaker 1: So the status quo the establishment went to come up
Speaker 1: with new loopholes and and issues to make barriers to voting.
Speaker 1: Right after the two thousand and eight election, there was
Speaker 1: a huge surge in African American voting. Threatened the status quo.
Speaker 1: So the establishment came up with new loopholes, right, and
Speaker 1: there was a study from the University of Massachusetts. Should
Speaker 1: be totally disregarded because that's an elite academic education and
Speaker 1: therefore liars, but they did a study that the more
Speaker 1: states saw increases of minority and low income voter turnout,
Speaker 1: the more likely it was to have laws floated that
Speaker 1: pushed back on voting rights, that cut voting rights during
Speaker 1: this twenty thirteen study, and apparently there is this wave
Speaker 1: of voter id laws specifically that just hit the country
Speaker 1: after the twenty ten elections. There's ten blood bats. The
Speaker 1: country was suddenly just flooded with state and local bills
Speaker 1: that sought to require voter ID right and it came
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, seemingly somebody, this group called News twenty
Speaker 1: one's like journalism students who did an investigation under the
Speaker 1: auspices of the Carnegie Knight Journalism Foundation. They trace us
Speaker 1: back to ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and they
Speaker 1: deserve a podcast themselves, sure, for sure. But basically they're
Speaker 1: a group that was founded I think back in the
Speaker 1: seventies or eighties that brings together elected officials in the
Speaker 1: United States who pay something like one hundred dollars in
Speaker 1: dues every two years with corporations that pay thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars in dues every year, and they get
Speaker 1: them together and they say, hey, what do you need
Speaker 1: to make business easier for you? Oh, well, it would
Speaker 1: be great if we could get the Democrats to not
Speaker 1: vote quite so easily. So let's come up with some
Speaker 1: voter ID loss. They come together, they draft model ledge,
Speaker 1: and then the ALEC members go back to their various
Speaker 1: state legislatures or national legislatures and say, hey, I've got
Speaker 1: an idea, here's a bill, let's pass it. And so
Speaker 1: from this two thousand and nine meeting in Atlanta, actually
Speaker 1: a draft voter I D legislative model was produced and
Speaker 1: it suddenly just appeared everywhere around the country starting in
Speaker 1: about twenty ten. Yeah, so apparently that's what's going on
Speaker 1: right now, that's behind this current wave of especially voter
Speaker 1: ID laws, but also voter suppression laws that are going on.
Speaker 1: Like the history in this country, a voter suppression is
Speaker 1: pretty shameful, but it's even more shameful that we're doing
Speaker 1: it again, it seems.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: North Carolina is a pretty good example of recent years.
Speaker 2: In twenty thirteen, there was a law that led by
Speaker 2: the GOP that did a bunch of things that eliminated
Speaker 2: same day voter registration, cut a full week of early voting,
Speaker 2: It barred voters from casting a ballot outside their home precinct.
Speaker 2: They said you could no longer straight ticket vote. And
Speaker 2: then they got rid of a program that would pre
Speaker 2: register high school students who would be voting age by
Speaker 2: election day scrap right high school students that wanted to
Speaker 2: vote that would pre register them said no, too dangerous.
Speaker 2: Yeah so, and had one of the most strict voter
Speaker 2: ID requirements in the country. This one actually went to
Speaker 2: court and it was struck down and the judge ruled
Speaker 2: that it quote, I'm sorry that the intention to suppress
Speaker 2: African American voters was quote with almost surgical precision, and
Speaker 2: the court noted that lawmakers first studied which racial demographics
Speaker 2: use which voting methods, then moved to eliminate those favored
Speaker 2: by black residents. So like they actually found out they
Speaker 2: did these studies and looked at the data and said,
Speaker 2: all right, this is how black people are voting in
Speaker 2: North Carolina, so let's try and make that much more
Speaker 2: difficult for them to do.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: I think the judge that overruled or struck down those
Speaker 1: that basket of laws also said that it read like
Speaker 1: it was written in nineteen oh one. Yeah, so North
Speaker 1: Carolina got pantsed in front of everybody because I guess
Speaker 1: they were too aggressive. But plenty plenty of other states
Speaker 1: were able to pass new laws of varying strictness as
Speaker 1: far as voting suppression goes since twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: Well, North Carolina just got pants this week for the
Speaker 2: racial jerrymandering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, jerrymandering is another episode we need to do too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the whole thing comes down to here. I think
Speaker 1: we said earlier too, Chuck is with these laws, right,
Speaker 1: there's kind of a litmus test that's emerged. Are the
Speaker 1: results of these laws more likely to be to prevent
Speaker 1: voter fraud or to suppress votes? And ironically, it seems
Speaker 1: like it's going to be Donald Trump's commission that could
Speaker 1: conceivably put an end to this debate with what they
Speaker 1: find with the voter fraud investigation, which, seriously, I cannot
Speaker 1: tell you how interested I am in finding out what
Speaker 1: they find and hearing all the grizzly details from it.
Speaker 3: You think it'll be on the note or on the
Speaker 3: up and up.
Speaker 1: I don't know, But I don't know. If it's not,
Speaker 1: we'll hear all about it. I can tell you that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, man.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm very curious to see what they what
Speaker 1: they find, or even if it just falls away. I
Speaker 1: think the worst thing for this would be if it's
Speaker 1: just allowed to just fall to the wayside, because I mean,
Speaker 1: if we can get it out in the open and
Speaker 1: discussed and investigate it and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows, they maybe they did. What if
Speaker 1: they legitimately found that massive voter fraw is a huge problem,
Speaker 1: well then sure maybe we should have voter ID laws.
Speaker 1: Who knows. But if they find that that's not the case,
Speaker 1: then we can say, all right, this law is going
Speaker 1: to suppress votes. There's no such thing as massive voter fraud,
Speaker 1: so this law should be struck down. Just let people vote, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, agreed.
Speaker 2: Like, who is one person to say, you know that
Speaker 2: they're not as up on politics and they don't they
Speaker 2: don't really take the time, so they shouldn't be allowed
Speaker 2: to vote.
Speaker 3: I mean, that is so anti American.
Speaker 1: You have to be an elitist to think like that,
Speaker 1: Like that's an elitist thinking, we're regardless of what your
Speaker 1: party affiliation is. Yeah, you got anything else? No, Well,
Speaker 1: this is probably the last one we'll ever be allowed
Speaker 1: to record. So it's been.
Speaker 3: Nice, Chuck, I've enjoyed working with you.
Speaker 1: Been nice, Jerry. If you want to know more about
Speaker 1: voter suppression laws, you can type those words in the
Speaker 1: search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com. And since I said
Speaker 1: voter suppression, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know what before I do listener mail to
Speaker 2: listeners who are upset at us right now, like send
Speaker 2: us in a thoughtful, researched email of refutation.
Speaker 3: You know, m hm, that's what I want to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I'd like to think, like, give me.
Speaker 3: Some proof of stuff. Yeah, all right, I'm.
Speaker 2: Gonna call this fan theory. Oh, this is a good
Speaker 2: one that you picked out. Yeah, Josh, I really enjoyed
Speaker 2: your show guys on the crazy fan theories.
Speaker 3: Thought i'd share one. It came up with a couple
Speaker 3: of years ago.
Speaker 2: It involves to kill a mockingbird, go set a Watchman,
Speaker 2: which was the famous sequel to that book, and Back
Speaker 2: to the Future Part one, and Back to the Future
Speaker 2: Part two, which was the very famous sequel to Back
Speaker 2: to the Future Part one.
Speaker 3: Right, I added that nice. Did you know that the.
Speaker 2: Courthouse steps in the movie adaptation of Mockingbird the very
Speaker 2: same as the courthouse in the Back of the Future movies.
Speaker 1: I did not know that, did you?
Speaker 3: Well? I didn't.
Speaker 2: I've been on the universal lot and walk those steps though,
Speaker 2: so I was just like, in my mind, I was thinking, well,
Speaker 2: it's just a movie lot, dude. So he says, aside
Speaker 2: from it being on the universal lot, the reason for
Speaker 2: this has to be that both To Kill a Mockingbird
Speaker 2: and Back to the Future take place in the same town.
Speaker 3: Well that's not.
Speaker 1: True, no, but still to Kill It with the chuck.
Speaker 2: To Kill a Mockingbird depicts the town in the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties and the trial that exposes the deeply racist tendencies
Speaker 2: among its people. This is why in nineteen fifty five
Speaker 2: it would have never occurred to a black malt shop worker.
Speaker 3: I believe Goldie, Is that not right, future mayor Goldie.
Speaker 2: That he could one day become mayor until some guy
Speaker 2: from the future accidentally suggests it.
Speaker 3: This is falling apart from me already.
Speaker 1: I love this idea, and Back to the Future too.
Speaker 2: Marty steals a sports almanac from twenty fifteen which winds
Speaker 2: up in Biff's hands in nineteen fifty five, creating an
Speaker 2: alternate timeline from that point forward. Some twenty years after
Speaker 2: To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout returns home and Gossett a watchman,
Speaker 2: but it's set in the alternative timeline, which is why
Speaker 2: at least one character, Atticus Finch, seems very different.
Speaker 3: Is any like racist in this sequel?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's Marty McFly's fault.
Speaker 2: Go Setta Watchman was written in nineteen fifty seven. It
Speaker 2: is the To Kill a Mockingbird of the alternate timeline.
Speaker 2: To Kill a Mockingbird was published in nineteen sixty. Is
Speaker 2: the version of the book written in the timeline. Marty
Speaker 2: fixes when he burns the almanac at the end of
Speaker 2: Back of the Future two. I'm completely lost on that one,
Speaker 2: and he says, how fitting that Gosetta Watchman was published
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen. Yeah, and that bit.
Speaker 3: Of fan theoryishness is to you by Brian McBurney.
Speaker 1: Nice job, Brian. That was outstanding. It did have its poles.
Speaker 1: There's a little rough around the edges, but you're using
Speaker 1: your noodle and I like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's better than Angela Lansbury is a serial killer.
Speaker 1: It is. If you want to get in touch with
Speaker 1: us like Brian did, and send us a really cool
Speaker 1: fan theory you thought of yourself. That holds up. You
Speaker 1: can send us both and Jerry and Noel and Frank
Speaker 1: the Chair an email to stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot
Speaker 1: com and as always, join us are a home on
Speaker 1: the web. Stuff Youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.