Voter suppression

So let me be clear about what this actually is.

See, because we need to start to be able to frame what we're talking about when we talk about voter suppression, because it doesn't always look like you think it should look.

See, nobody told those students they couldn't vote.

That's the thing.

Their right to vote was still in place.

There's no law saying students are barred from being able to vote.

But what happened is more subtle and more effective, and it is still voter suppression.

They moved the polling places off campus.

civil rights if we don't first have human rights.

Mississippi as a state, and a lot of states around the Deep South, would not have these issues when it comes to voter suppression.

We would not be talking about one-year-olds being gunned down in a grocery store parking lot, allegedly over pampers.

We would not be talking about people dying in hospitals.

I was proud, I was overwhelmed, and I was grateful, deeply grateful to them.

Well, I don't want to count the chickens, you know, but as we say down here in the South, I'd like to think that Alito done effed up, you know, with Calais.

And the reason I say that is because I think a lot of these folks that rely on voter suppression to win elections and are counting on it this time.

I don't think they really have met black people.

And, um, this plan, uh, that they've been talking about now for, uh, several weeks, this plan to have more than 1,000 monitors out, uh, at polling sites across the country, is something that we should all be concerned about, and it's why the NAACP, uh, has, has filed suit.

We argue, uh, in one case that, uh, this violates the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voter intimidation.

But on another track, we're also, uh, fighting to just shine a light on what they're doing by use of the Freedom of Information Act.

And so we have a, a FOIA lawsuit where we're seeking to get emergency access to records and documents that will, um, provide clarity to us and to the public about what the Justice Department is trying to do here.

I mean, I thought you're supposed to wait until after an election so that you don't have an intimidation be a problem.

Exactly.

And you know, when I led the Civil Rights Division under the last administration, we would periodically send out, um, election monitors in very limited circumstances where, for example, we wanted to assess whether polling sites were physically accessible for people with disabilities, or, uh, where we wanted to see whether a jurisdiction was providing effective language access in, uh, parts of the country that are required by law to provide bilingual materials and, and other support for voters, or where we got real colorable complaints of voter intimidation.

This Justice Department could care less about any of those issues, and it is why there is, is reason to be deeply skeptical that they are there but for any reason, uh, than to discourage and deter people from freely casting their ballots.

But we saw recently that a federal judge just ruled that the Justice Department's voter screening policies were unlawful.

And so when we're looking at the things that we're seeing playing out in the courts, And then we're looking at the fact that they're now trying to utilize ICE as a part of this election protection process and really use it as voter intimidation and suppression.

What are you worried about as we're moving closer to the midterm date, which is November 3rd? And if you can vote early, please do.

What are your thoughts on what you think we might be seeing?

So we should not trust any plan that they are making to put their personnel inside polling sites this election day.

Their track record of voter suppression makes clear that they cannot be trusted.

Yeah.

I don't know that they have been smart enough or dumb enough, I guess depends on one's perspective, smart enough or dumb enough to put a list out yet of where they're sending these prosecutors.

Uh, they waited until it was too late to let us know.

The voter suppression is real and probably going on all over the country like this." I mean, it, literally Chris, it's gonna be to have to be that thing w- you may have to crawl over b- broken glass naked to go vote, but go [ding] vote.

Do not let them...

Because this is, you know, we were hearing stuff in Texas about people getting knocked off the voter rolls.

Mm-hmm.

Um, there are states that are very practiced in voter suppression.

Yeah.

People have often said Texas is not a red state, it's a voter suppression state.

They're apparently trying to push Trump to declare martial law or a national emergency if the Republicans look like they're losing the midterms.

So this is a very serious problem, and I think there's gonna be a lot of Republican governors that welcome certain voter suppression tactics in their state when, um, uh, and, and Texas is one that comes to mind as well.

Uh, in a moment we're gonna be talking to Benjamin Moser Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer on his most recent book, Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History.

Uh, first, couple words from our sponsors.