Selects: Are Election Laws Designed to Suppress Voting?

Are laws that are meant to protect the sanctity of the polling place in reality designed to make it harder for groups that traditionally vote Democrat to cast their ballots? Find out in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's Josh and for this week's select, I've
chosen our episode from May twenty seventeen on voter suppression.
Once in a while, we do a topic where, no
matter how hard we try, it just turns out to
be a one sided thing. We don't pick those topics
because they're one sided. They just turn out that way
despite our best efforts. So take a gander at this

(00:21):
episode and see what you think about all that.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast me. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Jerome Rowland.
You put the three of us together in a room,
shake it up, pick out some of the chess hares.
You got stuff you should know?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
All right? That was gross.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
I thought you'd like that.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
You ready to get angry on this one.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
I'm trying to keep it cool, man. I woke up
yesterday and said, I really want to tick off a
significant portion of our listeners. So what could what topic
could we do? And I thought voter suppression perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Well you know what, man, I've been trying to think
about the why this bugs me so much voter suppression
obviously bugs me because it's not right. Sure, But what
really bugs me, I think is that if you're in Washington,
DC and you're in government, like everyone knows about this

(01:37):
stuff and everyone talks about it frankly when the microphones
aren't around, right, Like, do you watch the show Veep?

Speaker 1 (01:43):
I love it. I've only seen season five, but man,
it is so good.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Like supposedly, that's kind of how it is.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Sure Like, when the microphones aren't around, they all talk
about politics in very frank terms. But as soon as
you get on television or in front of a microphone,
you have to tell the party lines on both sides
with this rhetoric crap, and it ends up you can't
even really talk about the things.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Well no, but plus also, I think one of the
reasons that that is the way it is is because
you got to feed the sheeple like a certain like
you said that company line or that party line, because
if you really talked about what was really going on,
some of the people who agree with your BS would
otherwise disagree with the actual thing that's going on.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
You know what I'm saying, Well, yeah, and let's just
go ahead and say it. And this one on voter suppression. Historically,
the Republican Party has purposely done things to try and
keep certain people from voting because they probably vote Democrat, right,
And they can't just say that, so they say, no,

(02:50):
it's really about voter fraud, right, that's a big problem.
And Democrats want those votes, and they say it's because
they just want a very inclusive democratic process us, but
that's not true. They want those votes because they're probably
going to be Democrat.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Votes, right, and Democrats will do anything, including voter fraud,
to get people to the polls or to get those votes.
That's the current, that's the argument that's going on right now.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah, but you know what I'm saying, though, like neither
one of them can say those things, so they have
to stand behind these two kind of bogus reasons, and
it's just infuriating.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Right. So the reasons these bogus reasons, ostensibly bogus reasons,
are that if you take measures to make it a
little difficult to vote, what you're going to do is
protect the integrity of the electoral system. Right, This is
the Republican's viewpoint. If you do that, then there's going

(03:45):
to be a couple of things. One, you're going to
cut down on fraud, which again, the Democrats are just
total fraudsters when it comes to voting as far as
Republicans are concerned, right, And then it's also going to
in some cases, sure, it's going to make it a
little difficult for some people to vote. But the Republican
way of thinking is, if you really care about voting,

(04:07):
you're going to do whatever it takes to get to
that poll and register and vote. And if you don't,
if just a couple of simple barriers will keep you
from doing that, then nuts to you, man, I don't
care about your vote, Yeah, and ts for the Democrats
who you probably would have voted for. That's like, that's

(04:27):
the that's the argument in public that you're talking about,
that you're saying is bogus, when it's really these people
who are having access issues to voting because of the
laws that the GOP is putting up are more likely
to vote for Democrats. So hence these are these are
targeted attempts to block people from voting for Democrats. Yeah,

(04:51):
that's that's the reality of it. Allegedly, we should say,
chuck like there's just calling it voter suppression. Is kind
of controversial in and of it.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Well, yeah, no one likes to use those words because
on the one side, like you said, they there's like
it's not about voter suppression, it's about like, you know,
what's wrong with having to have an ID to go
cast a vote?

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Right? I mean on its face it makes sense. Sure,
you know, they say you have to have ID to
buy alcohol. If some clerk decides that he wants to
see your ID, you have to show it to him
or you can't buy alcohol. What's the problem with that?

Speaker 3 (05:26):
You know?

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Well?

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Right, and then you go to some parts of Texas
and they say, well, you can use your your gun
license to vote, but don't use your student ID.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
That doesn't count.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Right.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
So, like it's the fact that they're all very targeted,
and everyone will see as we go through this, it's
very targeted. Like and we'll bring up specific cases where
you know, they find out like oh Man, leading up
to the election where Barack Obama's first elect president's election,

(05:58):
we saw a surge and increase in black voters in
this county. So let's go to that county specifically and
introduce some legislation that's going to make it harder for
them to get to the polls specifically there.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, like so it's maddening, Oh it is.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
It's infuriating. Even I was reading kind of the other
side on this by a guy named David French who
writes for the National Review, and he was saying even
he was like, if that happens what you just described,
it should be vigorously litigated that that there's no excuse
for that. For anything that's that's specifically targeting like minorities

(06:36):
or the elderly, or making it difficult for any group
that to to like purposefully making it harder for them
to vote and targeting people like that, then yeah, it
should be litigated and those those rules should be thrown out.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
Well, and that happens.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
It is liticated, litigated, and quite often reports do say
like you can't do this, and they say, all right, well,
we won't do it again.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
But it worked on this election.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Right Well. One of the reasons why this we're currently
in the midst of a really massive wave of voter
suppression laws that are sweeping the country right now, and
one of the reasons why it's being allowed to go
on is because just like in Citizens United, the Roberts
Supreme Court said, you know what, things are fine. We're

(07:21):
just going to get an important provision of the Voting
Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. And we'll talk a
little bit more about that in a minute, but it
basically said, you, these states, in these specific districts in
these states have a history of voter suppression, and we,
the federal government, are going to keep an eye on

(07:42):
you so much so that you can't make any changes
to your voting procedures without the federal government approving it.
And in twenty thirteen, I believe, the Supreme Court said,
you know what, we're fine, we're post racial. We had
a black president. We don't need that anymore. And they
overturned that provision of the Voting Rights Act, and it's
allowed again this this massive wave of voter suppression laws

(08:04):
to be passed in this country.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Man, we're already riled up.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
It's tough. It's tough not to be. You know, what,
were you gonna say, should we take a break?

Speaker 3 (08:14):
No, not a break. I was gonna say it. Should
we just go back and talk about history a little bit?

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, let's man, because the history is much easier to stomach.
Yeah right, Okay, So and you put this article together
with our own article and a bunch of other good stuff. Yes,
nice work, thanks, But you point out that very astutely,
that it's not in the constitution the right to vote.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
This has been.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Left up to the states over the years, even though
we've had you know, amendments since then that obviously allowed
certain people the right to vote. It wasn't just originally
included like, hey, everyone can vote. Everyone has the right
to vote in this country.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Right and no. Originally the only group that the that
citizens of the United States could vote for was the
House of Representatives, the Senate, and the president and the
president still this is the case, were elected by an
electoral college, right correct. So eventually they added Senate seats
for people to be able to directly vote for. But

(09:17):
in the first presidential election in seventeen eighty nine, the
one that where George Washington won and was elected to
the presidency, the first presidency of the United States, like
six percent of the population in the US at the
time were eligible to vote. And that was it.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, it was only white men and freed African American
slaves in just four states.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
I saw six six states. I was really surprised to
see that.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
But yeah, who owned property?

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Right, that was a big one.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
Right, So that left like eight guys.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Right they were allowed to But yeah, you had to
own property, and that was the big division at first,
even apparently more so than by race. It was by
whether you were a landowner a property owner.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Right, Yeah, and you had to be twenty one.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
There were certain religious restrictions too, So, like you said,
that ended up six percent, six percent of the population
could vote.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
I mean, I'm going to cut them a little slack
on the first election, say that they were trying to
get it together. But six percent is an alarmingly low number.
But they probably thought that was the six percent of
people that mattered, right.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
I guess it's more inclusive than the one percent, but
it's still pretty pretty low. We're in the single digits here,
you know.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
But like you were saying, it's a class distinction. Distinction
was really kind of the biggest deal. And that changed
a bit when war veterans who fought for independence from
Britain stepped up and said, hey, a lot of us
are not landowners and we helped free this country.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Can we vote?

Speaker 2 (10:56):
And little by little states said all right, you know,
you don't have to own property.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
It's eighteen fifty.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
And let's just say all white males can vote in
some African American males, but definitely not women.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Right, not yet, Just give us another seven decades or so. Okay,
we're just trying to keep our heads from spinning over
letting people who don't own property vote exactly. So in
that bizarre did you know that the first group to
agitate for voting rights was white men who didn't own
land or veterans? I didn't know that either. So something

(11:35):
really big happened in the middle of the nineteenth century
that changed things as far as voting went. And that
was the Civil War, Yeah, and the Thirteenth Amendment that
and in slavery, followed by the fifteenth Amendment that granted
suffrage to all men in the United States.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
But again it's not women.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Right, And it should have said dot dot supposedly, because
that fifteenth Amendment is what unleashed sort of the first Like.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
Before there was just voter suppression.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
They were like, no, you just can't vote, and now
they said, well, you can vote, and so they had
to be creative with their voter suppression, right.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
And at first there was a period of reconstruction in
the South after the Civil War where federal troops they
I guess it was led still by General Ulysses Grant
if he wasn't president by now, where federal troops were
occupying the South under martial law, right, and they were

(12:42):
enforcing the fifteenth Amendment and other laws that had come
into effect after the Civil War, and it was like
black people could hold office, they could vote, they could
live in this transition period from slavery into freedom, and
they were doing it on the auspices of the Union Army.

(13:03):
But then the Union Army with drew pretty prematurely, I
think in the eighteen seventies early eighteen seventies, and it
went from the reconstruction South, which ended up lasting just
a few years, to what became known as the Jim
Crow South, which was basically slavery by any other name
than slavery.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, that's when the Dixiecrats, which were conservative Democrats, I guess,
conservatives of the day, that's when they started to get
creative and said, all right, well, we have this new
fifteenth Amendment, so let's try and think of a lot
of ways. Even though the law says that black men
can vote, that we can keep them from doing so.
So how about a literacy test, and not only just

(13:46):
a literacy test, but maybe one only in English, so
that way there's no way an immigrant can vote if
they can't read English.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Or maybe some.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Poll taxes where you have to pay a dollar to
register to vote.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
But in like twenty sixteen money that was like eight
hundred dollars. Actually looked it up, it's nine thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
In the early nineteen hundreds, I looked up like taxes,
it was a dollar fifty to register and that would
be like forty three dollars today. Yeah, but you know,
for a poor person who you know is maybe waffling
on whether or not to bother voting, sure, charging them
forty three dollars is probably going to seal the deal.
And George actually had accumulative tax apparently for many years

(14:31):
where every year, like if you were forty years old,
every year from the age of twenty one that you
weren't registered to vote, you would have to pay per
year when you first registered to vote. Oh wow, So
that was clearly targeting like a freed slave in his
fifties would then have to pay a cumulative tax from

(14:52):
the age from twenty one up to fifty. And you know,
and again that just basically meant no one was going
to register.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Well, there were a lot of Grampa the clause laws too,
which basically said that if you were registered to vote
prior to the fifteenth Amendment, or your grandfather was registered
to vote prior to the fifteenth Amendment, you you were
eligible now under these Jim Crow laws. But most black
people in the South were not registered to vote, nor

(15:20):
were their grandparents prior to the fifteenth Amendment, so that
basically just stripped them of their voting rights automatically as well.
And you mentioned the literacy test too, Chuck, did you
look into those at all?

Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah, I mean some of them.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Some were like like recite the US Constitution. Some of
them some were like that twenty pages long. And they
would be administered by white Democrats. And again Democrats at
the time were the party of Conservatives. We should do
an episode on that on when the parties switched.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Yeah, names, we've chatted about that before.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
So it would be left up to this poll worker
who was administering the literacy test. It would be left
up to their judgment whether the person passed or failed. Yeah,
like it was up to them. It wasn't an objective test.
It was a subjective test.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
And so the end result of this is in nineteen forty,
nineteen forty, not eighteen forty, these suppression campaigns worked so
well that only three percent of eligible voters African American
Southerners were registered to vote by nineteen forty.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
And you know, it's probably one of the worst parts
about that is that I'll bet in nineteen forty that
the average white person considered black people politically disengaged in
this country because of statistics like.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
That, Oh right, say, like, oh, they don't even vote.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, they don't even care about politics. I mean three
percent of them are registered to vote even, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
And this wasn't limited to the south, kind of up
north and nationwide there were things going on.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
Notably, there was a for naturalized citizens.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
It was very long residency requirements basically to try and
keep immigrants from voting for a long time.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Especially the Chinese. Apparently did you know that I did not.
There was an eighteen eighty two law. It's pretty on
the nose. The Chinese Exclusion Act, and it said, if
you're Chinese and you're an immigrant, you're not allowed to
become a citizen, which meant they couldn't vote. And this
is on the books in the United States until nineteen
forty three.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah, this stuff is in ancient history. That's why it's
so shocking, you know. Yep, So nineteen twenty comes along
and women were finally given the right to vote thanks
to the Nineteenth Amendment, And you mentioned the Voting Rights
Act of nineteen sixty five, which finally got rid of
the Jim Crow voting laws officially in the South. But

(17:57):
that didn't mean that suppression intimidation didn't still go on.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
No.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
You know, like whenever the federal government decided that it
needed to lend a hand and assist the black population
of the Southern States in gaining their citizenship, that there
would be a huge backlash to that. And initially it
meant the formation of the Clan, and then after the

(18:23):
Civil Rights Act, the clan again experienced this huge resurgence
in popularity and membership, and acts of white terrorism just
became the norm. And now that we're looking back on it,
you know, we think of like the Civil Rights movement.
When I think of that, I don't think of it
as actually agitating for civil rights. I think of it
as agitating for full citizenship and equal treatment under the

(18:47):
law and everything that makes up civil rights. But you
don't think of it as like, really, at the basis,
what the civil rights leaders were agitating for were things
like protection of their voting rights, access to the polls
just says any white person would enjoy. And that march,
that very famous march from Selma to Montgomery. Did you

(19:08):
see that movie Selma?

Speaker 3 (19:09):
No?

Speaker 1 (19:09):
I saw.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
I haven't seen that one.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
It's a great movie. Have you seen either thirteen or Thirteenth? Oh?

Speaker 3 (19:14):
No, I'm dying to see that one too, Dude.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
That one that's amazing. It's just amazing. It's really well done,
and the stuff they're talking about is just so eye opening.
It's great. Like it's one of those ones you'll watch
more than once, I'm sure. Yeah, but that march from
Selma to Montgomery was a march for voting rights. Yeah,
and it actually helped usher in this Voting Rights Act

(19:38):
of nineteen sixty five because the Alabama State Patrol I believe,
I'm like horseback with batons and whips and night sticks
and tear gas just ruthlessly beat these unarmed, peaceful protesters

(19:58):
in the street of Selma, and it was all captured
on national television in broadcasts, and it really changed the
mood of the nation as far as that goes. And
it actually was supremely counterproductive to people who were against
black voting because it helped protect black vote by the
federal government through the Voting Right Tech to nineteen sixty five.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Another thing that came with that act was an official
ban on any quote test or device in quote to
qualify voters on the basis of literacy, education or.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
Fluency in English.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
And then it took all the way till nineteen sixty
six until poll taxes were banned, which was kind of
way later than I thought.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Well, it was like the next year.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Well no, I mean just period.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Oh yeah, No, those Jim Crow laws were basically done
away with after a century. Yeah, as they were around
for a century in one form or another.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Unbelievable. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
And then finally during Vietnam, they finally lowered the age
voting age to eighteen and nineteen seventy one post Vietnam
because veterans were like, hey, I can be drafted and
shot and killed for my country, but I can't vote.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
And they all went, yeah, it's a good point.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
That is a good point to argue that one.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
You want to take a break, Yeah, man, all right,
we'll be right back and talk about the eleven voter
suppression techniques as why.

Speaker 4 (21:26):
Sk as tough.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
You should note, all right, we're back, and before actually
we move on to some of these eleven techniques. My

(21:54):
question for you, sir, at the basis of all this
is voter fraud. Is what the argument is for a
lot of these, especially with IDs, So is that, like,
is voter fraud real?

Speaker 1 (22:08):
So, I mean everything I came across that strike me
as legitimate, although I'm not sure how legitimate, like say
a conservative might find it, but like the Brookings Institution,
to me, it's definitely left leaning. But I would also
say that it's quite a legitimate think tank. Right, But

(22:28):
the studies that I've come across, I'll say, no, it's
not really a thing like the It's basically a specter.
It's a potential possibility, but it's in actuality it's not
a thing. And one thing I saw was that this
came I'm not sure where this one came from. But
eighty six convictions. I have three hundred million votes cast

(22:53):
in the last few elections. I would say that's probably
about ten to twelve elections. There's only been eighty six
convictions for voter fraud. And the other issue with this, specifically,
specifically with voter ID laws is that most of those
cases of fraud where people have actually been convicted of
voter fraud were mail in ballots, and so like a

(23:15):
voter ID card is not going to do anything for
that because you don't produce ID to mail in a ballot.
So the idea that there is a big problem with
voter fraud is ostensibly not real, although of course Trump
is going to he's carrying out an investigation and he's

(23:37):
formed a commission, so I'm very curious to find out
what they find. But even if it were a real thing,
from the pattern that we're seeing, the voter ID laws
aren't going to help anything anyway.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
So so far as it actually makes a difference in
an election outcome, it is negligible.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
No, And I have to say there are It's not
like the people who are who say, especially rank and
file GOP members, right, not necessarily like high elected officials,
but just like the average GOP party member. It's not
like they're lunatics for believing that there's such a thing

(24:19):
as widespread voter fraud, right, Like this is a big
dram that's beat on the conservative side in conservative media,
But there's also like instances in the past that can
be pointed to saying like see, see, this is what
they do. Like Acorn definitely didn't help anything. Acorn was

(24:40):
a community organizing group that had been around since I
think the eighties, and they were dedicated to getting lower
income minority people who traditionally had trouble accessing the polls
or voting, getting them registered and getting them to vote right.
So they were very much aligned with the Democratic viewpoints

(25:02):
of universal access, universal participation in elections, and they were
very much a left leaning organization. They were associated with
Obama very famously, and then equally famously, they were this
disgraced organization because they were accused of voter fraud, a
voter registration fraud to be specific. And the way that

(25:23):
this happened was they would send out people to canvas
neighborhoods and they would give them a quota and if
they met their quota, then they would say, get paid
a bonus or something like that. Right, So these Acorn
workers were given and these were just the same people
who were also maybe on the next Tuesday coming by
your house to see if you wanted to donate to
the Sierra Club too. Right, they were given an incentive

(25:47):
to create fake registrations, and a lot of them did they.
And when these investigations were launched in multiple states into
Acorn and voter registration fraud, it was found that these
people weren't trying to pave the way for fraud at
the polls, but that they were creating fake registration forms,
very frequently duplicate registration forms for the same person to

(26:11):
get paid for work they hadn't done to get paid
from Acorn. That was the extent of it. So Acorn
ended up disbanding, but they left a huge, huge blemish
on the argument from the liberal side saying we don't
engage in voter fraud. Well, you're crazy for even thinking that.
Now forever, conservatives, especially people who aren't who are let's

(26:37):
just say conservatives, can point to Acorn for the rest
of the tourney, the rest of the time and be like, look,
you guys did that. So, yes, there is such thing
as voter fraud in my mind, and you can't persuade
me otherwise. And as long as there's that kind of division,
you're not going to be able to persuade anybody if
there's no such thing as voter fraud.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah, that's a good point, all right. Should we talk
about the eleven techniques?

Speaker 1 (27:02):
I'm pretty tired, man, I don't know, Yes, all right?

Speaker 3 (27:08):
Number one, number one on our list. Voter caging?

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Who was that? Was that? Your carson? Oh?

Speaker 3 (27:16):
No, sort of a casey case I mean here the
top forty guy.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
That was pretty good.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Did you ever hear that great outake when he had
to read the dead Dog letter?

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Pretty wonderful that that taught me to just shut up
when a micst Was it?

Speaker 3 (27:33):
Dead dog? Was that it?

Speaker 1 (27:36):
But it was? It was a pretty funny out take.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Man, God bless him? All right.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Voter caging is when uh, you send mail on unford
forwardable mmhm, that's really a mouthful mail which cannot be forwarded.
Uh send that mail to an address uh that is
on the voter rolls, and when it's not, when it's

(28:07):
return undelivered. Basically, they challenge and say this person no
longer lives at this address, so they can't vote.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Right, which in and of itself is not scientific. It's
not illegal. It's when you target, say Democrats, I think
specifically minorities, it becomes illegal. You can't target any minority group,
but I believe you can target the opponent's party like

(28:37):
registered party members. But the whole point is you're saying
this person doesn't live there or else they would have
gotten their mail, and because they don't live there, their
vote can't count. They should be purged from the roles.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Very famously happened in nineteen fifty eight when this literature
was sent to eighteen thousand registered Democrats, and then again
in nineteen eighty one when Republicans sent thousands of letters
to minorities blacks and Latinos in New Jersey.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
And that one actually calls.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Such a stir that the RNC got together with the
DNC and said, you know what, I'm going to consent
here with a consent decree, and we're not going to
do it anymore. Right.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
They didn't just do that out of the goodness of
their hearts. The DNC sued the RNC for that nineteen
eighty one election because there was a lot of dirty stuff.
And to this day, the RNC, if it does any
if it undertakes any voter suppression techniques, wants to create

(29:41):
any changes in voting regularity, it has to get approval
by the courts first.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Correct, But that doesn't stop it from happening because now
it's just third party groups can do it now, Yeah,
because they're not part of the RNC officially or the DNC, right,
and so it still happens. Yeah, what about these flyers.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
These so these kind of fall into a larger category
of misinformation campaigns, right right, you got flyers, you got
robo calls.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
These are just so brazen.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
They really are, like literally robo calls that say, hey,
you're your Democratic candidate has basically already won, so you
just stay at home and relaxed tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Yeah, don't forget to vote on November fifth, Latino voter,
even though election days November fourth.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, it's so And you know, I was about to say,
how do they get away with it? But it says
right in here, who is it, the co director of
the voting rights group Advancement Project. It says, basically, you know,
they're usually anonymous, So like, how do you how do
you go after someone you wait around at mailboxes?

Speaker 1 (30:52):
You could arrest the mail carrier.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
I guess, oh, I mean you think about that.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
I was thinking that they were just dropped in the mailboxes,
but I guess they are mail.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
These guys with these like handlebar mustaches and like black
capes come in hand deliver these things.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
So basically there's no way to trace this stuff. So
as a as a minority in a minority neighborhood, you
might get a flyer and a robo call saying a
wrong date like you said, or don't bother your candidate's one,
or you know, mail your absentee votes to this address,

(31:27):
which is incorrect.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, and this is like really really underhanded stuff, super
illegal stuff. But again you can't unless you can trace
it back to somebody who specifically and purposefully carried out
this campaign. Yeah, that you can't do anything about it
except go public and say no, no, no, don't listen
to that.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, well, because what happens is you get a Hispanic
voter on the nightly news that says I got a
call that said I could vote by phone, and half
the people watch and that probably think well, I like,
this guy probably didn't even understand that phone call, so
it's chalked off as that when in fact he really
did get a phone call saying he could vote by phone.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
Yeah. Well, yeah, that happened in Nevada in two thousand
and eight.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
I think that it's sor ry Nevada. It'll always be
Nevada to me. I'm sorry, Nevada. I know it tries
you guys, bat poop, but it's true. Nevada, Nevada. What else, Chuck,
This is a big one. I got one. You're ready. Yeah,
fell any disenfranchisement, fell in disenfranchisement.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
So there used to be apparently the Greeks are the
ones who came up with this, but it was really
codified in the West through medieval Europe, where if you
were a convicted bad guy, you would would undergo what
was called a civil death right. Yes, so much so, Chuck,

(33:04):
that you could be murdered by another person and you
were no longer protected by the laws, so the other
person would get away with it, Scott free right. One
of the things that you lost was any kind of
representation you might have or being able to participate in
any kind of community processes right that carried over to
the United States, but it really started to gain ground

(33:28):
over the right after reconstruction, during the beginning of the
Jim Crow period, where a lot of state legislatures enshrined
in their state constitutions that if you were convicted of
a felony, you lost your voting rights, and in some
cases you lost them forever. You had to appeal to
the governor to restore them. Some states said you lost

(33:52):
them while you're in prison. Other states said you lost
them after, say, if you were parolled, whenever your sentence
was fully finished. But to some degree felon's lost their
right to vote and it's stuck around.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
Yeah, you know, I got the current stats here.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Okay, there are only two states right now that allow
an incarcerated felon to vote.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
Do you know what those are?

Speaker 1 (34:17):
One is Vermont? Yeah, is the other? I want to
say New Hampshire, but I don't know.

Speaker 3 (34:23):
That that would be an obvious guess. But Maine.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
So close? Crazy maners, It's that Canada rubbing off on.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Voting rights restored automatically upon release, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana,
New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, in Utah.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
You like the FedEx guy from the.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
Eighth Rights restored automatically once released from prison and discharged
from parole, probationers can vote California, Colorado, Connecticut, New York
restored automatically upon completion of sentence, including prison, parole and probation.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
In a bunch of other ones.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
That's good.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
How about this everyone, but these last two Okay, Voting
rights restored dependent on type of conviction or outcome of
petition to the government Alabama, Delaware, Missippi, neb Outa, Tennessee, Wyoming,
and only restored through individual petition to the government Florida, Iowa, Kentucky,
and Virginia. So the ones that you did not hear

(35:29):
were upon completion, including prison, parole, probation.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
So people might say, don't do the crime, right, sure,
so if you like, on the one hand, it makes
sense like you've given up some sort of civil liberties
because you did commit some horrible, heinous crime. Other people say, okay, well,
maybe once you've done your time, you should get your

(35:54):
rights back. The problem is in the United States there
is a racial disparity between people who are convicted of felonies,
who are black, and everybody else. Right, Yes, So overall
seven percent of the United States African American population as

(36:16):
a whole does not have the right to vote because
of a felony conviction. For the rest of the United
States overall, just one point eight percent. That's including all
every other race. Right, So there's out of the gates.
There's disproportionately more convicted felons among the African American population

(36:37):
in the United States than everybody else. Right. But then
when you start boiling that down to voting rights on
a state level, it becomes painfully clear that this certainly
seems strategically targeted. These laws. In Florida, one in four
of Florida's black residents in twenty sixteen couldn't cast a

(36:59):
ballot because they were disenfranchised for being felons. Yea, one
in four.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Florida was one of the ones that one of the
four states where you had to have an individual petition
approved by the government.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Right. So one quarter, and that's not saying one quarter
of the voting population of African Americans in Florida, that's
the whole population, right. And since African Americans have traditionally
voted Democrat. Any law that says you're a felon you

(37:34):
can't vote right, you can just leave it at that
and make your own your own surmises about it.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
Right surmises.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
So word now sirmationians sermations. That's what I was looking for.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
Voter ID laws.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
That's sort of obviously a big one because it's probably
when you hear most about in the news. As of
this year, thirty two states have laws requiring or requesting
ID when voting. West Virginia is coming in twenty eighteen,
so that would make thirty three states.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
And we mentioned Texas earlier.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
That's one of the states where they say like, oh, well,
you can use your gun permit, but you can't use
your college student ID, even though the state has issued
both of those.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Right, because if you're a student, you're possibly more likely
to vote Democrat. If you are a gun owner, you're
probably more likely to vote GOP right.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
And if you're talking nationally, eleven percent of Americans don't
have current state issued photo IDs. There's a lot of
reasons why. Maybe you're elderly or disabled or both and
you can't drive, so a you don't need a driver's license. B,

(38:52):
you have a hard time getting to the DMV just
to get an ID like a non driving ID, state
issued ID, sure to vote. And once again, historically these
people might be more apt to vote Democrat. So it's
hard to not look at it along those lines.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Right, And a lot of people say, well, there was
this commission back in I think two thousand and five,
American University sponsored a bipartisan commission to look into voter
ID laws, right, whether they suppressed voting, whether they would
prevent fraud. And it was led by former Reagan Chief
of Staff James Baker and former President Jimmy Carter, Right.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Two opposite sides of the coin.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, but two statesmen, you could make the case. Sure.
So what they found is that both groups concerns were valid. Yes,
voter ID could prevent voter fraud. Yes, voter ID laws
would suppress voting. So they suggested the government minorities specifically, Yeah, minorities, women,

(39:57):
the elderly, and the disabled are who are most likely
to be affected by voter ID laws. And the poor right, Yes, sorry,
the elderly, the poor, women, the disabled, and minorities. Yes,
all five of those groups tend to vote Democrat. Two
so voter ID laws could be enacted to prevent frauds

(40:22):
of this commission. But if you're going to do that,
you need to basically give out IDs, and you have
to make access to these IDs extremely easy. And so Texas,
who has a very strict ID law you have to
show a photo ID to vote and only specific ones
said okay, well, then we'll undertake this. We'll give away

(40:43):
free IDs, but you've got to produce some documents to
get the ID. So, for example, you might need to
produce a birth certificate. If you don't have your birth certificate,
you have to go get a copy of it. And
if you were born before nineteen fifty, then you have
to go to wherever out whatever county you were born
in because they're not computerized records. You have to go

(41:03):
to the county clerk's office, get it, pay forty two
dollars for the copy, and then come back and get
your ID. And hopefully you also remember the other two
pieces of documentation that you have to bring with you
to get this free ID. And this investigation, I actually
think it was a court case found that in the
fifteen months leading up to the twenty fourteen midterm elections,

(41:25):
Texas's free voter ID registration drive managed to issue just
two hundred and ninety seven IDs for the entire state
over a fifteen month period.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Well, and this whole thing with you have to go
to the county where you were born, if you're basically elderly, right,
like you've ever driven across Texas.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Well, Plus, if you're poor, remember that poll tax. You
calculated the dollar fifty poll tax in Texas. It came
out to be about forty something dollars. Well, it costs
forty two dollars to get a copy of your birth
certificate to get that free ID. Some people say that's
a modern poll tax. Almost down to the penny, that's
a modern poll tax. If you are poor, if you're broke,

(42:04):
if you have trouble making ends meet, forty two bucks
is a lot. Yeah, And if you're on the fence
about voting, like you really want to.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Vote, and that's what you can get there to begin with. Right,
so you was born in Lubbock, but I live in
San Antonio.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Right, and I don't have a car. So all of
these things like these are to a person who believes,
if you really want to vote, you're gonna you're gonna
make it through hell and high water to vote. Yeah,
all of these excuses that we've just thrown out are
just falling on deaf ears, right. Yeah, but if you
really step back and put it into context and really

(42:41):
think about it from a realistic point of view, like
these are hardships, This is tough stuff, and if you're
a voter and you really want to vote, it could
dissuade the average person from doing that. And from everything
I've read, it is really easy to overlook how difficult
it can be to get an ID. For people who

(43:02):
already have an ID and use them every day and
have probably had one ever since their parents took them
to the DMV when they were sixteen to get their
first driver's license, it's really easy to act like it's
not a big thing to get an ID, when in reality,
the poorer, the more disabled, and the more minority you are,

(43:22):
the harder it actually is.

Speaker 3 (43:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
There was a study in twenty fourteen by Rice University,
and not to pick on Texas, but this, you know,
to Rice University.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
I think Texas brought this on themselves.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
In the University of Houston, Texas's twenty third congressional district
found that twelve point eight percent of registered voters who
didn't vote cited lack of required photo ID, so almost
thirteen percent didn't vote, and they said this because I
don't have the proper identification And only two point seven

(43:56):
percent of those people actually didn't have the right identify occasion,
so a full ten percent had the right ID and
didn't vote because they didn't think they did, which and
you know what, we'll take a break and talk about
it after this. But the reason that's not happening is
because of things like billboards and poll watchers and other

(44:16):
intimidation techniques.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
So we'll talk about that right after this, as w.

Speaker 4 (44:22):
Y s K As you should know, all right.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
So I set that up with the study from Rice University,
thirteen percent in the twenty third congressional district in Texas
did not vote because they didn't think they had their
right ID, even though ten percent of that thirteen percent
did have the right ID and just didn't vote because
they were I don't know, misinformed by a billboard and
scared to go to a polling place.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yeah, has that ever happened? Sure, it's happened. There's been
plenty of billboards that have like prison bars or something
on them. It says like voter fraud is a felony.
And apparently these billboards that are sponsored by dark money
groups that have no direct ties to say like the
GOP or the campaigns of a candidate, are they sprout up.

(45:28):
They tend to sprout up in poorer neighborhoods, minority neighborhoods,
neighborhoods that are more likely to be intimidated by billboards
like that, rather than just laugh at them and flip
them off. It's apparently the jury's out on whether they
have an effect or not, but it is it's intended
to be voter intimidation.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
Yeah, they use threatening language, like you said, like someone
behind bars and all of a sudden, let's say you're
a newly naturalized citizen or you are are a felon
that's now out and cleared your parole and everything, and
you see those bars and you're like, well, I'm not
going to take a chance, right and going to vote

(46:09):
because I might be locked up.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
And again, the disingenuous argument number eighty ninety two is well,
if you're not a criminal, you got nothing to worry about, right,
which just completely disregards the psychological impact that something like
bars and crime Fellon have on a person seeing a
billboard that's shouting that at them.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
If you actually are you know, fight your way through
that and say, you know what, I'm going to vote anyway.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
I'm not scared of the billboard.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
And you might show up to your polling place to
find what's known as a poll watcher, who are there
to scout out potential voter fraud what has generally in
many cases amounted to intimidation squads kind of right there
at the front door.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Yeah. Do you remember I said that the RNC got
in a lot of trouble for the nineteen eighty one
election for a bunch of stuff.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
Oh yeah, this is another one.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
One of the things that they had in this nineteen
eighty one I believe New Jersey election was called the
National Ballot Security Task Force, and it was basically off
duty cops wearing guns, wearing blue armbands, patrolling polling stations
who were basically ostensibly looking for voter fraud, but they

(47:31):
court sided with the DNC's contention that they were meant
to intimidate voters who were likely to vote for Democrats.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Well just because they were there with guns.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, like you don't want some dude just walking around
like looking at you, watching you, you know, what are
you doing here? Kind of thing like, No, it's not
what The polling station doesn't belong to one group. It
belongs to everybody, and no one should be made to
feel like they're a threat or they all are not
welcome at this polling station. It's not that guy's polling station.

(48:05):
He doesn't have any right to walk up and down
with the gun, intimidating people. What a despicable thing to
do with your time.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Yeah, I mean, how about this. The Conservative group True
the Vote, their national elections coordinator was he was, you know,
talking about pole watchers. He said that he wanted voters
to quote feel like they are driving and seeing the
police following them.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yes, it's not how you're supposed to feel when you
go vote no at the polling presecs like that's a quote.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Yeah, he wanted them to feel scared.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
And that wasn't nineteen eighty one. That was from the
twenty sixteen election.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Oh yeah, yeah, that got an old one.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
No, so it's not. It hasn't just been say GOP
leaning voters who have done poll watching. There was a
very famous case in the two thousand and eight election
in Philadelphia where the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, which,
as we pointed out in our Black Panther episode, is

(49:04):
not affiliated with the Black Panthers. They're kind of like
this new offshoot group that took over the name.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
I think they were arrested for voter intimidation for basically
doing the same thing but with the police baton rather
than say a gun. Yeah, yeah, I don't care who
you are, what side you're on, don't intimidate voters at
the polls. No. I don't know if I could if
I said that clearly enough. Yet that's a disgusting thing

(49:32):
to do.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
Josh is going to come after you.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
Yeah, I'm watching you.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Early voting is one thing that you say and you're
writing here that I agree with that. Like, who could
argue with early voting because it works. People love it,
voters like it, elected officials like it. It's been a
really big success in the states that do it like

(49:59):
a lot. I think almost a third of this past
election people early voted me included, right, So like everyone
should love this, right, sure.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
Yeah, And it really really works. It gets voter participation
up and like you said, the lines are not long.
There's not like long waits on election day. And yet
despite that, despite everybody basically loving early voting, there have
been cutbacks since twenty eleven in eight states. Rather than

(50:29):
this decades long trend which had been leading up to
know the I think two thousand and eight election, which
is when it really came on, there's been cutbacks rather
than continuing forward with getting early voting out there. And
these eight states are, except for West Virginia, GOP governored states.

(50:53):
And the reason why people who are critics of these
laws or changes to the rules point out the reason
why that these are being done is because in the
two thousand and eight election, this early voting was used
by far and away more by African American voters who
voted for Obama and the Democrats than white voters, and

(51:14):
specifically white GOP voters. Right, something like seventy percent of
early of African Americans in the two thousand and eight
election voted early, compared to like fifty percent of white
voters in the two thousand and eight election. I'm not
sure what the breakdown was for Democrat to GOP, but
I'm quite sure it was lopsided in favor of the

(51:36):
Democrats in that right. So that happened, and then all
of a sudden, the midterm elections of twenty ten were
just a blood bath for the Democrats and swept GOP
governors and legislatures into power. And as a result, early
voting was cut back under new laws that were introduced

(51:57):
in these new sessions.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Yeah, and Sunday voting was a big deal too. Historic
Black churches have had a great success story in organizing
this campaign called Souls to the Polls, where they would
get their church members to the polling stations on Sundays
to vote.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
It's been a big success.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
And so what happens when there's a big success for
a minority group organizing and getting registered is states pushback.
Ohio and Florida specifically banned voting on Sunday, the Sunday
before the election, sorry, not just any Sunday. And that's
when these the black churches had organized to vote for
the Souls to the Polls campaign, and it made a

(52:37):
big deal. More than eighteen percent of Floridians who voted
on the last Sunday of early voting in two thousand
and eight did not vote at all in twenty twelve
because well maybe not just because they weren't allowed to vote,
but that right was taken away from them, And so
eighteen percent didn't vote in twenty twelve.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
So you do the math.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
Yeah, yeah, and I mean that's that's a significant amount
of voters in Florida alone.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
And again it's it's targeted like that. They do the
research and they find out the data on where these
votes coming from, when are they being cast, who is
casting them? And now let's put in as many laws,
let's bend the law however we can to try and

(53:27):
keep those people from voting. Yeah, like like there have
been there was who was a gun. There was a
legislator in Pennsylvania that was that bragged during the Romney
election like, hey, our voter suppression techniques are going to
give this to Romney.

Speaker 3 (53:42):
Right, this is a legislator.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Yeah, it's true. So you know it's funny to some
people listening right now, we sound paranoid. So early voting
is suppressed and as a result, it can it can
lead to voter suppression as well. Right, you've also got
voter registration. We already talked about acorn registering people, but typically,

(54:09):
voter registration drives like the soul of the polls campaign
have an effect on Democrats' votes, so curtailing those can
lead to can lead to a suppression of votes among
Democratic voters. Right, Yes, And we've been picking on the

(54:30):
GOP basically this whole time, Dude. I went all over
looking for instances of Democrats doing robo calls and using
intimidating billboards, and I didn't find it. They're just not
out there.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
If they are specifically robo calls deliver misinformation.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Right or send out deliberately misinforming flyers, or supporting laws
that and early voting, I didn't find it anywhere. This
all seems to be, at least in this current incarnation,
a GOP led wave of voter suppression laws. Right. Yeah,
there is one type of voter suppression that Democrats do

(55:10):
favor though, basically across the board and around the country,
and it's called off cycle off cycle election scheduling.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Yeah, that's when if you may notice that they'll they'll
be an election and you're like, what, there's an election
coming up, Well, why haven't I heard anything about it.
It's because it might be for the city council or
the local you know, it's it's very much local, locally based,
and Democrats they know that those are not very heavily voted.

(55:42):
You know, it's a very low voter turnout for that.
So if it's a referendum on like something that has
to deal with the teachers or specific union or something,
they know about it and they're really going to turn
out to vote and basically have that one in the bag.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Right, And and teachers' unions in city workers unions and
basically any unions typically are democratic leaning, right Democrat leaning.
So through this off cycle election scheduling, by cutting down
on voter participation, they're increasing the impact that these Democrat
leaning groups have on that vote. Right.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
Well, yeah, because everyone wants consolidated elections, like you pull people,
you pull people, sure, and it's like what everyone will say,
you know, I'd kind of really rather just vote on
everything all at once.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Right. But this, this idea of controlling local elections, especially
local school boards, leads to accusations of controlling developing minds
of America's children. Sure, so Republicans have taken notice of
this strategy, and this is from this great article from

(56:52):
Eton Hirsh from five thirty eight, and he talks about
a political scientist named Sarah Anzia who who was studying this,
and she found that between two thousand and one and
twenty eleven, over two hundred bills aimed at consolidating elections
getting rid of off cycle elections were floated across the country.

(57:15):
Half of them specifically on focused on moving school board
election dates, but only twenty five became law. Most of
the time the bills were sponsored by Republicans and killed
by Democratic pushes. Yeah, so there is definitely voter suppression techniques,
and apparently the Democrats will say, well, you know what,
people who aren't that informed aren't going to turn out

(57:38):
for these off cycle elections anyway, that's good. And people say,
wait a minute, wait a minute, that's the same criticism,
the same justification that the GOP uses to justify their
voter suppression techniques, and you're using it for yourself. So
you know, that really sucks when people do that. What
is that called hypocrisy?

Speaker 3 (57:59):
I think that's a word.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
So you know this this is all still happening. I
mean a lot of these examples are kind of throughout history,
but this is still going on, and especially after the
two thousand election.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
And this most recent one.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
It's it's pretty clear that like a few thousand votes
can swing in swing an election.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Yeah, and so this stuff matters.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Yeah, to fight it and whoever's trying to suppress votes,
it can make a difference.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
Right, and so specifically, well, there's this one study that
found after that huge surge, so you remember after the
fifteenth Amendment was passed where.

Speaker 3 (58:45):
Oh I remember, so.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
The the the black population of men at least suddenly
had the right to vote. It threatened the status quo.
So the status quo the establishment went to come up
with new loopholes and and issues to make barriers to voting.
Right after the two thousand and eight election, there was

(59:07):
a huge surge in African American voting. Threatened the status quo.
So the establishment came up with new loopholes, right, and
there was a study from the University of Massachusetts. Should
be totally disregarded because that's an elite academic education and
therefore liars, but they did a study that the more

(59:29):
states saw increases of minority and low income voter turnout,
the more likely it was to have laws floated that
pushed back on voting rights, that cut voting rights during
this twenty thirteen study, and apparently there is this wave
of voter id laws specifically that just hit the country

(59:50):
after the twenty ten elections. There's ten blood bats. The
country was suddenly just flooded with state and local bills
that sought to require voter ID right and it came
out of nowhere, seemingly somebody, this group called News twenty
one's like journalism students who did an investigation under the

(01:00:12):
auspices of the Carnegie Knight Journalism Foundation. They trace us
back to ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and they
deserve a podcast themselves, sure, for sure. But basically they're
a group that was founded I think back in the
seventies or eighties that brings together elected officials in the

(01:00:33):
United States who pay something like one hundred dollars in
dues every two years with corporations that pay thousands and
thousands of dollars in dues every year, and they get
them together and they say, hey, what do you need
to make business easier for you? Oh, well, it would
be great if we could get the Democrats to not

(01:00:53):
vote quite so easily. So let's come up with some
voter ID loss. They come together, they draft model ledge,
and then the ALEC members go back to their various
state legislatures or national legislatures and say, hey, I've got
an idea, here's a bill, let's pass it. And so
from this two thousand and nine meeting in Atlanta, actually

(01:01:16):
a draft voter I D legislative model was produced and
it suddenly just appeared everywhere around the country starting in
about twenty ten. Yeah, so apparently that's what's going on
right now, that's behind this current wave of especially voter
ID laws, but also voter suppression laws that are going on.

(01:01:37):
Like the history in this country, a voter suppression is
pretty shameful, but it's even more shameful that we're doing
it again, it seems.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
North Carolina is a pretty good example of recent years.
In twenty thirteen, there was a law that led by
the GOP that did a bunch of things that eliminated
same day voter registration, cut a full week of early voting,
It barred voters from casting a ballot outside their home precinct.

(01:02:08):
They said you could no longer straight ticket vote. And
then they got rid of a program that would pre
register high school students who would be voting age by
election day scrap right high school students that wanted to
vote that would pre register them said no, too dangerous.
Yeah so, and had one of the most strict voter

(01:02:29):
ID requirements in the country. This one actually went to
court and it was struck down and the judge ruled
that it quote, I'm sorry that the intention to suppress
African American voters was quote with almost surgical precision, and
the court noted that lawmakers first studied which racial demographics

(01:02:50):
use which voting methods, then moved to eliminate those favored
by black residents. So like they actually found out they
did these studies and looked at the data and said,
all right, this is how black people are voting in
North Carolina, so let's try and make that much more
difficult for them to do.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
I think the judge that overruled or struck down those
that basket of laws also said that it read like
it was written in nineteen oh one. Yeah, so North
Carolina got pantsed in front of everybody because I guess
they were too aggressive. But plenty plenty of other states
were able to pass new laws of varying strictness as

(01:03:28):
far as voting suppression goes since twenty eleven.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Well, North Carolina just got pants this week for the
racial jerrymandering.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Yeah, jerrymandering is another episode we need to do too.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
So the whole thing comes down to here. I think
we said earlier too, Chuck is with these laws, right,
there's kind of a litmus test that's emerged. Are the
results of these laws more likely to be to prevent
voter fraud or to suppress votes? And ironically, it seems

(01:04:05):
like it's going to be Donald Trump's commission that could
conceivably put an end to this debate with what they
find with the voter fraud investigation, which, seriously, I cannot
tell you how interested I am in finding out what
they find and hearing all the grizzly details from it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
You think it'll be on the note or on the
up and up.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
I don't know, But I don't know. If it's not,
we'll hear all about it. I can tell you that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
Yeah, I don't know, man.

Speaker 1 (01:04:40):
I'm just I'm very curious to see what they what
they find, or even if it just falls away. I
think the worst thing for this would be if it's
just allowed to just fall to the wayside, because I mean,
if we can get it out in the open and
discussed and investigate it and all that kind of stuff,
I mean, who knows, they maybe they did. What if
they legitimately found that massive voter fraw is a huge problem,

(01:05:02):
well then sure maybe we should have voter ID laws.
Who knows. But if they find that that's not the case,
then we can say, all right, this law is going
to suppress votes. There's no such thing as massive voter fraud,
so this law should be struck down. Just let people vote, Yeah,
you know, agreed.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Like, who is one person to say, you know that
they're not as up on politics and they don't they
don't really take the time, so they shouldn't be allowed
to vote.

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
I mean, that is so anti American.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
You have to be an elitist to think like that,
Like that's an elitist thinking, we're regardless of what your
party affiliation is. Yeah, you got anything else? No, Well,
this is probably the last one we'll ever be allowed
to record. So it's been.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
Nice, Chuck, I've enjoyed working with you.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Been nice, Jerry. If you want to know more about
voter suppression laws, you can type those words in the
search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com. And since I said
voter suppression, it's time for listener mail.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
And you know what before I do listener mail to
listeners who are upset at us right now, like send
us in a thoughtful, researched email of refutation.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
You know, m hm, that's what I want to see.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Yeah, because I'd like to think, like, give me.

Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
Some proof of stuff. Yeah, all right, I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
Gonna call this fan theory. Oh, this is a good
one that you picked out. Yeah, Josh, I really enjoyed
your show guys on the crazy fan theories.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
Thought i'd share one. It came up with a couple
of years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
It involves to kill a mockingbird, go set a Watchman,
which was the famous sequel to that book, and Back
to the Future Part one, and Back to the Future
Part two, which was the very famous sequel to Back
to the Future Part one.

Speaker 3 (01:06:56):
Right, I added that nice. Did you know that the.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Courthouse steps in the movie adaptation of Mockingbird the very
same as the courthouse in the Back of the Future movies.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
I did not know that, did you?

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
Well? I didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
I've been on the universal lot and walk those steps though,
so I was just like, in my mind, I was thinking, well,
it's just a movie lot, dude. So he says, aside
from it being on the universal lot, the reason for
this has to be that both To Kill a Mockingbird
and Back to the Future take place in the same town.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
Well that's not.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
True, no, but still to Kill It with the chuck.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
To Kill a Mockingbird depicts the town in the nineteen
thirties and the trial that exposes the deeply racist tendencies
among its people. This is why in nineteen fifty five
it would have never occurred to a black malt shop worker.

Speaker 3 (01:07:45):
I believe Goldie, Is that not right, future mayor Goldie.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
That he could one day become mayor until some guy
from the future accidentally suggests it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):
This is falling apart from me already.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
I love this idea, and Back to the Future too.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
Marty steals a sports almanac from twenty fifteen which winds
up in Biff's hands in nineteen fifty five, creating an
alternate timeline from that point forward. Some twenty years after
To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout returns home and Gossett a watchman,
but it's set in the alternative timeline, which is why

(01:08:20):
at least one character, Atticus Finch, seems very different.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
Is any like racist in this sequel?

Speaker 1 (01:08:27):
Yeah, and it's Marty McFly's fault.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
Go Setta Watchman was written in nineteen fifty seven. It
is the To Kill a Mockingbird of the alternate timeline.
To Kill a Mockingbird was published in nineteen sixty. Is
the version of the book written in the timeline. Marty
fixes when he burns the almanac at the end of
Back of the Future two. I'm completely lost on that one,
and he says, how fitting that Gosetta Watchman was published

(01:08:51):
in twenty fifteen. Yeah, and that bit.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
Of fan theoryishness is to you by Brian McBurney.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Nice job, Brian. That was outstanding. It did have its poles.
There's a little rough around the edges, but you're using
your noodle and I like it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
Yeah, that's better than Angela Lansbury is a serial killer.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
It is. If you want to get in touch with
us like Brian did, and send us a really cool
fan theory you thought of yourself. That holds up. You
can send us both and Jerry and Noel and Frank
the Chair an email to stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot
com and as always, join us are a home on
the web. Stuff Youshould Know dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.