Voter Suppression in America

Published Sep 21, 2023, 7:00 AM

Trevor Noah and Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. cover the tactics used to suppress the votes of American citizens, including the Republicans' use of the filibuster to block the Democrats' voting rights bill, and harsher vote-by-mail laws. Plus, Trevor sits with Carol Anderson to discuss the ways voters of color have been disenfranchised. 

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America's basic cable elections are coming up in November, which is just five COVID waves away, So now's as good a time as any to check in on how America's elections are shaping up. In our ongoing segment Vote Gasm twenty twenty two Voting it's what makes America the greatest democracy in the world. And if you don't like American democracy, America will come invade your country to show you in person how good choosing for yourself is. And as we approach the twenty twenty two midterm elections, Republican led states across America are busy fine tuning their voting processes to make sure that they're even more perfect. Take Texas, for example, During the last election, people were so frustrated by how many voting options they had. They could vote in person, they could mail it in, there was drive through voting, Too many choices. It was so annoying. So now Texas is saying, don't worry, We're giving you fewer options so you don't have to worry about choices anymore. Oh and in Georgia, voters were complaining about how many convenient ballot drop boxes were cluttering the streets. Well, thankfully, there's going to be a lot fewer of them, and they're going to be a lot harder to find. This November. In Iowa, they're reducing early voting and closing the polls earlier on election day, which we can all agree is great because who wants to vote after work? I mean, that's prime Netflix time. Baby, democracy can wait. Now, all of these changes have just affected the process for voting, but some of America's most respected leaders also trying to fine tune the process for counting votes, and they're doing this to make sure that the votes are counted the right way.

Allies of Donald Trump are trying to move some of the guardrails that prevented him from overturning to twenty twenty election. Now, according to The Post, Trump and his supporters are pushing a plan to place loyalists in key election posts, from poll watchers and precinct judges to county clerks and state attorneys general.

We have to be a lot sharper the next time when it comes to counting the vote, is a famous statement. Sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate, and we can't let that ever ever happen again. They have to get tougher and smarter.

Is that a famous saying? There's a famous saying that the vote counter. I've never heard that saying in my entire life. I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for saying this, But Trump is totally right. He's right about being tough. You got to count those votes hard. You show any weakness, those ballots are going to take you girl. And for Trump to say the vote council is more important than the candidate, I mean that just shows you how committed he is to ensuring the democratic process goes the way he wants it to. I mean, think about it. Donald Trump said, stop thinking about me so much. It's unprecedented. So that's just some of the admirable work Republicans have been getting up to. But the Democrats have been trying to make changes of their own. And if you ask them, everyone should be able to vote with barely any effort, which would be crazy because then everyone would vote, including Bill Cosby.

No.

So they've been pushing their own laws in Congress, and last night they almost got their way.

We're going to begin with a major setback for Democrats. On Capitol Hill. What would have been their landmark voting rights bill failed fifty two to forty eight in the Senate last night, with two Democrats joining all fifty Republicans in opposing a rules change to push it through.

To those surprise, it was Senator s Kirsten Cinemon Joe Manchin who helped Republicans kill hopes for filibuster reform and voting rights. Eliminating the filibuster would be the easy way out.

Wasn't meant to be easy.

Yeah, Joe Manchin is rights, Everything in the Senate should be as difficult as possible. If Democrats want a possibile Chuck Schumer should have to carry it through a stage of American Ninja Warrior first. But yes, Republicans were able to use the filibuster to block the Democrats voting rights bill with the help of Democrats Joe Manchin the Curson Cinema, because you see, those two do support the Democrats voting rights bills, they just don't support making sure that they pass, which, when you think about it, is actually it's so inspiring, you know. Joe Manchin and Curson Cinema believed so strongly in the power of voting, that they used their vote to block voting rights for the entire country. They were unvoting, voting by voting. So it was the right thing for Mansion and Cinema to do. And basically everyone loves them for it. But as usual, there are haters out there who just don't get it.

If you think this bill makes sense, and if you're worried about the future of American democracy, and if you're prepared to vote for the bill, so why are you wasting everybody's time and not voting for the rule change that allows us to pass the bill? You know, it's like inviting somebody to lunch, putting out a great spread and say you can't eat.

This is why people shouldn't debate on an empty stomach. If we're not gonna pass this bill, can someone at least pass me a goddamn sandwich. But this is just classic Bernie Sanders Man. He thinks just because those two Democrats say they support the bill, they should vote accordingly. Really, Bernie, it's called politics, not logic tics. See what I did there, changed it with politics, and I made it. Maybe if he had spoken off to lunch, Bernie would have understood how much sense. This makes because what Joe Mention is saying is I want to help you out of the water. I'm not gonna throw you a rope, but I want to throw you the rope, and any drowning man would have. It's the thought that counts, Isn't that right? Droning matter can't hear what he's saying, but he agrees. So for whatever reason, the right to vote has gotten people very passionate on both sides. In fact, it's become such a big deal that they even woke up Joe Biden so that he could weigh.

In with the voting rights push hitting a dead end, President Biden was asked whether this year's midterms would be fairly conducted and legitimate after many Republican led states and acted new voting restrictions.

All depends on.

Whether or not we're able.

To make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election.

It's never good for an American president to sow seeds of doubt in the legitimacy of American elections. The language is being used is clearly concerning.

I thought that undermining our election results is a threat to our democracy.

The last thing you wanted to hear was to hear from President Biden that there are questions about the legitimacy of the elections. You needed the president to say, now, we've got the best electoral system in the world.

Yeah, that's right. Joe Biden needs to step up and say that not a single other country in the world has a better electoral system than America. People in Denmark, they wish, they wish they could spend all of election day sweating in a high school gym. I mean sure, that's why most functioning countries actually have the elections run by non partisan, independent commissions, you know, to make sure that politicians can't twist the voting laws for their own gain. But I mean that would just be ridiculous. I mean, think about it. You want the people in charge of the election to have some skin in the game, right, That's how you know it's fair. Imagine how stupid it would be if a basketball game had a separate group of people on the court just to enforce the rules. That would make no sense. That's why instead, the strongest teams get to the site for themselves, whether they committed any fouls and that's why, my friends, America's electoral system is still the best, and why nobody should ever say otherwise, because it's not true, and also because even if it was, it will be really uncomfortable to hear. Yesterday, the US Supreme Court upheld a law in South Carolina that requires male in voters to have their absentee ballot witnessed by one other person, which, in these days of pandemic isolation, is going to make it hard for some people to vote at all. It turns out, though, South Carolina isn't the only state making it more difficult for people to vote by mail. And you're asking how that can be, well, our very own Roywood Junior has more.

The RONA election is upon us, and vote by mail is the only way people will be able to vote safely. But not all the states are making it easy.

The Supreme Court approving a request from South Carolina to reinstate a law requiring absentee ballots to have a witness's signature.

The process of notorizing your absentee ballot in Missouri has also been closely watched by local civil rights groups.

Voters in Texas are confused about what exactly is allowed in our state.

If you put on your application that you want to vote by mail because of COVID, that application must be rejected.

Damn.

States like Texas and South Carolina really are actively limiting absent tee voting. To find out more, I spoke with miRNA Pariz, an expert in American voting rights. Madam Pariz, bring me up to speed real quick. Where are we with voting by mail in this country right now?

We're going to have some glitches, but every state in the country has a vote by mail process. We have been using vote by mail since the Civil War. But we still have a handful of states that are going to put barriers in front of the ballot box, forcing people to choose between their health and exercising their fundamental right to vote.

Why are some states like Texas making it so hard for people to vote by mail.

I think there's no other explanation other than they're worried about how their own voters are going to vote.

Makes perfect sense. The people in charge of voting making sure that people can't vote feels very American to me. And what a surprise. Turns out most of the states pushing back against vote by mail are controlled by Republicans. But maybe I'm not giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt, because if you ask them, they'll say there's a perfectly good reason for limiting absentee ballots.

President Trump has warned for months that expanded voting by mail because of the pandemic, will lead to massive voter fraud.

There will be extraordinary confusion and chaos in the aftermath.

It is open to fraud and coercion.

A postman in a fairy Republican district, for example, could throw out every ballot that he gets.

There'll be no ramifications for that. We all know that rogue mail men can be dangerous, But do these claims legit. Kim Wyman, one of the ogs of vote by Mail, says her state system it's proof that voting by mail works.

Our state votes entirely by mail, and we have since twenty eleven. So we mail every voter that's eligible a ballot about twenty days before election day, and then they get to vote when it's convenient for them.

Why should I trust your process? Wat should the other forty nine states trust what you're doing?

Because we have spent about twenty years really fine tuning it, building in the security measures, so when people attack it and call it into question and say there's fraud, we can demonstrate that it's secure, and we can show how it really empowers everyone to participate.

Have you told your Republican colleagues and other states about this, because they don't seem too interested in expanding vote by mail.

Well, we've been working with all fifty states, and certainly different states are in different places in terms of technology and their capacity for mail and voting. But you know, I think every one of my counterparts wants to empower their voters, give them options to be able to choose to vote at home or vote in person, and I'm confident by November they'll be ready.

You say your office is been in contact with all the.

Other states, Yes, we have.

Would can you talk to Texas one more time? I think they sent you to voicemail check with Texas? I will whyman a Republican insists this should not be a partisan issue, and yet it seems like it is. Colorado's Secretary of State Jenner Griswold, has another word for it.

That is voter suppression, trying to make it harder for Americans to use the best way to vote during a pandemic is voter suppression. We shouldn't be forcing Americans to risk their health to cast a ballot.

A lot of Republicans don't like vote by mail, and they use the argument of ballot tampering. And you know you can take the ballot and throw them out in the trash somewhere. So what do you say to those critics.

I'll tell you Colorado shows the opposite. In two out of our three last general elections, more Republican voters have used the mail ballot than Democrats.

Wait, so Republicans are fighting to stop something that bistically has worked to their advantage in some states.

You know that's totally true.

I would call that biting the hand that feeds you. But it seemed like Republicans just ate the whole damn all. So it's voter suppression, plain and simple. But with only weeks left until the election, is there anything we can do to ensure people's ability to vote? Listen, Matim, Secretary, what you are doing is amazing. You have my full support. It's just too bad that there's nothing I could do to help. But good luck.

The good news for you, Roy is that you can actually sign up to be a pull worker.

Oh oh, you mean work at the What day is election day? That's a Tuesday, November first Tuesday. Yeah, I'm not open. I'm sorry, but it's okay.

Roy, we have early voting. Are you available on October nineteenth?

Got right?

Know you're not frozen. How about November.

I'm frozen. I'm frozen. I'm frozen. For the love of God, make sure you check with your states to vote by mail this year.

My guest tonight.

My guest tonight is the chair of African American Studies at Emory University and a New York Times bestselling author whose latest book is called One Person, No Vote, How voter suppression is destroying our democracy. Please welcome Carol Anderson.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

It's so wonderful having you here. You wrote a book called White Rage, which was a New York Times bestseller. You spoke in depth about how America is dealing with an issue that it really hasn't dealt with completely, which is the rage that many white people feel at what appears to be America changing. This book is I guess based in some way off of that, and yet is a completely different topic. One Person, No votes, voter suppression destroying our democracy. How bad and how big do you believe voter suppression actually is?

I think it is massive. We have had millions of people blocked from voting. We have had millions perge from the roles who had been on the voter rolls. The purging and the voter suppression has been so intense that we have Donald Trump in the White House right now. That's the power of voter suppression.

The numbers in the twenty sixteen election, especially in and around the black vote, were really interesting. You saw in key states, in swing states where voter dropped from it may have been like seventy eight thousand people turning out and dropped to below fifty thousand or you know, you saw drastic drops. Now, some people have argued that that was because Hillary Clinton did motivates black voters to come out. But you've looked at the data, You've analyzed a lot of the information, and it seems like there's been a systematic efforts to remove people of color from the voting roles White people of color.

Though, it's because that after the two thousand and eight election with Barack Obama. Barack Obama brought fifteen million new voters to the polls with that incredible ground game, they were overwhelmingly black, Latino, young, poor. And with that, then the Republican Party that has moved further and further to the right and has become more and more white, and their policies have become more right wing. They don't have policies that resonate with the growing diversity of America. And so instead of thinking about how do we reform this party so that it resonates with America, that our policies are really strong and talk about benefiting more Americans, instead, what they decided to do is to suppress the vote.

Now, the argument the other way from people like Chris Kobuk, you know, from Donald Trump and his team, has been we're protecting democracy. That's why we scrub people of votes roles. If they've died, if they no longer respond to male, then why are we keeping on keeping them on the VOTU roles? How do you respond to that?

Yeah?

And I respond to that because one of the ways that this works in the why is so effective is that they're able to use that cover of being reasonable. You know, we're just keeping the voter rolls up. But when you really look at what they're doing, is that those the people that they're scrubbing. They're not scrubbing people who have moved or who have died. Overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly who they're scrubbing are people who are African Americans, people who are young, people who are poor. And they're doing it by the characteristics say, oh, we don't want black people to vote, because there's still this thing called the fifteenth Amendment. Although the Voting Rights Act got gutted by the Supreme Court, there's still this thing called the fifteenth Amendment. So what they do is they go after the characteristics of a people, societally imposed characteristics. They go after those things like if you move a lot, and we know that people move a lot, particularly if you're poor, you don't stay in the same house, right That moving then becomes a reason to knock people off the rolls.

Is there anything people on the ground can do, What can people do to protect their votes?

Yes?

Absolutely so. There are several things. One is you have to register to vote, and there are organizations that are on the ground helping people get the identification, get the documents they need in order to get the identification. Organizations like vote writers that are doing that work. Also, when you're registered, check the Secretaries of states voter registration page to make sure you're registered to vote, because they are notorious for purging people off the list, even well closely close to an election. So you think that you're registered to vote, you go in to vote and boom, your names nowhere there, and then you're getting the run around. I say, I think the other thing is really important is to help others, so that you're volunteering, you're you know, you've got election poll workers, and you're you're paying attention to what's happening at the polls when somebody is getting the run around. I think that that is really important as well. In there are organizations like the Lawyer's Committee that's doing that incredible work. So that's what we can do and register. The deadline is coming up in early October registered to vote, because we cannot be part of the solution if we're just sitting there and not participating.

We've got to do.

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