Why Voting in This U.S. Election Will Not Be Equal | 2020 Elections
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Transcripts
“Seven hours, 45 minutes, and 13 seconds
it took for me to vote in Fulton County, Ga.
As soon as I saw the line, I hit the stopwatch
on my phone.
I spent the first couple hours listening to a new
Run the Jewels album.
And then I ended up listening to the entire discography.
And then I started watching season eight of
‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’
And that’s five hours.
It was one o’clock in the morning,
and somebody was like, ‘Hey, y’all remember we came
to vote yesterday, right?’”
“Look at it.”
When it comes time to vote in November, would
you rather stand in a line like this …
“Somebody please help us.
We are at our polling place
in Atlanta, Fickett Elementary School.
The systems are down.”
… or like this?
“Oh look, there’s no line.
There’s no line at all out here
in suburban white country.”
Seven years ago, a controversial Supreme Court
ruling struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act.
“If you hear me, the voting machines were not working.”
And after that, many states passed
laws that ended up making it harder for people of color
to vote.
“We have all these barriers that aren’t
in place for other people.
It’s 2020.
Why is it this difficult for someone to go to and vote?”
To understand why, we go to Georgia.
“I think Georgia has become a kind of hotbed for
voting rights questions.”
“How voting takes place has become
one of the most explosive issues in Georgia.
Georgia is the largest state by landmass east
of the Mississippi River.
It’s dominated by the reality of Atlanta.
It’s multicultural.
It’s growing.
It's dynamic, this sort of throbbing megalopolis
where you’re seeing Democrats in large numbers.
And then beyond these urban centers,
you have a much more traditional, rural Georgia,
where you have seen a massive shift of white voting
behavior from conservative Democrat
to full-on Republican.”
Georgia has historically been a pretty conservative state, but
as it becomes more culturally and racially diverse …
“In this presidential election,
there is some thought that Democrats have a shot here.”
… but one fact still remains.
“Republicans control the State House.
Republicans control the Legislature,
and they are free, frankly, to implement the
voting laws they see fit.”
As Republicans fight to remain in control of the state,
some say it’s no longer a fight over who
people vote for, but who is allowed to vote.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,
an independent federal agency, says
these are the five most common voter suppression tactics.
They happen across the country,
but the only state that has ticked every box is Georgia.
“The term voter suppression —”
“Voter suppression.”
“Voter suppression.”
“Voter suppression.”
”— embedded in that word is the very question of what
the motivation is for these kinds of laws
and procedures.”
“The Republican argument, that they say,
is that they are worried about voter security.
They are worried about voter fraud.”
“Voter fraud is all too common.”
“We don’t have evidence of that.”
“And then they criticize us for saying that.”
“Federal law actually requires us to make sure
that we keep our voter rolls updated, clean, fresh
and accurate.”
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger
is Georgia’s lead elections official.
It’s his job to maintain the state’s voter lists.
“Many people don’t realize that, nationwide, about 11 percent
of all people move every year.
And that’s why you want to update your voter rolls.
We just send notices out to people that haven’t voted
for a long period of time.”
“There’s an argument to be made that purging voter rolls
serves a legitimate purpose.
And that is to make sure that people are alive.
The counter-argument, of course,
is that these voter rolls in some states
are being aggressively purged by Republicans in an effort
to keep them from coming to the polls.”
In 2017, 560,000 voters were purged from Georgia’s
voter rolls.
A report later found that Black voters
were purged at a higher rate in more than half
of Georgia’s counties.
“This is happening in the context of the American
South, where there is a long and well-documented history
of using trickery.”
“The kind of Jim Crow-era — things like poll taxes —”
“— voting tests, literacy tests to keep people of color
away from the polls.”
“You know, it’s important to recognize
that, until the 1960s, African-Americans
were pretty much shut out of voting
in the state of Georgia.
That began to change when the Voting Rights Act
was passed in 1965.”
“Voting Rights Act of 1965 basically says that states
cannot make laws that infringe on people’s rights to vote.”
A key part of the law with something
called Section 5 preclearance, which said —
“States with a history of racist legislation cannot
make laws that infringe on people of color without
the federal government’s permission.”
After the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965,
the number of African-Americans
who registered to vote in Georgia doubled.
“It changed Southern politics.”
“At the most basic level, bigger participation
from Black Americans.”
And for a while, that’s how things went.
But …
“It’s not as if the South loved the preclearance.”
Many of the states felt it was an unfair burden, especially
when voter participation increased.
“What was true is that they, frankly,
couldn’t do much about it.”
Well, until a challenge to the law
brought the issue all the way to the Supreme Court.
Announcer: “— the 1965 Voting Rights Act.”
[crosstalk]
“Shelby v. Holder.”
Shelby v. Holder.
“I just get wound up when you ask me about voting rights.”
Here to help explain is Debo Adegbile,
the lawyer who argued that preclearance was
still necessary.
But the other side argued that the standards
used to measure discriminatory voting practices
were outdated.
In a 5 to 4 decision, the justices
ruled to strike down the preclearance, which
effectively meant that states could pass new voting laws
without federal oversight.
“So it was a resounding loss, and perhaps
one of the most significant civil rights
decisions of the United States Supreme Court
in recent memory.”
“The decision of Shelby took away
the federal government’s most effective tool
in regulating state voting rights.”
“After the Shelby decision, there
were almost immediate attempts to change the way voting works.”
Some states passed voting legislation just hours
after the ruling.
Alabama implemented new voter ID laws.
North Carolina eliminated seven days of early voting.
And the list goes on.
“Without the preclearance provision,
there were many, many elections
where those discriminatory laws affected our politics.”
Voting rights advocates say this
was a key ruling that had the power to impact
the outcome of an election.
And that’s what many believe happened in Georgia in 2018.
“The governor’s race in Georgia in 2018 was …”
“Bitter.”
“On one side, you had …”
“I’m Stacey Abrams, and I’m running for governor.
I have a boundless belief in Georgia’s future.”
“Her strategy was based on signing up people of color.
And then on the other side …”
“I’m Brian Kemp.”
“— because you’re a proud, hardcore Trump conservative
on spending, immigration and guns.”
“So you had a secretary of state,
who had come under criticism for voter suppression,
running the election that he’s in.”
“That puts them at odds.”
“We’ve seen jurisdictions consolidate and close precincts.
We’ve seen voter ID laws come into play.
There was a system in Georgia called Exact Match, where
if your information doesn’t 100 percent match databases
that the state uses, that you can be purged from the
voter rolls.
That tends to target people with ethnic names.
A lot of these new suppression schemes seem race-neutral,
but they have the same impact.”
“Georgia has 159 counties.”
“It’s a staggering number of counties.”
“And we are hearing reports from all over the state.”
[phones ringing]
“There was a county in Georgia called Randolph County.”
“Randolph County tried to close seven out of nine —”
“Seven out of the nine.”
“— polling places in a county that’s 60 percent Black.”
“Jeff Davis County polling location consolidations.
I mean, I should say that, like, this
could take a while.”
“Chatham County allowed the city of —”
[crosstalk]
“Fighting voter suppression is very
much like fighting a hydra.
You chop off one head, and three grows in its place.”
Here’s one impact: The 2017 Exact Match law prevented
53,000 Georgians from having their registrations accepted.
Nearly 70 percent were Black.
“The evidence is very clear to us
that the ones most impacted by these new laws
are Black Georgians, are people
in Democratic communities.”
All of this results in a contested election.
And then …
“But I’m here tonight to tell you,
votes remain to be counted.”
“Make no mistake, the math is on our side
to win this election.”
“So Brian Kemp squeaks out a victory.”
“And he is now the governor of Georgia.
It was two figures who have represented
the opposite sides of the voting rights argument.”
“The question that dogged Georgia throughout 2018
was whether or not these tactics
were fundamentally fair.”
“So what happened in 2018 really
is a preview, where democracy is under a stress test.”
One that may get even more stressed in the lead-up
to 2020, with the added elements
of coronavirus and a country on edge
after nationwide protests.
“If you want change in America,
go and register to vote.
Show up at the polls on June 9.”
In April, in response to the pandemic,
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger
sent out absentee ballot applications
to nearly seven million registered voters
in an attempt to reduce in-person voting.
“And what that really has done is
it’s taken the pressure off it today,
so that instead of having those,
you know, million people that were voted absentee
show up today, we now have something
that is more manageable.”
But many of those absentee ballots were never delivered.
In Atlanta, this contributed to Election Day wait times
that were reminiscent of 2018 and 2016.
“We got here before six o’clock this morning.”
“Since six this morning.
It’s almost 9 a.m., and I have not moved.”
In Fulton County, Georgia’s largest, election director
Rick Barron had to contend with both
a 9,000 percent increase in absentee ballots,
and the rollout of a new voting machine system.
“We became an absentee-by-mail state.
We still had to do our full complement of
Election Day infrastructure.
We did our early-voting infrastructure.
And it stretched us.”
With many usual polling sites, like churches and schools,
dropping out because of the pandemic, an estimated 16,000
voters in Fulton County were redirected here,
to this restaurant, Park Tavern.
“Take a look behind me.
This is the Park Tavern precinct.”
“This polling place is serving multiple locations
that are supposed to be separate locations.”
And these problems stretched all across metro Atlanta.
“The impact of having problems at the voting
booth in high-density areas in Georgia
means that people of color are going to be
disproportionately affected.”
One study showed that in communities
where more than 90 percent of registered voters
were minorities, the average minimum wait time
at the polls was 51 minutes.
When whites made up more than 90 percent of voters,
it was just six minutes.
“So how are things running now?”
“Well, by and large, they’re running very smoothly
throughout the state, except, obviously, Fulton County has
had multiple failures.”
Each county in Georgia runs its own election,
with Georgia’s secretary of state as the top official.
But after the massive failures in the primary,
a blame game commenced.
“They should be embarrassed with their performance.”
“Whatever Secretary Raffensperger’s opinion is,
he’s the head election official in the state,
and he can’t wash his hands of all the responsibility.”
“In this environment, incompetence
does have the effect of voter suppression.”
Things would have looked different
before the Shelby decision.
Even in an emergency situation like
the pandemic, the implementation
of all of these changes —
new voting machines, poll place closures
and the absentee balloting — still would have required
federal oversight through Section 5 preclearance,
meaning voters of color would have had …
“A front-end protection that stops discrimination
before it can take root.
What we’ve lost with the Shelby County ruling is
that, now when changes are made to take account
of the public health crisis, they are not
being made toward, are those changes
harming minority voters.”
Which means …
“Your only option, now, is to go case by case,
to try and find every bad thing that’s happening
and try and figure out if you can bring a case to stop it.
That’s costly.
Litigation is slow.
Can they happen quickly enough in proximity
to an election to make a difference?”
“Voting rights and questions of voter suppression
are not limited to the South.
It’s happening in Texas, in Wisconsin, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and other places.
The political power of 1776 to 1960
was one that excluded huge communities of people
in this country.
And so history tells us the same thing
the current day tells us.
If you are Black, brown in this country,
to exercise your democratic rights
is harder than if you are white.
It’s not just a foregone conclusion
that everyone who is an American gets to vote.”
“You know, this is America.
We can put a Tesla in space, but we can’t vote?
I mean, what do we think is going to happen in November?”
“This is Alex.”
“And I’m Kassie.”
“We produced this episode of Stressed Elections.”
“There’s a lot going on in this election,
and we want to make sure we take a deep dive
into the major issues.
So stick around for the next episodes.”
“We’re going to cover voting technology, disinformation
and voting by mail.”
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