Welcome to Justice by Design. I'm Kimberly Atkins Store. Don't forget to click here to subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to like us to help others find us. You know, I've been thinking a lot about voting rights. Ever since I was a kid, I knew voting would be important, and I never

wanted to miss an election. And that's because I learned that it took not one, but two constitutional

amendments to ensure my rights as a black woman to be able to cast that vote. But I didn't realize the barriers that would still be in place for so many

people, particularly people of color, people who are poor, people who live in far-flung places

in the United States, indigenous people, still in 2024 to have access to the polls and have the confidence that their

vote would be counted. You know, when I covered the Supreme Court as a reporter, one of the most

gobsmacking decisions that I covered was the Shelby County case in 2013. I was really

appalled when Chief Justice John Roberts, in his opinion, made it seem like racism and bigotry

and voter suppression were only things of the past, and we couldn't use those things that happened in the

past to protect voting rights in the present. And so he stripped a key part of the Voting Rights Act

with his opinion by making it impossible for the Justice Department to be able to check and ensure that any change to voting systems in places in our country, particularly in the South, that had a long history of voting rights violations, were not going to violate more voters' rights before they went into effect.

And then the Supreme Court has steadily made it harder. going to violate more voters' rights before they went into effect.

And then the Supreme Court has steadily made it harder to bring lawsuits that challenge actual voting violations on the ground, really stripping the ability of people to ensure

that the polls stay open.

I never realized that in 2024, there would be cases like that of

Mayor Patrick Braxton. He is mayor of a town in Alabama called New Bern. This is a town that hasn't held

elections for mayor in decades. So in 2020, instead of just letting the outgoing mayor

appoint the successor like had been done for years and years, Patrick Braxton decided to file

his papers to run for mayor. And he is a black man in a town

where the mayors had all been white in his lifetime.

And so, because nobody else ran,

he became mayor.

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