Hey, everybody, we got a great one today, you know, for a change.

And this time, this time I mean it.

Ari Berman of The Nation magazine is with us again.

Ari and I discuss his new book, Minority Rule,

which shows how shithead Republicans have been trying to

prevent certain people from voting for years by every means possible. You know the tools.

Make it harder for the wrong people to vote. Make them wait in lines. No Sunday voting.

And this goes back to the beginning of our country when deals are struck in our constitutional

convention in Philadelphia to give southern slave states extra representation by counting every

slave as three-fifths of a person. And of course, this didn't mean that every slave was

given three-fifths of a vote. No, don't be silly. They counted as three-fifths of a person

only for determining how many members these slave states would send to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Of course, slaves didn't vote. They had no rights. Only white men with property

voted. Slaves counted as property so they could vote, the white men who owned them.

But every slave counted as three-fifths of a human being so the southern states could have

that many more members of Congress and that many

more electoral votes in every presidential election. Nope, the slaves didn't vote, but every slave

that could be worked to within an inch of their lives was worth three-fifths of a person

in calculating how many members of Congress the state was entitled to.

It's an ugly part of our country's history, of course, which continues today as Republican

state legislatures continue by making it harder for poor people, students, immigrants,

and people of color to vote.

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