(2016/12/13) Desperate times, desperate measures (Voting Rights and the Electoral College)
Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy
Jay Tomlinson
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2016
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Edition #1064
Today we look at the systematic suppression of voting rights during the election and the hail mary attempt to avert a Trump presidency through the electoral college
Be part of the show! Leave a message at 202-999-3991
Show Notes
Ch. 1: Opening Theme: A Fond Farewell - From a Basement On the Hill
Ch. 2: Act 1: The Myth of Voter Fraud - On The Media - Air Date 10-21-16
Ch. 3: Song 1: Fear is a villain - Theo Bard
Ch. 4: Act 2: @AriBerman on voter suppression being back in a big way - Bradcast from @TheBradBlog - Air Date 11-11-16
Ch. 5: Song 2: Beneath the Lies - Abscondo
Ch. 6: Act 3: Republicans Gloat Over Supressing Black Vote - @theyoungturks - Air Date: 11-11-16
Ch. 7: Song 3: Abuse of Power - Lion of Light
Ch. 8: Act 4: How Do We Fix Our Broken Voting System? (w/Guest: Mark Crispin Miller) - @Thom_Hartmann - Air Date: 11-08-16
Ch. 9: Song 4: The Fix Is In - Ok Go
Ch. 10: Act 5: The Big Lie - @FullFrontalSamB - Air Date 12-5-16
Ch. 11: Song 5: Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who
Ch. 12: Act 6: First Republican "Hamilton Elector" Breaks Ranks Against Trump - @theyoungturks - Air Date: 12-07-16
Ch. 13: Song 6: The Game Is Rigged - The Great Malarkey
Ch. 14: Act 7: Tell the Electoral College to #StopTrump & Vote with the People via @DemSpring and directelection.org - Best of the Left Activism
Ch. 15: Song 7: This Fickle World - Theo Bard
Ch. 16: Act 8: Introduction to the Hamilton Electors - Amicus from @Slate - Air Date 12-10-16
Voicemails
Ch. 17: Resist Trump Letters - Alan from Connecticut
Ch. 18: How to get around the fact gap - Andrew from Chicago
Ch. 19: Who's got the conservative argument talking points? - Eli from Northern California
Ch. 20: Conservative argument on the need for real policies - Ryan from Phoenix
Voicemail Music: Loud Pipes - Classics
Ch. 21: Final comments on small changes for the member’s feed and a call for conservative appeals for voting rights and against the electoral college
Closing Music: Here We Are - Everyone's in Everyone
TAKE ACTION
RSVP for the Democracy Spring December 19th rally at a state capitol building near you at savedemocracy.org
ASAP ONLY! Download everything you need to print and mail letters to the 273 Electoral College members pledged to vote for Trump at directelection.org
EDUCATE YOURSELF
Produced by Jay! Tomlinson
Thanks for listening!
Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com
Check out the BotL iOS/Android App in the App Stores!
Follow at Twitter.com/BestOfTheLeft
Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft
Contact me directly at Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Donald Trump is demonstrating that he is a uniquely dangerous individual to be in the White House. |
| 0:10.0 | This program is made possible by the members and donors to the show. To support the work we do and get members on the bonus content, |
| 0:16.0 | please visit the Contributes tab at bestofalife.com. Now welcome to the award winning best of a left podcast with clips today from on the media, the broadcast, the young Turks, the Tom Harman program, |
| 0:27.0 | full frontal with Samantha B and Amatis from Slight. |
| 0:39.0 | This election season Trump has warned the electorate to fear a long list of things, including illegal immigrants, apocalypse at the hands of ISIS, and now dead people voting. |
| 0:50.0 | They even want to try to rig the election at the polling booths and believe me, this is a lot going on. People that have died ten years ago are still voting. |
| 0:59.0 | What Trump's talking about is voter fraud. The keystone of his claims that the election will be rigged. But Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice said NYU School of Law and author of the book The Fight to Vote, says, don't worry. |
| 1:16.0 | In-person voter impersonation, which is what Trump is talking about, is vanishingly rare. One study for the Washington Post looked at a billion ballots cast over the past decade and found 31 documented examples of in-person voter impersonation. |
| 1:33.0 | Even before Trump started running his mouth, this bogeyman of voter fraud has been presented at least as a pretext to pass all sorts of voter ID laws. |
| 1:45.0 | We have on the books right now about 15 new laws in this election that would make it harder for many Americans to vote in one way or another for the first time since the Jim Crow era. |
| 1:57.0 | And voter fraud has been used as the justification for these laws that really hit minority communities, the hardest that hit young people. |
| 2:06.0 | And recently there were documents leaked from an investigation of Governor Scott Walker and his political operation around a judicial election. |
| 2:16.0 | There was actually campaign finance investigation. But in the middle of these documents, there is an email from one of his political aides to the other folks saying, |
| 2:25.0 | well, it looks like this election isn't going to go so well for our candidate. Should we start claiming voter fraud now or wait till people actually vote? |
| 2:36.0 | I say we start now and they all write back some version of good idea. Over and over again, you hear these allegations and they have evaporated upon contact with any investigation. But they're the pretext. |
| 2:50.0 | The notion of voter fraud was not invented out of whole cloths. There was a day back in the latter part of the 19th century when Tamini Hall, the great boss, Tweed political machine that essentially governed New York City, made pretty sure that everything was going to turn out just fine on election day. |
| 3:12.0 | Politicians have wanted to stuff the ballot box ever since senators were togas in the 20th century, Lyndon Johnson winning his first Senate race when they quote discovered a box of votes cast in a southern Texas town called Alice Texas, where 200 votes had been cast all for Lyndon Johnson in alphabetical order. |
| 3:36.0 | And that was enough to win in the Senate. They called him landslide Lyndon. There's always a risk of misconduct. But in all these instances, it was in a sense what we would call election fraud. |
| 3:47.0 | It was not stray individual voters walking in and pretending to be someone else. It was the politicians or the people on the other side of the table stuffing the ballot box or rigging things. |
| 3:58.0 | Even today, there are risks with voting machines and there are greater risks with absentee ballot where you can't see the person casting the vote. But the specific thing that Donald Trump is railing against doesn't happen. |
| 4:13.0 | I noticed that Trump has home to in particularly on inner city Philadelphia, where he has said that the ghost voters are just going to be out of control. |
| 4:24.0 | He did not mention the outline Western Philadelphia suburbs, which are also reliably blue, but also almost entirely white. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jay Tomlinson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Jay Tomlinson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

