Welcome to Courtside, everyone, a discussion of legal issues.

Today, I want to talk about the new assault on the right to vote, which is going on in various

states.

This week, it was led by Florida.

And this is a movement that has been supercharged by Donald Trump and his bogus claims of election fraud.

Really, those claims of election fraud, the big lie, it's all just shorthand for those people are voting, and that's their complaint.

So what I want to do today is explain what these different voting restrictions are

and what they mean and what we can do about it. And the worst part about the big lie is that we've all

seen it coming for months and months. Donald Trump said even before the election, he wouldn't

accept the results if he lost. This is truly like the world's slowest car crash, except the wreckage is our democratic norms and our commitment to equality, particularly the idea of one person, one vote.

So let me start with Florida, because in Florida we had this week signed into law restrictions placed by Governor DeSantis in the Florida legislature.

Governor DeSantis went and actually signed these things into law and brought one television station and only one Fox News to be able to witness it.

If he had only shown that kind of, the same kind of selectivity when he opened

bars for summer break in the middle of a global pandemic, we would have been better off at least

a matter of public health. But the restrictions he signed into law are ones that make it harder to vote.

So they say, for example, you can't use a ballot drop boxes on

election day. They add all sorts of onerous new ID requirements. They require a reapplication for an

absentee ballot. And, you know, they do this all. DeSantis does it all in a secret meeting with Fox News. You know, nothing to me says

integrity and transparency like holding a closed door session to decide who gets to vote. And the

announcement itself on Fox, which I braved myself to watch, was incoherent. Governor DeSantis

knows he's in a double bind. After all, this is the same

guy who three months ago proclaimed that Florida had held, quote, the smoothest, most successful

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