I'm Dora McKesson and you're listening to Kruger Conversations.

On today's episode I talk to Ari Berman, a writer of Mother Jones and the author of Give

Us the Ballet, the modern struggle for voting rights in America.

We discuss midterm results and how we'll be affected as well as where the country currently

stands when it comes to protecting voting rights.

I hope you enjoy it.

Ari Berman, it's great to talk to you.

We have a lot to talk about.

Hey Dora, thank you for having me back and you're right never a dull moment in this

election.

Now can we start with the purging?

Is it, you know, it feels like people looked up and all of a sudden it was like people

being purged in the hundreds of thousands and it was it that we just didn't know, was

it that we weren't paying attention, was it that people knew and like we couldn't get

the word out quick enough like what?

How did we even get to a place where voters were being purged at the magnitude that they

were being purged?

Well, I think part of it was that it was closer to the election so it got more attention

but I think you're also right that the level of voter purging increased.

There was a very comprehensive report by the Brennan Center for Justice that looked at

southern states that previously had to approve their voting changes with the federal government

before the Supreme Court gutted the voting rights act in 2013 and they found that in states

...