Pandemic, Polarization, Prosecution: New Ballot Box Politics
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 8 September 2022
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, voting correspondent Hansi Lo Wang, and politics reporter Ashley Lopez.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Laura in Berkeley, California, and today is my first day at grad school at UC Berkeley's |
| 0:06.1 | Graduate School Adjournalism. This podcast was recorded at 1.07 pm on Thursday the 8th of September. |
| 0:15.1 | Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll still be relishing the fact that I get to |
| 0:19.4 | be here and learn the craft of audio journalism. All right, here's the show. |
| 0:23.0 | Oh my gosh, go Bears! That's where I went to school. Whoa! And that's so fun! I love the J-School. |
| 0:33.2 | Another audio reporter. That's so great. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamer Keith. |
| 0:39.2 | I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Hansi LaWong. I cover voting. |
| 0:44.3 | And today on the pod, we are talking about voting, a most fundamental element of American democracy, |
| 0:51.4 | and we're doing it from two different angles. Challenges staffing polling places and a crackdown in |
| 0:57.2 | Florida on alleged voter fraud that is raising a lot of questions. So, Hansi, I want to start with you. |
| 1:03.4 | You have some new reporting that could be summed up with the phrase, Help Wanted. And it seems |
| 1:09.4 | like there's a couple of big drivers behind this, COVID, and then also the toxicity of politics at |
| 1:15.8 | the moment that are just making it really hard to find poll workers. So give us a sense of the |
| 1:20.5 | situation right now. Trying to staff polling places as this fall election approaches. |
| 1:27.3 | Well, in many parts of the country, this is a big challenge. You know, polling places need workers |
| 1:33.0 | to help, you know, sign in voters, hand out ballots, process of votes, and it's really easy to |
| 1:38.4 | take these very basic tasks for granted. But what helps make U.S. democracy function? |
| 1:44.8 | Are these poll workers? Some are paid, others are volunteers, and many local election officials are |
| 1:50.0 | sounding the alarm this year that they may be understaffed in some places because, like you said, |
| 1:54.9 | we're still dealing with COVID and this unprecedented level of scrutiny and harassment of election |
| 2:01.0 | workers that's driven by election deniers right now. Right. I mean, if you look back at the |
| 2:05.9 | January 6 hearings over the summer, there was testimony from people talking about being |
... |
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