Squash the Vote-Part 2. W/Ari Berman
The Bill Press Pod
BP Pods
4.7 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2021
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
Mother Jones Senior Reporter Ari Berman is the go-to guy on voter suppression. This is our second in a continuing series of podcasts which will spotlight the GOP efforts to restrict the right to vote. When ideas failed to attract enough voters to win elections, Republicans are focused on disenfranchising young people and minorities.
Today we are asking you to help save our democracy by supporting LetAmericaVote.org and FairFight.com, the organization created by Stacy Abrams. Only by long-term and continuous voter engagement can we overcome the anti-democratic actions of GOP controlled state governments. Volunteer or donate, but please get involved.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Bill Press Pod. |
| 0:10.0 | You know, in Washington, there's a lot going on these days. President Biden will soon |
| 0:13.8 | sign the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. The president's also out with an immigration reform |
| 0:20.5 | plan, and he'll soon unveil a huge infrastructure package. |
| 0:24.6 | But as important as all of that is, what's going on outside of Washington is more important and much more dangerous. |
| 0:33.6 | A concerted effort by the Republican Party in almost every state to suppress the vote and, in effect, do away with free and fair elections. |
| 0:43.8 | It's the greatest threat to our democracy in our lifetime that all Americans should be concerned about and do everything in their power to stop. |
| 0:56.2 | Of course, we've talked about it before, |
| 1:02.1 | but it's only gotten worse since. So we wanted to come back to the issue of voter suppression today to ask, how bad is it, and what can we do about it? With us today, Ari Berman, |
| 1:10.2 | senior reporter for Mother Jones, who specializes in the |
| 1:14.2 | issue of voting rights. Ari Berman has been a while. Good to catch up with you again. |
| 1:19.1 | Hey, Bill. Great to talk to you again. Thank you. So I think all of us would agree that our most |
| 1:24.1 | sacred right as Americans is our right to vote, but there are many civil |
| 1:29.2 | rights organizations today that warn that our right to vote might be in danger. Do you think it is? |
| 1:36.6 | And if so, how? It's absolutely endangered because we are seeing the most intense effort to roll back voting rights in decades. |
| 1:47.6 | There have been, in the span of just two months in this year, 253 bills to restrict voting |
| 1:53.9 | rights in 43 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which is magnitudes |
| 1:59.0 | higher than previously. Of course, Republicans have tried to restrict voting rights in the past. They put in place things like voter ID laws and cutbacks to early voting and closing polling places, things like that in the last decade. But they've dramatically ramped up those efforts. And I think it's a direct response to both losing the 2020 election, but then also the |
| 2:21.6 | big lie that Trump told that the election was stolen, which has put pressure on a lot of |
| 2:26.2 | Republicans to try to change the methods of voting that Democrats used most successfully |
| 2:31.0 | in 2020. |
| 2:32.2 | So 43 states means this is happening not just in red states. |
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