The Troubled State of Voting Rights Heading into the 2020 Election

Talking Feds

Harry Litman

News, Politics, Government

4.8 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2019

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The last 15 years have ushered in a series of daunting obstacles to voting rights in this county. It turns out that the supposed principle of "one person one vote" falls short in the field to a series of impediments, beginning with three 5-4 Supreme Court opinions that have scaled back on the ability of minority voters in particular to participate on equal footing with other voters. Returning Fed and Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in Law at the University of Alabama Joyce Vance, Congress Member (and manager of his brother's presidential campaign) Joaquin Castro, President of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (and former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights) Vanita Gupta, and Federal Election Commission Chair Ellen Weintraub join Harry to break down the state of voting rights in the country, analyzing the Court's actions and also poll closures, bogus charges of voter fraud, and the emasculation of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. They close with some hopeful developments on the horizon, beginning with proposed HR1, which would enact a laundry list of improvements and mitigate some of the harsh effects of the Court's decisions. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Talking Feds team, take a moment to tell us what you like and what you'd like us to improve about this podcast.
0:06.4	Head to our website, TalkingFeds.com and participate in our listener survey.
0:11.6	It only takes a few minutes and you can complete the survey anonymously. Thanks!
0:17.1	Everyone, welcome and listeners, welcome back to TalkingFeds, a prosecutor's round table that brings together prominent former federal officials for a dynamic discussion of the most important legal topics of the day.
0:37.6	I'm Harry Littman, I'm a former United States attorney and a current Washington Post columnist.
0:44.0	Today, for people who aren't in the room, we're in Austin, Texas for a live recording of a very...
0:55.1	Arguably, maybe not even arguing, the coolest town in America.
0:58.6	Very special episode here at the Texas Tribune Festival, where we've had two really great days,
1:06.8	a chock full of panels on timely and important topics and fantastically knowledgeable commentators,
1:14.6	and I think we will extend that run of great panels.
1:18.8	Our topic is the troubled state of voting rights in advance of the 2020 election,
1:26.0	could not be more timely and critical, and we certainly have four fantastically knowledgeable commentators on the topic,
1:32.9	who were thrilled to join us today.
1:35.6	And let me briefly introduce them.
1:39.1	A walking Castro, the Congressman probably known to many of you, represents the 20th Congressional District of Texas in the US House of Representatives.
1:49.1	That's since 2013, and for 10 years before that he was a member of the Texas House of Representatives.
1:56.8	First, thank you very much for joining.
1:58.7	Yeah, good to be with you.
2:00.4	Thank you, have a nice day.
2:03.2	As many of you know and is also germane to our topic, he serves as campaign chair for his brother, former HD Secretary,
2:12.4	Juliane Castro, who is running for president, and for whom he seems faded to be confused by MSNBC this week.
2:23.1	This is serious, he was said, you guys at MSNBC know that's me, right?
	...

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