Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable in partnership with the LA Times Studio that brings

together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion

of the most important political and legal topics of the day.

I'm Harry Litman.

We are virtually thrilled to be here virtually at the Texas Tribune 2020 Festival one of the

great events of the year.

We were here last year as a fledgling podcast and we return with a fantastic episode with

phenomenal guests.

Almost everyone who is paying attention is now acutely aware of the welter of challenges

and obstacles to full voter participation in the upcoming election, including COVID and

aggravated, measurably, by the leading strategy of the president's re-election efforts, which

is to try to suppress the vote and so chaos at every turn.

But there's considerably less awareness of the concrete and massive effort and it

is truly massive.

The Democrats and voter protection groups are using to fight back in the courts, in

Congress, and in public opinion.

That's what we're going to cover today, along with a strategy discussion to talk through

the immediate challenges, the most important ones, the ones that are too difficult to

pour resources into.

All the considerations that are guiding the efforts of the combatants in the field or

I should say fields because the battles are being waged in many venues.

And to do it, we have, without exaggeration, the complete dream team of leaders who are

...