Front Burner - How MAGA world is planning to deny a Harris win

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Republicans have already filed over 100 lawsuits in US courts, in what critics say is an attempt to overturn the upcoming election. Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent with Mother Jones, brings us the latest on how the 2020 Stop the Steal movement shaped the 2024 election.He also talks about the fifteen years he’s spent reporting on this topic.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Our elections are bad. And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote. They can't even speak English.

They don't even know what country they're in, practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote. And that's why they're allowing them to come into our country. I did watch. This is, of course, Donald Trump during the October presidential debate talking about how the Democrats are trying to get people who aren't American citizens to vote, even though that is illegal. And even though there is no evidence that this is a widespread problem. It's something he's been talking about a lot on the campaign trail. Democrats and voting rights advocates worry that what he and other Republicans are saying here is part of his strategy, laying the groundwork to spuriously claim fraud if Trump loses in November. A stop the steal or big lie 2.0, if you will. My guest today is Ari Berman. Ari is a national voting rights correspondent for

Mother Jones. He is also the author of the book Minority Rule, the right-wing attack on the will of the people. We're going to talk about the non-citizen thing, but also put it in context of what Ari has spent the last 15 years reporting on. What he argues is a concerted war by the right, accelerated in recent years, to rewrite the rules that govern America's democracy. Ari, hi, thank you so much for coming on to FrontBurner. Hey, thanks so much for having me. So before we get into the 2024 election, I want to go back in time a bit. In 2012, you wrote a piece for Rolling Stone about the, quote, GOP's war on voting.

And generally, tell me, what was this piece about? Well, when you said I've been covering this issue for 15 years, I started to feel very old. But basically, it laid out what was the emerging strategy of the Republican Party to pass all of these laws, making it more difficult for Democratic-aligned constituencies to be able to vote. And this strategy really kicked into overdrive following Barack Obama's election in 2008, but also following the Republicans' big wins at the state level in 2010. And what happened as a result of 2010 is they gained full Republican control of all of

these key swing states, places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Florida and Ohio. And they began in very short order, passing new laws to make it harder to vote. Things like requiring new IDs to be able to vote, cutting back on the amount of time that you had to cast a ballot, removing people from the voter rolls in very aggressive ways, closing polling places, things like that, that we had seen them do this a little bit here and there, but never had so many states passed such restrictive legislation in such a short period of time. And this clearly seemed to me to be an effort to try to manufacture an electorate that would be older, wider, and more conservative, like it was in the 2010 election, as opposed to younger, more diverse, and more

progressive, like it was in 2008 when the first Black president was elected. Because those are the people that are more likely to vote Republican. Exactly. They wanted to try to create a more Republican electorate, not by changing their policies, but by changing the voting laws and procedures to get an electorate that would be more favorable to them. And so this seemed like a really big story at the time that not a lot of people were covering. And so I wrote my first piece about it all the way back in August of 2011 called The GOP War on Voting for Rolling Stone magazine. And just take me through how things evolved in the years after you wrote that piece, specifically, though, after Trump was elected in

2016 during his presidency and then in the lead up to the 2020 election? Well, the whole issue of voting rights, debates over voting, new voting restrictions, that really accelerated after Trump's election. Remember that Trump in 2016 claimed that he would have won the popular vote if not for three million people voting illegally in California. The president-elect, undeterred, tweeting he, quote, won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. Donald Trump claiming voter fraud nationally and in three states specifically, Virginia, New Hampshire and California. The president does believe that. He has stated that before. I think he stated

his concerns of voter fraud and people voting illegally during the campaign. And he continues to maintain that belief based on studies and evidence that people have presented to him. We had never seen a president suggest such massive fraud, let alone an election that he actually won. So that was extremely unusual. Then he created this Presidential Commission on Election Integrity that was supposed to search for voter fraud. They didn't actually end up finding any evidence of fraud, but they, of course, elevated the issue. And then I think that started to lay the groundwork, Trump's demonization of the election process, at least when he didn't win or when he won but felt like he should have won by more, that then laid the groundwork for him contesting the 2020 election.

And what ended up occurring was that he took it a lot further than anyone thought, and that even though people would eventually stop him, nobody was able to stop him from inciting his supporters to such an extent that there was ended up being an insurrection at the Capitol. Come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today, we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections. So that brings us to post-2020, and a lot has happened around voting in the intervening years.

Maybe we get started at the state level. What has happened there and what have the impacts been? So at the state level, 29 states have passed new restrictions on voting since the 2020 election, meaning more than half the country has passed some type of restriction on voting. One measure requires election officials to throw out votes cast in the wrong precinct. Another bans the practice of third-party ballot collection. 30 states made it easier to vote by mail because of the pandemic, but now at least 24 states are considering measures to scale it back in future elections. They want to restrict placement of ballot drop boxes, cut hours for early voting on weekends, and require photo ID to vote by mail.

A lot of that is the institutionalization of Trump's big lie that Trump failed to overturn the election results. But in many important states, Republicans turned around and they changed the voting laws and procedures in some way to try to go after the type of voting methods that Democrats used in 2020 and to give Republicans more control over how elections were run and ultimately how elections were certified. And can you give me some examples of what we've seen in recent years? So I'm thinking of some of these big states like North Carolina, Alabama, Texas. Yeah. So what they've done is they've cut back first and foremost on mail voting, because that was the kind of new thing about 2020 was that a lot more Americans voted by mail in 2020 than in years past.

And Democratic constituencies voted by mail in much higher numbers because they were concerned about the pandemic. So places like Alabama, North Carolina, Texas, they made it harder to vote by mail. And that means a lot of different things from making it harder to get a mail ballot, making the rules more restrictive in terms of filling it out, making it harder to drop off your mail ballot, making it harder to have alternatives to voting. So all of those things happened in these kind of states. For example, dramatically cutting the number of mail ballot drop boxes, or requiring new ID requirements for mail ballots, or requiring that mail ballots had to arrive by election day,

even if they were postmarked by election day. So the first thing they targeted was mail voting, but then in many states, they went further than that. They increased access for partisan poll workers. They demanded more aggressive purges of the voting rolls. They cut back on the number of polling places. They gave partisan officials more oversight in terms of how elections were run and certified. So there was a lot of changes that just went beyond the tactics that were used in 2020. When you say that they gave partisan officials more oversight in terms of how elections were run and certified, I think you're alluding to what happened in Georgia. Can you tell me more about that? In Georgia, what happened is there's now a majority of election deniers on the state election

board, people who have questioned the 2020 results and support Donald Trump. And that's a big change because what they've done is they have passed a series of rule changes that could give Republican officials a pretext not to certify the election results, from a hand count of ballots on election night to saying that counties must undertake a quote unquote reasonable inquiry before certifying the elections without specifying what that inquiry would actually look like, to giving election officials access to what they call all election-related documentation. And the fear is that they're going to try to make the certification of elections optional

instead of mandatory, even though state law very clearly says that it is mandatory. But we have seen partisan officials exert more control over the voting process in other states as well. For example, in Texas, a state you mentioned earlier, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a law saying that the Secretary of State in Texas, who's a Republican, has the authority to potentially order new elections and oversee the voting process only in one county in the state, Harris County, Texas, which is home to Houston, which is the largest blue county in Texas. So it's very unusual for a statewide legislature to pass a law that targets election operations only in one county,

especially if it's the largest and most democratic county in Texas. So that is the kind of thing that we're seeing. North Carolina passed a law that stripped the governor, who is a Democrat now, of the authority to appoint a majority of county election board members, meaning that instead, there will be split boards. So if those boards deadlock on things, there could be, for example, fewer early voting locations, things like that. So this is really what's different about post-2020, is there have been debates in the US over how voting laws should look in terms of casting a ballot. But I think what Republicans have done is they have now added this whole dimension of fighting over election results, trying to throw out results altogether,

or change how elections are run and certified. And that is a pretty new and, quite frankly, more alarming debate that we're having now in the wake of 2020. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Republican groups have launched as well some 100 lawsuits. And just what are these lawsuits and what are they trying to accomplish? How do they fit into the conversation that we're having? conversation that we're having? Well, they're challenging voting procedures in all sorts of ways from trying to remove people from the voter rolls more aggressively to try to throw out mail

ballots through all sorts of really narrow definitions of whether a ballot should count or not to now they're actually trying to prevent military and overseas people from casting a ballot by changing the rules there, which has proved to be quite controversial. So it's kind of a flood the zone tactic. There's not really one thing they're going after. They're filing lawsuits in all of these swing states, sometimes on multiple fronts. And I think they're doing it first to try to, if possible, get an advantageous ruling that will give them an advantage before the election. But I think a lot of this is just about setting the stage for post-election challenges, that if the election is close, they want as many ways as possible to contest the results. And so they're filing these lawsuits to set up what comes after November 5th. I've heard you talk about this before and talk about it in terms of if before the concentration was on the front end, now it is also on the back end. Exactly.

And I think what they realized in 2020 was they passed all sorts of restrictions on voting on the front end, but that can only shave off so many votes. But if you try to throw out votes on the back end, so after votes have already been cast and counted, but not ultimately certified, you can throw out a lot more votes. For example, you look at the lawsuit that the state of Texas filed on behalf of the Trump campaign, You look at the lawsuit that the state of Texas filed on behalf of the Trump campaign challenging the election results in five or six swing states. That went for Joe Biden in 2020. President Trump says he will join the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, and his legal effort at the Supreme Court to reverse Joe Biden's win in the election.

The lawsuit demands that the 62 total electoral college votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all be invalidated. They wanted to throw out 10 million votes in that election. So, I mean, it was ultimately unsuccessful, but they're not going to suppress 10 million votes through changing the law. They can try to throw out 10 million votes. And so that ultimately the voter suppression on the back end is, if successful, would be the largest and most effective voter suppression tactics, not to try to make it harder to vote, but just throw out votes altogether. How might the composition of the courts impact all of this, right? Like there's now a Republican majority on the Supreme Court.

I think it's like over 220 federal judges that have been appointed by Trump. Could that have an impact here? It could. I mean, 230 appointments by Donald Trump to the federal courts, including three Supreme Court justices. So of course, there's a six to three conservative supermajority on the US Supreme Court. I think it was pretty clear in 2020 that if Republicans just allege fraud with no evidence of fraud and try to throw out millions of votes, the courts aren't going to go for it, both Republican or Democratic judges. But the question is, what if it's a closer election, and there's a more legitimate dispute about the votes? What if it's more like the 2000 election in Florida, which you're talking about 1000 votes, it was ultimately decided by 537 votes,

but it's a closer number of votes. And both sides feel like they have some kind of legitimate argument for whether ballots should be counted or not. Then I think it's less clear what the courts could do. And I think it's more obvious that the courts appear as partisan actors. I think America ought to be comforted to know that the highest court of our land is going to make sure that the outcome of this election is a fair outcome. I don't think that the conservative dominated courts are just going to overturn the election for no reason and spark some kind of constitutional crisis. But if it feels like they have a legitimate reason to get involved, could they then take that legitimate reason and try to interpret the rules in such a way that was advantageous to Republican candidates. I think that's absolutely the case because they've already done that

in the past. They've already issued a series of rulings, whether weakening the Voting Rights Act of 1965 or siding with Republicans in all sorts of election law cases. They've already done that. And I did want to ask you specifically about the non-citizen issue, which I talked about in the intro. So this is something Trump and his allies, they keep talking about. I hear hysteria and voter fraud paranoia. And illegal immigrants voting, that checks both of their boxes, right? Because they're able to draw attention to all the crazy things they're saying about immigration. And then they're also trying to heighten fears of illegal voting as well, and tie these two things together. So it's that, okay, you're not just worried about a migrant taking your job, but you're also worried about how they're corrupting American elections.

Now, there's no proof of this, of course, but I think it's one of those things just like the big lie itself. You say it enough and people believe it. And you talk to a lot of Republican voters, and they believe this kind of thing. They believe that nobody's checking and that Democrats are allowing people to cross the southern border in record numbers because they're registering them to vote. Now, I mean, first off, no studies have ever shown that to be true. Second thing just kind of defies common sense that someone coming from a pretty desperate situation would try to come to America, vote illegally, and then risk deportation after

all they've gone through to come here to build a better life. It doesn't make either empirical sense or just common sense, but I think they're pushing it for political reasons. And then they're having, quite frankly, a lot of success in convincing people it's a thing, if not any success in in convincing people it's a thing, if not any success in actually proving that it's a thing. I want to ask you about the big players behind all these efforts. So who has been bankrolling these efforts, providing the ideological enthusiasm

for them? Well, there's a whole network of election-denier people. There's a lot of dark money that's been put into these groups. Things like, for example, Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the Federalist Society. That is the group that appointed all of the conservative justices under Trump and before Trump. Leonard Leo joined the Federalist Society in 1991. A master networker, he also understood the ways of Washington. But the idea was really to create a pipeline, to create a pipeline that started in law school and then glided into the legal profession

by building a networker infrastructure of people around the country who could influence the major power centers of our legal culture. They have poured a lot of money into these election lawsuits. There have been dark money donors from different states, places like Wisconsin, that have bankrolled a lot of these efforts. And then, quite frankly, a lot of the people that tried to overturn the 2020 election are back and leading different kinds of groups in 2024. One example is a woman named Cleta Mitchell, who was one of Trump's lawyers in 2020, helped try to overturn

the elections in states like Georgia. She's now running a network of election deniers that are filing lawsuits all across the country. They're working with officials in Georgia and other states to try to challenge certification of elections. The Trump campaign is trying to recruit 100,000 people to watch the polls. A lot of those efforts are being done by people who tried to overturn the election. So the 2020 effort to try to overturn the election was very much seat of the pants. And it was very disorganized. It was kind of famously symbolized by the Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Rudy Giuliani, hair dye dripping all over his face.

What was it called by? Oh my goodness, all the networks. Wow. All the networks. This is much more sophisticated. They have think tanks now. They have money behind it. They have a lot of volunteers. You look at these county election meetings, these state board of election meetings, they're packed with election deniers. Board of Election Meetings, they're packed with election deniers. So they have really institutionalized this movement since 2020 in a way that I think is disturbing to a lot of people, not just Democrats, but people that want to see a free and fair election because they feel like there's a lot of people there that believe a lot of false things about the voting process. They're now in charge of the voting process.

And it doesn't seem like a lot of good is going to come out of that. So while all this has been happening, what have the Democrats actually been doing? Like, what is the other side of this fight? Well, they've been filing a lot of counter lawsuits to try to protect voting access. They have teams of people who are ready if there's a contested election to file more litigation. They have voter protection teams to make sure that people are able to cast their ballots. There's, of course, been some legal changes that will make it harder for Republicans to subvert the election process. Most notably, there was a change to how electoral college votes are counted and certified by the Congress. So the vice president has less power now. So you can't get in a situation where Trump would

pressure his vice president to try to overturn the election results. There's clearer rules about what state legislatures can do, what individual members of Congress can do. So there are some safeguards in place since 2020 that should make people feel better about how votes are counted and certified. But they remain in such a decentralized system where not only do the voting process vary based on state, but they often vary based on county, depending on who's in control or how laws are interpreted. There's still a lot of vulnerability in the American election system. I know voting rights advocates say that this kind of piecemeal fight to keep American elections sort of democratic just isn't

sustainable, right? And they want to basically blow things up. And what would they like to see? Well, then they would like to see federal protection for voting rights in a way that we don't really have right now. The most important federal law governing voting rights is the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that was passed to enfranchise many people that have been previously disenfranchised, most notably African Americans in the Jim Crow South. That law has been weakened repeatedly by the Supreme Court, so it's not nearly as strong as it used to be. And it's also more than 50 years old. So they want new federal regulations for voting, basically to standardize the voting process so that there would be basic guarantees of voting rights in all 50 states, that they would have things like online and election day registration, early voting, no excuse mail voting. Those things would be standardized. And not only that, but they want guarantees that elections can't be subverted, that it's very clear that you can't challenge election outcomes just because your side doesn't win. We have some of

that right now, but there's enough ambiguity in the law that it allows for voting rights to be challenged, both in terms of how ballots are cast, but also in terms of how votes are counted and certified. Yeah. But you know, didn't at some point, and I'm sorry, I don't know what the current makeup is, but they did have the House and the Senate, right? So why didn't the Democrats do more? Because of the rules of the Senate, most notably, that you had to get 60 votes to be able to pass voting rights legislation, which they didn't have, or you had to exempt voting rights legislation from the filibuster. And that meant that you had to get around a supermajority requirement. And so Democrats tried to change the rules to pass voting rights legislation. And they were blocked by two Democratic senators at the time, Joe Manchin

of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona. Now, those two are both no longer in the Senate, and they are also no longer Democrats. But the fact is, that's what prevented the Democrats from passing voting rights legislation. They came very, very close to doing so, but there were two holdouts in the Senate that blocked it from happening. And one of the things Democrats would like to change is they would like to change that filibuster rule to be able to pass voting rights legislation if Kamala Harris wins, and they also have control of both houses of Congress after November. Ari, thank you so much for this. This was really great. And I learned a lot.

Really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. All right, so just an update before we go today. Ari talked about how the makeup of Georgia's election board has been stacked with pro-Trump election deniers and how they passed a series of rule changes that could give Republicans a pretext not to certify the election. That included a rule on requiring paper ballots be counted by hand and then matched with the electronic tally. Critics said that this would delay results and create room for election deniers to spread misinformation. Well, in a win for

Democrats and other voting rights advocates, a judge has now blocked that rule. And in another ruling, the judge also decided that county officials must certify election results by the deadline set out in the law. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.