Front Burner - What voter suppression looks like in the U.S. election

Episode Date: October 29, 2020

Hours-long lines, polling place closures, and voter roll purges are just a few of the ways that this upcoming U.S election is challenging voting rights in the country. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is also an unprecedented demand for mail-in ballots, adding many logistical challenges and complications to vote counting. Many voters are also concerned about the effectiveness of the post office. Today on Front Burner, we explain voter suppression in this U.S election with CBC Washington correspondent Alex Panetta and CBC New York correspondent Steven D’Souza, and who is disproportionately affected by it.

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. We anticipate long lines for the presidential race. If you're standing in a long line and then you finally get there and you don't have what you need, you're not going to go home, get what you need and stand in another line for, you know, another three hours or whatever the case may be.

So this is Angela Lang, a community activist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 2018, she was nearly turned away from voting when she moved to a new unit in her apartment building, and her info didn't match her voter ID. Angela pushed back, but another voter may have just gone home. It was fine. And basically, when you show your ID to vote, they're only supposed to be looking at the picture. They're not supposed to match up your address. Your address doesn't need to match if you're already registered. With the U.S. election just days away, Angela isn't the only U.S. citizen who's encountered problems when it comes to casting a vote.

For weeks, we've been hearing about long lineups. New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised the issue just the other day. There is no place in the United States of America where two, three, four hour waits to vote is acceptable. And just because it's happening in a blue state doesn't mean that it's not voter suppression. And there has been a wave of more than 300 court cases filed in 44 states trying to define what are acceptable voting rights in the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, these cases have become wildly politicized.

While the right to vote might be ingrained in the U.S. Constitution, the ability to vote is not always a sure thing. Today, we explain voter suppression in the United States with two of my colleagues. Stephen D'Souza is in New York and Alex Panetta is in Washington. I'm Jamie Poisson and this is FrontBurner. Hello to you both. Alex, welcome back to the podcast. Good to be here.

And Stephen, I'm so happy that we have finally got you on FrontBurner. I know that we've tried to make this work. It is a pleasure to finally have you on. Thank you so much for having me. All right. So we are talking about voter suppression today, all the many ways in which people's right to vote is taken away or made more difficult. So we're talking about making it very hard to get to a mail drop box, closing polling places, long lines, or strict or badly applied voter ID laws, as we heard in the introduction. And so I know you've both been in states where voter suppression is very much an issue right now. Stephen, you've been reporting from Pennsylvania the last few days,

a swing state that was decided by just 44,000 votes in 2016. It's very, very close this time around. And you've been talking to people about their access to the vote. What are you hearing from voters? Yeah, so I spent some time in Philadelphia in Bucks County. So Bucks County is a suburb of Philadelphia, and it's Trump territory, and one of the only suburbs Democrats didn't flip in the 2018 midterms. And I saw those lineups firsthand, you know, people lining up for hours at these special election sites. Well, I spent four hours yesterday trying to vote. I was here at 2 o'clock and at 6 o'clock they said I couldn't vote. There was 20 people left. You know, Pennsylvania did something pretty interesting.

They actually expanded mail-in voting to everyone back in 2019. And so voters no longer needed a reason to request a mail-in ballot. And the goal was to make voting more accessible to everyone, which was an audible goal. But then the pandemic hit, and so the request for these mail-in ballots went through the roof. And so that brought a lot of bureaucratic problems. And so at these special election sites, people have been lining up for hours to get their mail-in ballots because they didn't receive them.

So I talked to a host of different people. I'm here to pick up for an 82-year-old who's handicapped, can't come out. So I'm here to return the paperwork today, and hopefully I can receive a ballot. We have mailed in for our ballots but we have not received our ballots. I never received my ballot so I really wanted to make sure my ballot counted. They're lining up for hours because they all were excited they all want to have their say and they all want to vote but they just need to get that ballot.

Right and talk to me about the role of drop boxes here. Yeah. So at these special election sites, there's two lines, the long line that snakes for hours, where people are trying to sort out their ballot issues. Then there are these drop boxes, which were the subject of some of those lawsuits you mentioned off the top. And this is where people who got their actual mail-in ballot are coming to drop it off. And you may ask, well, why not just mail it in? Well, remember back in August, the stories of the Trump administration slowing down the mail and the president himself has repeatedly cast doubt, you know, often without evidence about mail-in ballots being rife with fraud. I'm not going to say which party does it,

but thousands of votes are gathered and they come in and they're dumped in a location and then all of a sudden you lose elections that you think you're going to win. I won't stand for it. And so, you know, that's really faded from the headlines, but it's resonated with people. It's really stuck with them. So there was a constant stream of people I spoke to who were dropping off mail-in ballots and the common theme was they don't trust the mail, there's too much controversy, and so they don't want to take any chances. They want to walk up to a spot where they can physically hold their mail-in ballot, put it in a box, and know it's going to get to where it needs to go. We don't know what's going to happen with the mail.

We figured that the best thing for us to do is come down today and get our ballots and vote. I don't trust the mail to get there in time. So I wanted to make sure it voted. I wanted to make sure it counted. There's just a lot of stuff going on. So we just wanted to give the best shot for our vote to go where we want it to go. And talk to me about the issues around what people are calling naked ballots. Each mail-in ballot comes with two envelopes. The first is a secrecy envelope, and then there's the return envelope. This is something only 16 states do, and it's kind of a relic of the past

when election officials had to open each ballot by hand, but it's done by machines now, so it's not really a concern. But the issue is, if voters don't put their ballot in the secrecy envelope and then in the return envelope, if they just use the return one by itself, it's considered a naked ballot and it's rejected. And so this is an issue that's keeping up election officials like Lisa Dealey. She's one of Philadelphia's election commissioners. I spoke to her last week and she estimates that hundreds of thousands of ballots could be tossed statewide because of this naked ballot issue.

Remember, the 2016 election was decided by just 44,000 votes. thousands of ballots could be tossed statewide because of this naked ballot issue. And remember, the 2016 election was decided by just 44,000 votes. And so that's a major issue that election officials are concerned about. But really one vote not being able to count that has been applied for properly, has been received properly. We've gotten it on time to see that voter not have their voice heard or their vote counted simply because of a technicality is really, really unfair. Right, right. And I know there's a public service announcement I remember seeing about this naked ballot issue with like a bunch of celebrities. They're really trying to like educate people on this. Yeah, a group of celebrities including Sarah

Silverman Mark Ruffalo Chris Rock were naked in the video I'm naked I'm completely butt ass naked I'm naked nothing untowards could be seen but you know it was a message you know message really informing voters what they need to know you know that ballots could be naked and if you don't do exactly what I tell you your ballot could get thrown out and specifically aimed at places need to know. Did you know that ballots could be naked? And if you don't do exactly what I tell you, your ballot could get thrown out. And specifically aimed at places like Pennsylvania, where they know that, you know, potentially hundreds of thousands of ballots being thrown out could dramatically swing the election in one direction or another. And there's one other

issue. I know it's sort of a laundry list that keeps, you know, keeps hitting you and, you know, think of what voters are dealing with. But there's also the issue of counting all of these mail-in ballots that are being dropped off or being mailed in. Unlike a lot of other states, Pennsylvania can't start counting them until seven o'clock in the morning on election day. And so Lisa Dealey, the election commissioner says they won't know the final results on election day, and they could be accepting mail-in ballots up until Friday after the election. And so there's a lot of uncertainty. You know, some of this has gone all the way up to the Supreme Court. And so you can understand with all this uncertainty, why a lot of voters are so nervous.

Let me tell you, this has been the most horrific experience that I have ever received. And I'm quite sure most people that live here in the United States have ever went through for voting. It's unsettling and I think it scares a lot of people, which is a shame, because people need to come out and vote and feel comfortable about it. Alex, I want to bring you in here and I know you've got so much going on right now. We're actually reaching you at like a local restaurant in your neighborhood. And we're talking about voter suppression a lot right now with this election.

And this issue, it is a recurring issue, right? Like it's not new. Absolutely not. And I think to understand this issue, there are probably two bits of context to bring up. And the first is on the nature of an American election itself. It's not really one election. In Canada, you have one set of rules about what ID is required or what information is required to go and vote. In the United States, there are roughly more than 10,000 systems around the country.

And that's because American elections are held at the municipal, county, state, and federal level concurrently. So there are a whole bunch of different systems, and it makes it very hard to track. The second thing to keep in mind is the issue of race and how civil rights has been closely intertwined with this debate for generations. So after the Civil War, not everybody realizes that African Americans were being elected to Congress after the end of slavery. There was this brief movement towards greater freedom throughout the United States. And the way that was interrupted was, well, in part by domestic terrorism. The Ku Klux Klan prevented people from voting.

The second thing that happened is this system we call Jim Crow was erected, a whole bunch of new laws. And one of those laws, for example, was felon disenfranchisement. So if you had a criminal record or charges that may have been trumped up against you, you couldn't vote for the rest of your life. Such a law was introduced in Florida in 1868. Well, guess what? There is a similar law on the books, or there has been up until recently. Now there's some litigation about it. But, you know, anywhere between 10 and 20 percent of African-American men don't vote in elections. They're disenfranchised. Right. And you alluded to this earlier, but can we talk a little bit about who ends up being affected disproportionately here?

Absolutely. African-American voters are affected disproportionately. Overwhelmingly African American, Latino, Asian American, young and poor. When we begin to look at these voter suppression laws, that's the group that is targeted. That is the group where issues such as voter ID, issues such as closing voting polls. In the last few years, after the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act, hundreds of polling places across the United States were contracted out of existence. So basically they sort of reduced the number of polling places in different states. Well, guess which neighborhoods ended up with disproportionately fewer?

So this has probably had an effect on American elections. On the other hand, you'll hear people sometimes suggest, experts on this, suggest that there are countervailing forces. One is that any time you talk about voter suppression, that drives turnout among people who are being suppressed, that it actually can have a counter effect. And the second thing is there are actually more voting options now than ever before in the United States.

I think Steve alluded to this, but you couldn't vote for weeks in advance throughout American history. You couldn't vote easily by mail ballots. These are options available to people now while understanding the suppression measures still exist. Right, right. It's interesting to hear you say that the idea that there could be suppression measures in place, it serves as a call to people that they want to come and vote sort of as a defiant act. It's like an interesting analysis of that. I'm an LGB person, you know, and a black person, and I just feel like a lot of this stuff that's going on

is really trying to take my voice away. Our rights have been stepped on and we're not going to have it. You know what I mean? Everybody's entitled to vote and not be harassed. Alex, you were in Wisconsin recently talking to voters there. The U.S. Supreme Court just voted to not extend the state's deadline for mailed ballots, meaning they have to arrive by election day. As we've talked about, there are hundreds of lawsuits. This is one of them. How are we seeing these fights play out along political lines? So what happened is essentially the Supreme Court tossed out a Wisconsin court ruling that

would have allowed people to get their ballots in after November 3rd if it were postmarked before November 3rd. So you mail it early, it gets postmarked, but it arrives late, your vote counts. Well, that was the idea. Well, the Supreme Court invalidated that, and it broke down along strictly partisan. I know you're not supposed to say that judges have partisan affiliations, but it often happens in these cases that judges appointed by Republicans said the lower court ruling should not stand, and judges appointed by Democrats said there should be an extension. with a 6-3 Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett joining the ranks of the conservative justices. Now, you can't take for granted that she would vote in lockstep with the conservative wing every time. In fact, you know, there are, you know, what you would call switchers on some of these

cases. But it's just that, you know, there tends to be a pattern on a lot of these cases where, you know, people vote alongside their ideological lines. Right. where people vote alongside their ideological lines. Right. Stephen, this idea or this issue of when ballots are counted in and around Election Day, it's also a big issue in Pennsylvania. I think you alluded to this earlier. Can you tell us a little bit more about this case?

Yeah, so the Supreme Court also ruled on whether Pennsylvania can accept mail-in ballots past November 3rd. And a lower court and the legislature had already ruled that Pennsylvania can accept mail-in ballots up until the Friday after the election, as long as they were postmarked by November 3rd. So if you mailed it on November 3rd, it was postmarked that day, they will accept it up until Friday. They will accept it up until Friday. And so the Supreme Court was actually tied 4-4 with the Chief Justice, who usually votes with the more conservative wing, actually siding with the more liberal wing of the court. And so when the Supreme Court is tied, it's basically like no decision,

and it goes back to whatever the lower court ruling was. What's interesting about this is, though, that was seen as a victory for the Democrats and a defeat for the Republicans. But this decision came just before Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in. So the Republicans have actually refiled the case to the Supreme Court now, now that Amy Coney Barrett is on the Supreme Court, hoping that perhaps it may get overturned and that any mail-in ballots that come after November 3rd would be disregarded, which would be a major blow to specifically the Democrats, because I think in Pennsylvania, it's about 62% of the mail-in ballots that were requested were from Democrats compared to about 25% for Republicans. So, you know, any impact on mail-in ballots definitely does have an outsized impact on one party as opposed to the other.

Right, right. This is how all these cases are playing out. Like generally, it does seem like the Democrats are trying to make it easier to vote and to have your vote counted. And the Republicans are trying to put restrictions on that. put restrictions on that. And the Republicans, you know, I spoke to the state Senate majority leader in Pennsylvania, and their defense is that they're trying to maintain the security and integrity of the system. If all the rules of our process is laid out, you'll be fine. I don't think they're hurdles. I think they're security measures.

You know, making sure that the signature matches is important. The security of that ballot, once it's sent in, matters. So they don't see it as limiting people's right to vote. They see it as keeping the system safe and keeping the integrity in the system. So that's why they think that a lot of these rules need to be in place.

And so that's how they defend, you know, the accusations that they're trying to suppress the vote. 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. I want to fast forward to Election Day here. There are concerns about voter intimidation. Trump has told his supporters to watch the election. And Alex, talk to me about what you think we could potentially see happening on voting day and how this could be seen as a form of voter suppression too. Yeah, so I mentioned at the outset that after the Civil War,

two things were done to disenfranchise African Americans. One was to introduce Jim Crow laws. The other one was voter intimidation. There's a long history of that at U.S. polling stations. And it sounds like some people want to harken back to that old era where, whether it's militias or, you know, self-appointed poll watchers decide to watch their fellow citizens as they cast ballots. Safety showing up at in-person voting locations is a big issue as well. Anybody armed standing, you know, large armed groups tend to scare people.

I don't care where they're standing. You know, just in Pennsylvania a few days ago, there were people honking car horns trying to intimidate or annoy voters in a suburban Philadelphia county. That's, you know, it's, I don't know how much of an effect it'll have, given that the vast majority of Democrats, I think, will have already voted by Election Day. But it could intimidate some people. What kind of issues do you think we're most likely going to see as we start counting these votes? Stephen, I'll start with you and then end with Alex.

Well, let me paint sort of the nightmare scenario that's keeping up election officials at night and that, you know, on November 3rd, the election's going to be close. Everyone's going to look to Pennsylvania's 20 electoral college votes to see which way they're going to go. And as we've been saying throughout,

the Democrats predominantly are the ones voting early, mailing in their ballots. So it's expected that Republicans, by and large, will be showing up on election day to vote in person. Those are the votes that are going to be counted first. The Democratic votes, largely, which are coming by mail, will be counted second, especially in a lot of counties. And so what we could see is the results early on showing the president having an early advantage and then pressure from the president and others to call the election right there and say that he's won and that any votes that are counted afterwards, the thousands and millions of ballots that are being counted afterwards that are still coming

in even, they would be showing perhaps the Democrat numbers going up. But then we might have the president or others saying that that's evidence of fraud. And, you know, we've seen him lay the groundwork for this. We'll see what happens at the end of the day. Hopefully it won't go longer than that. Hopefully the few states remaining that want to take a lot of time after November 3rd to count ballots that won't be allowed by the various courts. And so Trump supporters may think the election is being stolen. And of course, the naked ballots the various courts. And so Trump supporters may think the election is being stolen and, of course, the naked ballot's being tossed out. And so we could see these accusations of voter fraud

and lawsuits as a result of this. It's just, you know, a scenario that nobody wants to see happen, but is very likely given all of the issues that we've been discussing. Okay, Alex, anything to add there? The way I'll be watching Election Day really is as a tale of two separate elections rolled into one. The first set of results I'm going to be looking at are in the South. And the reason for that is two key swing states, North Carolina and Florida, tend to count their mail ballots more quickly.

And if Joe Biden wins both those states, game over. He's President of the United States on January 20th. If he wins one of those states, he'll probably be President, almost certainly be President. Now, if he wins none of those two states, then we're going to be looking at a slower, longer, more painful process in the North, and it could be quite a contentious spectacle. You know, people have gotten used to the election being called on November 3rd because of projections done by media organizations and the fact that counties and states have gotten really good

at counting the ballots and providing results. But there's nothing in U.S. law that says the results have to be declared on November 3rd itself. I think, in fact, I think the date is December 8th is when states have to have their election results certified. And so I think people just have to be prepared for not having potentially a result. And that there's nothing wrong with that, that there's no fraud, there's no nefarious things going on. It's just the process is going to take a little longer than it has in the past because of all of the issues we were talking about. So, Alex, I know you're going to be with us on election night. Thank you so much. You and Lindsay Duncombe. And Stephen, it was such a pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much. Thanks, guys. My pleasure.

Thank you. All right. So this story is moving so fast that we've got an update on something we talked about during the episode. story is moving so fast that we've got an update on something we talked about during the episode. Stephen talked about how Pennsylvania Republicans renewed their request to block the extended ballot deadline in the state, which allows absentee ballots that arrive three days after the election to be counted. Well, the U.S. Supreme Court announced late Wednesday afternoon that it won't fast track that request. It is a decision welcomed by Democrats. The just-sworn-in-justice Amy Coney Barrett, who might have broken a previous deadlock on this case,

did not take part in the vote. That's all for today. I'm J.B. Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.