Stuff You Should Know - Are Election Laws Designed to Suppress Voting?

Episode Date: May 30, 2017

Are laws that are meant to protect the sanctity of the polling place in reality designed to make it harder for groups that traditionally vote Democrat to cast their ballots? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Me, I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Jerome Rowland.

You put the three of us together in a room, shake it up, pick out some of the chest hairs. You got stuff you should know. Oh, that was gross. I thought you'd like that. You ready to get angry on this one? I'm trying to keep it cool, man. I woke up yesterday and said,

I really want to tick off a significant portion of our listeners, so what could, what topic could we do? And I thought, voter suppression, perfect. Well, you know what, man? I've been trying to think about the, why this bugs me so much. Voter suppression obviously bugs me because it's not right. Sure.

But what really bugs me, I think, is that if you're in Washington, DC, and you're in government, like everyone knows about this stuff, and everyone talks about it, frankly, when microphones run around. Right. Like, do you watch the show, Veep?

Love it. I've only seen season five, but man, it is so good. Like, supposedly, that's kind of how it is. Sure. Like, when the microphones run around, they all talk about politics in very frank terms, but as soon as you get on television, or in front of a microphone,

you have to tow the party lines on both sides with this rhetoric crap. And it ends up, you can't even really talk about the things. Well, no, but plus also, I think one of the reasons that that is the way it is, is because you got to feed the sheeple, like you said, that company line, or that party line, because if you really talked about

what was really going on, some of the people who agree with your BS would otherwise disagree with the actual thing that's going on, you know what I'm saying? Well, yeah, and let's just go ahead and say it, in this one on voter suppression. Historically, the Republican party has purposely done things to try and keep certain people from voting

because they probably vote Democrat. And they can't just say that, so they say, no, it's really about voter fraud. That's a big problem. And Democrats want those votes, and they say it's because they just want a very inclusive democratic process, but that's not true.

They want those votes because they're probably gonna be Democrat votes. Right, and Democrats will do anything, including voter fraud to get people to the polls or to get those votes. That's the current, that's the argument that's going on right now. Yeah, but you know what I'm saying though,

like neither one of them can say those things, so they have to stand behind these two kind of bogus reasons, and it's just infuriating. Right, so the reasons, these bogus reasons, ostensibly bogus reasons, are that if you take measures to make it a little difficult to vote, what you're going to do is protect the integrity

of the electoral system, right? This is the Republican's viewpoint. If you do that, then there's gonna be a couple of things. One, you're gonna cut down on fraud, which again, the Democrats are just total fraudsters when it comes to voting, as far as Republicans are concerned.

Right. And then it's also going to, in some cases, sure, it's gonna make it a little difficult for some people to vote, but the Republican way of thinking is, if you really care about voting, you're gonna do whatever it takes to get to that poll and register and vote.

And if you don't, if just a couple of simple barriers will keep you from doing that, then that's to you, man, I don't care about your vote, and TS for the Democrats, who you probably would have voted for. That's the argument in public that you're talking about,

that you're saying is bogus, when it's really these people who are having access issues to voting because of the laws that the GOP is putting up, are more likely to vote for Democrats. So hence, these are targeted attempts to block people from voting for Democrats. Yeah.

That's the reality of it, allegedly. We should say, Chuck, like there's just calling it voter suppression as kind of controversial in and of itself. Well, yeah, no one likes to use those words because on the one side, like you said, there's like, it's not about voter suppression. It's about like, what's wrong with having to have an ID

to go cast a vote? Right. I mean, on its face, it makes sense. Sure. You know, they say you have to have ID to buy alcohol if some clerk decides that he wants to see your ID. You have to show it to him or you can't buy alcohol. What's the problem with that, you know?

Well, right. And then you go to some parts of Texas and they say, well, you can use your gun license to vote, but don't use your student ID. That doesn't count. Right. So like, it's the fact that they're all very targeted and everyone will see as we go through this,

it's very targeted. Like, and we'll bring up specific cases where, you know, they find out like, oh man, leading up to the election where Barack Obama's first presidential election, we saw a surge in increase in black voters in this county. So let's go to that county. Specifically, and introduce some legislation

that's gonna make it harder for them to get to the polls. Right. Specifically there. Yeah. Like, it's maddening. Oh, it is. It's infuriating. Even, I was reading kind of the other side on this

by a guy named David French who writes for the National Review. Yeah. And he was saying, even he was like, if that happens, what you just described, it should be vigorously litigated that there's no excuse for that. For anything that's specifically targeting

like minorities or the elderly or making it difficult for any group to purposefully making it harder for them to vote and targeting people like that, then yeah, it should be litigated and those rules should be thrown out. Well, and that happens. It is litigated and quite often courts do say, like, you can't do this.

And they say, all right, well, we won't do it again, but it worked on this election. Right. One of the reasons why we're currently in the midst of a really massive wave of voter suppression laws that are sweeping the country right now. And one of the reasons why it's being allowed to go on is because just like in Citizens United,

the Roberts Supreme Court said, you know what? Things are fine. We're just going to get an important provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute, but it basically said these states and these specific districts in these states have a history of voter suppression.

And we, the federal government, are going to keep an eye on you so much so that you can't make any changes to your voting procedures without the federal government approving it. Right. And in 2013, I believe the Supreme Court said, you know what, we're fine. We're post-racial.

We're a black president. We don't need that anymore. And they overturned that provision of the Voting Rights Act and it's allowed, again, this massive wave of voter suppression laws to be passed in this country. Man, we're already riled up. It's tough not to be, you know?

What were you going to say? Should we take a break? No, not a break. I was going to say, should we just go back and talk about history a little bit? Yeah, let's, man. Because the history is much easier to stomach. Yeah, right.

Okay, so, and you put this article together with our own article and a bunch of other good stuff. Yes. Nice work. Thanks. But you point out that very astutely that it's not in the Constitution the right to vote. This has been left up to the states over the years,

even though we've had, you know, amendments since then that obviously allowed certain people the right to vote. It wasn't just originally included like, hey, everyone can vote. Everyone has the right to vote in this country. Right, and no, originally the only group that citizens of the United States could vote for was the House of Representatives.

The Senate and the President, and the President still, this is the case, were elected by an electoral college, right? Correct. So eventually they added Senate seats for people to be able to directly vote for. But in the first presidential election in 1789, the one that, or George Washington won

and was elected to the presidency, the first presidency of the United States, like 6% of the population in the US at the time were eligible to vote, and that was it. Yeah, it was only white men and freed African-American slaves in just four states. I saw six. Six states?

I was really surprised to see that, but yeah. Who owned property. Right, that's a big one. Right, so that left like eight guys. Right, they were allowed to, but yeah, you had to own property, and that was the big division at first, even apparently more so than by race,

it was by whether you were a landowner or property owner, right? Yeah, and you had to be 21, there were certain religious restrictions too. So like you said, that ended up 6%. 6% of the population could vote. That's, I mean, I'm gonna cut them a little slack on the first election,

say that they were trying to get it together, but 6% is an alarmingly low number, but they probably thought that was the 6% of people that mattered. Right, I guess it's more inclusive than the 1%, but it's still pretty low. We're in the single digits here, you know? But like you were saying,

it's a class distinction was really kind of the biggest deal, and that changed a bit when war veterans who fought for independence from Britain stepped up and said, hey, a lot of us are not landowners, and we helped free this country. Can we vote? And little by little, states said, all right, you know, you don't have to own property.

It's 1850, and let's just say all white males can vote, and some African-American males, but definitely not women. Right, not yet. Just give us another seven decades or so, okay? Right. We're just trying to keep our heads from spinning over letting people who don't own property vote.

Exactly. So, in that bizarre, did you know that the first group to agitate for voting rights was white men who didn't own land? No. War veterans? I didn't know that either. So, something really big happened in the middle of the 19th century

that changed things as far as voting went. That was the Civil War. Yeah. And the 13th Amendment that ended slavery, followed by the 15th Amendment that granted suffrage to all men in the United States. Yeah, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

But again, not women. Right, and it should have said dot, dot, dot, supposedly. Because that 15th Amendment is what unleashed sort of the first, like, before there was just voter suppression, they were like, no, you just can't vote. And now they said, well, you can vote. And so, they had to be creative

with their voter suppression. Right, and at first, there was a period of reconstruction in the South after the Civil War, where the federal troops, I guess it was led still by General Ulysses Grant, if he wasn't president by now, where the federal troops were occupying the South under martial law, right?

Yeah. And they were enforcing the 15th Amendment and other laws that had come into effect after the Civil War. And it was like, black people could hold office. They could vote. They could live in this transition period from slavery into freedom.

And they were doing it under the auspices of the Union Army. But then the Union Army withdrew pretty prematurely, I think, in the 1870s, early 1870s. And it went from the Reconstruction South, which ended up lasting just a few years, to what became known as the Jim Crow South, which was basically slavery by any other name than slavery.

Yeah, that's when the Dixie Crats, which were conservative Democrats, I guess conservatives of the day, that's when they started to get creative and said, all right, well, we have this new 15th Amendment. So let's try and think of a lot of ways, even though the law says that black men can vote, that we can keep them from doing so.

So how about a literacy test? And not only just a literacy test, but maybe one only in English. So that way, there's no way an immigrant can vote if they can't read English. Or maybe some poll taxes, where you have to pay like a dollar to register to vote. But in like 2016 money, that was like $800.

I actually looked it up. It's $9,000. In the early 1900s, I looked up like Texas, it was $1.50 to register, and that would be like $43 today. Yeah, but for a poor person who is maybe waffling on whether or not to bother voting, charging them $43 is probably gonna seal the deal.

And George actually had a cumulative tax apparently for many years where every year, like if you were 40 years old, every year from the age of 21 that you weren't registered to vote, you would have to pay per year when you first registered to vote. Oh, wow. So that was clearly targeting like a freed slave

in his fifties would then have to pay a cumulative tax from the age from 21 up to 50. And again, that just basically meant no one was gonna register. Well, there were a lot of grandfather clause laws too, which basically said that if you were registered to vote prior to the 15th Amendment or your grandfather was registered to vote prior to the 15th Amendment,

you were eligible now under these Jim Crow laws, but most black people in the South were not registered to vote, nor were their grandparents prior to the 15th Amendment. So that basically just stripped them of their voting rights automatically as well. And you mentioned the literacy test too, Chuck, did you look into those at all?

Yeah, I mean, some of them. Some were like, like recite the U.S. Constitution. Some of them, some were like 20 pages long, and they would be administered by white Democrats. And again, Democrats at the time were the party of conservatives. We should do an episode on that on when the parties switched names.

We've chatted about that before. So it would be left up to this poll worker who was administering the literacy test. It would be left up to their judgment whether the person passed or failed. Yeah. Like it was up to them. It wasn't an objective test, it was a subjective test.

Yeah, and so the end result of this is in 1940, 1940, not 1840, these suppression campaigns worked so well that only 3% of eligible voters, African American Southerners, were registered to vote by 1940. And you know, it's probably one of the worst parts about that is that I'll bet in 1940 that the average white person considered black people

politically disengaged in this country because of statistics like that. Oh, right. So they're like, oh, they don't even vote. Yeah, they don't even care about politics. Only 3% of them are registered to vote even, you know? Yeah, and this wasn't limited to the South, kind of up north and nationwide,

there were things going on. Notably, for naturalized citizens, it was very long residency requirements basically to try and keep immigrants from voting for a long time. Especially the Chinese, apparently. Did you know that? I did not. There was an 1882 law.

It's pretty on the nose. The Chinese Exclusion Act. And it said, if you're Chinese and you're an immigrant, you're not allowed to become a citizen, which meant they couldn't vote. And this is on the books in the United States until 1943. Yeah, this stuff is in ancient history. That's why it's so shocking, you know?

Yeah. So 1920 comes along and women were finally given the right to vote, thanks to the 19th Amendment. And you mentioned the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which finally got rid of the Jim Crow voting laws officially in the South. But that didn't mean that suppression and intimidation didn't still go on.

No, you know, like whenever the federal government decided that it needed to lend a hand and assist the black population of the southern states in gaining their citizenship, there would be a huge backlash to that. And initially, it meant the formation of the Klan. And then after the Civil Rights Act, the Klan, again, experienced this huge resurgence

in popularity and membership. And acts of white terrorism just became the norm. And now that we're looking back on it, we think of the civil rights movement. When I think of that, I don't think of it as actually agitating for civil rights. I think of it as agitating for full citizenship and equal treatment under law and everything

that makes up civil rights. But you don't think of it as really at the basis what the civil rights leaders were agitating for were things like protection of their voting rights, access to the polls, just as any white person would enjoy. And that march, that very famous march from Selma to Montgomery, did you see that movie, Selma? No, I haven't seen that one.

It's a great movie. Have you seen either 13 or 13th? Oh, no, I'm dying to see that one, too. Dude, that one, it's amazing. It's just amazing. It's really well done. And the stuff they're talking about is just so eye-opening. It's great.

Like, it's one of those ones you'll watch more than once, I'm sure. But that march from Selma to Montgomery was a march for voting rights. And it actually helped usher in this Voting Rights Act of 1965, because the Alabama state patrol, I believe, on horseback with batons and whips and nightsticks and tear gas just ruthlessly beat these unarmed, peaceful protesters

in the street of Selma. And it was all captured on national television and broadcast. And it really changed the mood of the nation as far as that goes. And it actually was supremely counterproductive to people who were against black voting, because it helped protect black vote by the federal government through the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Yeah, another thing that came with that act was an official ban on any, quote, test or device in, quote, to qualify voters on the basis of literacy, education, or fluency in English. And then it took all the way until 1966 until poll taxes were banned, which was kind of way later than I thought.

What was like the next year? Well, no, I mean just period. Oh, yeah, no, those Jim Crow laws were basically done away with after a century, as they were around for a century in one form or another. Unbelievable. Yeah. And then finally, during Vietnam,

they finally lowered the voting age to 18 in 1971 post-Vietnam, because veterans were like, hey, I can be drafted and shot and killed for my country, but I can't vote. And they all went, yeah, that's a good point. That is a good point to argue that one. You want to take a break? Yeah, man.

All right, we'll be right back and talk about the 11 voter suppression techniques. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, it's going to be a new episode of the show.

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All right we're back and before actually we move on to some of these 11 techniques. My question for you sir the basis of all this is voter fraud is what the argument is for a lot of these especially with ID so is that like is voter fraud real. So I mean everything I came across that I that strike me is legitimate although I'm not sure how legitimate like say a conservative might find it but like the Brookings

institution me it's definitely left leaning but I would also say that it's quite a legitimate think tank right but the studies that have come across all say no it's not really a thing like the it's basically a specter it's a potential possibility but it's in actuality it's not a thing and one thing I saw was that this came I'm not sure where this one came from but 86 convictions of 300 million votes cast in the last few elections I would say that's probably

about 10 to 12 elections there's only been 86 convictions for voter fraud and the other issue with this specifically with voter ID laws is that most of those cases of fraud where people have actually been convicted of voter fraud were male in ballots and so like a voter ID card is not going to do anything for that right because you don't you don't produce ID to mail in a ballot so the idea that there is a big problem with voter fraud is ostensibly not real although

of course Trump is going to he's carrying out an investigation he's formed a commission so I'm very curious to find out what they find but even if it were a real thing from the pattern that we're seeing that the voter ID laws aren't going to help anything anyway so far as it actually makes a difference in an election outcome it is negligible no and I have to say there are it's not like the people who who are who say especially rank and file GOP

members right not necessarily like high elected officials but just like the average GOP party member it's not like they're lunatics for believing that there's such a thing as widespread voter fraud right like this is a big drum that's beat on the conservative side in conservative media but there's also like instances in the past that can be pointed to saying like see see this is what they do like acorn definitely didn't help anything right acorn was a community

organizing some group that have been around since I think the eighties and they were dedicated to getting lower income minority people who traditionally had trouble accessing the polls or voting getting them registered and getting them to vote right so they were very much aligned with the democratic viewpoints of universal access universal participation in elections and there are very much a left leaning organization they were associated with Obama very

famously and then equally famously they were this disgrace organization because they were accused of voter fraud a voter registration fraud to be specific and the way that this happened was they would send out people a canvas neighborhoods and they would give them a quota and if they met their quota then they would say get paid a bonus or something like that right so these acorn workers were given and these are just the same people who are also maybe on

the next Tuesday coming by your house to see if you wanted to donate to the Sierra Club to right right they they were given an incentive to create fake registrations and a lot of them did they and when these investigations were launched in multiple states into acorn and voter registration fraud it was found that these people weren't trying to pave the way for fraud at the polls but that they were creating fake registration forms very frequently duplicate registration

forms for the same person right to get paid for work they hadn't done to get paid from acorn right that was the extent of it so acorn ended up disbanding but they left a huge huge blemish on the argument from the the the liberal side saying we don't engage in voter fraud when you're crazy for even thinking that now forever conservatives especially people who aren't who are let's just say conservatives can point to acorn for the rest of the term the rest of time and

be like look you guys did that right so yes there is such thing as voter fraud in my mind and you can't persuade me otherwise right and as long as there's that kind of division that there's you're not going to be able to persuade anybody if there's no such thing as voter fraud yeah it's a good point all right should we talk about the 11 techniques I'm pretty tired me I don't know yes all right number one number one on our list voter caging who was that was that your

Carson oh no sort of a casey case I mean oh I hear a top 40 guy that was pretty good you ever hear that great outtake when he had to read the dead dog better yeah pretty wonderful that that taught me to just shut up when on my time was it dead dog was that it I don't remember specifically but it was it was a pretty funny outtake man God bless him all right voter caging is when you send mail on on on forward for it a bowl that's really a mouthful mail which cannot be

forwarded better send that mail to an address that is on the voter rolls and then in when it's not when it's return undelivered basically they challenge and say this person no longer lives at this address so they can't vote right which in and of itself is not scientific it's not illegal it's when you target say Democrats I think specifically minorities it becomes illegal you're you're you can't target any minority group but I believe you can target the

opponents party like registered party members but the whole point is is you're saying this person doesn't live there else they would have gotten their mail and because they don't live there their their vote can't count they should be purged from the rolls right very famously happened in 1958 when this literature was sent to 18,000 registered Democrats and then again in 1981 when Republican sent thousands of letters to minorities blacks and Latinos

in New Jersey and that one actually calls such a stir that the RNC got together with the DNC and said you know what I'm going to consent here with a consent decree and we're not going to do anymore right they didn't just do that the goodness of their hearts the DNC sued the RNC for that 1981 election because there was a lot of dirty stuff and to this day the RNC if it does any if it undertakes any voter suppression techniques wants to create any changes in in

voting regularity it has to get approval by the courts first correct but that doesn't stop it from happening because now it's just a third party groups can do it now yeah because they're not part of the RNC officially or the DNC right and so it still happens yeah what about these flyers of it so these kind of fall into larger category of misinformation campaigns right right you got flyers you got robo calls these are just so brazen you really are like

literally robo calls that say hey you're you're democratic candidate is basically already won so you just stay at home and relax tomorrow yeah or don't forget to vote on November fifth Latino voter even though election days November 4th yeah it's so and you know I was about to say how did they get away with it but the it says right in here who is it the co-director of the voting rights group advancement project is basically you know they're usually anonymous so like how

do you go after someone you wait around at mailboxes you could arrest the mail carrier I guess I got anything about that I was thinking that they were just dropped in the mailboxes but I guess they are these guys at these like handle bar mustaches and like black capes come in hand deliver these things so basically there's no way to trace this stuff so as a as a minority in a minority neighborhood you might get a flyer and a robo call saying a

wrong date like you said or don't bother your candidates one or you know mail mail your absentee votes to this address which is correct yeah and this is like really really underhanded stuff super illegal stuff but again you can't unless you can trace it back to somebody who specifically and purposefully carried out this this campaign yeah what you can't do anything about it except go public and say no no no don't listen to that yeah well because what happens is you

get a Hispanic voter on the nightly news says I got a call that said I could vote by phone and half the people watching that probably think well I like this guy probably didn't understand that phone call so it's chalked off as that when in fact he really did get a phone call saying he could vote by phone yeah well yeah that happened in Nevada in 2008 I think that it sorry Nevada I it'll always be Nevada to me I'm sorry Nevada I know it drives you guys at poop but it's true

yes Nevada Nevada what else Chuck this is a big one I got one you ready yeah felony disenfranchise my fellow in disenfranchisement. Yeah. So there used to be apparently the Greeks are the ones who came up with this but it was really codified in in the West through medieval Europe where if you were a convicted bad guy. You would would undergo what was called a civil death right yeah you like to lose all your rights. Yes so much so Chuck that you could be murdered by

another person and you are no longer protected by the loss of the other person would get away with it's got free. Right yeah one of the things that you lost was any kind of representation you might have or being able to participate in any kind of community processes right sure that carried over to the United States but it really started to gain ground over the right after reconstruction during the beginning of the Jim Crow period where a lot of state legislatures

enshrined in their state constitutions that if you were convicted of a felony you lost your voting rights and in some cases you lost them forever you had to appeal to the governor to restore them some states said you lost them while you're in prison other states said you lost them after say if you were paroled whenever your sentence was fully finished but it to some degree felons lost their right to vote and it's stuck around. Yeah you know I got the current stats here.

Okay there are only two states right now that allow an incarcerated felon to vote. Do you know what those are? One is Vermont. Yeah. It's the other I want to say New Hampshire but I don't know. That would be an obvious guess but Maine. So close. It's crazy Mainers. It's that Canada rubbing off on it. Voting rights restored automatically upon release DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New

Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah. You're like the FedEx guy from the 80s. Rights restored automatically once released from prison and discharged from parole probationers can vote. California, Colorado, Connecticut, New York restored automatically upon completion of sentence including prison, parole and probation and a bunch of other ones. How about this? Everyone but these last two. Okay. Voting rights

restored dependent on type of conviction or outcome of petition to the government Alabama, Delaware, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, Wyoming and only restored through individual petition to the government, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia. Right. So the ones that you did not hear were upon completion including prison, parole probation. So people might say don't don't do the crime. Right? Sure. So if you if you like on the one hand it

makes sense. Like you've given up some sort of civil liberties because you you did commit some horrible heinous crime. Other people say okay well maybe once you've done your time you should get your your rights back. The problem is is in the United States there is a real racial disparity between people who are convicted of felonies who are black and everybody else right? Yes. So overall 7.7% of the United States African-American population as

a whole does not have the right to vote because of a felony conviction. For the rest of the United States overall just 1.8% that's including all every other race. Right. So there's out of the gates there's disproportionately more convicted felons among the African-American population in the United States than everybody else. Right. But then when you start boiling that down to voting rights on a state level it it becomes

painfully clear that this certainly seems strategically targeted these these laws. In Florida one in four of Florida's black residents in 2016 couldn't cast a ballot because they were disenfranchised for being felons. One in four. Florida was one of the ones that one of the four states where you had to have an individual petition approved by the government. Right. So one quarter and that's not saying one quarter of the

voting population of African-Americans in Florida. That's that's the whole population. Right. And since African-Americans have traditionally voted Democrat any law that says now you're a felon you can't vote. Right. You can just leave it at that and make your own your own surmises about it. Right. Surmises. It's a word now. Cermations. Cermations. That's what I was looking for. Voter ID laws that's

sort of a obviously a big one because it's probably when you hear most about in the news as of this year thirty two states have laws requiring or requesting ID when voting. West Virginia is coming in twenty eighteen. So that would make thirty three states. And we mentioned Texas earlier. That's one of the states where they say like oh well you can use your gun permit but you can't use your college student ID even

though the state has issued both of those. Right. Because if you're a student you're possibly more likely to vote Democrat. If you are a gun owner you're probably more likely to vote GOP. Right. And if you're talking nationally eleven percent of Americans don't have current state issued photo IDs. There's a lot of reasons why maybe you're elderly or disabled or both and you can't drive. So A. you don't need a

driver's license B. you have a hard time getting to the DMV just to get an ID like a non driving ID state issued ID. Sure. To vote and once again historically these people might be more apt to vote Democrat so it's hard to not look at it along those lines. Right. And a lot of people say well there was this commission back in I think two thousand five American University sponsored a bipartisan commission to look into voter

ID laws right. Yeah. Whether they suppressed voting or whether they would prevent fraud and it was led by former Reagan chief of staff James Baker and former president Jimmy Carter. Right. Two opposite sides of the coin. Yeah. But two statesmen you could make the case. Sure. So. So what they found is that both groups concerns were valid. Yes voter ID could prevent voter fraud. Yes voter ID laws would

suppress voting. So they suggested the government come on minorities specifically. Yeah. Minorities women the elderly and the disabled right are the ones who are most likely to be affected by voter ID laws and the poor. Right. Yes. Sorry. The the elderly the poor women the disabled and minorities. Yes. All five of those groups tend to vote Democrat too. So voter ID laws. Could be enacted to prevent fraud

said this commission. But if you're going to do that you need to basically give out IDs and you have to make access to these IDs extremely easy. And so Texas who has a very strict ID law you have to show a photo ID to vote and only specific ones said OK well then we'll we'll undertake this. We'll give away free IDs but you got to produce some documents to get the ID. So for example you might need to produce a

birth certificate. If you don't have your birth certificate you have to go get a copy of it. And if you were born before 1950 then you have to go to wherever count whatever county you were born in because they're not computerized records you have to go to the county clerk's office get it pay $42 for the copy and then come back and get your ID. And hopefully you also remember the other two pieces of

documentation that you have to bring with you to get this free ID. And this investigation actually it was a court case found that in the 15 months leading up to the 2014 midterm elections Texas's free voter ID registration drive managed to issue just 297 IDs for the entire state over a 15 month period. Well and this whole thing with you have to go to the county where you were born if you're basically elderly. Right.

Like you've driven across Texas. Well plus if you're poor. Remember that poll tax you calculated the dollar 50 poll tax in Texas it came out to be about 40 something dollars. Well it cost forty two dollars to get a copy of your birth certificate to get that free ID. Some people say that's a modern poll tax almost down to the penny. That's a modern poll tax. If you're poor if you're broke if you have trouble

making ends meet forty two bucks is a lot. Yeah. And if you're on the fence about voting like you really want to vote. And that's if you can get there to begin with. Right. I was born in Lubbock but I live in San Antonio. Right. And I have a car. So all of these things like these are two to a person who believes if you really want to vote you're going to you're going to make it through hell and high

water to vote. Yeah. All of these excuses that we've just thrown out are just falling on deaf ears. Right. Yeah. But if you really step back and put it into context and really think about it from a realistic point of view like these are hardships. This is tough stuff. And if you're if you're a voter and you really want to vote that it could dissuade the average person from doing that. And

from from everything I've read it is really easy to overlook how difficult it can be to get an ID for people who you who already have an ID and use them every day and have probably had one ever since their parents took him to the DMV when they were sixteen to get their first driver's license. It's really easy to act like it's not a big thing to get an ID when in reality the the poorer the more

disabled and the more minority you are the harder it actually is. Yeah. There was a study in 2014 by Rice University and not to pick on Texas but this you know it's Rice University. I think Texas brought this on themselves. The University of Houston. Texas is twenty third congressional district found that twelve point eight percent of registered voters who didn't vote cited lack of

required photo ID. So almost thirteen percent didn't vote and they said this because I don't have the proper identification and only three two point seven percent of those people actually didn't have the right identification. So a full ten percent had the right ID and didn't vote because they didn't think they did which and you know what we'll take a break and talk about it after this but the reason that's

not happening is because of things like billboards and poll watchers and other intimidation techniques. So we'll talk about that right after this. On the podcast. Hey dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show. Hey dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use a dude as our jumping off point but we are going to unpack and dive

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tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right so I set that up with the study from Rice University. 13% in the 23rd congressional district in Texas did not vote. They didn't think they had their right ID even though 10% of that 13% did have the right ID and just didn't vote because they were I don't know misinformed by a billboard and scared to go to a

polling place. Yeah. Has that ever happened. Sure it's happened. There's been plenty of billboards that have like prison bars or something on them. It says like voter fraud is a felony and apparently these billboards that are sponsored by dark money groups that have no direct ties to say like the GOP or the campaigns of a candidate are they sprout up. They tend to sprout up in poor neighborhoods minority neighborhoods neighborhoods

that are more likely to be intimidated by billboards like that rather than just laugh at them and flip them off. It's apparently the jury's out on whether they have an effect or not but it is it's intended to be voter intimidation. Yeah. These threatening language like you said like someone behind bars and all of a sudden let's say you're a newly naturalized citizen or you are a felon that's now out and cleared your parole

and everything and you see those bars and you're like well I'm going to take a chance. Right. And go into vote because I might be locked up. And again the disingenuous argument number 8092 is well if you're not a criminal you got nothing to worry about. Right. Which is completely disregards the psychological impact that something like bars and crime and felon have on a person seeing a billboard that's shouting

that at them. If you actually are you know fight your way through that and say you know what I'm going to vote anyway. I'm not scared of the billboard and you might show up to your polling place to find what's known as a poll watcher who are there to scout out potential voter fraud what has generally in many cases amounted to intimidation squads kind of right there at the front door. Yeah do you remember I said that

the RNC got in a lot of trouble for the 1981 election for a bunch of stuff. Oh yeah this is another one. One of the things that they had in this 1981 I believe New Jersey election was called the National Ballot Security Task Force and it was basically off-duty cops wearing guns wearing blue armbands patrolling polling stations and who were basically ostensibly looking for voter fraud but

the court sided with the DNC's contention that they were meant to intimidate voters who were likely to vote for Democrats. Why just because they were there with guns. Yeah like you don't want some dude just walking around like looking at you watching you you know what are you doing here kind of thing like no that's not it's not what the polling station doesn't belong to one group it belongs to everybody and no

one should be made to feel like they're a threat or they are not welcome at this polling station it's not that guy's polling station he doesn't have any right to walk up and down with a gun intimidating people what a despicable thing to do with your time. Yeah I mean how about this the conservative group through the vote their national elections coordinator was he was you know talking about poll watchers he said

that he wanted voters to quote feel like they are driving and seeing the police following them. Yes that's not it's not how you're supposed to feel when you go vote now at the polling precinct. Like that's a quote. Yeah he wanted them to feel scared. And that was in 1981 that was from the 2016 election. Oh yeah yeah that's not an old one. No so it's not it hasn't just been say GOP leaning voters who have done

poll watching there but there was a very famous case in the 2008 election in Philadelphia where the new Black Panther Party for self-defense which as we pointed out in our Black Panther episode is not affiliated with the Black Panthers they're kind of like this new offshoot group that that took over the name. Right. I think they were arrested for voter intimidation for basically doing the same thing but

with a police baton rather than say a gun. Yeah. Yeah I don't care who you are what side you're on don't intimidate voters at the polls. No I don't know if I could if I said that clearly enough yet. It's a disgusting thing to do. Josh is going to come after you. Yeah I'm watching you. Early voting is is one thing that that you say and you're writing here that I agree with that like who could argue with early

voting because it works. People love it. Voters like it. Elected officials like it. It's been a really big success in the states that that do it like a lot. I think almost a third of this past election. People early voted me included. Right. So like everyone should love this right. Sure. Yeah and it really really works. It gets voter participation up and like you said the lines are not long. There's

not like long waits on election day. And yet despite that despite everybody basically loving early voting there have been cutbacks since 2011 in eight states rather than this decades long trend which had been leading up to you know the I think 2008 election which is when it really came on. There's been cutbacks rather than continuing forward with getting early voting out there. And these eight

states are except for West Virginia GOP governor states. And the reason why people who are critics of these laws or changes to the rules point out the reason why that these are being done is because in the 2008 election this early voting was used by far and away more by African American voters who voted for Obama and the Democrats than white voters and specifically white GOP voters

right something like 70% of early of African Americans in the 2008 election voted early compared to like 50% of white voters in the 2008 election. I'm not sure what the breakdown was for Democrat to GOP but I'm quite sure it was lopsided in favor of the Democrats in that right so that happened and then all of a sudden the midterm elections of 2010 were just a bloodbath for the Democrats and

swept GOP governors and legislatures into power and as a result early voting was cut back under new laws that were introduced in these new sessions. Yeah and Sunday voting was a big deal too. Historic black churches have had a big great success story in organizing this campaign called Souls to the Polls where they would get their church members to the polling stations on Sundays to vote.

It's been a big success and so what happens when there's a big success for a minority group organizing and getting registered is states push back. Ohio and Florida specifically banned voting on Sunday. The Sunday before the election sorry not just any Sunday. Yeah and that's when these the black churches had organized to vote for the Souls to the Polls campaign and it made a big deal and more than 18% of Floridians

who voted on the last Sunday of early voting in 2008 did not vote at all in 2012 because well maybe not just because they weren't allowed to vote but that right was taken away from them and so 18% didn't vote in 2012. Right. So you do the math. Yeah and I mean that's a significant amount of voters in Florida alone.

And again it's targeted like that they do the research and they find out the data on where these votes coming from, when are they being cast, who is casting them and now let's put in as many laws, let's bend the law however we can to try and keep those people from voting. Yeah. Like there have been, there was a legislator in Pennsylvania that bragged during the Romney election like hey

our voter suppression techniques are going to give this to Romney. Right. This is a legislator. Yeah, it's true. So you know it's funny to some people listening right now we sound paranoid. So early voting is suppressed and as a result it can lead

to voter suppression as well, right? Yeah. You've also got voter registration. We already talked about Acorn registering people but typically voter registration drives like the Soul of the Polls campaign have an effect on Democrats' votes. So curtailing those can lead to, can lead to a suppression of votes among Democratic voters, right?

Yes. And we've been picking on the GOP basically this whole time. Dude, I went all over looking for instances of Democrats doing robo calls and using intimidating billboards. And I didn't find it. They're just not out there. Yeah, that's specifically robo calls where they deliver misinformation.

Right, or send out deliberately misinforming flyers, or supporting laws that end early voting. I didn't find it anywhere. This all seems to be at least in this current incarnation, a GOP-led wave of voter suppression laws, right? Yeah. There is one type of voter suppression that Democrats do favor though, basically across the board and around

the country, and it's called off-cycle election scheduling. Yeah, that's when if you may notice that there'll be an election and you're like, what? There's an election coming up? Well, why haven't I heard anything about it? It's because it might be for the city council or the local, you know, it's very much locally based. And Democrats, they know that those are not very

heavily voted, you know, it's very low voter turnout for that. So if it's a referendum on like something that has to deal with the teachers or a specific union or something, they know about it and they're really going to turn out to vote and basically have that one in the bag. Right, and teachers unions and city workers unions and basically any unions typically are democratic leaning, right, Democrat leaning.

So through this off-cycle election scheduling by cutting down on voter participation, they're increasing the impact that these Democrat leaning groups have on that vote, right? Well, yeah, because everyone wants consolidated elections. Like you pull people, you pull people. Sure, just do it. And like everyone will say, you know, I'd kind of really rather just vote on everything all at once.

Right, but this idea of controlling local elections, especially local school boards, leads to accusations of controlling developing minds of America's children. So Republicans have taken notice of this strategy. And this is from this great article from Eaton Hirsch from 538, and he talks about a political scientist named Sarah Anzia, who is studying this, and she found that between 2001 and 2011, over 200 bills aimed at consolidating

elections, getting rid of off-cycle elections, were floated across the country. Half of them specifically focused on moving school board election dates, but only 25 became law. Most of the time, the bills were sponsored by Republicans and killed by Democratic pushes. So there is definitely voter suppression techniques. And apparently, Democrats will say, well, you know what?

People who aren't that informed aren't going to turn out for these off-cycle elections anyway. That's good. And people say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. That's the same criticism or the same justification that the GOP uses to justify their voter suppression techniques. And you're using it for yourself. So that really sucks when people do that.

What is that called a hypocrisy? I think that's a word. So this is all still happening. I mean, a lot of these examples are kind of throughout history. But this is still going on, and especially after the 2000 election, and this most recent one, it's pretty clear that a few thousand votes can swing an election.

And so this stuff matters. Yeah. To fight it and whoever's trying to suppress votes, it can make a difference. Right. And so specifically, well, there is this one study that found after that huge surge. So you remember after the 15th Amendment was passed, where?

Oh, I remember. So the black population of men, at least suddenly, had the right to vote. It threatened the status quo. So the status quo, the establishment, went to come up with new loopholes and issues to make barriers to voting. Yeah.

After the 2008 election, there was a huge surge in African-American voting, threatened the status quo. So the establishment came up with new loopholes, right? And there was a study from the University of Massachusetts should be totally disregarded, because that's an elite academic education, and therefore liars. But they did a study that the more states saw increases in minority and low-income voter turnout,

the more likely it was to have laws floated that pushed back on voting rights, that cut voting rights during this 2013 study. And apparently, there is this wave of voter ID laws specifically that just hit the country after the 2010 elections. There's 2010 bloodbaths. The country was suddenly just flooded

with state and local bills that sought to require voter ID. And it came out of nowhere, seemingly. Somebody, this group called News 21s, like journalism students who did an investigation under the auspices of the Carnegie Night Journalism Foundation, they traced this back to Alec, the American Legislative Exchange Council. And they deserve a podcast themselves.

Sure. For sure. But basically, they're a group that was founded, I think, back in the 70s or 80s that brings together elected officials in the United States who pay something like $100 in dues every two years with corporations that pay thousands and thousands of dollars in dues every year.

And they get them together and they say, hey, what do you need to make business easier for you? Oh, well, it would be great if we could get the Democrats to not vote quite so easily. So let's come up with some voter ID laws. They come together, they draft model legislation, and then the Alec members go back to their various state legislatures or national legislatures and say, hey,

I've got an idea, here's a bill, let's pass it. And so from this 2009 meeting in Atlanta, actually, a draft voter ID legislative model was produced, and it suddenly just appeared everywhere around the country starting in about 2010. Yeah. So apparently, that's what's going on right now. That's behind this current wave of especially

voter ID laws, but also voter suppression laws that are going on. Like the history in this country of voter suppression is pretty shameful, but it's even more shameful that we're doing it again, it seems. Yeah. North Carolina is a pretty good example of recent years. In 2013, there was a law led by the GOP

that did a bunch of things. It eliminated same day voter registration, cut a full week of early voting, barred voters from casting a ballot outside their home precinct. They said you could no longer straight ticket vote, and then they got rid of a program that would pre-register high school students who would be voting age by election day. Scrap.

High school students that wanted to vote would pre-register them, said no. Too dangerous. Yeah. And had one of the most strict voter ID requirements in the country. This one actually went to court, and it was struck down. And the judge ruled that it, quote,

I'm sorry, that the intention to suppress African-American voters was, quote, with almost surgical precision. And the court noted that lawmakers first studied which racial demographics use which voting methods then move to eliminate those favored by black residents. Right.

So they actually found out they did these studies and looked at the data and said, all right, this is how black people are voting in North Carolina. So let's try and make that much more difficult for them to do so. I think the judge that overruled or struck down that basket of laws also said that it read like it was written in 1901.

Yeah. So North Carolina got pantsed in front of everybody because I guess they were too aggressive. But plenty, plenty of other states were able to pass new laws of varying strictness as far as voting suppression goes since 2011. Oh, North Carolina just got pantsed this week for the racial gerrymandering.

Yeah, gerrymandering is another episode we need to do too. Yeah. So the whole thing comes down to, I think we said earlier too, Chuck, is with these laws, right, there's kind of a litmus test that's emerged. Are the results of these laws more likely to be to prevent voter fraud or to suppress votes?

And ironically, it seems like it's going to be Donald Trump's commission that could conceivably put an end to this debate with what they find with the voter fraud investigation, which seriously, I cannot tell you how interested I am in finding out what they find and hearing all the grisly details from it. You think it'll be on the up and up? I don't know, but I don't know.

If it's not, we'll hear all about it. I can tell you that. Yeah. I don't know, man. I'm very curious to see what they find, or even if it just falls away. I think the worst thing for this would be if it's just allowed to just fall to the wayside.

Because, I mean, if we can get it out in the open and discussed and investigated and all that kind of stuff, I mean, who knows? Maybe they did. What if they legitimately found that massive voter fraud was a huge problem? Well, then sure, maybe we should have voter ID laws. Who knows? But if they find that that's not the case,

then we can say, all right, this law is going to suppress votes. There's no such thing as massive voter fraud. So this law should be struck down. Just let people vote. Yeah, agree. Like, who is one person to say they're not as up on politics and they don't really take the time, so they shouldn't be allowed to vote?

I mean, that is so anti-American. You have to be an elitist to think like that. Like, that's an elitist thinking, regardless of what your party affiliation is. Yeah. You got anything else? No. Well, this is probably the last one we'll ever

be allowed to record. So it's been nice, Chuck. I've enjoyed working with you. It's been nice, Jerry. If you want to know more about voter suppression laws, you can type those words in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I said voter suppression,

it's time for Listener Mail. Yeah. And you know what? Before I do Listener Mail, to listeners who are upset at us right now, like, send us in a thoughtful, researched email of refutation, you know? That's what I want to see. Yeah, because I'd like to think like.

Give me some proof of stuff. Yeah. All right. I'm going to call this fan theory. Oh, this is a good one. That you picked out, Josh. I really enjoyed your show, guys, on the Crazy Fan Theories, Thought I'd Share One.

It came up with a couple of years ago. It involves to kill a mockingbird, go set a watchman, which was the famous sequel to that book, and back to the future part one, and back to the future part two, which was the very famous sequel, to back to the future part one. Right. I added that.

Nice. Did you know that the courthouse steps in the movie adaptation of Mockingbird, the very same as the courthouse in the back to the future movies? I did not know that. Did you? Well, I didn't.

I've been on the Universal lot and walked those steps, though. So I was just like, in my mind, I was thinking, well, it's just a movie lot, dude. So he says, aside from it being on the Universal lot, the reason for this has to be that both to kill a mockingbird and back to the future take place in the same town. Well, that's not true.

No, but still. To kill a mockingbird depicts the town in the 1930s and the trial that exposes the deeply racist tendencies among its people. This is why in 1955, it would have never occurred to a black malt shop worker. I believe Goldie, was that not right? Future Mayor Goldie.

That he could one day become mayor until some guy from the future accidentally suggests it. This is falling apart for me already. I love this idea. And back to the future, too. Marty steals a sports almanac from 2015, which winds up in Biff's hands in 1955, creating an alternate timeline from that point forward.

Some 20 years after The Kill a Mockingbird, Scout returns home and goes to a watchman. But it's set in the alternative timeline, which is why at least one character, Atticus Finch, seems very different. Because isn't he like racist in this sequel? Yeah, and it's Marty McFly's fault. Go Set a Watchman was written in 1957.

It is The To Kill a Mockingbird of the Alternate Timeline. The Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 is the version of the book written in the timeline Marty fixes when he burns the almanac at the end and back to the future, too. I'm completely lost on that one. And he says, how fitting that Go Set a Watchman was published in 2015.

And that bit of fan theory-ishness is brought to you by Brian McBurnie. Nice job, Brian. That was outstanding. It did have its holes. It was a little rough around the edges, but you're using your noodle, and I like it. Yeah, that's better than Angela Lansbury

as a serial killer. It is. If you want to get in touch with us like Brian did and send us a really cool fan theory you thought of yourself, that holds up. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast. I'm also at Josh underscore um underscore Clark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook

at facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can also hang out with them at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us both Ann Jerry and Noel and Frank the Chair an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyshouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

down in the comments below. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Hey, dude, the nineties called on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass

Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot Sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life tell everybody yeah Everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts