The Daily Beast Podcast - Merrick Garland Is the Reason We’re in This Trump Mess

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

The New Abnormal co-hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy are angry about the current political mess that Americans find themselves in—but not at who you might think. Plus! A conversation with Andrew Garber, a lawyer at the Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program, about the sorry state of U.S. election law. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

Andrew Garner, a lawyer with the Brennan Center's Voting Right and Elections Program, joins us to talk about voting and election legislation recently enacted across the country and which states in particular are the most at risk. Then Rebecca Carruthers, Vice President of the Fair Election Center, is here to tell us all about the Georgia State Election Board's recent decision to require ballots be counted by hand. including why it's bad and who it helps. But first, let's have some fun. Surprise. It's October. And much like we have been anticipating, there is news that dropped. And special counsel, Jack Smith, is the one that did the dropping.

Where in a 165 page brief, he has essentially taken the Supreme Court to task with their presidential immunity and outlined all the ways in which, Donald Trump was not acting in his official capacity as president of the United States when he tried to overturn the election with a fake elector scheme and sent an violent inciting mob to the Capitol building, even though J.D. Vance for some reason doesn't fucking remember or would just like to look to the future. And the contents of these 165 pages on top of Donald Trump saying when learning about his vice president of the United States, being taken to a secure location? What was his response, Andy? So what? Exactly. So what? Who cares? He didn't do me a favor, though, so I don't care of my people trying to hang him. It's wild. It's wild. The timing is actually, yes, it's a month out from the election, but it's also just a few days after we watched a vice presidential debate in which J.D. Vance tried to, I guess you could say, coo wash what happened in? 2021 on January 6th and try to pretend that the Trump administration and Donald Trump himself was all about a peaceful transfer of power. And to see this stuff in absolute black and white about how he tried

every non-legal means to try to hold onto his power and did not give a damn, as you pointed out, that his vice president had to be evacuated, that he had AIDS telling him over and over again that all the election fraud claims were false. And he would just say, as he said to, I think it was Jared Kushner and maybe Ivanka, it doesn't matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell. When a lawyer told him that the fraud allegations would be impossible to prove in court, his reply was the details don't matter. It goes on and on and on. And the shame of it is that Jack Smith had to do this, because the only reason, as you pointed out, the only reason he had to do it is to show that Trump was doing this in his quote-unquote, I guess, non-official capacity and not in his official capacity as president, thanks to the hideous Supreme Court ruling. But my take on this and what it means is not much for Republicans.

I think it was Philip Bump and the Washington Post had a good piece on how basically the same percentage of Republicans believe that Trump won in 2020 now, as did in January of 2021. It's like 70%. It's insane. Hopefully, this kind of stuff will make a difference with someone who, you know, people who are true independence, not people who say their independence. pull the lever for Republicans every time. But the actual people who are out there, God knows how,

still not sure who they're going to vote for, maybe they'll hear about this and maybe that will push them over the line to vote for Harris. I mean, the thing about the way that they need, and by they, I mean Democrats, need to sell this, right? Which is unfortunate that I have to talk about it in those terms. But the reality is that, yes, you need to sell this in a certain way that it will open up non-listening ears, right? And I'm not talking about the set of 40% of Americans that are never going to believe anything other than what comes out of Donald Trump's mouth.

Like, we know that those people are gone. But I'm talking about everyone else. It was not until 2020 that all of a sudden, centuries of voting in this country, now all of a sudden was called into question, right? It wasn't until Donald Trump planted the seeds of there being fraud, that all of a sudden now we can't trust any of our elections unless he wins. And what this brief laid out was that he knew.

He knew from the beginning that he lost. His people told him that he lost. And he says, like you said, it doesn't matter. I'm just going to declare victory, which should be an insult to everyone that casts a vote. Right? Because Donald Trump, regardless of if you voted Republican or Democrat, is saying, I don't give a fuck. Your vote doesn't matter. What matters is what I say.

Just like he's telling his people, oh, just vote this one time. And then you'll never need to vote again. And I think that Democrats need to tie these two things together and say, this man, this party, they do not care about your ability to have a voice and a say in any election. and that includes Republicans, right? Like, it is everyone. Donald Trump decided, I'm just going to go out there and say that I won. And had people in Arizona, Wisconsin, and other places say, okay, boss, we'll do whatever you say, boss, like all of the other sick offense around him, we would be in a Trump administration right now. It was just so clear in his documentation what Jack Smith laid out and his just just,

a total and complete indictment also of the Supreme Court, that you knew that this man was not acting in any official capacity. But Donald Trump, I got to tell you, was looking well into the future as he was committing all of the crimes that he was committing. And knew that if he placed those people on the Supreme Court, he was going to get, that was his get out of jail free card. But I think that what Jack Smith was able to articulate and lay out in this document are all ways in which Donald Trump was clearly acting as a candidate and not as a president of the United States. There are so many details in the report that came out with the release of this. They're just mind-blowing. One of them is that as the Capitol was being attacked, Trump was

sitting in the White House by himself when he sent out a tweet saying that Mike Pence lacked courage. As the prosecutor's right in what was released, quote, the defendant personally posted the tweet at a point when he already understood the Capitol had been breached. So he knew that this violent mob had breached the Capitol where Mike Pence was. And he sent out a tweet condemning Pence and saying he lacked courage. And all of this is, you know, and we talk about this all the time. And, you know, we use words now like stochastic terrorism and things like that. But all of it is mob boss behavior. It's, who was it, Henry II, who said, who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?

Go ahead, Shakespeare. I don't know. Yeah, no, I know. I know. But that's the famous quote. I mean, you know, encouraging his underlings to get rid of this priest without actually saying, somebody go kill this fucking priest. It's that.

It's that kind of stuff over and over again. Yeah, he's not quite, you know, insane enough to say somebody go out there and harm Mike Pence, but he sees what's going on. He sees that there are violent rioters in the capital where Mike. Pence is, and he chooses that moment to send out a tweet saying that Pence lacks courage and denouncing him. It's all very, very obvious what is going on here. And we see this over and over again in the report. And look, it's important for people to know this. It sometimes feels like there are people out there who forgot that January 6th happened. There are certainly people on the right

want to pretend it never happened or pretend it was just, as we always hear, a bunch of tourists. Look, I'm glad this stuff is out there. It sucks that the only reason it's out there is because Jack Smith has to deal with a ridiculous Supreme Court ruling. But we'll see if it makes any difference. Who knows? I have to say, too, on one of the pages, page 21, where they're talking about where he's laying out state by state what was happening. Right. And in Arizona in particular, just have to read this part.

In Arizona in particular, this is what is written. In the post-election period, P-18, so Person 18, was harassed on several occasions, individuals gathered outside of their home with bullhorns and screamed and honked their vehicle horns to create noise. Once an individual invisible possession of a pistol and wearing a T-shirt in support of a militia group came onto P-18's property and screamed at him. This is a person in Arizona and an official in Arizona who said, we don't have enough evidence for me to call the legislature back into session. So I'm not going to do it. You lost Arizona and this is what the response was. I mean, when you talk about mob tactics, this is domestic terrorism, right? Like they gathered outside of this person's home with pure intimidation tactics and then had weapons.

The fact that this is not headline news everywhere that Donald Trump knew he lost was trying to pressure and use intimidation tactics. And all of his people around him said, you lost. He said, I don't care. It doesn't matter. I'm declaring victory. And these are the lengths that I'm going to. President, your vice president is in a hidden location. So what?

Like, the fact that this person is 50, 50 percent likely to become president again? I'm at a loss. I'm at a loss that we're here. That the Supreme Court brought us here. Merrick Garland brought us here. The Senate, Mitch McConnell brought us here. Like, it's crazy. Yeah, it's nuts.

For some reason, I feel like you'll have more to say about Merrick Garland later, Danielle. Oh, you know I will. I want to point to another thing. Politico had a good piece from Kyle Cheney and Josh Kirstine that laid out a bunch of stuff. in this report from from Jack Smith. And one of them is this. Well before January 6th, an unidentified Trump campaign employee enthusiastically spoke of the potential for a riot in Michigan. The prosecutors refer to this employee as a co-conspirator. They're unnamed. But what this person wanted to do was, quote, unquote, create chaos at a polling center in

Detroit when it became clear a batch of election returns favorable to Biden was legitimate. This guy said to a colleague, find a reason it isn't. And then the colleague said it feels like there's imminent violence here. Like there's a definite threat of an outbreak of violence. This guy, the campaign employee, replied, make them riot, do it. Half of this is the legal shenanigans or the illegal shenanigans, I should call it. He tried to pull with, you know, filing all the lawsuits and trying to send the electors back to the states. But it feels like the under-recognized component of this is the constant.

sort of they wanted violence. They wanted people to riot. And we see this again over and over again. We see this in this report with the Capitol, again, with Trump saying so what and Trump saying what he said about Pence. We see it in this instance in Michigan. It's just over and over again. This is what they wanted. They wanted violence. They wanted bloodshed. If you need any more examples of their third. for power and their thirst and desire to be authoritarian and dictators, that's it. You know, let's go back to Donald Trump saying, in Lafayette Square, just shoot them in the leg about protesters protesting the murder of George Floyd, right?

They want violence so that then they can amp up their militias that Donald Trump told to stand back and stand by. Yep. Because if they can get people, if they can show that there is complete and total chaos, it goes back to their other big lie about crime being on the rise and these cities being infested in white women being so scared to leave their suburban homes because there's so much crime and then news flash literally FBI comes out with a report. Crime is down 10% across the country. But so long as you can fuel it, it doesn't matter. You can talk about the Jack Smith filing

for hours. But I want to bring something up that is just a Another example of why this guy is unfit to be president, why he's unfit to be in charge of anything. It's a report from E&E News, which is, I guess, a vertical of Politico that has to do with the environment. Two reporters, Scott Walbin and Tom Frank talked to a guy named Mark Harvey. Mark Harvey was Trump's senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff. So he was a senior Trump administration official. He says that back in 2018, when during deadly California wildfires, Trump at first refused to approve disaster aid for the state because it voted Democratic. And Mark Harvey says the only way he was able to get Trump to release these funds was by pulling voting results that showed him that Orange County, California, which is one of the areas that was being heavily.

damaged, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa. The idea, and here's the quote, we went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas to show him those are people who voted for you. Yep. I got to tell you, if Donald Trump were 100% perfect on every other thing in the world, this would be enough to disqualify him from holding the office of the presidency. This is absolutely unbelievable. It's not the first time. time we've seen this from him. And of course, now he's trying to claim that the Biden administration is pulling these kinds of shenanigans with Asheville, North Carolina, in the wake of Hurricane Helene and other places, which of course is 100% not true. But A, he loves to lie. And B, he might

even think it's true because in his mind, that's how you operate as president. This man is just, he's wholly unfit to be anywhere near the White House. He's just totally unfit, period. I don't know what job he would be fit for. At this point, you look at this and you say to yourself, Donald Trump is not interested in being the president of all Americans. He's not. It doesn't matter. Like, if you actually win an election, you are governing over 330 million people, not just the fucking people that voted for you. And so the audacity that there are people that were in dire need. I mean, Donald Trump should, you know, have been unqualified when he threw paper towels at people in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria

that devastated that island. And he went there and threw bounty at them? Like the lack of leadership, the lack of empathy, the lack of compassion, the list goes on and on and on. And there is no way for him to point fingers at the Biden administration because every Republican governor has come out and unequivocally thanked Biden for taking action even before the storm hit their state so that there would be absolutely no hangups. So I'm just like the fact that we are here and it's a 50-50 race right now and he did the same thing during COVID, I'm not going to give aid to the states that are blue. It's disgusting.

And it's just, it's a travesty. I'm out done today. He's sick. He really is sick. This past week, the Brennan Center for Justice published a roundup of voting and election legislation recently enacted in states across America. And the findings seem pretty grim, showing that this year's presidential election will have people in more than half of the states facing obstacles to voting that they have never encountered in a presidential election before. Joining me now with more details is Andrew Garber, a lawyer who serves as a council within the Brennan Center's voting rights and elections program. Andrew, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for happening. So explain what this roundup is all about. What are the kinds of things that the Brennan Center is looking at here? We track voting legislation and elections related legislation that is introduced in all 50 states across the country every year. And so doing, we track in particular restrictive voting laws, meaning those that make it harder for people to cast their ballots, as well as expansive voting laws, ones that make it easier for people to be able to vote. And now with the election just a month away, early voting already starting in some states, we've seen what has happened over the last four years' complete picture. And that picture shows an unprecedented wave of voting-related legislation passed in many, many states, and in particular, restrictive voting legislation. Voters in at least 29 states will face 63 laws that may get harder for them to vote this fall that they didn't face four years ago.

these laws attack all the parts of the voting process. In some cases, they make it harder for people to register, harder for get out the vote groups to be able to register people. They make it harder for voters to request or cast a mail ballot or to get the voting assistance they need to be able to fill out a mail ballot or any kind of ballot in many cases. But on the other hand, there are a lot of states that have made it easier to vote. And some states have passed many, many measures that make it easier to vote. We found that at least 41 states have enacted 168 expansive loss. And really, this is a story of two Americas. In so many states, it's clear which direction they've gone over the last four years. Some have latched on to lies about there being

widespread voter fraud in our elections to pass all sorts of restrictions I just talked about to make it harder for voters to be able to cast a ballot when in reality these are providing very little additional election security while other states have done many things to help their citizens participate in their democracy whether it's adding early voting whether it's enacting no excuse mail voting whether it's increasing the ability for people to get assistance to vote these are the types of changes we're seeing and so often it's dictated by what state you live in So there was a stat in the report that kind of blew my mind. You know, the report says that between the 2020 and the 2024 presidential elections, at least 30 states enacted 78 restrictive laws. And then, and this is the stat that is just wild, those 78 restrictive voting laws account for over two thirds of all restrictive laws enacted since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 2013. So this is just, I mean, what we've seen basically over the last four years is kind of unprecedented. it ended, right? Absolutely. This legislation is being introduced in past at volumes that are

completely different from what we've seen in prior election cycles. The Brennan Center has been tracking state legislation like this for over a decade now, so we have a pretty good sense of things. As you mentioned in 2013 in a case called Shelby County, the holder, the United States Supreme Court gutted one of the key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that had helped prevent a legislation that made it harder for people to vote and discriminatory voting. voting legislation going into effect in many parts of the country. Right after that in 2013, 2014, we saw states like Texas and North Carolina that were previously subject to those restrictions very quickly passed and introduce all sorts of legislation that affected their citizens, made it

harder for them to vote. But it was in 2021 when things really took off. Again, it was right after the 2020 election, which we all know was safe and secure. Then President Trump's Department of Homeland and security said it was the most secure election in American history. Nonetheless, we heard all sorts of rumors being spread, all sorts of lies being told about there being fraud, about the results not being trustworthy. They absolutely were. They had been audited over and over. We know this. Nonetheless, a lot of state legislators grabbed onto that in early 2021. And while that was the peak of this restrictive legislation being passed, it wasn't a blip. 2024 had the second most number of restrictive laws passed in any year we've tracked behind 2021,

which is particularly jarring because a lot of state legislatures in even number of years, either don't meet or they only meet for a few weeks, things like that. And yet nonetheless, there's remaining a very intense focus on election legislation. Yeah, man, that is scary. So the report talks about sort of two general categories. One is restrictive laws, which I get laws that make it harder to vote. and the other are election interference laws. Start with the restrictions.

What are the most prevalent types of restrictive laws that we're seeing? Without question, it's restrictive laws that go after mail voting. In 2020, of course, a lot of people, myself included, voted by mail for the first time because of the pandemic. And a lot of states decided after that, even though it proved to be a robust, secure, convenient way for people to vote, that they wanted to make it harder for people to vote by We've seen states passing laws that do things like shorten the window to request or return a mail ballot, do things like restrict assistance in filling out a mail ballot, a number of people because they have limited English proficiency, because of a disability, maybe even just older voters, need someone to help them fill out a ballot. Federal law protects that right. States have nonetheless done what they can to trim it to make it harder to get that assistance.

We've seen states eliminate or severely limit the number of ballot drawboxes that are available. We've seen them make it harder for people to cure a signature mismatch. When you sign your mail ballot, they'll compare it to the signature on record. Sometimes they don't look same, even though the same person casts them. States that are making it harder to fix that, I mean people's ballots won't be counted. And what's really important to understand about these restrictions is that in 21st century, states aren't putting up walls saying you can vote. Instead, what they're doing is they're adding a hurdle here or a speed bump there, and they say, well, it's not that big a deal. And maybe in the abstract, a minor speed bump doesn't seem like that big a deal. But you put up a handful of them. And some people are going to be slow that they can't get to the ballot backs on time. You put up what you say is a small hurdle while some people still can't get over it. And in the end, it's the most vulnerable of our community members who are affected. It's older voters. It's people with disabilities. It's people with limited English proficiency. And often, these laws have a discriminatory

bend to them. Just for one example, in Georgia before 2020, it was consistently white voters who primarily voted by mail. In 2020, that flipped the percent of black voters voting by mail went way up. Surprise, surprise, early 2021, the state passed a law that did all sorts of things that make it harder to vote. In particular, it did several of those different things I mentioned about mail voting. It did a whole bunch of them. So it seemed like a director's thoughts. Yeah, if I didn't know better, I would think that one party didn't want certain kinds of people to be voting. But that can't be right.

So what are the election appearance laws that the report talks about? Yes. So in addition to laws, make it harder to vote. We, beginning in early 2020, started tracking election interference laws. These are laws that interfere with the election administration process, either by allowing partisan actors. to metal or by attacking the people in processes that make election work, in particular, putting criminal penalties on election officials. So these interference laws come in a few different flavors. One that we've seen several states in act relates to poll watchers. Poll watchers are a common

part of our elections process. All states allow them, though they have different rules. The problem with these laws is not only are they granting poll watchers more power. They're making it a crime for elections workers to limit the poll watchers power. And they're doing it in ways that are confusing. They're doing things like saying, poll watchers have to be able to have open viewing of certain activities. Well, if you're an election worker, you're not exactly sure what open means.

Every precinct is different, which open in one precinct might look different in another. If you're facing criminal penalties, are you going to feel confident that you can tell a disruptive poll watcher that they need to stand down, that they can't be so close or listen to confidential information? The answer might be no, and that's the sort of way these laws interfere with the election processes.

Similarly, states have made it illegal for election officials, again, at the risk of criminal penalties, to accept third party funding for elections. Third party donations made a big difference for some places in 2020, and now those officials want access to it. And just as the last thing, you see a number of states can partisan actors control over election processes. For example, taking nonpartisan election boards. and putting them beneath the power of partisan elected officials, for example, on a state legislature. And the report notes that at least 14 states will have, in effect, 31 new laws that impose or that you would categorize as election interference.

There's an interesting thing in the report, and that is that the numbers, when we talk about the number of restrictive new laws, don't tell the full story. So, you know, you said earlier, voters in 29 states will face at least 63 new restrictive laws that weren't in place in 2020. But even that, which is bad enough, that kind of downplays just how efficient some states have been at making it harder to cast ballots, hasn't it? Yes, absolutely. The numbers don't tell the full story. A couple of months ago, a few colleagues and I put out another piece that looked at changes in several battleground states. And just to give you one example, we found that over the last four years, the state of Texas has passed four restrictive laws. and three expansive loss.

Well, if that's all you knew, you might say, okay, things might kind of be awash in Texas. It might not really be easier or harder than it was four years ago. But when you dig into the details, it's very clear. That's not the case. And it's very clear because in 2021, Texas passed SB1, which is an omnibus voter suppression bill. It does all sorts of things that make it harder to vote, including getting assistance with mail balance, including hardship voter ID requirements, including barriers for voters of disability, limiting polling place availability, limiting early voting opportunities, making it a crime for election

officials to do some of sorts of things I talked about a few minutes ago. And so when a state passes a law that does so many things at once, it really tilts the playing field. Georgia also passed a very large law that restricts the ability of votes, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and so in these states, in particular, voters should be looking now about how they can vote. They should be thinking about their plan now because what they took of took advantage of four years ago might not still be available. So which states would you say have been the worst offenders since 2020? Is it those, take five states you just mentioned, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, and Texas? Or is it some of the states that have just passed a bunch of little measures that just add up in the aggregate?

You know, we're careful not to rank states in any sort of formal way. Okay. The landscape and what they look like, what their existing laws looked like are very different. But, yes, certainly places like Texas, Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Ohio are of big concern to me because they did pass laws that make it harder to vote in a lot of different ways. Louisiana this year has passed eight different laws that make it harder to vote. Those are, again, individual restrictions, but you add them all together, they can make a big difference. And it's a sort of depth by a thousand cuts that can really add up for vote. because it's not just I was unable to return a mail ballot, but if more people have trouble getting a returning mail ballots,

and there's fewer early voting opportunities, and there's fewer polling places, and election workers are nervous about serving because they face criminal penalties, disruptive poll watchers have more power. That's going to mean when you get to the polling place on election day, you're more likely to face long lines. You're more likely to face disruptions.

These sorts of things can really add up when a state passes a law that does a lot of different things where it passes a number of laws that do smaller things. And that's why these individual restrictions, state may be only passed one restrictive law, can still make a big difference and may result in some people not being able to cast their ballot this fall. This was something I don't know that I was aware of. In the report, it says at least three states empower statewide actors to seize control of local election administration. What does this mean?

This has been a little bit of a trend we've seen over the last four years that is deeply concerning. it means is states are passing laws that either allow the legislature themselves or partisan actors, for example, a state board of elections to impose authority over local administrators. The reason that's so important is that election administration in the United States is done almost entirely at the local level. We don't have one national election system. We don't even have 50 state election system. We have thousands of local election systems with county, city election directors, elections boards running the show, doing all the really hard, Huffton-Donglamour's work to make sure our systems run effectively and securely,

and it makes sure you and me and everyone else can cast our ballots and be confident that they will count. And so when we see a law being put in place, for example, in Georgia that has allowed the state legislature to actually change the composition of local election boards, that suggests that partisan interests may be being put above election administration, which again, for so long was a nonpartisan activity, was something that didn't generate a lot of passion, because running elections is actually not quite that interesting to most people. It's very interesting to me and my colleagues. Sometimes we forget this, but it's about

printing ballots. It's about making sure you would enough ballots. That's about making sure you a backup plan, a generator in case of power goes out somewhere. And when a state legislature, the partisans there, partisans on a state board, are now choosing who's hand, those jobs, it unfortunately creates circumstances where something could go wrong and where they're not fully prepared for everything that needs to be done. And just want to end the answer by making clear election officials and workers out of this country are fantastic. They do a wonderful job at the local, state, federal levels to make sure all these things get done. They should be put in a position to succeed and not having to be dragged into partisan fights. Yeah, it's basically,

correct me if I'm wrong, but most of these positions, the election boards, the people that, you know, when we go to cast our ballots, we see volunteers sitting there directing us where to go. And as you said, the printing of the ballots, the mailing of the ballots, all of these are meant to be sort of, I guess, ministerial functions. And it sounds like what is going on here is trying to change that and making them more nakedly, like you said, partisan and political functions. Yes, that's completely correct. And it's really a new phenomenon.

Even a few years ago, no one was really thinking about local election boards. No one was really thinking about the job they do. We're now seeing a tax on election certification, which is a ministerial, which is to say non-discretionary. It's an obligatory task. It's ceremonial for local election boards to certify the election. Now, over the last couple years, we've seen some local boards refused to do so. We've seen efforts in Georgia by the state election boards empower local election boards to refuse to certify. In reality, under all state laws, again, it's required election.

certification is not the step of the process to make sure everything has gone right. There are lots and lots of other steps to count ballots, recount ballots, cross-check ballots, do audits after the election. There are court contests sometimes. But certification by being made more partisan, more of a fight, is introducing potential chaos. So you did mention this earlier. I want to bring it up. There is some good news in the report, right? Absolutely. There's a lot of good news. A lot of states have made it easier to vote over the last few years. In fact, 41 states have passed laws that make it easier to vote. And in some cases, like I mentioned with Texas, it might mean that it's still harder to vote there than it was a few years

ago. But a lot of states, it is much, much more accessible. Michigan, New York, Virginia, as a few examples, have all passed a dozen or more laws that make it easier to vote. They've implemented no excuse to mail voting. So now everyone in some of those states is able to cast a mail ballot if they want to. They've increased early voting opportunities. They put the in place that make it easier to return a ballot, for example, by including prepaid postage with a mail ballot. They're increasing the number of polling places. They're passing state voting rights act to make sure that there is not discrimination in the way elections are run at the local level within their states. And so just as I say that voters should be checking now

to make sure that they're registered, some registration deadlines I should mention are coming up in a matter of a week or two, voters should also be checking to see if there's options available to them that weren't four years ago. Maybe four years ago they weren't eligible to vote by mail, but now they are. Maybe four years ago they had trouble getting some sort of assistance, but now they're able to get that. Maybe they weren't able to apply for an absentee ballot online, but now they can. So voters should be checking now to see what the laws in their state are, making sure that what they did four years ago is still an option, or if there's something available to them now that wasn't, because there is a lot of good news out there. Unfortunately,

it still remains too dependent on what state you live in. We should be making voting. being accessible and convenient for voters in every state, but there are lots of people, millions of Americans this year who will have new, safe, convenient options to vote. When I introed you, I characterized the study as or the findings of the study as seeming pretty grim. Do you agree with that or am I overreacting? It's hard to say. I am really concerned for voters in some states that their opportunities to voter are being cut. And while I don't want to paint a picture that people should feel defeatists that they shouldn't bother, that it's going to be really hard. The truth is, even in

states like Georgia and Texas and Florida, most people will have an easy time with voting. They won't encounter many issues, but we want to make sure everyone, every single eligible voter has an easy time with voting and won't encounter any issues. So I definitely have concerns for voters in those states, and it's why I keep saying over and over, now is the time to make your plan to make sure you're registered, so you aren't someone who is cut out by one of these speed bumps or her. that the state has put in your way. But yes, I feel very positive for voters in quite a few states. Some I mention as well as places like Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico,

because voting is easier in those states. And whatever the opposite of Grimm is, that's the word I would use for them. I'm hopeful for voters in those states and hopeful that many other states will follow in the near future. Andrew Garber, thank you so much for coming on the show and for all the work that you and the Brennan Center do. It's so vital and important. And as you said, I hope listeners in whatever states they're in will take your advice and make sure that everything is good to go for them and to see if maybe there are even things that have made it easier for them to cast their ballot this year. Andrew, thank you so much.

Thank you for having. I really appreciate speaking with you. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. Rebecca Carruthers, who is the vice president of the Fair Elections Center. Rebecca, we're speaking right after the vice presidential debate, and I want to get, you know, your thoughts as the headlines and pundits are offering their analysis on what we saw. How do you think that the debate landed for voters and for yourself? So I'll speak for myself first. I wasn't the target audience for last night's debate. It was very much a CBS audience. And even though I was born or raised in.

in Nebraska, you know, the Midwest, Middle America. I'm also not the white voter that I felt that last night's debate was speaking to, understanding that of those who are going to cast their ballot between now and November 5th, at least 60% of them will identify as being white Americans. And so for me, last night's debate was targeted towards that particular cohort of voters, And so it didn't resonate as much for me as the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. But I also don't think it really, well, one, I don't think there are many undecided voters at this point. I think it's more of voters deciding or looking for a permission structure to determine if they're going to vote or if they're not going to vote. That's really interesting that you say that what do you think then that the purpose,

permission structure is because, I mean, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I do not think that there are a lot of undecided voters. I think that there are either people that are going to vote for Donald Trump and they don't want to say so publicly. And then I think that there are people that are not going to vote for whatever they feel there could be a range of feelings that they have with regard to the stances that the Harris Walls team is taken, for instance, you know, as it pertains to Israel and the Middle East. But when you say permission structure, what is it that you think that voters are looking for? So there are some voters who have very serious concerns on the direction that our country is going in in terms of both domestic policy and like you mentioned with foreign policy. And so there are some voters they care about what's happening in their local communities.

They have exited the national discussion because they view what's happening inside Washington, D.C. as largely dysfunctional because they're told through media over and over that Congress is broken. And then you have members of Congress now who aren't interested in the business of the federal government. They're in Congress to grandstand to get media hits and to raise money. They're there for notoriety and not to actually do the business of Congress. And so you have voters who are who are checked out because they're not seeing the things. being done that needs to be done in order for our country to keep moving forward, just in its basics. You know, the theory is if you're in a country, your government should actually work,

but we have a large enough citizenry that has accepted broken government. So that's a problem. So what we saw last night, especially around the January 6th questioning, Vance's response was, well, you know, on January 20th, you know, there was a peaceful transition of power by the fact that Biden became president. That lets you know right there that there wasn't this major insurrection because if there was an insurrection, the January 20th never would have happened, right? It's similar to those people who say, oh, global warming or climate change isn't a thing because we still get winter and it's still coat. Right. So it's very reductive reasoning. and, you know, there are voters where that's very much a turnoff.

And so for them, listening to that creates a permission structure of, hey, I might think that our federal government system is broken and highly dysfunctional. However, in the event that this particular worldview takes over the office, that's going to be disastrous. And so even if I'm not fully locked into a working federal government, that over there can happen. And so that's the permission structure that I heard last night. I think that what strikes me to, and I want to pivot to what is happening in different states like Georgia, like Nebraska and others, where there have been attempts to completely change how votes are handled,

how they are counted. And the normalization that has been made since 2020 and Donald Trump talking about the fact that the election was going to be rigged and was going to be stolen. And for nearly 250 years, we have had sound elections with maybe you can count on one hand the people that have voted illegally, let's say. But what has happened over the last several years is this devolving in terms of how people believe and have faith in our elections. And so what do you make of how that has been able to do? devolve in just four years versus the 240-some-odd years that we had previous to that. So what we're seeing now is a mixed bag. We're seeing a lack of civic education in this country.

We see someone who is performing almost like an authoritarian demagogue is espousing very anti-democratic language, who is using fairmongering tactics to scare people. and to make people really question fear and be extremely skeptical of our institutions, namely our federal government and our election system. So when you have someone who's using their bully pulpit to really beat up on the idea of free and fair elections, and then knowing that practically we're under a decimated voting rights act, especially with sections three and five, no longer in play. And then you add on top of that different outside groups who have created anti-democratic and voter suppression templates that you'll see introduced in Florida.

And then you'll pop up me introduced in Arkansas. And then it's introduced in Mississippi and then Georgia and then Texas. And so when you're seeing hundreds on hundreds of non-voter friendly bills being introduced and some of them passed, you now create a framework. of where voting is now a lot tougher than what it has been. And it's based upon, you know, we're being told, oh, well, it's because people are showing up who aren't eligible to vote and they're voting. That simply isn't the case. If this was rampant, we would have thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of documentation showing that this thing is indeed happening. For those folks who say, oh, well, people who are in this country undocumented, they should not be voting.

Well, let me tell you something. They aren't voting. That isn't happening. When you live in the shadows of this country, the last thing that you're going to do is show up to a polling location and try to cast a ballot. Instead, you're hiding in the shadows, working in the shadows. You're at extreme high risk. You're avoiding the system.

You're not trying to actively become a part of the system. I know. And when you make that point, it is just the accusations. that are made from the right are absolutely wild and unfounded. But it doesn't matter because I recognize that before the truth gets out of the car, you know, a lie is already around the block. And I feel like we continue to play catch up in that space, particularly when you have, for instance, you know,

and I want you to walk us through what has happened with Georgia, where they have passed a new legislation that now is having five to six million votes counted by hand. And we know like the margin for human error here. We saw it back in 2000 with hanging chads and all of, and pregnant ballots and all of these things that we learned at that time because they want to set up an election that is decided not by the people of this country, but by the Supreme Court as it was in 2000. So talk to us about the ways that this lie about election fraud has now spread into new legislation

that is going to actually cause harm. in our elections and make people begin to doubt them. Well, let's be clear. What's happening in Georgia is not legislation. It's a new rule that's implemented by the Georgia State Election Board, which, mind you, is not made up of elected people. So these are people who are going against even Republicans in the state. So specifically, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said that the board will likely be unlawfully

usurping the power of the state legislature by paying. passing this particular, or by implementing this particular rule and saying, okay, we're changing the rules with how ballots will be counted in Georgia. And let me make it very clear. This is a delaying tactic because we know Georgia says that the deadline to certify the election is November 12th. So to make sure that your listeners really understand what's happening here, it's not that the votes are being hand counted is literally the ballots. So say, for instance, if you have a car that uses gasoline, you go to the gas station and you decide you're going to put eight gallons of gas in your tank. Are you actually going to pull out a weight and measure and determine if the volume that you're

getting from the pump is actually eight gallons? No. The reason why is regulated by the states. There is a system of weights and measures are scientifically tested and proven. And these particular pumps, if they're in use at a gas station, they have been certified that, hey, when you are paying for a gallon, indeed, you are receiving a gallon of gasoline, right? And so what's happening in Georgia, right now, Georgia voters make selections on a touchscreen voting machine that prints out paper ballots. These ballots includes a list of the selection so voters can verify the action.

of how their ballot was cast. And then it also includes a QR code that is read by a scanner to actually tally up the votes. This is very reliable. It also follows best practices. And if there was an error, the system alerts you that there is an error. That is a lot more practical and that is a lot more dependable than hand counting. So say the three of us sat together, let's say we had 500 pennies. and we're now told, okay, you need to create stacks of 50 pennies each, and we have to sit here

until everyone constantly gets the same number. We can't move on, and then we have a supervisor watching us. That, in essence, is what's going to happen on election night and the dates leading up to November 12th, and is nonsensical. There hasn't been an issue in Georgia where people are saying hundreds and thousands of ballots are going missing. That simply isn't the case. This is a delaying tactic, which is another type of voter suppression, because by delaying that November 12th certification of ballots in Georgia, these people hope to impact with a delay certification to now invalidate the results of the election. We know that there are some state legislatures who try to do the independent state legislature theory saying that somehow that branch of government has the right. right to determine the results of an election. That is simply not the case. It's anti-democratic.

It's not constitutional. I want to ask you this because I think that it is really important with basically a little over a month until the election. How much faith do you have in this election being decided, how confident are you in the Republicans maneuvering and suppression and oppression that is happening that we're going to get the real results that America wants on November 5th? I mean, I don't, again, I don't think that we will know on November 5th, given what you just laid out with regard to Georgia. And we know that other states are following suit in different measures. But how are you feeling about where we are right? now and the team, frankly, that Harris Walsh legal team that has been put in place.

So there are many organizations, including organizations like mine, Fair Election Center, we're a nonpartisan national voter rights organization. We are so determined every year, every vote should be counted in this country. If you are eligible to vote in this country, you should be able to vote full stop. And so for us and many other organizations like us that do litigation, that does advocacy, to look for ways to make sure that our system is as free and fair as possible for voters. We're all watching this. We're all getting prepared. But one thing that I will say and that I'm confident about, if voters show up and they turn out to vote, I am confident that their

voices will be heard. If voters decide, hey, I don't know about the system, I'm going to stay home, that's when you'll have a system. When you have lower voter turnout, then these suppression tactics have more bite to them. They have more influence on what's happening with the election. But if people are turning out, if they are determining to exercise the right to vote, the will of the people will happen. So despite all of the machinations that we're seeing from some forces in this country, that is determined to be anti-democratic, If you have millions and millions of voters showing up in Georgia, I am confident that the ballots will be counted. I am confident that our system, which has seen so many things in this country, I'm confident that our system will keep propelling us forward because there are more people in this country that support democracy than do not support democracy.

Yeah. We will have to leave it there today. Rebecca, I just, I appreciate the work that you all are doing to ensure that our elections are protected, that people can rely on the systems that have been in place and have been working until 2020, until a liar came on to, to the scene to disrupt our democracy and has been doing a really good job of it ever since. So it is organizations like yours that continue to give us faith and hope and a pathway forward. So appreciate it. you. Thank you all for having me.

Danielle Moody. I like that you say my name like it's a question. That was a question. That was a question. Andy Levy? Have you been body stanched? Andy Levy? Is Daniel Moody in the room with us now? Yes. Yes, she is. Danielle, close out this week. Who in the world could you fuck that guy possibly be? I want this to be etched in stone. What is harder than stone? Marble, I don't know. But Merrick Garland will forever.

Like, I want Merrick Garland to go down in history as the fucking worst attorney general that these United States has ever seen. And that says a lot when we've had people like, you know, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr. Merrick Garland is a feckless, spineless sloth who basically just, you know, gave up before he even started. How you enter into office with the Mueller report literally sitting on your desk, freshly off of an insurrection that we all watched with our own eyes unfold. And you sit on your fucking hands for over a year to do anything to prosecute Donald Trump.

I don't understand. Like that in itself should be prosecuted. I don't understand what Merritt Garland was thinking. This man was denied the opportunity to be a Supreme Court justice. And when he was nominated to be Attorney General, I thought, oh, he's going to come in with some teeth because he was denied what many would see as an opportunity of a lifetime. But instead, he came in like with a bowed head. I can't think of anyone that kissed the ring of Donald Trump and the Republican Party more than Merrick fucking Garland.

The man that is supposed to be, oh, I'm an institutionalist. You give a fuck about truth and justice and equity when you decide that the person who tried to overthrow our democracy to erode our faith in our institutions was somehow above prosecution. We're in this place at a 50-50 fucking coin toss-up of an election because of Merrick Garland. Because if he had entered into office doing his job from day one, Donald Trump wouldn't have had the opportunity to announce that he was right. running for office again because he would have been buried under, you know, indictments. But we're here. So I don't even blame Donald Trump because you can't blame a fucking criminal for criming. You can't blame Mitch McConnell for being a fucking leech, which he's been for, I don't know how many decades that man has been in the Senate. But I sure as fuck can blame

Merrick Garland or a supposed Democrat that was supposed to do a really important job and failed. And it's failed every year since. Fuck that man. to infinity. Other than co-signing, I don't have much to add, other than Mitch McConnell has been in the Senate for 17 decades.

That's impossible. He's 196. And I think he was 22 when he first was voted in. Yeah, I don't have anything else to add to that. I agree with all of it. And, you know,

we've talked about Merrick Garland a lot on this show. And it would be nice if we wouldn't have to. But sort of every week we are reminded why we do have to. Fuck that guy. So, Andy, how are you closing out this October surprise of a week? Well, we talked earlier in the show about Donald Trump not wanting to send disaster aid to states that voted Democratic.

I want to talk now about some Republicans who literally the day before Hurricane Helene hit Florida voted against a stopgap measure to continue. continue funding the government and within that to provide billions of dollars in disaster assistance money for FEMA. The continuing resolution was eventually passed by the House of Representatives, but a whole bunch of Republicans voted against it. Included in that list is Matt Gates from Florida, and he went ahead and voted against that. And then the day after it had, happened. He assured Floridians that they would still be able to get Hurricane Helene disaster aid from the federal government. We see this over and over again. There were Anna Paulina Luna from Florida voted against it. Brian Donald's. Senator Rick Scott didn't vote. He chose

not to vote. In North Carolina, Dan Bishop and Ted Bud, congressman and senator respectively. In South Carolina, Nancy Mace, Ralph Norman, some others, in Georgia, also hit hard by Helene, Marjorie Taylor Green, Mike Collins, and a couple others. In Tennessee, which was also hit hard, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Haggerty, both of Tennessee's senators voted against this, and three of their representatives did as well. This is a pattern. Matt Gates, in particular, did this back in 2022 when there was Hurricane Ian, I believe, hit Florida. And he also in 2022 voted against a continuing resolution that included disaster relief funding.

This is what they do. They do this over and over again. And then they run back to their constituents and talk about how they're working for them and how they're getting them the disaster money that they need. And it's at a point where it is just, it is so unbelievably flagrant. And somehow they keep getting away with it in the sense that they keep getting reelected. fuck all these guys, but also fuck the people that keep voting for them. And I feel really bad for the residents of those areas who don't vote for these people. Because that's literally your neighbors are sitting there trying to make it harder for you to get relief.

When there's a hurricane, when there's an earthquake, when there's wildfires, etc., etc. All things that are going to be happening more and more and more as climate change continues to recap. havoc on this planet. So it needed to be pointed out. Yes, they're hypocrites. We all know they're hypocrites. But this to me was just so egregious that I needed to point it out. So fuck all those guys. I have no notes. Fuck them all. And I wish their constituents would wake the hell up. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon.

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