The Daily Show: Ears Edition - ICYMI - Carol Anderson on "One Person, No Vote" and the Impact of Voter Suppression

Episode Date: January 3, 2021

"One Person, No Vote" author Carol Anderson dispels the myth of voter fraud and describes how voter suppression strategically targets people of color. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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My guest tonight is the chair of African-American Studies at Emory University and a New York Times best-selling author whose latest book is called One Person No Vote. How voter suppression is destroying our democracy. Please welcome, Carol Anderson. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. It's so wonderful having you here. Um, you wrote a book called White Rage, which was a new to the show. Thank you so much, thank you. It's so wonderful having you here. You wrote a book called White Rage, which was a New York Times bestseller, where you spoke in depth about how America is dealing with an issue that it really hasn't dealt with completely, which is the rage that many white people feel at what appears to be America changing. This book is, I guess, based in some way off of that, and yet is a completely different topic.

One person, no votes. Voter suppression destroying our democracy. How bad and how big do you believe voter suppression actually is? I think it is massive. We have had millions of people blocked from voting. We have had millions purged from the rolls who had been on the voter rolls. The purging and the voter suppression has been so intense that we have Donald Trump in the White House right now. That's the power

of voter suppression. The numbers in the 2016 election, especially in and around the black vote, were really interesting. You saw in key states, in swing states where voter turnout dropped from, may have been like 78,000 people turning out and dropped to below 50,000, you know, you saw drastic drops. Now some people have argued that that was because Hillary Clinton didn't motivate black voters to come out, but you've looked at the data you've analyzed a lot of the information and it seems like there's been a systematic effort to remove people of color from the voting rolls. Right. Why people of color though? And I believe why people of color, besides

being just snide and saying, duh, it's been that way for a long time. It's because that after the 2008 election with Barack Obama, Barack Obama brought 15 million new voters to the polls with that incredible ground game. They were overwhelmingly black, Latino, young, poor, and and with that, then, the Republican Party, that has moved further and further to the right

and has become more and more white, and their policies have become more right-wing, they don't have policies that resonate with the growing diversity of America. And so instead of thinking about how do we reform this party so that it resonates with America, that our policies are really strong, and talk about benefiting more Americans. Instead, what they decided to do was to suppress the vote. There are some really scary parts of the book where I read about things I never knew before. I knew about the larger picture of voter suppression in certain states in certain places. But you read about how so many people have been stripped of their rights. Now, the argument the other way, from people like Chris Kobuck, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, th. thi, thi, thi, th. th. th. th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, thi, the, thi, their, their, thi. their, thi. that, what their, what their, what their, what their, what th the argument the other way from people like Chris Kobak,

you know, from Donald Trump and his team has been, we are protecting democracy. That's why we scrub people of voter rolls. If they've died, if they no longer respond to mail, then why are we keeping them on the voter rolls? How do you respond to that? And I respond to that because one of the ways that this works and the way is so effective is that they're able to use that cover of being reasonable.

You know, we're just keeping the voter rolls up. But when you really look at what they're doing, is that those, the people that they're scrubbing, they're not the people the people th....... The people they're not not not not not not they're not their their their their the people who died overwhelmingly. Overwhelmingly, who they're scrubbing are people who are African-Americans, people who are young, people who are poor. And they're doing it by the characteristics. So they can't say, oh, we don't want black people to vote, because there's still this thing called the 15th Amendment. Although the Voting Rights Act got gutted by the Supreme Court.

There's still this thing called called the the the the thing called the 15th Amendment. So what they do is they go after the characteristics of a people, societally imposed characteristics. They go after those things like, if you move a lot, and we know that people move a lot, particularly if you're poor, you don't stay in the same house forever. That moving then becomes a reason to knock people off the rolls. They say, and one of the things things things things things things things things things things things things things things things things things things things thinks that we also thinks thinks thinks thinks thinks that we the things that we also know characteristics is that young people, minorities, and students, they don't vote regularly.

So they start knocking people off the rolls for not voting regularly. And so they use those characteristics and those are the characteristics of people who don't overwhelmingly vote for Republicans. Right. When you look at the numbers and you look at how impactful this could actually be. of people who don't overwhelmingly vote for Republicans. Right. Yeah. When you look at the numbers and you look at how impactful this could actually be, the argument is always met with yes, but look at how much voter fraud there is. Now, we talked briefly about this, but overwhelmingly,

most Americans believe that voter fraud is a very definite threat. Absolutely. And that has been a a very definite threat. Absolutely. And that has been a well-cultivated myth. It has borne up out of the 2000 election, that horrible election with hanging chads. Right. And that myth of massive, rampant voter fraud coming out of the cities, stealing our elections. Except when they really went hunting for it, they couldn't find it.

Justin Leavitt, a law professor out of California, he looked, and he went from 2000 to 2014. Out of 1 billion votes, he was able to identify 31 cases. 31 out of 1 billion votes of voter impersonation fraud. When Chris Kobach, the Secretary of State that you mentioned, who helped head up Trump's election integrity commission, in their report, which was all about when Trump said 5 million voters have come in and I would have won the popular vote. That's a great Trump, by the way.

Thank you, thank you. It's not as good as yours. You know when he said you know he's got five million then they went hunting and they couldn't find it. I mean the pages are blank when it says voter fraud his Commission's looking blank pages it's not there. When Greg Abbott out of out of Texas is arguing for voter ID and Judge Ramos is saying, okay, you've got rampant voter fraud. Where, where? And he's like, it's rampant.

She's like, where? How many? It's a lot, rampant? How many? Two? And I'm like, is that rampant? The argument I've seen a lot of confidence is with a lot of confidence is it's not suppression. What we're doing is making sure that the integrity of our election is maintained.

And so they say we're not purging people or we're not restricting them from voting. We're just saying that everyone needs a voter ID. Now I understand it, but if you were explaining to someone who is genuinely well intentioned, someone who says I don't understand. Why is it so hard or why is it so difficult for the government to say, why is it so bad for the government to say, everyone should have a voter ID that is issued by the government or at the DMV? Why is that so much to ask? Okay, so let me just give you a couple of examples about how that really, thiaiaiaiaiaiathat it sounds so reasonable because you need an ID you know what trump said you need an ID to go buy groceries Right

I'm like But as we all know it doesn't quite work that way, so for instance in Alabama said you got to have a government issued photo ID and then said but your public housing ID does not count. Now Alabama's a poor state. They've got lots of public housing. 71% of those in public housing in public housing are African-American. For many that's the only ID they have. So you automatically wiped away that type of government-issued photo ID, because public housing is government-issued. Right.

Okay. Then Alabama shut down the Department of Motor Vehicles in the Black Belt counties. And so now people were going to have to go 50 miles. But if you don't drive, how are you going to go 50 miles? And you don't have public transportation. So what you do is you create an obstacle. Right. And then you create an obstacle to the obstacle. And you make it so difficult for people who are already working their hardest

to make it, to now be able to just access their basic right to vote. We see this in state state in state in state in state in state in state in state the the the the the their their their their their their basic right to vote. We see this in state after state. North Carolina, the Fourth Circuit said, you have targeted African-Americans with nearly surgical precision. So these states, they make it sound innocuous. Oh, you need an ID. But it's not any ID.

In Indiana, you need to have a driver's license to get a birth certificate. But to get a birth certificate, you need a driver's license. That's brilliance. It's genuinely brilliant. It's really. Let's look to the future. Yes. We have elections coming up. You have midterms happening in America.

You also have the presidential election which will be on its way shortly after that. Is there anything people on the ground can do? What can people do to protect their votes? Yes, absolutely. So there are several things. One is you have to register to vote. And there are organizations that are on the ground helping people like get the identification, get the documents they need in order to get the identification.

Organizations like vote writers that are doing that work. Also, when you're registered, check your, the Secretaries of State's voter registration page to make sure you're registered to vote. Because they are notorious for the the Secretaries of States voter registration page to make sure you're registered to vote because they are notorious for purging people off the list even well closely, close to an election. So you think that you're registered to vote, you go in to vote and boom, your names nowhere there, and then you're getting the run around. So that checking regularly, I check every week and then I print off a copy so that I've

got documentation that I am actually registered to vote and that this is my polling place. I think the other thing is really important is to help others so that you're volunteering, you know you've got election poll workers and you're paying attention to what's happening at the polls when somebody's getting the run around. I think that that is really important as well. And there are organizations like the lawyers committee that's doing that incredible work. So that's what we can do. And register. The deadline is coming up in early October, registered to vote, because we cannot be part of the solution if we're just sitting there and not participating. We've got to do it. Thank you so much for doing the show.

Thank you. One person, no vote is available now. Scary and fascinating. Carolinas and everybody. The Daily Show with Kverna, Ears Edition. Watch the Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central and the Comedy Central app. Watch full episodes and videos at the Daily Show.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And subscribe to the Daily Show on YouTube for exclusive content and more. When 60 Minutes premiered in September 1968, there was nothing like it. This is 60 Minutes. It's a kind of a magazine for television. Very few have been given access to the treasures in our archives. But that's all about to change. Like none of this stuff gets looked at. That's what's incredible. I'm Seth Done of CBS News. Listen to 60 Min Like, none of this stuff gets looked at. That's what's incredible. I'm Seth Done of CBS News.

Listen to 60 Minutes, a second look, starting September 17th, wherever you get your podcasts. This has been a Comedy Central Podcast.