The Daily - Who’s Allowed to Vote in Georgia?

Episode Date: October 22, 2018

One candidate made a name for herself trying to register voters. Another rose to prominence trying to purge them from the rolls. We look at how one of the most closely watched governor’s races in the country became a battle over whose vote counts. Guest: Astead W. Herndon, who covers national politics for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, one candidate made a name for herself trying to register voters. The other rose to prominence trying to purge them from their roles. How the most closely watched governor's race in the country became a battle over whose vote counts.

It's Monday, October 22nd. A major dust-up in the state of Georgia weeks before voters go to the polls to choose their governor. Brian Kemp is the self-described unapologetic conservative. He'll face Democrats. Stacey Abrams will try to become the first female black governor in U.S. history this fall. The big twist here, though, is Kemp is also the man in charge of Georgia's elections. While growing allegations of voter suppression are emerging. Voting rights groups say her opponent, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, is suppressing votes.

To keep potential voters for Stacey Abrams away from the polls. Civil rights groups are now suing Kemp, alleging he is using his day job to suppress African-American voter turnout. Every time you talk about voting in the South, you have to begin with the civil rights movement and real codified voter disenfranchisement that was true in that part of the country for decades. Astead Herndon covers politics for The Times. So our most urgent request to the President of the United States and every member of Congress is to give us the right to vote. In places like Georgia, we have in the 60s and the 50s. Here, as in many places in the South, voter registration was designed to keep Negro voting to a minimum. Difficult literacy tests were administered by white officials. And Negroes who attempted

to register were often harassed. Institutionalized laws that stopped minority populations from being able to exercise their right to vote. Make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time

to make justice a reality for all the country. That took real organized movements. This is an unlawful assembly. You have to disperse. Go home or go to your church. This march will not continue. That took violence to really overcome.

We have no alternative but to keep moving with determination. We've gone too far now to turn back. Members of the Congress. This culminates with a political effort. I have the great pleasure of presenting to you the President of the United States. And eventually, it ends in a legislative victory with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It is wrong, deadly wrong, to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. You, in the years of 1964 through 1972, had laws on the books that targeted Black voters.

You're going to fall into this category that the federal government is going to watch you more closely. And so what those states are told is that if they want to enact any type of voting laws, any type of measures that would specifically deal with the people's ability and access to get to the polls, they would have to get preclearance from the federal government, and the panel of judges has to decide that that is okay, and that it's not targeted at a specific group, and that it does not unduly help either side. So the federal government is basically saying, given your past behavior, we don't really trust you when it comes to voting laws, so anything you do meaningful to try to change those, you're going to have to get our approval.

Exactly. The federal government says, for these certain states, because of your history, you have to go through us first. Until? Until, in the 2000s, there is more conversation around the changing demographics of America. And the conversation starts changing from how does the South maintain its reputation as providing equal access to all to maybe this has gone on for too long. Maybe this was a law that was necessary for our parents, but not for us. states and counties with a history of discrimination against minority voters to seek preclearance from either the Justice Department or a federal court based in Washington before making any changes to their voting procedures. And so in 2010, you have Shelby County, which is in Alabama, challenge the Voting Rights Act. Shelby County, Alabama, argues much has changed in the ensuing years,

and evidence shows that requirement is no longer necessary. And that challenge eventually makes its way to the Supreme Court. I have the opinion of the court this morning in case 1296, Shelby County versus Holder. And in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court effectively strikes down the federal government's enforcement measures for the Voting Rights Act. We find that the coverage formula in Section 4 violates the Constitution and cannot be used to decide

which jurisdictions are subject to preclearance. After all of these decades of having to ask the government for permission, this now frees the states to be able to enact new voting laws and change current voting laws without federal government's permission. Almost immediately, across the country, you have states start implementing more strict

voter registration laws. You have some states closing down polling locations. And in a state like Georgia, you have this happen in a wide fashion that is almost outsized from even any other state across the country. And the man behind that effort is Brian Kemp. I'm a former state senator, a small business owner, and a father of three girls from Athens, Georgia. Brian Kemp is the Georgia Secretary of State in charge of maintaining their election laws. I've spent my career in public service devoted to running the business of government like a business.

He has kind of free reign to restrict voting access. He and the Georgia State House and State Senate passed what's called an exact match law. What's that? If a voter tries to register to get on the election list and they put in their information, the state checks that against all the other pieces of information the state has on the individual. And if there is anything misplaced, something as small as a hyphen or a misspelled name that could be a problem with data entry, that person is put on a pending list or could have their application rejected.

So even a typo in a voter registration means that a person may not be able to vote. Exactly. And people who may have set out an election or had an address changed can all be part of this group that is eventually removed from the polls. So in Georgia, over the last six years, you've had more than a million voters who were removed from the voting rolls. Wow. So there's not much debate that these changes that have been championed by Kemp are disproportionately

affecting voters of color, minority voters, Democratic voters. There's no question. Voters of color, minority voters, Democratic voters. There's no question. And the leading figure to counteract the Republicans' effort in Georgia is Stacey Abrams. And what I want to do is repeat some of the stuff she said and tell you about myself. Because you shouldn't vote for me if you don't know me. Stacey Abrams is an attorney.

She is a former romance novelist. I'm actually, I was born in Madison, Wisconsin. I only lived there till I was three. I just remember being cold and cheese curds. That's about it. She is a member of the Georgia Statehouse. She's actually the leader of the Democratic minority there. She's a Black woman. She started an attempt to register new voters

and to actually reach out to those populations who were previously disenfranchised or might feel disaffected from the political system. So Kemp is this high-powered Republican dead set on restricting voting procedures in Georgia. Abrams is a Democratic lawmaker determined to fight those rules and register as many Democrats as possible to counteract them. It seems like these two are inevitably on a collision course. They are going back and forth for years. The Secretary of State was investigating fraud allegations against a voter registration group headed up by a prominent Democrat.

In 2014, Brian Kemp had the New Georgia Project, Stacey Abrams' group, investigated. We do not object to sharing information, but what we do object to is a witch hunt and a fishing expedition. Which ended up finding no wrongdoing with the group. Stacey Abrams has called him a remarkable architect of voter suppression. An architect of voter suppression. My mission is to tell folks, he doesn't matter, you do. They have been mudslinging for years. And then after Trump's election, where focus starts turning towards the Georgia governor's race, they both in their respective parties decide to get in, and they're both underdogs.

They both decide to run for governor. Exactly. And so you have a primary election that sees them both kind of usurp the establishment wings of their parties and win the nominations for their respective parties. And it's striking that the issue that they seem to care most about, that they've kind of defined their careers around,

will be the issue, voting rights, voting procedures, voting access, that could very much determine who wins the election. It's the mechanics of the election. Yes. Stacey Abrams is trying to, after all those years of registering new voters, she needs them to come out and vote for her if she has a chance to become the next governor of Georgia. And after all of these years, the person who she is opposing in this race

is the same person who she calls the architect of that voter suppression. We'll be right back. So I said, knowing these two candidates, Kemp and Abrams, and their backstory, how much has this governor's race been shaped by the question of voting rights and voting procedures? But it's really come to the forefront in the last couple weeks after an AP report that 53,000 Georgians, particularly African-Americans, were placed on a pending voter list has really exploded the race. What does that mean exactly? It means that that exact match law is doing what it was intended to do. It means that these people are ones who applied to register to vote, but the government found that there was some mismatch. Some typo, some hyphen, some comma.

Some hyphen, or it could be an address change that put it in the question mark category. And they have created a list of those, which totals 53,000 Georgians. And do we know who those 53,000 Georgians are? We know that 70% of them are Black. Wow. And that speaks to what the voting rights activists call this intentional racial voter suppression. Stacey Abrams has said,

We're deeply worried that 53,000 people, 70% of whom are African-American, will be disenfranchised in this election. That this is a racially motivated... He knew from experience that this law has a disproportionate effect on certain communities. Politically motivated attempt

for the Secretary of State to benefit himself in the governor's race. Brian Kemp has said that these pending registrations are a result of shoddy work by Democratic activist groups who are trying to register these voters. That this is all just a controversy that was ginned up by Democrats and there's no real truth to it. He has also said,

Well, it means she wants illegals to vote in Georgia. I mean, this is a shocking development in the campaign while she was campaigning. That Stacey Abrams is trying to get non-citizens to vote. I think hardworking Georgians should decide who their governor is, not people here illegally like my opponent wants. Is there any evidence of that? She said on the campaign stop last week that... But the thing of it is, the blue wave is African-American.

It's white, it's Latino, it's Asian Pacific Islander. It is disabled. It is differently able. It is made up of those who've been told that they are not worthy of being here. It is comprised of those who are documented and undocumented. The blue wave, quote, is comprised of the undocumented and the documented. Brian Kemp has used that literally, saying that she wants undocumented non-citizens to go to the polls. She denies that. I've never once argued for anyone who was not legally allowed to vote in the state of Georgia to be allowed to vote.

What I said that day is that this is a state that should be looking out for everyone in our state. She was meaning this is who we're fighting for. that should be looking out for everyone in our state. She was meaning, this is who we're fighting for. I had seen the mudslinging going back and forth, so I just decided to go to Georgia and talk to voters and see how this was playing out on the ground. And what did you find in talking to the voters

who were on this kind of suspension list? I'll snow down here. I went door to door with a group of women who were volunteering six days a week to try to get voters information about election day. And we were out in Gwinnett County, which is one of the most diverse counties in Georgia, and a key spot that Democrats would need to come out and turn out for Stacey Abrams to win. Have you checked your voter registration? Find any chance? Sure did.

There was one man I met who... My daughter called me, asked me that she need to re-register. He said that his daughter had just called him with the news about the 50,000 people on the pending list and they both rechecked their own voter registration. But when you checked it, she was all good too? Yeah. Okay, great. And found out that they were okay. But it was really indicative of the

type of panic that's going around, especially among Black voters. Hi. Hey. My name's Ested. I'm a reporter from the New York Times. I met another woman who, when we went to her house, she said... My husband, I had to give him, strong-arm him to make sure, because he was one of the ones who his voter registration was. I was registered, and I rechecked, and my registration was fine.

But after this news, we checked on my husband's, and he was not registered. He was registered, and that's what prompted us to look, and he was not registered. She looked online? Mm-hmm. She doesn't know whether it was a change in address or it was a purge that happened before this list or whether he's on that list himself,

but there's confusion. And the impact of the list really seems to have just brought in larger questions and larger feelings of disenfranchisement that have always lingered beneath the surface in Georgia politics. These are majority African-American voters. These are disproportionately voters

who don't come out in midterms. And this is just another reason that may make it more difficult for them to do so or make them feel as if this is not a race that is for folks like them. Thank you so much. Have a great day. It has also gotten worse since early voting began this week. Because there's been some high-profile incidents that's really inflamed those tensions. In Cobb County, another county with a lot of Democrats in the Atlanta metro region,

there's been over three-hour lines for people to vote. Folks have passed out in the lines. From heat exhaustion? From heat exhaustion earlier this week. I spoke with a man who the person next to him passed out, but then refused to even go see the paramedics because he wanted to make sure his vote would count. And people in those communities think that this is an intentional effort

from Brian Kemp to make sure that the Democratic parts of Georgia have as hard of a time as possible in trying to vote. Because perhaps there aren't enough polls? Because 8% of all polling locations have been closed in Georgia in the last six years.

And this year, with turnout expected to be at record highs, that may mean longer lines, and that may mean a more difficult time for these voters. Do you think that Republicans and Democrats nationally are watching this race so closely because it feels like this race is increasingly not just about two visions for Georgia or even left versus right, Democrat versus Republican, but whether or not electorally these rules keep one party in power and prevent the other from getting it?

This race is a preview into something that we may see nationally going forward. You have Republicans, Secretary of States like Chris Kobach in Kansas, who's also running for governor, who have made voter ID, voter registration, and strict voting rules very central to their candidacy and their ideology. As our parties get more polarized, and as that is filtered on racial lines, it gives an incentive for Democrats to make easy access for everyone, and also gives the Republicans an incentive to place barriers for those groups because they know that their political futures might depend on it.

What is the message, do you think, if Stacey Abrams loses this race as an advocate for greater access to the polls, to a Republican who is an open champion of efforts to restrict those laws. There would certainly be a chilling effect. She has run kind of the textbook campaign for this strategy to be successful. If that is unsuccessful, that could really send a message that this type of strategy is not one worth pursuing. And more importantly, it gives Brian Kemp increased ability to play out the kind of voter restrictions of his dreams.

What do you mean? We have coming up another round of a census happening, which means the state houses and the state legislatures are particularly important to decide things like gerrymandering, drawing districts for voting, and deciding kind of who counts in these states. And that's a really important power that determines who is represented. And putting him in charge of the state at that critical moment would be a real blow to voting rights activists. would be a real blow to voting rights activists. It would harken back to darker times in the South where champions of voting restrictions,

explicit open champions of disenfranchising voting, rose to those prominent positions. Part of what people like Brian Kemp have done quite successfully is make issues of voting rights partisan in a way that it hasn't really been since things like the Voting Rights Act. Explicit and open restrictions to voting brings us back to a time when the very fundamental exercise of democracy is by itself a controversial issue. I said thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

On Friday, an investigation by APM Reports found that in a single day last year, after he had declared his candidacy for governor, Secretary of State Brian Kemp oversaw the removal of more than 500,000 people from Georgia's voter rolls. Of those, an estimated 107,000 were removed for failing to vote in previous elections. According to the investigation, the removals disproportionately affected minority voters. Here's what else you need to know today. I think the cover stories from the Saudis are a mess.

You don't bring a bone saw to an accidental fist fight inside an embassy in Turkey or a consulate in Turkey. So the Saudis have said a whole bunch of crap that's not right, accurate, or true. We know that. On Sunday, U.S. senators from both parties challenged Saudi Arabia's claim that the journalist Jamal Khashoggi died after a fistfight with Saudi agents and called on the Trump administration to distance itself from Saudi Arabia's crown prince,

Mohammed bin Salman. I feel certain that the crown prince was involved and that he directed this, and that's why I think we cannot continue to have relations with him. And so I think he's going to have to be replaced, frankly. In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky went so far as to call for bin Salman to step down as Saudi Arabia's day-to-day leader, something President Trump has so far refused to do. Joining us now from Riyadh is Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Adel Al-Jubeir. Mr. Minister, thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me. In a rare televised defense, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister on Fox dismissed calls for bin Salman to step aside and claimed that the crown prince had no prior knowledge of the operation that led to Khashoggi's death. This was an operation that was a rogue operation. This was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding the authorities and responsibilities they had. They made the mistake when they killed Jamal Khashog exceeding the authorities and responsibilities they had. They made the mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it. And the Times reports that in its latest attempt to roll back government protections for transgender people,

the Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological condition determined by genitalia at birth. The new definition would eradicate federal recognition of an estimated 1.4 million Americans who have chosen to recognize themselves as a gender other than the one they were born into. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.