The NPR Politics Podcast - Activists Stoke Corporate Backlash To Voting Restrictions

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

States are facing pressure from corporations to dial back legislation that makes it harder to vote. Major League Baseball announced on Friday that it is relocating the All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to a new state law.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, KUT reporter Ashley Lopez, and WABE reporter Emil Moffatt.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Bert Ashbrook in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, inside what we think is the longest cave in the Commonwealth. This show was recorded at… Right, Pennsylvania etiquette calling a commonwealth, not a state. It is 1237 Eastern on Wednesday, April 7th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but we'll still be in this cave surveying, hoping to get our fifth mile of passage. Oh my God. Five miles.

He didn't say which cave it is. It's a big cave. Even if he tells me where it is, I'm not going in it. You're the resident Pennsylvania expert, no idea? I don't like caves. You're not a spelunker, are you, Scott Detrow? No, I'm not a spelunker. I do cover the White House, though. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And we're going to put aside spelunking, fun word, for now and talk about some broader things today with two member station reporters, Ashley Lopez of KUT in Austin and Emil Moffitt of WABE in Georgia. Hey there. Hey, y'all. Hey, good to be with you. As you can guess from the places we're talking to people from, this is a podcast about voting rights measures and the boycotts and counter boycotts and broader cultural argument that they have kicked off. We talked last week

about new restrictive voting measures that passed in Georgia that are under consideration as well in Texas. This storyline has now ballooned into something else. It's a story about corporations weighing in on politics and a lot of Republicans getting very angry that they are doing so. Domenico, I'm really dwelling on the fact that you have a situation where Republicans are blasting Coca-Cola and baseball, which is like a real cultural plot twist, but we will talk about that in a moment. Sure. Emil, let's start with the center of things, though. Remind us what is in, and just as importantly, what is not in this new Georgia law. Yeah, it puts a lot of new restrictions on vote by mail. It adds an ID requirement to vote absentee. It also greatly reduces the number of those absentee ballot drop boxes in state election board. They could actually go in and take over local elections departments.

And this bill also changes the way provisional ballots are handled, and it is now the subject of four lawsuits. And one important thing to note about this bill, you mentioned what's not in it, what's not in the new law, and that is it keeps in place no-excuse absentee voting. It also keeps in place weekend voting, which during early voting period, which were two things that were originally taken out of this law. Yeah. And Ashley, no new law has been signed yet in Texas, but similar changes are being debated by lawmakers. What are the broad characteristics of the bill at question in Texas? Well, similar in that these bills are aimed at addressing voter fraud, which there's no evidence that there's any widespread problem with,

you know, voter fraud in Texas. And the bills that are being considered do things like not allow local election officials to just send people applications without them asking for them first, which, you know, only a couple of major counties did have ever done that. So in terms of effect, this isn't very sweeping, but the bills do do things like expand what poll watchers can observe. And then they also create like new rules for people who assist voters with disabilities. And more importantly, they create a slew of new criminal penalties for related to voting. So that

that's something that voting rights advocates are watching closely. But you know, it is a little different in that Texas is starting from a place of just having way stricter voting laws already. Right. And one point that Georgia Republicans have made is even though these changes were put in place, Georgia still has a lot more early voting than a lot of states. But Domenico, this really got charged up to the next level when Major League Baseball decided to move the All-Star game out of Atlanta, which was shocking and a few reasons to me, mostly because Major League Baseball is a sport that tries very hard to not step in the middle of political controversies. Yeah, it tries to be America's pastime, right? And tries not to do a lot of that. But, you know, Major League Baseball moved the All-Star game as a political statement to Colorado. And Colorado is a place with much more flexible voting laws in place. It has one of the highest participation rates in the country, because of an almost all vote by mail, lots of drop off locations, you know, and just far more

accessible, even though Republicans have tried to muddy the water and say that it's very similar to Georgia's laws, which is not exactly true. I mean, how has this been playing out in Georgia? Because you've got baseball, you've got, you know, companies like Delta and Coke weighing in and on one hand being criticized for waiting until after the bill is signed into law. And on the other hand, being criticized for saying something at all, like, like, how is this affecting the actual politics in the state? Well, you mentioned that they didn't make their strongest statements until after the bill had been signed into law.

And then you saw Major League Baseball pull the All-Star game out of Atlanta, and that drew immediate condemnation from top Republicans like Governor Brian Kemp. Kemp accused Major League Baseball of caving into the fears of people like President Biden and Stacey Abrams, powerful Democrat here in Georgia, and not actually reading the law. People would disagree with that and say that there are plenty of things that are wrong with this bill. But Brian Kemp continued to defend this law and said that companies cannot give in to this what he called cancel culture. And so there's been a lot of pushback to the pushback. Pressure has been put on these companies from the other side, too,

to speak out more in support of federal regulations that would protect voting rights across the country. So, Ashley, similar measure under consideration in Texas. What have Texas-based companies, and there's a lot of high-profile companies based in Texas, what have they been doing and saying? Well, two big corporations here in Texas, American Airlines and Dell Technologies, took a position soon after corporations started talking about Georgia's bill. Very sort of broad comments on, you know, the importance of voting and their basic concerns about bills going before the Texas legislature, specifically House Bill 6, you know, making it harder for people to vote. And, you know, it was, you know, a short little, I mean, I think Michael Dell just put up like a short little tweet, just raising concerns about these bills. But,

you know, it was enough for state officials here in Texas to start getting upset about. Domenico, what do you make of this whole, even more hypercharged conversation? I mean, where you have Republicans yelling at corporations saying don't get involved in politics, boycotts and counter boycotts. Like what jumped out to you? And do you think this is all sustainable? Well, this is an interesting moment, especially for the Republican Party, because there's been such an emphasis in the Trump era, which I think we're still in because so many Trump supporters are really the base of the Republican Party now, that we're seeing this tension between cultural conservatism and the more traditional, you know, pro-business, pro-corporation

conservatism. And, you know, there used to be a time when big corporations and the Republican Party were sort of synonymous, but these corporations are seeing that, you know, they also have their customers to look at. And if they're going to be boycotted because of culturally conservative state laws, then they're being responsive to what they see as the market. And that's really roiling not just their bottom lines, but the bottom line of politics in this country. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. essential performances. All of that in around 20 minutes every weekday. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. And we're back. And Emil and Ashley, I want to ask both of you what groups you have seen being the most active in specifically calling for this pressure in organizing these boycotts and these

pressure campaigns on companies. Emil, let's start with you in Georgia. Really, the person who's been leading the effort has been Bishop Reginald Jackson, who's with the AME Church here in Georgia. He has called for companies like Coca-Cola and Delta and the Home Depot, some of the prominent Georgia-based companies, to take a stronger stand against restrictions on voting, not only at the state level, but also at the federal level as well. It's interesting to note that after the bill was passed, you had Coca-Cola saying it was

disappointed in the bill. You had Delta Airlines saying it was unacceptable. And there's been discussions about having a boycott against these companies, saying that they didn't take action soon enough and that they needed to do more. And Ashley, what about in Texas? So not surprisingly, voting rights groups here, specifically groups who represent communities of color in Texas, have been asking corporations to make statements and commit to withholding contributions from politicians who support what they see as voter suppression. But, you know, interestingly, this week there was a group based in Georgia, Black Voters Matter, who held a press conference with a bunch of groups here to announce that this was an initiative,

that they were going to start asking corporations to do this. They're based in Atlanta, I believe, and they said, you know, they're kind of widening the scope of the work they do. And so Texas kind of neatly fit into the work they do. And Ashley, you mentioned Black Voters Matter expanding into Texas. And that's kind of the model that Stacey Abrams used with her group Fair Fight. She has expanded and from the 2020 election, expanded her group outreach into, you know, racial minority population, and, you know, slightly changing politics, or in George's case, like, rapidly changing politics, and seeing that as a space to do work like this, because, you know, you get, you get your bang for your buck here because there's just so many restrictive voting laws, but also just so many potential voters and potential, you know, political change. I think that's a great point because the demographic growth in the Sun Belt has been a real threat to Republican politics. And they've said so and made that case, in fact, even in court. Yeah. And I mean, that's that's something we saw that affect the presidential map this year. And

if these these trends continue, it will definitely rewrite the presidential map in the next few cycles. Domenico, you have spent some time looking at the history of corporate boycotts. Broadly speaking, do they work? Do they get laws revoked? Do they change the politics of states? Well, there've been many that have actually worked through the years. You know, you don't have to look too far back for some of the most recent ones, you know, really a lot of this during the Trump era. But in 2016, 2017, we saw three of these against the NFL, the Professional Football League, the NRA, the National Rifle Association, and most importantly, in North Carolina, when they passed limitations on LGBTQ

rights that included restrictions on what bathrooms people could use. And that really backfired on the state of North Carolina, because you had the NCAA, multiple states that didn't allow their employees and officials to travel to those states to do business. The NCAA withheld – the National Collegiate Athletic Association withheld playing games in their state where you have – obviously basketball is pretty big with some pretty powerful schools there. And that did shift and change the conversation, not only the conversation, but the law. The bill was repealed in 2017 after having been passed. So using that model, and frankly, some other models through history, this is what a lot of people who look at these boycotts and realize that money talks that they're looking at. All right. Thanks so much, Ashley Lopez of KUT and Emil Moffitt of WABE. We appreciate your reporting and following these twists and turns as they play out. Thanks

for joining us on the podcast. Thank you. Enjoyed it. All right. We will be back in your feeds tomorrow. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.