The NPR Politics Podcast - Republicans Move To Curb Voting After Historic 2020 Turnout

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

Republican state lawmakers across the country, including in Iowa and Arizona, have introduced measures designed to make it harder to vote. Meanwhile, Virginia has followed other blue states in passing reforms to expand ballot access This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, KJZZ reporter Ben Giles, IPR Reporter Katarina Sostaric, and VPM reporter Ben Paviour.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 Sarah from Richmond, Virginia. I just got my first COVID shot. Congratulations for joining the herd of immunity, or at least starting the process. This podcast was recorded at 2.12 p.m. on Tuesday, March 16th. Things may change by the time you hear this, but as a licensed veterinary technician, I'm going to feel a little safer taking care of my furry patients. Now on to the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. So the 2020 election set a record for voter participation, thanks in part because of more flexible voting options brought in because of

the pandemic. More vote by mail, for instance. Now, a number of Republican-dominated states are trying to pass more restrictive rules around voting. In essence, in response to that, we are joined by Ben Giles from KJZZ in Arizona. Hello. Hello. And Katarina Sostarek from Iowa Public Radio. Hello. Hi. So, Domenico, I want to do the big picture here. And we should acknowledge that laws that make it harder to cast a ballot raise a lot of civil rights concerns. But this push now is happening under a banner of election security, of preventing fraud, which we should be clear is not a large scale issue in the United States, but has certainly been a topic of much discussion over the past nine months. Yeah, there's absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud

in this past 2020 general election that former President Trump lost and President Biden won. But that has not stopped Trump from continuing to spread this misinformation. That has had state parties across the country and state legislators across the country introducing all sorts of bills. We've seen, you know, some 250 pieces of legislation that have either been introduced or started in the process across 43 states, you know, that are really seeking to restrict access, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. That's more than seven times the number of restrictive bills that were put out compared to this time last year. It's not a coincidence that this all comes on the heels of Trump's misrepresentations after the election. So, Katarina and Ben, you are reporting on these issues in your states. Tell us what you are seeing in Iowa and Arizona. In Iowa, these changes have

already been signed into law by Republican Governor Kim Reynolds. Some of the biggest things that will affect most voters is that early in-person voting will start 20 days before Election Day instead of 29. And that's also the time that absentee ballots will start getting mailed out. And that's down from 40 days before Election Day just four years ago. And then the deadlines for requesting a mail-in ballot have been moved up and for returning a mail-in ballot. So they're really shrinking the time frame for voting by mail in Iowa and also cutting an hour off of Election Day voting as well. This just sounds like less voting. Definitely less time for voting as well. This just sounds like less voting. Definitely less time for voting. Yep.

We're seeing similar changes in Arizona proposals to alter what's called the permanent early voting list, commonly known as PEVL. Commonly known as? It would actually change to EVL because there's one bill that would get rid of the permanent part of it. If you were an inactive voter, that is, if you don't use your early ballot, the ballot you get by mail for two consecutive election cycles, you could be removed from the list. There's also changes being proposed to when that early ballot gets mailed to you.

It would get mailed to you five days closer to the election, so you have less time to sit at home and consider how to vote. You'd also have less time toiled it back on a Friday and it got there in time, they'd still have to throw it out. There's also an effort to add a voter ID requirement to those mail ballots. You would have to provide some form of identification, like a driver's license, or even something as specific as a utility bill if you don't have a driver's license to return with that mail ballot. So just lots of changes to a really popular system that most voters in Arizona use that would just make it harder to use. Is the idea here, is there a lot of talk about restoring faith in the voting system? And was faith actually lost, I guess? In Iowa, there have been state lawmakers who have alluded to that, that voters have lost

faith in the election system. One of the lead lawmakers on these new voting restrictions said that not having faith in elections is the ultimate form of voter disenfranchisement. You know, Arizona is unique in the sense that voting by mail or getting your ballot by mail wasn't new in 2020. It's a system that's existed for years and years and is becoming increasingly popular. So there's this disconnect where every election, more voters opt to use this system to get their ballot by mail, maybe return it by mail, maybe drop it off in person, but nonetheless, get it early and not have to stand in line at the polls. And yet after 2020, Republicans are pushing all these changes that would make it a little bit more of a convoluted system to use. And that's been the pushback here is, you know, why do that to a system that is so popular, has been used for so long? And, you know, our governor

here, Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey actually defended the system in front of Trump as one that makes it easy to vote and hard to cheat. So, Domenico, I want to come back to you. You know, this this does seem to be coming down to Republicans want these restrictive new laws, more restrictive laws or more safe, secure laws, as they would phrase it. And Democrats saying, no, this is voter suppression. Would Republicans benefit from this? I mean, are they pushing for something that would help them electorally? Or is this a misunderstanding of who vote by mail and voter access benefits? Is more voting better for Democrats than less voting? Well, it's kind of a mixed bag. You know, I think that the thinking generally has been in the last few elections that high turnout helps Democrats. And the reason for that is because the Democratic Party is far more diverse currently than the Republican Party. Now,

Republicans in the past have certainly benefited more actually from absentee mail-in voting than Democrats have. So this push that President Trump was making to sort of reduce the amount of mail-in voting had a lot of Republican strategists before the election shaking their heads and actually wondering if President Trump was hurting their cause. But by the way, a lot of Republican state party officials in court have admitted that the reason for doing what they're doing is because it benefits them in the election, or they at least perceive that it would benefit them more in the election to restrict some of these voting rights. All right. Well, I think we have to leave it there for now. Katarina Sostarek from Iowa Public Radio and Ben Giles from KJZZ in Arizona. Thank you both for being with us.

Thank you. Thanks for having us. And we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about one of the states that has expanded access to the ballot. On NPR's Consider This podcast, we don't just help you keep up with the news, we help you make sense of what's happening. Like what the case about George Floyd's killing means for the ongoing fight for racial justice, or how to best navigate a pandemic that's changed life for all of us. All of that in 15 minutes every weekday. Listen now to Consider This from NPR.

And we're back and Ben Pavier with Virginia Public Media is here with us. Hello. Hello. We have our second Ben of this podcast. So we in the first half were talking about restrictions on voting. But this year, Democrats in Virginia passed a bill that they say will make it easier to vote there. And I think Virginia is actually part of a broader trend of Democratic leaning states that are going in that direction. So tell us about this bill. What what was the impetus for it? Well, there's actually been a number of bills. And I think it kind of dates back to 2019 when the Democrats flipped Virginia's legislature and gained power really for the first time in a couple of decades.

And really one of the first things they did was set about changing the voting rules. So things like early absentee voting for 45 days, getting rid of excuses for absentee voting, a lot of the kind of those sorts of things they did last year. And then this year when the pandemic hit, you saw Virginia, a lot of the kind of those sorts of things they did last year. And then this year, when the pandemic hit, you saw Virginia Institute, a lot of the changes that other states made, things like ballot drop boxes, waiving the witness requirement on absentee ballots, those kinds of things. And then this year, the legislature moved to make those permanent. And then on top of that, there's the Virginia Voting Rights Act, which was a big bill Democrats

pushed this year, which actually was inspired by the Federal Voting Rights Act in a lawsuit in, I believe, 2013 that went in front of the Supreme Court that critics say gutted parts of that act. And this bill was intended to kind of address what happened in the Supreme Court and make up for it at the state level. Yeah. I mean, I remember when I first moved to Virginia being shocked at how much harder it was to vote there than in other states where I've lived. And then over the last couple of years, it's gotten easier. In particular, this voting rights bill, what's included in it? Well, so to understand that, I think you have to go back to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, where part of that act had a process known as preclearance, where states with a history of voter discrimination had to have changes to voting, things like polling locations or polling hours or those sorts of things, approved by the federal government, by the Department of Justice before they made those changes. And in 2013, the Supreme Court effectively removed that process. And so, you know, states in the South moved pretty quickly to pass new voting rules that were more restrictive. And they also had free reign to like close polling places and that kind of thing.

The new process in Virginia kind of replicates to some degree anyway, what was in place at the federal level before. So if you're in a county and you want to remove a polling location, for instance, you would have to either advertise that publicly for 60 days and get public feedback or get permission from Virginia's attorney general to make the change. And then citizens, if they believe there's a discriminatory element of the change, could actually sue. So there's a number of pieces to the bill, and those are some of the top levels. And this is really why it's so important, why down ballot races that people don't necessarily pay attention to in off years or state legislative races, why those things can matter. Because in states where Democrats control the legislature and or the governorship, you're seeing this effort to

expand voting rights. In states where you see Republicans, where they control legislatures or governorships, you're seeing efforts in many places to restrict that voting access. So that's where a lot of this activism really makes a lot of difference. And Ben, I kind of wonder, you know, in this state, given that Virginia had been such a heavily Republican-leaning state for so long and has really in the last decade or so become pretty blue, what kind of pushback are we seeing to the effort that Democrats are making? Certainly lots of pushback. I think there's, you know, Republicans are frustrated with these changes and they're, you know, they're making a lot of the claims we heard earlier from Arizona and Iowa, you know, but I mean, they don't have the votes to change anything. So it's been mostly kind of a rhetorical device rather than a real power to change the outcome. Domenico, at the federal level, this has been a priority for Democrats for a while, in particular,

restoring some of the Voting Rights Act that was undermined by the Supreme Court. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a couple of priority bills related to increasing voting or voting access. Is any of it going anywhere at the federal level? They passed a bill earlier this month that passed narrowly 220 to 210 in the House. And, you know, this has come on the heels of, remember, voting rights legislation that's passed overwhelmingly through the decades, 1965, 1993, 2002, for example, and had overwhelming bipartisan support until the Supreme Court really vacated key rights of the Voting Rights Act. And Republicans have since mostly abandoned wanting

to be part of any new legislative efforts. And this bill, you know, is a very muscular bill. It would help protect marginalized groups' ability to vote, their access to vote, and by the way, limits gerrymandering that practice of drawing districts in ways that are politically advantageous to one party or another. I don't think Republicans are on board with this legislation and probably not going to go very far in the Senate. Well, Ben Pavier from VPM in Richmond, Virginia, thank you so much for your great reporting. Thanks for being with us. Thank you all. All right, let's leave it there for now. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.