[inaudible conversations] good evening, everybody. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. So delighted to have such a great crowd on a middle of august summer evening. My names lissa muscatine, im one of the coowners of politics prose. On behalf of our staff and on behalf of my husband and coowner, brad graham, we really are excited to have all of you here. I do want to just mention a couple of things for those of you who dont know. We are also now running book operations in three of the six busboys and poets in washington with plans to be in all of them before not too long. So if you happen to be at 14th and v or in tata coma and or in tacoma, youll find our books there. We also are going to be the bookseller for the National Book test value over the saturday of labor day weekend. There are going to be more than a hundred authors there with its a tremendous literary event here in d. C. , so we hope well see some of you there as well. Before we get started, a couple of housekeeping things. I think those of you who have been to an event here know the way this works is that our guests will speak for a bit, and then theyll be happy to take questions. If you can make your way to a ohioan to ask ask a question, thats helpful because we videotape this, and cspan is also here tonight taping this event. And for that reason especially, we do ask that you be mindful to keep your questions short and to the point and be mindful that as much as we would love to hear your ongoing opinions about all sorts of matters, in the interest of time and focus [laughter] if you could stay on subject and keep it brief, we would be very, very grateful for that. And then at the end, ari will be happy to sign his book. Well do the signing lineup here as we usually do. There are plenty of copies up front if you havent had a chance to purchase it yet. We do have copies at the front register. In any case, it is a pleasure for all of us here to host ari berman for a discussion of his new book called give us the ballot the modern struggle for Voting Rights in america. Aris a journalist whos spent considerable time thinking and writing about the forces that shape politics. Hes a correspondent for the nation, hes contributed to other leading publications and is a frequent presence on npr and msnbc. Hes also a fellow at the nation institute, and give us the ballot is his second book, and what a great contribution it is to explaining the great promise of american democracy but also its ongoing, relentless challenges. With the election of barack obama in 2008 and his reelection in 2012 and the 50th anniversary of selma and bloody sunday earlier this year, americans can be justifiably proud of the progress weve made since the days of literacy tests and poll taxes and the overt and aggressive suppression of Voting Rights in many parts of our country. But as ari writes so persuasively in our country, we should not take progress for Voting Rights on votes rights for granted. After this book we will all be even more wound up about other things as well. His thorough and clear writing about events leading up to and following passage of the Voting Rights act and even immediately since the election of barack obama provides, frankly, a fairly distressing picture of how far we have or havent come in achieving the full enfranchisement of our citizens. And also what it means for democracy when many gains have effectively been reversed. Now with a president ial election looming in 2016 in which Voter Participation, particularly of historically marginalized groups, could be a key to who gets elected, the protection and enforcement of Voting Rights should be front and center in all of our minds. So we are delighted to serve as a forum for a discussion that is so important here tonight and will be for many weeks and months to come. And we are also extremely happy and lucky that joining ari in conversation is Hedrick Hertzberg whose work has graced the pages of the new yorker where hes a Senior Editor and staff writer and im sure you all know a mainstay of the talk of the town section. Hes also editorial director of the nation institute. Rick was a speech writer for president jimmy carter, editor and correspondent at the new republic and is the author himself of several books, and i think its fair to say without exaggeration that hes one of the most respected political and social critics around. We are so excited to have you both here. This is going to be a fascinating discussion. Thank you all for coming, and thank you both for coming. [applause] thank you so much, lissa. Can everyone hear okay . Im so glad to be back, so glad to be back at politics prose. I heene, this is my number i mean, this is my number one favorite bookstore as a customer and as an author. This is a place that really knows how to treat a reader and how to treat a writer too. And im so glad to be here with ari. Hes one of the best political reporters and analysts of his generation. Ive been following his work for a long time, and im deeply impressed with the book were here to talk about tonight. Give us the ballot is about as timely a book as is possible to be, coming out on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights act in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in the shelby case and at the beginning of a president ial campaign in which the question is going to be less who are people going to vote for, perhaps, than which people are going to be allowed to vote. So, ari, i want to start, i want to start basically by asking how you came to write this book. I mean, what made you start reporting on Voting Rights, and what made you think it could be a book, and what did you what are the big things you learned in the course of researching it . Well, thanks so much for that introduction, rick, and i just want to thank politics prose for having me. I think everyone recognizes this is one of the worlds greatest bookstores, so to be here is really special and to have cspan here is great. This is my second book event, so im really grateful for everyone to come here, and im really grateful to have rick doing the moderating. Its a little surreal, because i grew up wanting to be rick hertzberg. [laughter] i read all 720 pages of his book politics, some of them many times. And so to have rick praise my work really, really means a lot, so really looking forward to this conversation. As to how i came to start reporting on Voting Rights, i had been covering american politics for the nation for some time, and i noticed in early 2011 after so many state legislatures had flipped from democratic to republican that a bunch of states all across the country were introducing new voting restrictions, things like shutting down Voter Registration drives, cutting early voting, purging the voting rolls, disenfranchising exfelons, requiring a governmentissued id which you never needed before to cast a ballot. And this was happening all across the country, particularly in key swing states like florida and ohio and wisconsin. And no one was covering it. And there was just brief mentions in the New York Times or the washington post. And so i pitched a story to Rolling Stone where i had written once before and who had covered Voting Rights issues in the past, and i said i think this is a National Trend thats emerging, a very disturbing National Trend following the election of the first black president. We should cover this. Without really knowing much about the subject matter, which i dont recommend young journalists to do. Always want to know a lot about your subject matter before you pitch a story. But i became, i kind of took a crash course on Voting Rights, and i wrote this story in august 2011 with the quite prosocktive title called the gop war on voting. And it ended up being a really big story, a bigger story than i anticipated. A lot of people had the same reaction which i had which was outrage. How in the year 2011 is this still going on, are there still efforts to make it harder to vote . And then i realized after doing the article i was one of the few people reporting on Voting Rights, and what happened is more states started passing new restrictions, the laws were challenged in court, there were major mobilizations against these efforts, and it became a major issue in the 2012 election. So i covered the 2012 election through the lens of who could and couldnt participate and what influence these new restrictions would have. And then after the election what we saw is the Supreme Court decided to hear a challenge to the Voting Rights act, and i was fascinated by this case, Shelby County v. Holder. And why the Voting Rights act was being challenged and what it did. And i started asking my friends and colleagues who i relied on as Voting Rights experts what should i read to better understand the Voting Rights act . And to my surprise, there really wasnt a whole lot out will about what the law did. There was a lot about what led to the passage of the Voting Rights act, the dramatic events of selma, alabama, but there wasnt a lot about the 50 years that happened after that. And i knew that at a time when Voting Rights were under attack, i knew the Supreme Court was likely to gut the Voting Rights act, and i knew we were headed towards the 50th anniversary, and i thought all of this could make for a really timely book. And because i had reported on this, maybe i had the expertise to do it. So im glad that i listened to myself [laughter] and i think, you know, it ended up, i think, being a really important story that needed to be told. Ari, tell us a little about just what the vra is and what it does and did, what its various sections did. And read. Yeah. So the Voting Rights act is widely regarded as the most important piece of civil rights legislation, but also just one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed by the congress, because it really did work. And it worked to end decades of disenfranchisement in the south. So what it did is overnight it abolished literacy tests in the places like selma where it had disenfranchised africanamerican voters for decades. It authorized the attorney general to abolish the poll tax which was subsequently abolished. Then days after the act was passed, federal examiners were sent to the south to register voters in laces like selma which was places like selma which was a revolutionary upside taking. Only 3 of africanamericans were registered, in mississippi, only 6 president of africanamericans 6 of africanamericans were registered. What you saw within days hundreds were registered, then thousands, and eventually millions. So the registering of voters was a key part of it. Then federal officials stayed in the south to make sure that elections werent stolen this places like selma, to make sure states complied with the law. And over a longer period of time what happened was those states with the worst histories of voting registration, alabama, mississippi, georgia and South Carolina, they had to approve their voting changings with the federal government to make sure that states complied, that we didnt have to pass the Voting Rights act of 1966 and 1967 and 1968. So that enforcement mechanism, the fact that and this is what the Supreme Court rendered inoperative in 2013, but the fact that the law could actually block discriminatory changes before they went into effect made the Voting Rights act so powerful over a period of five decades. And how many times did laws get blocked by that, by the government . Just this one provision alone, section five, blocked over 3,000 discriminatory voting changes. And is what i show in the book is if people will take one thing away from the book, its that the fight over Voting Rights didnt end in 1965, that a whole new chapter of the struggle began, and states came up with more sophisticated ways to try to thwart the act, and they can kept trying to implement voting changes that were discriminatory in nature, and the federal government kept stopping them. And this was a battle that continued really for five decades until 2013 when the Supreme Court removed that critically important protection. Now, every time the vra was renewed, it was under a republican are president. Yeah. Nixon in 1970, ford in 75, reagan in 82 and george w. Bush this 2006. And every time it was renewed, there was a big ceremony at the white house where the president gave a speech about how wonderful the vra was. Were those president s all lying . [laughter] well, it is fascinating, because i think many people think of the vra as a democratic and liberal piece of legislation because it was passed by Lyndon Johnson in the heyday of the great society, but republicans have been instrumental not just in the passage of the vra, but the reauthorization of the vra as well. Theres always been a strong bipartisan consensus this congress, and whats interesting is the Voting Rights act has been reauthorized four times even though many of those republican president s really did not want to reauthorize the act and tried very hard to subvert it. First, Richard Nixon with his southern strategy did not want to sign a reauthorization of the vra. He was force forced to do so because of republican moderates in his own party pushing back against him. Ronald reagan was not a fan of the Voting Rights act. He opposed it when it was passed, and his administration which im sure well talk about it in a little bit launched a revolution against civil rights. Nonetheless, he was forced to sign reauthorization of the vra because people bike like bob dole stood up to him. Even george bush had to sign this reauthorization because you had republican members of Congress Like Jim Sensenbrenner of wisconsin who stood up and said this is a priority for us. So even though there have been republican efforts all throughout the years to try to gut this act, the congress historically has protected Voting Rights. And thats something that, and well talk about this later, has really shifted today. How exactly did the republican administrations and the officials they appointed try to subvert the act . What could they do . How did they try to do that . So maybe pick one administration. Yeah. Ill give you, ill give you one example early on that kind of shows what happened. So after the vra was passed, the court upheld its constitutionality very quickly. So just to give a little bit of background, pretty much weeks after the act was passed states like South Carolina were already figuring out how they were going to challenge the constitutionality of it, and they appealed directly to the Supreme Court which is very rare. It almost never happens. There was a twoday oral arguments, one of longer oral arguments in Supreme Court history. And, essentially, South Carolina and the other Southern States said that the federal government didnt have the power to regulate state voting changes and state voting procedures. And the Supreme Court said very clearly in an 81 decision South Carolina v [inaudible] that, yes, in fact, thats why the Voting Rights act was passed, reicely because the federal government precisely because the federal government needed to regulate to make sure africanamericans and other minority groups werent disenfranchised. So after it was upheld, states started trying to dilute the power of the emerging minority vote. And mississippi held a special legislative session this 1966 in 1966, and they passed 13 election changes to try to weaken the power of the africanamerican vote. They gerrymandered political districts to prevent africanamericans from getting elected. They consolidated smaller black counties with larger white counties so that the white counties would remain in control. They made every election in multimember districts so that if you had a situation where a district was 60 white and 40 africanamerican and elected ten candidates, all ten candidates would be white. And this was a major restructuring of its election system. And and this, these laws were challenged, and they were challenged before the Supreme Court. And, basically, the argument was made by the Justice Department and by civil Rights Groups that the Voting Rights act was supposed to regulate all of these new voting changes that were coming up. And mississippi said that the act only applied to registration, it didnt apply to these broader notions of representation. The Supreme Court in a very influential 969 case, allen v. State board of elections, said, yes, all of these voting changes have to be proved. Any election change has to be approved, because the Voting Rights act is going to deal with not just the right to vote, but the power of the vote. To guarantee that once you register, your vote actually means something. That established section five of the act, the preclearance provision. What happened was that was very controversial, and almost immediately southern conservatives wanted to get rid of the requirement that states had to approve their voting changes with the federal government. So when Richard Nixon campaigned in 1968, he promised Strom Thurmond and all those southern conservatives who were sporting him that he was supporting him that he was going to gut section five of the vra. So once he became president , thats exactly what he tried to do. He failed in that effort. As i mentioned, the congress wouldnt allow the Nixon Administration to do that. But what we see is even after nixon loses that battle, there is still a fivedecade effort to try to weaken particularly that part of the law that then succeeds in the Supreme Court in 2013. And what happens, what happened the other three times under ford, under ford, under reagan and under bush . Did it, did it get worse . And did the rationales change . Guest well, the interesting thing about the fact that the vra was reauthorized four times was that even though there were efforts to weaken it, every time it was reauthorized, the law emerged stronger. So in 1970 the vra was not only reauthorized for another five years, but the voting age was lowered to 18 for all federal elections, and literacy tests were abolished nationwide. The Voting Rights act clearly became the vehicle to expand be Voting Rights for all americans, not just one segment of the population. In 1975 the votes rights act was expanded to protect hispanics and other language minority groups. So it mandated bilingual ballots. It meant that states that had discrimination against groups other than africanamericans texas had a long history of discrimination against latino voters they now had to submit their changes for federal approval. That made the act more broad and powerful. In 1982 there was a big effort to try to weaken the Voting Rights act. I write a lot about this in the book, and people like john roberts who was a young lawyer in the reagan Justice Department at the time play major roles in this story, because the Supreme Court had just ruled in a case from alabama that you had to limit cases of discrimination to intentional discrimination which is very difficult to prove. By the 1980s, most states didnt say i want to discriminate against black or latino voters. Theyd gotten smarter in terms of how they were trying to discrimination, so that was a big blow, this finding of intentional discrimination. And the Reagan Administration, which had this broader counterrevolution against civil rights, they tried to preserve that decision, and john roberts as a young lawyer wrote dozens and dozens and dozens of memos trying to limit the effectiveness of the Voting Rights act. The congress overruled john roberts and said you dont have to just prove intentional discrimination, you just have to show the effect, and that made the Voting Rights act a lot more powerful going forward. The law was renewed for another 25 years in 1982. What happened after 82 was that you saw a lot of new people get elected, people like john lewis, the congress manuel known there georgia. He was elected in well known in georgia. And then in 2006 there was again efforts to try to gut section five of the act, to not renew the vra. But, again, it was reauthorized for another 25 years by a vote of 39033 in the house and 980 in the congress. And so this is something that despite all the opposition to the Voting Rights act, its always emerged stronger every time its been renewed. Referred to the intellectual movement against the vra, and be even despite these enormous majorities in congress, something was eating away below the surface here, wasnt it . Yeah. Yeah. So youre absolutely right. For nixon, he was trying to court white southern conservatives, so he opposed the vra out of political expediency. He actually was for it when it passed in 65. I think for ronald reagan, this was the real turning point. He opposed the civil rights act, the Voting Rights exact the Fair Housing Act. So he was on the wrong side of history in all three major pieces of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. And what you see during the Reagan Administration is a whole new generation of conservative legal scholars come of age. People like john roberts are schooled in the kind of conservative, the emerging conservative legal movement. And a key part of this emerging conservative legal movement, a key part of the emerging Federalist Society is opposition to the civil rights laws of the 1960s, particularly the vra. So even though the Reagan Administration loses its battle with the congress over the Voting Rights act, reagan trains a whole generation of legal scholars who are skeptical of the vra, he appoints a generation of judges who are skeptical of the vra, people like Antonin Scalia, William Rehnquist get put on the bench. What were seeing today if you look at the current court, all five justices either worked for reagan or were appointed by reagan, so you can draw a direct line from the counterrevolution of the 980s to the Supreme Court and the congress that we see today. You can also draw a direct line between the Supreme Court we have today and the 2000 election. Yeah. Unfortunately. Now, this was an election that those 537 votes in florida, nothing has ever been more overdetermined than that. I mean, you can the jews for buchanan, hanging chads, all of that stuff. But one factor that may have been bigger than all of those but was not much discussed but that i learned a lot about in your book was, was Voter Suppression, essentially. What happened . So i think, you know, many people who ive talked to who have already read the book found this to be the most infuriating part of all of it, and it was the excerpt that i wrote in the nation was about florida 2000 because i think this remains so relevant today. Basically, what florida did in the runup to the 2000 election was they had ahassive voter massive voter purge. Exfelons couldnt vote, and so they, they made up this purge list that had tens of thousands of people they claimed were felons and were on the voting rolls, and they said to county supervisors they had to purge the rolls. Now, it turned out this purge list was littered with errors because there was only a 70 match required between the felon database and the Voter Registration database. Your name could be rick hertzberger, and you ended up on this list. There was so much inaccurate data, and not an that, it was discriminatory in nature. Africanamericans were 44 of the purge list. So when people showed up on election day and were told that they were wrongly labeled as felons and couldnt vote, they were disproportionately africanamerican voters. And what was determined after the election is that 12,000 people were wrongly labeled as felons. That was 22 times bushs margin of victory. So i think this set a very bad precedent. The Civil Rights Commission looked into this, and they found that this voter purge likely violated the Voting Rights act. And this is so significant because i think many republicans learned the unfortunate lesson that small manipulations in the electoral process could make a big difference in close elections. And so in this this led to a new wave of Voter Suppression. It also led to george w. Bush becoming president and his administration not only worked to support the vra, not only hyped the threat of voter fraud, but named two justices to the Supreme Court, john roberts and sam alieu toe, who would be instrumental in the gutting of the vra. The last thing ill say about florida is that if you look at what happened after the 2000 length with the recount election with the recount, a man by the name of ted cruz who you may be familiar with was leading bushs recount team. And he was a 29yearold policy director for the bush campaign, and one of ted cruzs first calls was to another guy you may have heard of, john roberts, who he clerked with as a clerk for Justice Rehnquist who was the most vociferous opponent of civil rights when he was appointed to the court. And roberts and cruz helped craft the Supreme Court arguments that the Bush Administration would use to prevent all those votes from being counted. And so florida is so important not just because of the precedent itself, but because john roberts, ted cruz, jeb bush, all of these people are still with us today. These are now the leaders of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. Now, who is abigail [inaudible] why was, why was she a surprising kind of person to find playing the role she did, and what was that role . Sure, so abigail was a former liberal who became a conservative intellectual and really led the intellectual case against the vra. She was kind of the neoconservative who, of the Voting Rights counterrevolution. So there were all these old School States rights conservatives from places like mississippi who never were that crazy about civil rights. But then there were people who supported civil rights but believed that the Civil Rights Movement had lost its way after 1960s when things like affirmative action and busing and quotas and drawing what became known as majority minority districts, they thought that the Voting Rights act was meant to register voters. It wasnt meant to insure that africanamericans or latinos or other minorities should be elected. Now, to many civil rights advocates, thats exactly what the Voting Rights act was supposed to do. It was supposed to lead to the election of president obama and all of these and john lewis and andrew young and all the people that have served throughout the last 50 years with distinction. But abigails arguments were very influential in new critics emerging. And her critique of the vra which became known as color blindness, you shouldnt classify based on race which sounds very simple and has an intellectual lure to it, this influenced the Reagan Administration and john roberts. So when Antonin Scalia makes the argument in the 2013 Voting Rights case that it has led to, quote, a perpetuation of voter entitlement, a very shocking statement, he is saying in the most blunt ways a version of alabama bail. s critique abigails critique of the vra. That is a surprise, that the neoconservative, that this kind of, the neoconservative and the old reactionaries converging, and there are more than one such person doing damage to the vra. How lets talk a little bit about Shelby County v. Holder. What was the logic of that . What was the logic the court used for that decision, and exactly what did they invalidate . So what the Supreme Court did in this 2013 decision is they struck down the formula that determined which states had to approve their voting changes with the federal government. So, essentially, they said that, yes, you could still theoretically approve your voting changes with the federal government, but no states were covered under it. So they took this preclearance requirement, the most important part of the vra, and turned it into a zombie. What john roberts argued in his decision, in his 54 majority decision which was really culmination of his threedecade struggle against the Voting Rights act, was that history had changed since 1965, that we had a black president , that we had a black mayor in places like selma, alabama, but the Voting Rights act continued to treat the country as if it were 1965 even though history itself had changed. Now, what i think john roberts missed, i think he missed a lot of things in that decision. But what i think he most notably missed was that, number one, the progress that we made was because of the Voting Rights act. And the second thing that he missed was that despite all of this progress there has been a fivedecade attempt to subvert the vra and that the barriers to the ballot box were not eliminated this 1965 and, in fact, in the 2012 election as i mentioned earlier, there was an explosion of Voter Suppression efforts. So john roberts said that we needed the Voting Rights act least at the moment that we needed it the most in the past three decades to stop things like voter id laws and cuts to early voting and voter purges. So there was a strange dissonance when i sat in the courtroom, because i had just spent an entire election reporting on Voter Suppression efforts, and then i heard the chief justice of the Supreme Court say everything has changed since 1965. And so i think roberts had one reading of history, the most generous reading of history in terms of its progress, while ignoring all of disturbing history that e emerged in the five decades after the vra. Now, if your book has a hero, i guess it would have to be john lewis. He was there at the beginning, and hes still there. Youve gotten to know him, i guess, in the course of doing the book. Yeah. Tell us a little about him as a person and how you got to know him and what you think about him. One of the coolest parts of the book was getting to interview people like john lewis and getting to sit down with them for long periods of time. Not just john lewis, but civil rights activists from the 1960s, lawyers, politicians, people who have been there, you know, all throughout the struggle. I see bob zoellner is here, talking to people like bob was just a real highlight, and congressman lewis is such an amazing person because so many people went off after Civil Rights Movement to do other things. Stokely carmichael moved to africa, bob moses taught math. But john lewis remained involved in this fight for five decades. And harold ford senior from tennessee. It was an unbelievable representation of people and john lewis then became the conscience of the conference. What interested me so much of his theory was decades after the passage finding this all over again in the Supreme Court and watching the chief justice and five judges got it his lifes work so i wanted to ask how that felt, why he remained involved in what hes doing today. I wanted to try in the book to talk about the counterrevolution which i understand its very into a lot of people and its very distressing today. I also want to talk about not just john lewis but so many people who are the heroes and he really did democratize the country. I dont think people realize we are not a democracy before the Voting Rights act and there are many flaws where a far more Perfect Union because of that law. What is left now . Section five was struck down. Could you repeat what she said about section five b. In the b. In a zombie and was not directly struck down with there being shot . And determines which states are covered under section five, so basically the congress could recover stay connected the two states once again but right now no state had to approve voting changes. This argument is frequently made. One reason it was upheld when of a challenge so many times is the fact it was targeted. John roberts was turning his head and saying theres only applying to certain states. The reason it is constitutional as idaho didnt have the same problem as alabama and she suggested dead would be very naive. What the decision did is take away the most important protection the federal government had and what we see in states that have strict laws blocked by the voter i. D. Law went into effect a month after the decision North Carolina passed a sweeping host of voting restriction. They eliminated same day Voter Registration required strict voter i. D. And eliminated preregistration for 16 and 17 year old passed as a civic lesson to get younger people involved. Even that was repealed in North Carolina had very good election laws previously in essentially one bill curtailed a repeal of almost all of them. These two states alone were striking case studies of the fact Voter Suppression still exists. What we saw which was the first president ial election co. Shelby county was thousands of people were disenfranchised by the laws. The prediction people would be harmed came true and now we enter the 2016 election which is the first president ial election in 50 years. Everyone should be on alert for what can happen in 2016 but that the era as strong as it once was. Get rid of your umbrella in a rainstorm because im not getting wet. That is what bruce reader ginsberg used. We dont need this. The idea did the 15th amendment say little son in about 15 amendment, which is the one that guaranteed the vote supposedly and its unfortunate provision was that stays with me deprived of congressional representation if they suppress voting. Is that something is that that clause of the 15th amendment, did that come up in any of these cases . That may be the exception. What is happening now is people are looking for different ways to solve the problem. If i can talk a little bit perhaps people should start coming out. If you have questions, come on up and stand at the microphone. If i could say a little bit about the pushback and also some possible solutions to this problem. One of the things that lost their challenge in texas and North Carolina under other parts of the dna. That thats still exists. Section two is nationwide and replaced while voting changes. The difference in the reason why its hard to challenges the burden of proof is on the plaintiffs. Nospace in discrimination to show it is discriminatory. Theres also a difficult and if they have to prove under section five not to get too technical you have to show voting change with each minority voters were softened to be invalidated. The court has to look at it so it something i have come to some position that none of us used of us use the challenged of us use the challenged law and we just saw court in texas district and taxes under section two of the Voting Rights act. I do think it is weekend and that is why we see legislation in congress to restore in the senate if they have an active 2015 that would restore the requirements through changes to the federal government. So they attack it at face value instead will look at the more recent Voting Rights obligation and they said with a look at the forms of discrimination and cover those as well. The last thing i will say is that more and more states make it harder to vote, other states make it easier and try to expand voter access. What we see in california and vermont and oregon is at first to expand Voter Participation by doing things like automatic Voter Registration in oregon where if you have a contact return 18, youre automatically registered to vote. If we did that nationwide that would be fit the more Million People being registered. You can register and vote on the same day which is very convenient for people. 15 states have sameday registration. Half the states have early voting. Theres a lot of things you could do to make voting easier. The congress which has historically protected will take any of this out. On the 50th anniversary at the Voting Rights act was the first Republican Debate and i found it to be sad and shameful on that anniversary of the moderator never asked the candidates a question about the Voting Rights act and never bothered to mention it. Youre not going to talk about the Voting Rights law, when we talk about it . Thank you very much. [applause] will take some questions and if youd like to say who you are, [inaudible] we should die because cspan is filming from the police try to keep your questions as brief as possible. Im a member of the Editorial Board of the nation and his paternal pride that we produce ari berman. You mentioned including robert scalia, if that era, who produced the rationale for the counterrevolution. But cant blame it all on sicily. It seems to me you mention the social scientist exliberal. If you look in the background, you may find an attachment to another very disappointing revolution but thats a long time ago. At any rate, do you have a picture of the maloof come in the social origins given the concerns produce these people. Shawn roberts is an ordinary come highly in telogen and ambitious young lawyer. They attach themselves to the cause of civil rights. Why is this attachment to counterrevolution so to speak . Wow, i try to tell the story comprehensively the book that i think they were a product of their environment that they came of age politically at a time when there was a backlash of the civil rights laws of the 1960s. The backlash took a few different forms. I think there was a backlash against the Voting Rights act because republicans viewed as democrats and they wanted to weaken it for that reason. There was an intellectual backlash against the Voting Rights act because they believe the civil rights act, Voting Rights act, Fair Housing Act shouldnt be two remedies like affirmative action that they were wellintentioned but went astray when i started prescribing remedy for representation. I do think that was part of the i also think race is an issue and states rights realize people like William Rehnquist to administer literacy tests to block and hispanic voters when they lived and he was wrongly decided. You can see that in you cant read that and think this guy doesnt have a problem on some level. There is a rebranding of states rights conservatism in the colorblind conservatives on that were respectable. The sociologist who was one of the leading from phone and i asked him, did you feel uncomfortable when they started making their argument. I did feel uncomfortable. I felt there was an element this is a new southern strategy in an element of race to it. To ignore our society with everything going on, ferguson, baltimore, we realize racism still exists. We need to talk honestly about the fact race has been an issue for a lot of people. Im just the leader of the nation, but a twopart question. First of all thank you very much. I havent read the book so maybe this is a basic question. What is the need that this law would need to be reauthorize so many times and it seems like for different periods of time. The second part of that defense it did need to be reauthorize relatively recently to 2013 decision, how did the court justified its decision for recent legislative intent. Two very good questions. Lyndon johnson had to move quickly. The American Public was outraged and we didnt want another to happen months later or years later. Usually legislation gets watered down what works its way through the congress. The va had introduced entirely intact and one of the reason johnson is able to get to the congress so quickly was because some of the most stringent requirement like you had to get your voting changes approved for temporary. The fact they are temporary about them to get passage quick weight that number to the courts were able to save lives and theres a this. Congress has looked at it and they will decide when it ends. If interested what was drafted in a way and the Supreme Court overruled its discretion. Basically what john roberts said was the congress couldnt be trusted anymore. Antonin scalia said most notably the Voting Rights act, if not great. Whos going to vote against that and suggested that has led to a perpetuation of racial entitlement to such an extent that Congress Never not vote to reauthorize it. The strong bipartisan consensus in congress became a reason for the Supreme Court to god it because they thought only they were brave enough to step in and Anthony Kennedy famously said the Marshall Plan was good, too at times changes at the Voting Rights act had rebuilt berlin and cease to exist after that. The court felt they were doing the heavy lifting that congress was unwilling to do. Hi. Im bob sommer and i worked with john lewis and barber and North Carolina and i want to thank you very much for this masterwork. That happens a lot [inaudible] i do have a specific question. Nonviolent direct action is very current right now with the black lives matter movement. Ferguson, charleston, all of that. We focus on pinch points where we can convince someone to do the right thing or compel them to do the right thing. What are the pinch points . Or with the young people go now . You set me up while because i would urge people to Pay Attention to what is happening in North Carolina where we see the monster might bring all the Civil Rights Movement because that has been weve seen the most romantic attacks the Voting Rights but also the most dramatic push back and let the North Carolina naacp and other groups realize after the Supreme Court gutted the va that they have to traumatize to the state of the nation in such a way ahead to go down to the legislature got arrested because people would understand people are getting arrested for it cause any with it cause everyone could get behind. There were so many attacks and North Carolina on a variety of levels. It is able to get so many people riled up. Voting rights connected all of them because people realize if you undermine the right to vote, you undermine the most core ability to do something and Martin Luther king said it gets you into the arena. If you dont have that come you dont have the most basic prerequisite for change. I think we are at a hopeful moment in a way and that there has been a resurgence of activism not just Voting Rights, the civil rights were probably. People realized lessons are still applicable to today and people realizing the things we took for granted, how important they were really hard and how badly they are needed now. Hi, my name is scott. Reef question. He talked a little bit about Abigail Finch providing a lot of the intellectual arguments why the majority, minority districts wasnt the intent. I wonder what you think about the other dynamic that is happening with the Bush Administration in the early 90s where they were advocating promoting the exact opposite of the intellectual argument. And what do you think why is one hand to witness and the other hand do they not get that make sense . This is a complicated issue and when i try to deal with new onset in a book that there are elements in the Republican Party that wanted to drive it straight that would benefit africanAfrican American and latino candidates and other minorities because they would put them in one district and they would become wider and more conservative and republican. I think that as this tragedy pursued and it was definitely for political benefit. It is also minority political power over time. At the same time there was a dramatic underrepresentation and the south as i mentioned earlier in 1987 only to africanamericans from the south in congress for their 25 of the population, only 5 of elected seats. You have to do some thing. You couldnt be a democracy so we finesse there was a political benefit to the Republican Party for driving his districts that didnt mean to districts that need to be drawn and what we see is a lot of highcaliber people have emerged from these districts. One of the things thats happened more recently its districts over 55 africanamerican for 55 latino has become 65 latino because republicans have packed more and more voters into fewer and fewer districts to increase political power. I think that is wrong. Is interesting when i talk to African American populations in the south if they draw the district of order 5 , 50 to live a chance to be elected. But dont try to 70 of our power as we can. This is the most complicated and nuanced one. Some of the critiques made about majority minority districts have been valid. Broadly speaking this era in the broader critique was still misplaced. Thank you. June billing. I wanted to ask you about a specific elected official marion barry here in washington d. C. If you look at him, he was a mixed bag and so depending on your political background, you might see him as a pretty good with a few flaws are pretty bad guys who is good once in a while. Email, he is an example of somebody basically elected by the voters. What is your take on this. I dont have a take on it. Hes not someone i read about in the book. I dont want to not answer a question but it doesnt relate to what ive been covering. I could give you a quick one on marion barry. When he came to washington d. C. He wasnt supported by the poor people at all. He was supported by the intelligence yet. He took policy that built the black middle class, to change the face of the in many ways in favor of poor people and working people and especially young people and they never forgot that at all. He was finally known as mayor for life. I want a push of a little more on this question of the majority minority districts. Not too much longer though. Five minutes. Make it quick. It seems as if that kind of manipulation and the packing of black voters in a single history has been a Political Polarization worse than existed before. Essentially you have a black Democratic Party and a white Republican Party and the former white moderate outnumbered and im able to swing districts. It actually contributes to the extreme rightwing takeover of the Republican Party and that seems like a profound irony. I think it is a profound irony. I think it can be true these districts were drawn in some ways to benefit the Republican Party that does lead to polarization over time they become more extreme in how republicans still with them after the 2010 election. Its also true you can recognize people like john lewis, lake mel watt, lake terry sewall, commerce one from selma is very dynamic wouldve never been elected without these districts. There were unintended consequences but also one of the most important thing the Voting Rights act did was much as the congress but elected bodies across the country. In some cases that do this harmoniously with a lot of spirit of cooperation and an cross racial alliances and sometimes it didnt happen and they recognize racial polarization existed and sometimes the good guys and sometimes the bad guys. You may have the last question. I just wondered if you had given any thought about how to amend this in light of Michelle Alexander spoke, the disenfranchisement of africanamerican men in in particular but other minorities with the drug felonies and a vast difference between state of what the sentences mean for your ability to become a citizen again. Is an increasing realization that we needlessly disenfranchise millions of people in this country is unfortunately solidstate make it harder for exfelons to vote as opposed to giving them Voting Rights back in states like florida. And he said of Racial Justice platform has to deal with the problem of mass incarceration. But this is the one issue where there is some interesting bipartisan movement. Youve heard people like grandpa say we should be giving Voting Rights act to nonviolent exoffenders and i think thats great. Even the coat others have talked about it. Why not go further. Why not stop there. If you give the right to vote back, why arent you willing to protect the right to bill for all americans. I give those politicians credited for moving on this issue but this is the first death in terms of a broader restoration. [applause] i recommend his books very, very highly. Even someone like me whos paying close attention is full of revelation. And if you are to experience it, i think it would come as an exciting extraordinary feat. Pick up every copy. I think ari alluded to a number of high profile people in todays world. The retelling of the story is done so well and its fascinating and very engaging and very important. Plenty of copies of friend or at the habitus and appeared. We hope to see you all again soon. Thank you for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] youre watching the tv on cspan2. We are on location on in las vegas at the end of freedom fest conference where we are watching on trend interviewing authors. Joining us now, star parker. Her most recent book is called blind
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