south carolina voted no evidence that voter fraud was occur in the state. i m joined by katie o connor, with the aclu voting rights project. caroline heldman, professor of politics at occidental college. great to have both of you with us tonight. this story is one that gets my blood boiling because it s about suppressing the voices of americans across this country. miss o connor, your reaction? is this the tip of the iceberg of the justice department? i m hopeful it is and hopeful it turns the tide on the way of voter suppression efforts we ve seen over the past few years.ç the department of justice under section 5 still has several other laws it can refuse to preclear. most notably the voter i.d. law that s coming out of texas but also alabama and mississippi have those laws as well. and also the department of justice can bring section 2 claims in court to challenge the same sorts of laws for those states that aren t subject to section 5.
so i m hopeful that that s exactly what they re going to do. and katie, are you confident that they will do these kinds of things? you know, i really believe that this is. the tide is about to turn. i think we ve done a great job of sort of educating the public about why the laws are bad in the first place. i also think that the department of justice has finally seen it as really, you know, sort of an emergency situation where we ve got ten states that have passed voter i.d. laws in the past five years. seven states that are limiting early voting. two states that tried to get rid of election day registration. the list goes on and on. as you know.
protect against cheat and fraud. priebus doesn t have proof to back up his claim. the justice department said south carolina voted no evidence that voter fraud was occur in the state. i m joined by katie o connor, with the aclu voting rights project. caroline heldman, professor of politicsç at occidental colleg. great to have both of you with us tonight. this story is one that gets my blood boiling because it s about suppressing the voices of americans across this country. miss o d connor, your reaction? is this the tip of the iceberg of the justice department? i m hopeful it is and hopeful it turns the tide on the way of voter suppression efforts we ve seen over the past few years. the department of justice under section 5 still has several other laws it can refuse to preclear. most notably the voter i.d. law
that s coming out of texas but also alabama and mississippi have those laws as well. and also the department of justice can bring section 2 claims in court to challenge the same sorts of laws for those states that aren t subject to section 5. so i m hopeful that that s exactly what they re going to do. and katie, are you confident that they will do these kinds of things? you know, i really believe that this is. the tide is about to turn. i thk we ve done a great job of sort of educating the public about why the laws are bad in the first place. i also think that the department of justice has finally seen it as really, you know, sort of an emergency situation where we ve got ten states that have passed voter i.d. laws in the past five years. seven states that are limiting early voting. two states that tried to get rid of election day registration. the list goes on and on. as you know. so i think that that s finally
as you know. so i think that that s finally sort of off the back burner and i do think that the tide s going to turn. i hope so. professor, if the law is considered discriminatory, why isn t the department of justice rejecting similar voter i.d. laws in other states? what do you think? i think it s probably because those states aren t on the list of eight states that require preclearance because of their history of discrimination, as katie has pointed out. he s specifically going after south carolina and texas because they re on that list. eric holder could under section 2 also go after any law that is discriminatory under the voting rights act of 1965. he s not chosen to do that. i guess i m a little more pessimistic because i think it s hard for the average american because of the way this has been framed as voter fraud. who doesn t want to stand against fraud? because of the way it s been framed by a lot of conservative outlets, i think it s hard to make the case that we shouldn