vote. dean, i would love to call your dean thompson. representative thompson, let me just read through what s in this bill that they want to put through. a new voter id requirement for vote by mail. banning drive-through voting, and this poll watching thing. i want to focus on the last thing. what is it they think these poll watchers should be allowed to do? well, the thing that they want to do is i have had experience in this area. they normally put poll watchers in minority areas, and they are normally people of different nationalities than the areas they place them, and they re there to intimidate the workers, not the workers, but there to intimidate the voters. when persons, people walk into a poll, and they see these strange persons in their polling place looking at them mean spirited, it s frightening. and sometimes they may just get up and walk out. are they allowed to be armed?
people who are not quite as well known and now at least britney spears is getting the awareness that she wants to get, what about everybody else in the arrangement. griff: that raises a good question and tragic to hear that she s simply not okay. clearly something needs to happen. i want to change gears a little bit because you can t be a panel unless we get a little politics in here and let s go to the peach state, georgia. obviously you have merrick garland, attorney general filing a lawsuit against georgia new voting law. here is what governor brian kemp said in his statement. this lawsuit is born out of the lies and misinformation the biden administration has pushed against georgia s election integrity act from the start among the things in it, creates voter id requirement for absentee voting and limits the use of ballot drop boxes, jessica, your reaction. jessica: well i was a little bit surprised about the timing, i
it is a 50/50 u.s. senate. but the democrats at least all 50 were united on this procedural vote. yeah. it would have been a huge embarrassment to them had they not been able to get every democrat onboard for this legislation. what they ended up doing was getting joe manchin onboard. he proposed effectively alternative legislation. his legislation includes a voter id requirement and also early voting, vote by mail, ethics reform, ending dark money, et cetera. but they did manage to get him onboard today in the 11th hour. in the end, what i think they re going to do, and i don t think it s going to work, what they re going to do is take what manchin proposed and make that their new legislation and come back to deal with it on another day. you know, david chalian, there are some democrats who think this whole issue is for all practical purposes a
democrats to figure out what the heck their strategy s going to be. do they pull out pieces of sr-1 and put pieces before the senate going forward? do they take what manchin put on the table in whole cloth and work that on the back end after this fails? that s what the next test is about and we ll see how well the democrats meet that test. donna edwards, michael steele put it in a more elegant way. let me be a little more blunt as i tend to do. joe manchin put voter id requirement in there, something republicans have wanted since back when i was a republican, six decades. that is in there. republicans aren t going to permit a debate because republicans aren t looking at this in good faith. they are looking at this in bad
as a cosponsor. again, we will see how it unfolds today. we are waiting to hear from senator joe marchin on where he is on this, if they have been able to coalesce around perhaps his changes. you mentioned some of those in the beginning. one key thing he keeps in place is that there would be a voter id requirement. that s the difference from where a lot of the other democrats are on this. we will see if thiac make up ground on this. another topic on the agenda, police reform, the talks and negotiations have been going on for months. the three key negotiators involved said to me it is june, it is happening in june, it is june or bust. the last day of june that they are going to be here. we are waiting to see. they seem to be inching toward there. we will see if they can come to a conclusion. we have got a few days. jessica dean on the hill. let s go to john howard.