>> about an hour left in our program this morning. up next, we'll talk about where democrats go from here on voting rights. we'll be joined by michael waldman. he's president of the brennan center for justice. author of the book "the fight to vote." stick around. we'll be right back. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we're funded by these television companies and more. including cox. >> cox is committed to providing eligible families access to affordable internet. through the connectivity program. bridging the digital divide one connected and engaged student at a time. cox, bringing us closer. >> cox supports c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers. giving you a front-row seat to democracy. >> book tv, every sunday on c-span2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. 9:15 p.m. eastern, professor michael eric dyson examines the impact of black culture on politics in the united states with his book, entertaining 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john lewis act. there does not right now seem to be a majority to change the rules so that the bill can pass. as we know, senator sinema and senator manchin, who support the bill, have said they don't want to change the rules, and we're going to see a real debate on that. we're going to hear from the republicans, and basically, everybody is going to have to go on the record today, what are they going to do to protect voting rights in a time when i certainly think that our democracy is facing extraordinary challenges of a kind it has not seen in years. >> after they go on the record today, what happens tomorrow if it doesn't pass? >> well, they're going to bring the bill up. it will not get cloture, presumably. in other words, it will not achieve 60 votes. there will also be a vote taken, as i understand it, on this proposal to keep the filibuster but return it to what it has been throughout most of its history, which is a talking filibuster. right now, senators can phone their filibuster in. and senator schumer, the majority leader, and the other democrats want to put out the idea that you have to actually hold the floor if you're going to try to stop a bill. there's going to be a lat of push and pull. this is not over today. it's a many inning ball game. the way real legislating is done on major issues. but today is a pretty big moment in shining a spotlight on what's going on. you know, the filibuster -- >> please go ahead. finish. >> a lot of folks may not realize it, the senate is not working as it has, and it is not working as it is supposed to. one of the goals is to restore the senate to its functioning as a deliberative body. the filibuster is not in the constitution. in fact, the framers wanted to make sure there wouldn't be a super majority requirement in a place like the senate. in recent years, it has become basically a 60-vote threshold in effect for everything. so there are always exceptions. we know for budget reconciliation, for supreme court nominations, for military base closings, plans for trade agreements. there's 160 exceptions to the filibuster, and what the democrats are trying to do now is basically carve a rule for this vital bill so it can actually pass with a majority vote. >> if this bill does not pass in the 117th congress, if it isn't -- if the will isn't there, will you have confidence that election 2022 will be a free and fair election? >> i have grave concerns about election 2022 and '24 and those going forward. we see in this country right now something we have not seen in a long time. unfortunately. as i described in my book "the fight to vote" which has a new edition about these recent events out this week, we have always fought over who can vote in this country. some people want to have their seat at the table, and others try to stop them. and it's been a big fight over many centuries, actually. what's new right now is what happened in 2020 and 2021. in 2020, it was an extraordinary year. despite the pandemic. we had the highest voter turnout since 1900. and as donald trump's own department of homeland security and many, many courts confirmed, it was the most secure election on record. i think it's actually something we ought to be celebrated. so many people in business, in election officials, so many others, worked so hard to make that happen. as we know, the response was, trump's big lie, the slander that our election was stolen. the insurrection driven by that big lie, and now in states all across the country, new laws to make it harder to vote. also driven by that big lie. last year, we had 19 states pass 34 new laws to make it harder to vote by the count of the organization i lead, the brennan center. this year, the legislatures are coming back, and there's many more possible bills to be voted on. and of course, at the same time, there's redistricting happening, with really egregious gerrymandering taking place in much of the country. and what failure by congress to act, congress has the power to act. it has the constitutional power and the legal power. the question has always been, does it have the political will? if we see a situation where voting rights are being abused in the states, where congress cannot act because of the 60-vote requirement in the filibuster, and the courts have stepped back, the u.s. supreme court in fact has gutted the voting rights act, for example. that's a green light for states to abuse the rights of their own people. it's happened before, and i'm afraid it is a signal for even worse things to happen in the states going forward. >> michael waldman with us until about the bottom of the hour. go ahead and start calling in. phone lines, democrats, 202-748-8000. republicans, 202-748-8001. independents, 202-748-8002. a caller in one of our earlier segments this morning had a question about voter fraud in this country. how often do we know from studies that voter fraud takes place? >> there's good news, which is our elections are very secure. we ought to be proud of that. every study shows, every investigation shows voter fraud in the united states is vanishingly rare. you are more likely to be hit by lightning than to commit in-person voter fraud, for example. we saw that in this last election, where 60 courts rejected these unfounded claims in the litigation brought by the defeated former president after the election. it happens every once in a while, but it's really a very minor problem given the billions of votes cast over the years. you know, it used to be a big problem. it used to be the case that when you went to the river, 120 years ago, if you went to the river on election day in new york city, you would see boxes floating down the river because the democrats would go to the republican precincts and throw the boxes in the river, and the republicans would go to the democratic precincts and throw the boxes in the river. but it has really cleaned up, and right now, our elections are extraordinarily secure. there are all kinds of things we need to do to make sure that's the case. the most important is paper ballots for voting machines, to avoid potential hacking of the machines and to make it possible to have recounts. if you have paper ballots, then you really can check and see if there's been a problem. the lucky thing is and the good news is that as former attorney general barr put it, they used a barnyard epithreat to describe these, elections are secure. >> you mentioned new york city. this is elliot in new york city. democrat. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i met michael waldman in new york city about 35 years ago. and anyway, michael, in the constitution, it does not say anything about people, like the common people, voting on anything. and i wanted to give you a chance to just sort of explain a little bit how voting became part of the fabric of american life. and i also wanted to make a quick comment on my own, which is that if people don't vote, if they don't have the right to vote, you cannot have voter integrity. because you won't have anyone voting. >> elliot in new york. mr. waldman. >> first of all, hello again, elliot. 35 years later. you know, you're exactly right that when our country started, it was not what any of us would regard as a democracy, really. only white men who owned property could vote. but the ideals of the declaration of independence and the revolution, the idea that we're all created equal and that government is legitimate only when it rests on the consent of the governed as the declaration said, those ideas were really powerful and quickly they began to push us toward more and more democracy, from the very start. i tell the story in the book, in pennsylvania, they wrote a new constitution in 1776 for that newly independent state, and it was written by ben franklin. and they eliminated that property requirement. and franklin explained, he said there's a man who owns a jackass, and it's worth $50, so the man can vote. but then the jackass dies. and the man is older, he's wiser, but nevertheless, the jackass is dead, so the man cannot vote. so ben franklin asked, who really has the right to vote, the man or the jackass? good question. up in massachusetts, you saw a very different view. john adams was writing their constitution and he was urged, do what they did in pennsylvania. eliminate the property requirement, and adams was aghast. he said f we do that, women will demand the right to vote. lads of 18 will demand the right to vote, and men who have not a farthering to their name will demand a right to vote. he said there will be no end of it. and adams was right. there was no end of it, and that's really the story of the country. generation after generation, people demanding their democratic rights. and always some people pushing back, pushing back against it. and that's the story up until this point. what i think is new now is something we have not seen at least since the civil war, which is a major political movement that really rejects so much of the electoral system and the legitimacy of our democracy. when you hear the big lie, when you hear the things people were saying in that rally out in arizona the other day, it's not only that they're factually imaginary, it's that it really undermines our democracy. and we have not had that really since maybe 1860. and it's a real challenge for the country. >> this is richard out of little rock, republican. good morning, you're next. >> caller: thanks, y'all. i just got one small statement and one question. first of all, i don't appreciate anybody using the word lie about anything, but let's get past that. the one thing about the last election so many people questioning it and everything and they're all got to be crazy if their question it, if you go back to the last five republicans elected president, the democratic party filed on average 80 separate lawsuits. maxine waters filed 31 herself individually, but when they did it all these years before, nobody said it was a big lie, it was the wrong thing to do, and right now we're bringing up right now just like these people are questioning what went on, especially when people like zuckerberg put in $180 million of their own money to put out new boxes for people to drop off in. we need to be fair about giving out information, and you're a teacher, so you need to make sure everybody knows both sides instead of just showing one side. why can't we let everybody know, this is not unusual what's going on here? >> mr. waldman, let you respond. >> first of all, i lived in little rock. i love hearing from anyone from arkansas. i do think it's different in that, yeah, there have been charges after elections, and people making claims, but they certainly were never taken terribly seriously. they certainly were never embraced by the defeated candidate, and they certainly didn't lead to an assault on the u.s. capitol, as we all saw a year ago. so i think that it is true that every once in a while, people say, hey, that election wasn't fair, this election wasn't fair. they never get much support, and if it's not true, we should call it out and say it's not true. but we know that what we're seeing right now is very different. the caller doesn't like it to be called a big lie, but it's factually made up and with really bad consequences. so you know, i know that millions of people take this claim very seriously. the politicians making it are very cynical. they know it's not true. many people care a lot about our country and because they hear it from their own leaders, they believe it, and it's a real, real challenge for the country going forward if we're not operating on the same set of facts. >> to the hawkeye state, melissa in bloomfield, an independent. good morning. >> caller: good morning. thank you. i guess i have a statement and then i have a question. as far as, you know, this great government that we have, we haven't seen political prisoners since world war ii, and guess what, we have them now because of nancy pelosi and chuck schumer and them in d.c. second of all, you talk about how voting rights are so important and the integrity of the vote. well, isn't it biden who says it doesn't matter who votes, it only matters who counts the votes? with this bill, they want to turn everything over to the united states government so therefore they're the ones that count the votes. we the people are the ones that vote. we the people are the ones that should count this vote. and we the people should be heard. not whatever biden or the race baiter in chief that we have in office right now that wants to spew. >> we'll let mr. waldman jump in. >> well, there's important points i think that need to be responded to. first, the caller, i think, was talking about the hundreds of insurrectionists who stages a violent assault on the u.s. capitol a year ago. many, many police officers were injured. we say we care about law enforcement. those insurrectionists attacked the police. five people died that day. i don't think they're political prisoners, i think the law is being applied fairly, and i sure hope it continues to be applied fairly. in terms of the question of the role of the federal government should be, elections are properly run in counties and in states, but we have always had national role and national standards. in fact, the constitution very specifically says that congress has the power to enact national laws about elections to make sure that state legislatures in particular aren't abusing the rights of their people. i think that's what's behind the legislation that we're talking about right now. and the final thing that is unusual, that is new, and the caller identified it correctly, though i think misidentified the speaker, one of thespeaker, one of the things that's particularly scary right now are the attacks on election officials and the attempt to undo how are elections are counted and how they decide who wins. it's kind of election subversion in effect on top of these voting laws. so you see laws proposed that actually passed in all different kinds of places to take the power of deciding a winner away from nonpartisan election officials and giving them to partisan politicians usually in the state legislature. you saw that in georgia, for example, laws in texas, threatening criminal penalties on bipartisan, nonpartisan election officials for doing their job. the quote that the caller mentioned, it doesn't matter how people vote, it matters who counts the vote. that was not president biden, it was kind of a paraphrase of two different people who more or less said the same thing, former president trump in a video last week basically said that, and joseph stalin the dictator of soviet russia says it doesn't matter who votes or how they vote, what matters is who counts the vote. almost word for word. it's and it's a pretty scary thought, the caller is right, but make sure we know who is being driven by that thought. >> section 4 of the u.s. constitution, shall be prescribed in each state by the election there of but the congress may any time by law alter such regulations. when should congress refer to the states? when should that first clause apply? >> great question, that's called the elections clause and what the supreme court said strongly consistently is states run elections, set these rules but at any time the government can set national standards. we have the voting rights act to protect racial discrimination and voting, we have requirements about what kind of voting machines we set election day by national law. we say that congressional seats have to be single member. there's many, many examples where the national government has enacted national laws so that everybody has a basic floor. that provision, the elections clause, eventually studied and write about it interestingly in this book, the fight to vote, because, you know, your viewers probably know this more than most people but if you go back and look at the founders, look at the constitutional convention and look at james madison's notes, they're incredibly interesting and teach us a lot about how our government was established. madison insisted on putting that elections clause into the constitution. it was a big debate they had. precisely because he knew that state legislatures would be captured by a thing called a faction, we call them political parties today, and they would engage in what we now call voter suppression or gerrymandering. they didn't call it gerrymandering back then, you know, eldridge jerry was standing there and they hadn't invented the window word, but the whoem purpose of that provision was to make sure elections were run fairly and that politicians would not manipulate the rules for their own benefit, actually a pretty good judge of human nature and its flaws. >> will you briefly describe what preclearance is? >> well, what preclearance was. so one of the great moments in the history of the fight was the voting rights act of 1965 and i'm sure most of your viewers are familiar with the basic story which is that congress failed to act in 1890, circumstance of light today where a filibuster killed a national voting rights billing, the southern states enacted jim crow laws that basically took away the right to vote from black men in the south who had been previously slaves who had the right to vote after the civil war. what followed was seven decades of disenfranchisement and discrimination and the civil rights movement led by dr. martin luther king. in 1965 after the assault on voting rights marchers at selma, congress passed the voting rights act and in many ways, the most successful civil rights law of all of them and what it said is states with a history of discrimination in voting on race had to get anything they do to change the voting rights precleared, in other words, permission in advance from the court to do that. it was extremely successful, led to today where anybody is supposed to have the right to vote. the supreme court basically ended that preclearance, gutted the voteth rights act. chief justice roberts wrote the opinion and said hey, look, that was then, this is now, and we see black voters and white voters both voting in large numbers so we no longer need it and it shouldn't be applied in places where it was being applied. that's where justice ginsberg wrote a famous descent, she said that's like standing in a rainstorm holding an umbrella and not getting wet, and therefore saying oh, i don't need an umbrella, i'm not wet. in other words, both sort of making predictions about what was going to happen. i think ginsberg protection was much better. we've seen a wave of laws cutting back on voting targeted in very dangerous ways, targeted at black and latino and asian voters in particular. courts have stopped a number of them, but then this past year, the supreme court gutted the other part of the voting rights, making it much harder to sue when these racially discriminatory laws are passed so unfortunately, right now, voters, especially in communities of color are really left undefended or much harder to defend and one of the things this legislation, which is a very good bill today in front of the congress would do is restore that preclearance. it changes the formula of how it would work. basically if there's a history of racial discrimination, states can't just willy nily change their voting laws without somebody taking an extra look but also set standards on things like vote by mail, early mail, and gerrymandering, this was a very good bill, one of the reasons i hope it becomes law. >> short on time, lots of calls, jerry, democrat, good morning. >> hello, yes, that was a lot to swallow there he just said. i do have a statement about the previous statement made by the gal who said elections are run by we the people and on that she's absolutely correct. workers come from the counties, come from the neighborhoods and poll workers really wondering why they weren't listened to when they said this was a fair election. but anyway, my question is, we brought up the supreme court a lot and speaking about gutting the voting rights act and then a justice actually following up and getting it more, even though history has proved his opinion in error, how can average citizens like me, 65-year-old man with grand kids growing up in society, what can we do to diminish the power or actually remove certain supreme court justices when it turns out they are not intellectually capable of doing their job. >> well, first of all, congratulations on your grand kids and the caller is exactly right and it's worth drawing a line under it. election officials of both parties in states and cities across the country have done a tremendous job. they've said hey, these elections were fair and they're under attack. so many of them face threats of violence, face political attacks, and one thing we all can do, we the people is stand up for these public servants. this is not the just glamorous, high paying job of all time. stand up for them in our own communities when they're under attack. the supreme court has a lot of power, but ultimately, we are not going to get voting rights through the courts. at least not in nearly as much force as we can through how we vote, how we organize. legislation, like the legislation we're seeing debated today, there are ballot initiatives in places like washington state where the caller is from and all the other places. we saw in a state like ohio, the voters passed ballot initiatives there, like in michigan and many other states to end gerrymandering, to actually have the lines drawn from legislatures, not from politicians but by an outside body. and both parties jerry mander when they can, in ohio, tried to push anyway, and actually struck it down, so sometimes courts play important role but much more important is we the people, you're exactly right. as far as the supreme court goes, that's a whole bigger conversation. i certainly personally support term limits for supreme court justices so among other things, presidents all get a chance to make some appointments, but right now, we have a supreme court that risks being very much out of touch with the country that it is in. >> last call, al in water town, tennessee, independent, good morning. >> yeah, got a comment and a question. first of all, i am a sworn election official and i'm telling you that every provision in the legislation in the senate right now makes fraud more likely. there's not a single provision that makes it less likely. let me give you an example. where i work, we post the results at the polling place minutes after the poll is closed. all these other places that have the fraud, they take the boxes to a central location where they know exactly how many ballots they need to cheat. that's just one example. let me ask you this sir, do you know who mark elias is? >> yes, i do. >> okay. why don't you tell your people that mark elias was paid by the clintons through the perkens law firm to hire people in gps to cook up the steel docier, he's single person done more to under mine american elections. you want confidence in american elections, talk about that. >> well, mark elias can defend himself, he's an election lawyer who brought a lot of successful cases defending voting rights. you know, i think that the caller made the point that he's an election official and he did not see fraud and just like him, we've had very secure elections in the rest of the country and this myth of misconduct is being used to pass partisan laws to make it harder for some people to vote and not for other people. it's a dangerous moment. and again, we need to make sure that our election gives the people the real voice and makes sure that we have a free and fair election, that reflects the country that we actually live in and not be dazzled by rumors and actually look at what's happening. i think there's a lot of challenge, and again, right now, the fundamental fact on these issues is this big lie repeated over and over again that somehow the last election was stolen, is unfortunately driving an unprecedented attack on our elections. it's not new that we're fighting over these issues. it's gone back to the very beginning of the country. we saw it in the civil war, saw it in the fight for women's voting rights, voting rights for african americans. what is new now is this claim that american democracy isn't real and unfortunately millions of people share that and i think we all, if we love our country need to stand up and speak out and say that's wrong. part of the answer is national legislation, but ultimately it's all up to us, i would say. >> michael waltman, president of the brennan center for justice, also the author of the book the fight to vote, that book new addition, into chapters in the

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