in arizona in the assembly. the de- november to get to the bottom of november 3rd and decertify biden electors in arizona, in wisconsin nrkts commonwealth of pennsylvania, and the great state of georgia. so i know all of this is enough to make your head spin. let s bring in an expert who monitors these threats and can help us make sense of the big picture here. the president of the brennan center, also the author of the fight to vote. thank you, michael, so much for being with us tonight. i m just hoping especially as we are here on the eve of the beginning of the debate of voting rights legislation in the senate which ultimately is expected to fail and we re watching all of these efforts to undermine elections and institutions, where would you say our democracy is? well, you have said it so well. this is a very big moment in american history. our democracy is under assault in ways it has not been in a long time. if ever.
it s about who gets to count the votes. joining us now is civil rights attorney, former prosecutor david henderson. and michael wallbun, author of the fight to vote out tomorrow. michael, your book is timely. it looks at the voter restrictions and suppression in the country and what s being done to make voting more difficult and more politicized. what are you most concerned about? well, this is a big moment in history. we ve been fighting about who gets to vote, who gets a seat at the table of democracy from the country s beginning. but what we re see right now with the big lie, as you say, with states moving to restrict voting, driven by that big lie, and on top of those voter suppression laws, you might call them election subversion laws, changing who counts the votes and attacking election
crowd. they talk about the people that walked down to the capitol. they don t talk about the size of that crowd. i believe it was the largest crowd i ve ever spoken before. it wasn t and, yet, that kind of lie seems almost quaint as steve bannon feeds his listeners their daily ration of coup porn. this is what he said over the weekend. the dessertification process is really kicking up next week in arizona in the assembly. the november the get to the bottom of november 3rd and decertify biden electors in arizona, in wisconsin, in the commonwealth of pennsylvania, in the great state of georgia. so i know all of this is enough to make your head spin. let s bring in an expert who monitors these threats and can help us make sense of the big picture here. the president of the brennan center, also the author of the
republicans who say this is about election integrity, but the facts suggest otherwise. michael waldman is the president of the brennan center and joins us now with his research on this issue. he s also the author of the fight to vote. michael, thank you for being with us. many people, you know, hear things like voter i.d. or election security and they think that s reasonable, so what is the real effect of some of these restrictions we hear about that have been passed into law, and can you just give us some examples? well, elections should be secure. elections are secure. these laws, unfortunately, target and have a disproportionate impact on voters of color across the country. they are very mischievously crafted. you have, for example, one example in georgia. the law there shut down mobile voting. well, that s only used in one place very successfully, in
but they are lying to their voters and certainly former president trump is lying to their voters and millions of people believe it. and they are being doubly cynical because they know it s not true. and the idea that, well, some day they ll kind of pull back and be responsible is cold comfort. right now we ve had this kind of fight over who can vote in our country s history, in this book i did i saw that from the beginning we ve been fighting about who can vote. some people want to have that seat at the table of democracy. other people try to stop them. what s new, what s different is this mass belief in a major lie. we ve not had that before. we don t really know how it is going to play out. there is a point, a key point in your book the fight to vote where you talk about it isn t really the courts. you know, that is the impetus for change. it is people. so what do you see actually