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The United States is a representative democracy. The idea is that we’re a government "by the people" (we vote officials into office) and "for the people" (the officials in office are supposed to represent our interests). But it’s not so straightforward around here.
When you take that golden idea and add restrictive voter laws, billions of dollars, and a whacky electoral system, representation takes on a whole different hue. But...you should vote anyway. This episode explains why.
Featuring:
Nazita Lajevardi, assistant professor, political scientist, lawyer. Lajevardi teaches at Michigan State University
Kim Wehle, professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law
Andrea Hailey, CEO of vote.org
Listen here:
Resources:
Listen to the episode, then take the quiz to test your knowledge of voting rights!
Click here for a Graphic Organizer for students to take notes upon while listening.
And if you’re curious about the voting requirements in your state, check out this interactive tool by the National Conference of State Legislators, which tells you what you need to register and cast your vote on election day.
And of course, check out vote.org for information about your local elections.
Transcript:
Archive: [00:00:04] The ballot is right at the voter's eye level, easily read.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:07] I found this old promotional video for one of the automatic voting machines that was rolled out in the fifties.
Archive: [00:00:14] And all offices and all candidates are at the same eye level. No candidate suffers by being placed in an unfavorable position.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:22] The machine itself is kind of bizarre looking and frankly does not look all that simple. But in order to sell.
Archive: [00:00:29] A large number of voters who are disenfranchised every year at the paper ballot type polls, by making mistakes.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:36] They compare it to paper ballots.
Archive: [00:00:37] Busy people, often by habit, make checkmarks on the ballot in states where X's are required.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:43] And it's just voter after voter.
Archive: [00:00:46] They might as well have stayed home. That vote is a no vote. It doesn't count - illegal.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:51] And I'm watching this thing and thinking....
Archive: [00:00:56] It doesn't count.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:57] Wow. That just sounds an awful lot like voting in America today.
Archive: [00:01:06] Good try, sir. But this ballot will be thrown out for.
Archive: [00:01:10] The first time in a presidential election. Nine more states are enforcing new laws requiring eligible voters to present a government-issued photo ID at the poll.
Archive: [00:01:18] Critics point out that there have been few instances of voter fraud in the US and that in Texas, where the state once blocked African Americans and Hispanics from voting, it's more important to encourage voter participation. As we've already seen in the primary season, the right of the black man and woman to vote is still not a guarantee. Laws across the US are being passed to make it harder, not easier to vote. This is the only advanced democracy on earth that goes goes out of its way to make it difficult for people to vote.
Nazita Lajevardi: [00:01:52] I was at a few BLM protests and at these protests I get really curious and I ask people, you know, you're really upset, are you going to vote?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:59] This is Nazita Lajevardi.
Nazita Lajevardi: [00:02:01] I am a lawyer and also a political scientist. I teach at Michigan State University. I teach political science, mostly focusing on American politics, studying how racial and ethnic groups fare in American democracy, whether or not they're facing discrimination, the extent to which they are represented, and also how they perceive their inclusion in American democracy.
Archive: [00:02:31] Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:34] So Nazita, is it a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. And she goes up to some of the protesters who are obviously interested in making a difference in society. And she asks them...
Nazita Lajevardi: [00:02:46] What are you going to do? Like, tell me what you're going to do? And they're like, no, we're not going to vote. And I asked them, you know why you're here? You're spending your time on a Tuesday morning. You know, what are you doing here? And they say, you know, Bernie isn't running. If Bernie comes back, then we'll vote.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:02] I've been hearing this a lot. You've got people who just don't see what they want in the candidate pool, so they're just not going to vote. And it has nothing to do with them not caring. It's just they don't feel like they have good choices.
Nazita Lajevardi: [00:03:16] And so then you have to understand, like you may not agree with the politics, but what they want is a different vision of America. They want a different vision of this world. Whatever game we're playing is not representative of their interests, or at least what they think their interests are. And so maybe there just aren't enough candidates out there who represent them.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:34] When we talk about voting in America, the most basic democratic exercise that we've got, we're not just talking about showing up to the polls. We're talking about representation. We're talking about access. It's voting that facilitates our representative democracy. So what does it mean when people feel underrepresented by their options at the polls or when getting to the polls is a hurdle in and of itself. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:08] I'm Nick Capodice
Speaker2: [00:04:08] And this is Civics 101, a podcast about the basics of how our democracy works. And today we are talking about the right that isn't a right. The thing that makes this democracy work, even though a lot of people call it broken. We're talking about voting.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:25] Hold it. What do you mean, the right that isn't a right.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:28] Oh, yeah. First thing that you got to know about voting. Nowhere is it written that you have a right to vote. The Constitution left it to the states to set voting requirements. The federal government only says that you can't be prevented from voting due to your sex or the color of your skin. Speaking of preventing people from voting, by the way, let's start there, shall we?
Nazita Lajevardi: [00:04:51] Voting rights were restricted to free white people. And so, like going back and thinking about who could vote and how different immigrant groups especially like tried to gain whiteness under the law.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:04] There are exceptions, but for the most part, and until fairly recently, voting was restricted to white people, specifically free white men. Now, property and religion factored in here and there, depending on the state. But free, white and male was the golden ticket.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:21] When I think about the various demographics fighting for the vote. Historically, I think of it as them fighting against discrimination, not fighting to be considered white. What is Nassetta talking about in terms of gaining whiteness under the law?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:35] Yeah, a major factor in all of this is the Naturalization Act of 1790. It was our first one that was codified, which in effect made it so that only white free men could become citizens and vote in the US.
Nazita Lajevardi: [00:05:49] So I think it's important to think about historically who had access under the law and how did groups make arguments that they were white and had especially these immigrant groups who came to the United States. Of course, African-Americans were excluded from the franchise and continue to be so. But I think it's important to think about when we talk about Asian Americans and we talk about Latinos and we talk about Middle Easterners and we talk about these other natives. You know, I think it's very important to think that there's been a number of efforts at trying to be classified as white.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:18] The framers had this notion of a representative democracy, right? When we say that our government is of by for the people, voting is at the core of that. But the history of voting in the US reveals, of course, that many of the people were and continue to be ineligible for that representation for a long, long time in American history, citizenship and the vote meant proving your whiteness. Black Americans fought this, of course, and argued for their citizenship, civil rights and enfranchisement as Black Americans. But there were so many other groups who felt forced to argue that they could be American citizens because they were free whites.
Nazita Lajevardi: [00:07:01] Which is why you see like Middle Eastern and North Africans classified as white under the census right now.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:06] These days, though, we do talk specifically about the Asian-American vote, the Latinx vote, for example.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:12] Right. Nazitaa says that the civil rights movement that fight on the part of Black groups to have their civil rights observed and preserved in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in a reinforcement of anti-discrimination laws. And the need to prove your whiteness in order to be enfranchised. Began to dissolve.
Nazita Lajevardi: [00:07:36] Certainly after the civil rights movement and the three major pieces of legislation that came out of the 1965 Civil Rights Acts, the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing Act. So certainly after that period of time, and especially with like the 1970s and seeing like this mobilization of the Latino vote of the Asian American vote in the 1980s, you do see right groups starting to find a position already in American politics and no longer trying to identify with this whiteness because it's no longer the governing law. Right. To be a part of the franchise.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:12] And it's not just that whiteness ceases to be the governing law. Right now, Nazita says there's something else going on.
Nazita Lajevardi: [00:08:19] Also, I think it's important because these groups were finding a voice and were making demands on the democracy, right? They were making demands for representation. And so certainly there was a shift and it certainly happened after the civil rights movements for for non-Black groups, for sure.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:40] Demands for representation. So this is the sticking point again. Right. People demand to be properly represented by the people making their laws and governing their worlds. So if these disparate groups have achieved the right to vote and they exercise that right, they should see themselves represented. Correct?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:00] Maybe. Maybe if you're in a perfectly balanced electoral system, that might be the case, but a perfectly balanced electoral system we do not have.
Kim Wehle: [00:09:11] The framers left a lot of electoral politics to the states.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:14] This is Kim Wehle.
Kim Wehle: [00:09:16] Hi, I'm Kim Whele. I'm a professor of law at the University of Baltimore and author of my second book, What You Need to Know About Voting and why.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:24] Oh Kim Whaley. She talked us through the Constitution back in the day.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:27] She did indeed. And this time she schooled me on how voting actually works in the US and what that means for representation. I'm going to go over the major ones here. I think you can probably guess the big one, Nick, a little something called congressional redistricting.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:44] Or to friends of Old Elbridge Gerry gerrymandering. That's called a portmanteau word. Did you know that?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:50] Is that what a portmanteau is?
Nick Capodice: [00:09:52] A portmanteau is when you're, like, mash together two words and make a new word. Yeah. So it comes from a mixture of Jerry and Salamander. Jerry was governor of Massachusetts during some sneaky district redrawing and the salamander part because of the wiggly shape the district ends up having when you bend them around party lines.
Kim Wehle: [00:10:10] And one of the things states get to do is decide how to carve up the districts that go to the United States Congress that represent the Congress. So if you did it logically, you might take a state like Maryland, where I live, and you might put a big plus sign in the middle of it, make, you know, four congressional districts and just assume there's four congressional members of Congress. And each quarter gets the population of each quarter gets one person.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:34] And I think we know that is how things did not go.
Kim Wehle: [00:10:37] Well, we don't have to carve it up in logical ways like a mapmaker might do. Let's figure out where all Republicans are or all our Democrats are, and we'll make these salamander-like distorted, tortured districts, that kind of cluster or either cluster or break up people from one party. So if you imagine instead of a plus in Maryland, we put circles around all the Democrats and they don't have to be necessarily equal in size. You just do have to be equal representation in terms of the numbers of people. But we'll send we'll carve it up in a way that we just know it's always going to be Democrats living in that city.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:15] See, in a lot of states, it's the state legislature that's in charge of drawing the district lines, which means the majority party can draw those lines in favor of their party.
Kim Wehle: [00:11:26] And so even if the whole state has more Republicans in one day, they'll they'll never get a completely Republican representation in Congress because of this gerrymandering. So people criticize it legitimately because it's the state lawmakers from a particular party that carve up the districts. And so the politicians are picking their voters instead of the voters picking the politicians.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:51] The drawing of districts is not necessarily political. It's just that the way things go is that the people in power are on the right or the left, and that is how the districts end up being drawn. And another thing that draws a big fat line between the voter and getting represented by the person who really represents you as a person - money. One recent Supreme Court case in particular, called Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission, ruled that corporations have a right to political speech, which means they can spend big, big money on things like ads for their preferred candidate.
Kim Wehle: [00:12:28] So now politicians care more about raising money from not individual constituents, but big corporations and, you know, anonymous donors that can put as much money as possible on the airwaves in support of an issue that the candidate cares about.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:41] And what you really need to know here is despite campaign finance reform that has limited the amount of money individuals can give to a campaign. Money has found a way to be very much involved in getting people elected. Why is that a problem for you as an individual?
Kim Wehle: [00:12:59] So this is where billionaires have big impacts. They still have their First Amendment rights. They want to hire some fancy firm from New York City to spend tons of money flooding the airwaves, waves. They can still do that as individuals. But when it comes to regular people that have bread and butter issues and budgets, that's a problem in our campaign finance system. But because the Supreme Court has treated corporate speech as a First Amendment right without a constitutional amendment, that can't really change, Congress can't fix that.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:34] And there's that one last thing that I'm going to mention here. When it comes to unevenness in representation.
Kim Wehle: [00:13:39] When you go to the polls, you're voting for your delegate, the elector, the delegate to Electoral College. You're not actually voting for the president.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:47] So this one coming, it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:48] Always seems to boil down to the Electoral College.
Kim Wehle: [00:13:51] So most states say a state again has ten delegates and say 51% of the voters in that state voted for Donald Trump, 49% voted for Hillary Clinton. All ten delegates will go to Donald Trump. So that's a winner take all system.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:15] The winner take all Electoral College system, which we have mentioned many, many times before on this show, means that someone can win the popular vote but lose the election. It also means that a lot of voters are going to end up feeling unheard and unrepresented.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:31] And I hate to add potholes to this rocky road to representation, but, you know, Hannah, we still have not talked about the barriers to getting to the polls and to actually being able to cast your vote once you're there.
Nazita Lajevardi: [00:14:44] Yeah, I mean, I think I think what people don't realize is how much how much planning goes into and strategy goes into mobilizing and mobilizing folks. To vote.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:57] Here's Nazita again.
Nazita Lajevardi: [00:14:58] So oftentimes we say to ourselves like, oh, you know, by 2040, America is going to be majority-minority. And so it really won't matter. But that's actually not true because, you know, there are there are factions. There are groups that are interest groups that are being mobilized to keep people away from the polls. Right. Even, for instance, like with absentee ballots, the number of ballots that are thrown away because the signatures, quote unquote, don't match. Right. Is so incredibly disproportionate in certain areas that are larger percentage of minorities. Right. And, you know, we can't say we can't draw so many causal arguments as we would like. All we can say is there seems to be an association. But, you know, it does seem like there is a there there when you take the totality of of the picture together.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:46] And we'll talk more about that that trend of actively disenfranchizing certain groups of voters and other ways citizens are simply prevented from casting their ballots when we come back from the break.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:57] But before that hand, and I would encourage everyone to sign up for our newsletter, extra credit. It's fun, it's pithy. It's full of all the stuff that doesn't make it into our episodes. It comes out every two weeks and it's free. Sign up at our website, civics101podcast.org, or just click the link in the show notes.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:13] And if you want to make a donation to support our work, we would love that to you. Can also get that done at Civics101podcast.org or just click the Donate link in the show notes and thank you.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:44] This is Civics one. One, I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:46] And I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:47] And before the break, we were getting into something we've been hearing about more and more in recent years, coordinated efforts to keep certain groups of voters from casting ballots.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:57] Yes. And this is after hundreds of years of disenfranchised minorities clawing their way into recognition and giving them a right to vote. There is still a massive effort to stifle their votes.
Andrea Hailey: [00:17:10] There have been a series of rules and laws put in place to keep people. Politicians are at the point where they're picking their voters rather than voters picking politicians.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:20] This is Andrea Hailey.
Andrea Hailey: [00:17:21] Ceo of Vote.org. We're a tech platform that simplifies the process of registering to vote or requesting your absentee ballot.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:31] I called up Andrea because things were feeling a little dodgy, Nick. You know, I was looking at this screwy electoral process. Efforts at voter suppression. And I'm thinking of those protesters that Nakita mentioned at the beginning of this episode who were like, No, we're not going to bother voting. And I hate to say it, but I started to think, what if they are right?
Nick Capodice: [00:17:53] No.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:54] Well, no, no, they're not.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:57] But I'm going to get to that in a minute. The point is, Andrea runs a site devoted to making it as clear and simple as possible for people across the spectrum to vote. And she was in full acknowledgment. Disenfranchisement is real and it's multifaceted. It's voter suppression, but it's also a lack of options.
Andrea Hailey: [00:18:16] You see people working really hard to overcome odds, those odds, and jump through all of those hoops to make sure their voice is still heard and they can elect leaders who reflect their own value systems. And so I think that we know that young people and people of color have been historically disenfranchised in the voting process and have extra barriers to overcome. And there are several of those barriers. There's the fact that Election Day is not a holiday. There's all the voter ID laws that were brought in, the closing of polling locations that are convenient for people, misinformation about voting. There's there's a whole series of things that keep people separated from the right to vote.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:04] Is this about when you started to agree with the vote abstainers? Because I'm starting to feel a little down about it myself.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:10] Here's what I hadn't factored in, though, for every person too disillusioned, and sometimes rightfully, to vote. There's a voter waiting in the stifling heat or rain just to be heard. Remember in June of 2020, when Georgia rolled out its new voting system and black voters waited in hours, long lines to cast their ballots, the amount of people in line shocking to see in the middle of a pandemic.
Archive: [00:19:33] When we first pulled up, cars was on both sides of the road.
Archive: [00:19:36] That high turnout turned into long lines in DeKalb and Fulton Counties because of problems with the state's new touch screen voting equipment Tuesday.
Andrea Hailey: [00:19:43] One of the things that I'm really excited about, though, if you just looked at the Georgia primary, is the resilience of the American voter, because despite long lines, despite people, the last voters voting at 1230 in the morning, a lot of people jump through all those hoops and overcame those barriers. And I think that moving forward, one of the things that the American public can start to demand is a voting process that makes it easy and convenient for them to have their voice heard. And if they're elected officials who make it more difficult, they can work to fire those people.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:18] In other words, think small, think state and local government. The ones who make the voting laws in your state.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:25] Right. Who is in charge of making it easier or harder for you to vote? Are they someone who you get to vote for? And before election day even comes, Andrea says, What can you do to make sure those officials help you out?
Andrea Hailey: [00:20:40] I think that there needs to be pressure on officials to announce their plan early so that voters can do their job, you know, and show up. And I think that it's now on election officials to say how they're going to administer this election in a way that imagines enfranchising the highest number of people possible. Like that's literally their whole job is to is to administer safe and free and fair elections. So it's it's time for them to do that and to let us know what the plan is for Election Day so that we don't see repeats of Georgia anywhere else across the country. And I think that that's something that voters can absolutely demand from their county officials, from their secretaries of state. You know, demand that that people make it easy.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:33] Andrea's thing is basically, och yes, there are loads of systems in place to disenfranchise you, especially those of you who have worked so hard over centuries to be granted enfranchisement. Chances are, the harder your demographic has worked for the vote, the harder it is going to be for you to exercise your vote. But starting at the state level, showing up and refusing to go away without a ballot or asking for that mail-in ballot early. These are the small steps you can take to push the system to work for you.
Nick Capodice: [00:22:08] All right. So I'm hearing that if you want a clear, demonstrable way to make sure that voting means real representation, starting with showing up for local races can make a real difference when you then show up for the big races. But I do think, given all the barriers we've talked about, another obvious step is knowing how to vote. Right.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:32] Right. And I decided we need a whole episode on that. How to vote. And that is in your Civics 101 feed. Right. Now. This episode of Civics 101 was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, along with Nick Capodice. Our team includes senior producer Christina Phillips and producer Jackie Fulton. Our executive producer is Rebecca Lavoie. If you want to learn more about our podcast, sign up for our newsletter or make a donation to support our work, visit Civics 101 podcast dot org.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:04] Civics 101 is a production of NHPR New Hampshire Public Radio.
Speaker1: [00:23:11]