I love to vote. It was instilled in us to vote. My grandma raised me up and my sister up to vote. You know, when we turned 18, that was our right. The address when I registered was 766 to Branchman's Circle.
Okay, I'm gonna have them have you and then that line so they can go up there too. Okay. All right, next voter please. I need a picture.
I got an old one. Let me see what you have. Karen, is this your address?
You know me. You have something. You can't be at the address. I'm at the bag place. She told me I could not vote at all, because I got to re-register, because I'm nowhere in the system.
They're not making it easy at all. It's tiresome. Yeah.
Yep, we gotta clean the rolls up one way or another. I happened to stumble across the Phantom Voter Project. I started looking at my neighborhood and started finding what I believe to be a bunch of fraudulent registrations and started investigating them. It's about time we turned the lights on in the kitchen and started cleaning the cockroaches out of here. When I found out that I was purged off the rolls, I was highly upset about it.
Because, like I said, I mean, I grew up seeing my family vote. I know it's my God-given right today to vote, and I want to vote. The challenge we have...
with the average voter suppression issue is that it's happening to people we don't pay attention to every day. And for the average citizen, it's not top of mind because it isn't as sexy, it isn't as violent, it isn't as present, but it can be the most insane. a insidious danger to our democracy.
The board found probable cause to go forward on a total of 3,564 voter registrations, challenges, all of which were submitted by Mr. Michael Hiers. Yaritza, Virgos, Robin, Bruns, Christopher Carmichael, Tina Carmichael, Justin Free, Christopher Carter, Rachel Rochelle. Again, that's 3,564 of those challenges the board found probable cause on to go forward. This is a big, you know, big win, really, as far as the numbers go. Good golly.
This meeting is adjourned. Thank you. I'm Jeffrey Wright. My grandfather, born in 1904, was an oysterman on Virginia's Chesapeake Bay, and he instilled in every one of his children and his grandchildren the importance of the vote.
Yes, I'm an actor, but also more important than any other. And I'm about to tell you a scary story about how the core tenet of our democracy, one person, one vote, is under attack. Today, American citizens are being wrongly persecuted.
purged from voter rolls, others intimidated not to vote. Meanwhile, state after state has passed new voter restriction laws, making it harder for all of us to vote. How did this happen? And what's the justification for this takedown of America's democracy? Well, this scary story starts in Chicago on a mild November night, the year is 2008. All right, let's do this thing.
Ladies and gentlemen, the next first family of the United States Army. We have never been a collection of red states and blue states. We are and always will. to be the United States of America.
The election of Barack Obama most certainly can't be left out of this story. That absolutely was a turning point. If there Is anyone out there who still questions the power of our democracy?
Tonight is your answer. That election was such a big moment, it seemed there was this demographic tide and destiny had kind of taken over for Democrats and that, you know, we were going to see Democratic majorities and presidents into the foreseeable future. Because of what we did on this day, in this election, change has come to America. Barack Obama, he said, I'm going to turn red states blue.
He said, I will compete in Florida. I'm going to... Compete here in the South, Virginia, North Carolina. I will have the audacity to challenge the Republican Foundation in Ohio and Indiana. And guess what?
The Latino population is growing out here. It is the future of the Democratic Party. I will not only contest for it, I will win it.
Whites in this country have voted Republican in every election since 1968. And for the, at least since 2000, all of the major minority groups, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, have voted Democratic. The data is very, very clear here. If you are losing the vote, vast majority of Hispanic voters, and if Hispanic voters are the fastest growing demographic in your country, and you can't appeal to them, you lose. This is very simple.
You lose. The 2008 election was the first election in which people of color were over a quarter of the eligible electorate. African Americans, turned out, had record numbers. This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African Americans.
And for the special pride that must be theirs tonight. We did start seeing some major backlashes against the expansion of the rights to vote after President Obama came into power. I think it has to do with changing demographics, with people having anxiety over the browning of America.
08 was the beginning of the whole demographic tide, the first election where we could see the demographics impacting. And if we... continue to underperform in this multiracial world that is going to be America, the white voters are going to be a clear minority, the Republican Party will cease to exist. The future looked pretty daunting for Republicans at that time, and so there were those like me who said, you know, we just have to do a better job of being compassionate conservatives, of expanding our ranks.
But there were others that took a route where we kind of go down the road of figuring out how you turn out more of your people and less of the other guys. The road many Republican leaders chose amounts to what we'll call the voter suppression playbook. Since 2010, they've created a number of plays or strategies to counter the rising demographic tide of non-white voters and to discourage younger voters. The first play was codenamed Project RedMap.
The concept was to leverage true national dollars from national donors on the Republican side and invest them in state races, state legislative races. in a way that had never been done before. In 2010, Red Map sought to change almost 20 legislative bodies to Republican control. To fund that, Chris Jankowski and the Republican State Leadership Committee recruited the Kochs, the billionaire brothers with their own political action group, Americans for Prosperity.
There are about 400 very wealthy individuals now who are allied with Charles and David Koch in a kind of a rich people's political movement. They looked at the 2008 election as a catastrophe. With some $30 million in funding, RedMap launched the blitzkrieg of attack ads targeting Democrats running for state legislatures.
Americans for Prosperity is responsible for the content of this advertising. And the 2010 elections really showed that you couldn't compete with all this outside money flooding into these races. That could carry the day, and in some of these races, it was over $200,000 in attack ad money that just flooded into a race.
that before had never seen more than $50,000 per candidate. And Operation Red Map was looking at what are the states that we need to win the state legislatures and take control of state politics. North Carolina was at the top of the list. North Carolina is the true battleground.
Democrats have the edge in terms of voter registration, followed by Republicans and then independents are the fastest growing group of the electorate. In the summer of 1999, my children are almost out of the House, and I had always been in politics and other people's campaigns. My grandfather was Speaker of the House many, many years ago here in North Carolina, and I thought, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to run for the House, and I did, and I was elected.
In these tough times, my priority is doing what I can to help families deal with rising costs. Margaret Dixon, fighting for our priorities. In 2010, North Carolina's Margaret Dixon sought re-election as a state senator.
She ended up caught in Red Map's crosshairs. I had not heard of the Red Map plan at that time. I did not see it coming, and I don't think any of my former colleagues saw it coming either. Incumbent Senator Margaret Dixon.
Who does she really care about? Using her public office to help companies she owned. Special deals, insider trading, no-bid state contracts. All for her own gain.
The Hooker ad portrayed me... as a prostitute. So that was pretty shocking. When the ads came out, I had women come to me crying at the portrayal of a woman candidate in that light. We took some artistic license.
You can take a set of facts and then tell a story that fits your narrative. And the Red Map narrative worked amazingly well. Democrats across the nation took a big hit in yesterday's midterm elections, and the same thing is being felt right here in Indiana. The state Republicans overtook the state House and the state Senate. There is a complete swing from a Democratic to a Republican majority.
We set a record for any political party in American history in the gain of state legislative seats. We gained over 700 seats in one election. In the North Carolina Senate, on election day, the Senate was composed of 30 Democrats. and 20 Republicans. The next day, it was 31 Republicans and 19 Democrats.
The only word you can use for that is just tsunami. We did what we needed to do in 2010, which was take dominant Republican control at the state level. RedMap focused on the 2010 elections because in 2011, many state legislatures would redraw their voting districts based on the 2010 census, something that happens every 10 years. So partisan redistricting Also called gerrymandering became the next play. And whoever gerrymanders usually wins.
Gerrymandering involves primarily two different methods. of dealing with voters of the opposite party. You can pack voters into districts, or you can crack them into districts to make them ineffective. Texas is as good an example of packing and cracking as anywhere in the country, particularly the Dallas-Fort Worth area, if you look at the map that was originally drawn and approved by the Republicans in 2011. Why would this district from the north, that's controlled by Anglos, up here in a suburban county, Why would it come in to Tarrant County like this?
Well, it's because they came in and they picked up Latino voters. And you see that they just very carefully pick up this big group of Latino voters, then come back and pick up another group of Hispanic voters like that. This is a classic cracking of Latino voters.
Cracking is taking the people of color and cracking them into as many districts as possible where their vote won't make a difference. Packing is putting as many African Americans or Hispanics into as few districts as possible. This shows District 30, which is this packed district.
Well, to get a sense of how packed that district is, we're going to shade both African Americans and Hispanics together. So the black plus Hispanic population, then in purple, you start to see what's going on. You've got a district here that virtually doesn't have anything in it except purple.
A classic way of undermining minority voting strength. If you favor one side over the other, you can clearly take a right turn on Maple Street and a left turn on Mulberry Street and have a partisan impact. It's also an opportunity for the maximum mischief in the line drawing.
The Republicans were able to draw unbelievably precise districts that maximize partisan advantage, where you have a state where The state is relatively even between the Democrats and the Republicans, and yet the Republicans may win two-thirds or three-quarters of the congressional districts. And that's what we're seeing as a result of the redistricting in many states in 2010. The party in power really decides who's going to stay in power, and that's not real democracy, and that's what we have in way too many states in our country right now. People feel that their vote doesn't count, and gerrymandering makes sure that they feel like their vote doesn't count. Because what happens is... You get pushed into a district that is completely safe for one party or the other, and if it's completely safe, why vote?
Now with their majority secured by gerrymandering, many red-map Republican legislatures executed the next power play, passing harsh new voter restriction laws. What you see is a outcropping across the country of bills. In state legislatures that are dominated by Republicans, bills... that require new kinds of hurdles that voters have to leap over in order to be able to vote. In 2011, Wisconsin, a red map state, debated a new voter ID law.
The law mandated that those without an acceptable ID, like a state driver's license, would need a birth certificate. or passport, social security number and proof of state residency to vote or register to vote. In short, more hurdles, more bureaucracy make it harder to vote. Clerk will read the bill. Senate Bill 7, related to requiring certain identification in order to vote at a polling place or obtain an absentee ballot, verification of the addresses of electors, absentee voting procedure in certain residential care apartment complexes and adult family homes, identification cards issued by the Department of Transportation...
I got involved when I was very young. My granddad was a Republican, so I said, I'll be a Republican. And he felt it was kind of like this family, so for me I think it was a sense of belonging, a sense of, hey, I'm working for something.
In 2011, Todd Aubaugh was a Republican staffer. He had a front row seat on the passage of Wisconsin's voter ID law. The chair of the Senate Election Committee at the time stood up and kind of hit her finger on the counter and she said, Look! We gotta start thinking about what this is gonna mean if this passes to neighborhoods around Milwaukee and the college campuses.
What Senator Lozik was referring is, hey, if we can suppress the college vote and if we can suppress the minority vote in Milwaukee... gives us a pretty good leg up on any future elections. Today, this is not a voter ID bill. This is voter suppression.
It's voter disenfranchisement. This is voter confusion. This is voter restriction.
This is voter discouragement bill. The term voter suppression was never used in the room, but everybody got the idea of what was being said. Just so you could see on some of these senators the light in their eye, they got it.
Because there are only so many white, straight, old, men left. So the only way to win is to scare the shit out of people and suppress the vote. And I saw it firsthand. I think the vast majority of our citizens want to make sure that their vote is a legal vote and that all the votes out there are legal votes because one fraudulent vote cancels out a legal vote.
And so I went to Facebook and said, this is why I love Republican Party. So there are all kinds of forms of ID that were permissible prior to these voter ID laws. No, these voter ID laws are premised on the idea of creating a form of identification that is going to require voters to go through hoops in order to get it. Now, what kind of voters am I talking about?
The average middle-class voter will say, I have a driver's license, or I have a passport. As many as 90% of registered voters have one of these forms of ID. It's in their pocket, and they think, what's the big deal?
But here's the thing. 90% of people have it. That means that 10% of people don't. If you live in rural places and you have to drive, and these motor vehicle offices are few and far between, and they're not open on the weekend, and they're not open in the evenings, and when you get there, then you've got to have the underlying identification that would allow them to give you the ID that you need to vote.
For example, that you have to have have a birth certificate. Well, some of us have our birth certificate and some of us don't. Some of us wouldn't know how to get it.
So it may cost you $15 to get the birth certificate. So you have to now add the travel cost, the time off work, the $15, all to get the voter ID so that you can exercise this right that the Supreme Court in 1886 said was preservative of all rights, the right to vote. The Supreme Court in 1966 said that a poll tax of $1.50 is unconstitutional. And if And if that's the case, then our view is no one should have to pay 10, 20 or 40 dollars to get a card so that they can vote. If we could put ID easily into the hands of every voter in our country, then I wouldn't have a problem with it.
But the reality is that getting access to government issued ID today requires jumping through a lot of hoops and hurdles. And there's one thing that I think is really worth pointing out, and that's... Having an ID and having an ID to vote in Wisconsin are very different things.
My name is Molly. If you haven't met me, what I can do is get you everything that you need to vote. Vote Riders is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization and really focused primarily on voter ID. We're going to make sure everybody can vote. So we can get you an ID from Wisconsin too because you need one of those when you go and vote.
I grew up in a household where we're encouraged to be civically active and to vote. In the bill, that's all you need to vote. And if somebody needs help exercising their fundamental right to vote, we should all be stopping what we're doing and figuring out what we can do as a society to make that better.
Because this is about you, you know, this is... It's about the voters, you know, and the people who are impacted. I can vote, but, you know, you can't.
And then I just wanted to talk about when you want to go back to the DMV. Oh, they want to get the ID now. Zach is one of the voters that I actually met here at First United Methodist Church doing regular community outreach. I didn't think it would take all this to get an ID to vote. When President Obama got elected, I voted then.
So ever since then, I've been trying to vote in every election. Zach had a pay stub. He had his social security card, but he didn't have a birth certificate. I'm going to let you hold onto these again.
OK. And we went to the DMV, and they still told me I needed my birth certificate. I felt like I had all the right information. They were trying to just have me go around and ring her just for a birth certificate. Voter ID laws impact certain demographics.
They impact low-income voters. They impact voters of color. They impact... first-time voters and voters new to Wisconsin. They impact students.
They impact older voters who no longer have a driver's license. Here they make it very difficult to vote and based on the legislature's own admission and testimony federal court, that doesn't seem to be a mistake. The court heard evidence and concluded that there were 300,000 registered voters in the state of Wisconsin who lacked one of the forms of ID is acceptable under the law.
They're trying to make it where only the rich vote for the rich. I thought it was going to be simple, but it wasn't. The studies are very, very consistent that barriers that you put in front of the ballot box are going to stop some people from voting.
The true objective of voter ID laws in Wisconsin and other states was clear to the politicians passing these laws. It's something we're working on. all over the country because in the states where they do have voter ID laws, you've seen actually elections begin to change towards more conservative candidates. Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.
A lot of Republicans since 1984 in the presidential races have not been able to win in Wisconsin. Why would it be any different? And now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well.
The law is going to kick the Democrats in the butt. If it hurts a bunch of college kids that's too lazy to get up off their boat hunkers and go get a photo ID, so be it. Right, right.
If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that wants the government to give them everything, so be it. And it just so happens that a lot of those people vote Democrat. Gee.
It's astonishing, actually, you know, 50 years plus after the Voting Rights Act was passed that we still have to do voting rights enforcement and protection. I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote.
You know, the Voting Rights Act shook up politics. Within weeks of the Voting Rights Act becoming law, black voters were being registered by the thousands in the South. And within a few years, their voter participation rates were nearly the same as white voters. After 2010, many red-mapped states enacted voter restriction laws. However, the 1965 Voting Rights Act prevented most southern states from following suit.
The act required that those states seek approval or pre-clearance. from the U.S. Department of Justice in order to change their voting laws.
Well, this was a problem, since the South is key to Republican success. So, some of the same conservative groups that fueled Red Map now funded a Supreme Court challenge to the voting rights. Act. The goal?
Do away with the pre-clearance requirement. The case was called Shelby County versus Holder. First, though, a landmark day for the Supreme Court as it struck down a key section of the landmark Voting Rights Act that was created to prevent discrimination at polling places. This is a critical day for Democratic participation in America.
This decision by the court is a game changer and leaves virtually no room for discussion. virtually unprotected minority voters in communities all over this country. When we think something like voting rights is something everybody believes and that progress only goes in one direction, we've seen sudden reverses. We've seen that history can go in the wrong direction.
I mean, the ink wasn't even dry on the opinion. And the next thing you know, the states race to the clerk's offices with legislation that would do harm. The people's right to vote. Soon as the Shelby decision was announced, North Carolina legislative leaders said, now we can go for the full bill.
And the full bill was the monster vote suppression bill. So what do we have? We have 53 pages. 53 pages. About reducing access and subtracting options, making it harder for people to vote.
There's a care that's exercised, right, around the creation of these laws. And in North Carolina, the Republicans asked for information. They identified those ways of voting that were more likely to be accessed by the African-American community, and those were the ones that they outlawed in that omnibus law.
Legislators asked for the demographics. And when the Republican Party received the information that The highest percentage, something like 70% of African Americans, used the first week of early voting. That's what they cut.
Every decision they made, they made it after they knew the impact it would have on African Americans, Latinos, people of color, and poor people. Some Republicans have admitted that, that this was a way to make it a little bit tougher on Democratic voters. For a moment I want to have a grown-up conversation about racism. You see, racism is not just about somebody calling you the n-word. Most modern-day racists are too smart for that anyhow.
Racism is about policy. Racism is about the ability to take your prejudice and implement policy. Since 2008, we've seen an all-out effort.
By extremists in suits and ties who sit in political seats working to a bridge and deny the right to vote. I have 500 years of ministry in my family on my father's side. So when I decided to go to college, I picked a school that had no courses in religion.
Because I didn't want to go into ministry. I wanted to go to law school, and that was my intention. But I had a very spiritual experience in 1984. I accepted the call to ministry. But it's always been from the beginning.
I don't know any way to be Christian without being involved in justice. What Reverend Barber and other... leaders in North Carolina did following the enactment of these vote suppression laws, I think had a big impact in a positive way. They do not want the people to vote. Reverend Barber was really at a time where I think many people were demoralized, really being a strong voice saying, these are fundamental issues that we're going to fight for.
And when you had waves and waves of people at the legislature every week Willing to be arrested Standing by the border I shall not be moved That was a real sign that they weren't going to let voting rights be given up without a fight. Nearly 1,200 people went to jail. I was arrested here about six times. And I like to connect it, because voting rights is not just a black issue. Black and white Republicans and Democrats joined us in getting arrested.
Come on, come on, come on. Don't you want to go? Rosa Nell Eaton, 92 years old. I am appointed today to speak on voting rights. I am fed up.
Thank you so very much. And so we had this ritual that at the end of the rally, everybody that was going in to be arrested would line up. So I saw Miss Eaton going in the line with her walker.
I was raised in the South, so I'm taught to respect my elders and care for them. I said, Miss Rosanell, you're going to have to do this. You can sit this one out. We got it. She said, you back up.
I got this. And she led about 150 people who all got arrested that day. Rosa Nell walked with Dr. King. Dr. King encouraged and inspired her. She's registered thousands of people to vote in her life.
She's faced the Klan. She wasn't always nonviolent because she had seen the Klan burn crosses in front of her yard. I remember her standing at the kitchen counter one day, and all of a sudden I heard her say, I didn't ever think I would have to go through this again before I got in the grave.
And I knew she was dead serious, because she thought certain battles were already fought. These are my attachments. To justify new voter restriction laws like North Carolina's HB 589, politicians needed a cover, a compelling reason to fix an election system that wasn't broken.
This helped give rise to the so-called voter integrity movement, which took off after Obama's 2008 election. If you care about vote fraud, gentlemen, we're fighting it. We could use your help. Hey, if you care about vote fraud, we're fighting it.
We could use your help. If you care about vote fraud, gentlemen, we could use your help. Thank you.
I know a girl who votes eight times and has a million dollars in the bank and. and is on food stamps and gets everything for free. How do you know she votes eight times? Because we know her.
She does. Would you call me later after the election? Before I launched the Voter Integrity Project, I was a...
I was a military officer, retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. I became worried that this is a fragile system that depends on people, people being fair and honest. If you're worried about vote fraud, here's how we're fighting it tomorrow. We could use your help.
They're hiding something, and we're on to them. And that's the only question. It's not how many it's you know, we know they're doing it.
The question is, how big a deal is it? Are they really trying to steal? an entire nation?
Are they really trying to rig elections in so many states that they can determine the outcome of the presidency? And a lot of people are going through life with blinders on or like I used to tell people it's called the toilet paper tube syndrome. You got toilet paper tubes in front of your eyes and all you see is that little bit of world right out in front of you through the toilet paper tubes.
You don't see what all is going on out here. So if you're looking right here and you're not looking for voter fraud, you won't see it. see voter fraud.
Republicans saw an opportunity. They saw an opportunity where they could go into states and build this notion of voter fraud, get people scared about it, scared enough that they would create new laws that would heighten the threshold to qualify to vote and make that qualification so difficult that it would suppress voters and not coincidentally people who would vote against them. It's just a very well organized, well- staffed, well resourced operation that once they get an idea they can spread it. Like a dandelion. All we're trying to do is protect voter integrity.
We ought to protect election integrity. Voter integrity is at stake. How can you be against election integrity? There's a lot of people around the country that use this slogan. We need to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
We want to make it easy to vote. It's very easy to vote. And we also... We also believe it should be hard to cheat. We try to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
Because every time a non-citizen votes... It cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen. Every non-citizen who votes...
Cancels out a legally cast ballot. Every time voter fraud occurs, it cancels out the vote of a lawful citizen and undermines democracy. Can't let that happen.
You didn't have all this talk about fraud until all of a sudden African-Americans and Latinos began to vote in record number. I've called some of the people who advanced these arguments without good evidence, members of the fraudulent fraud. and they go around making claims that voter fraud is rampant, without good evidence to support it.
So, and what's the end game? The end game is passing new restrictive voting laws. I'm Chris Kobach.
In order for we the people to take our country back, we need to have fair elections. elections. I will stop voter fraud in Kansas. We need to require photo ID when people vote. Every state needs a Chris Cobot.
You know our campaign had an undeniable unmistakable message. Stop voter fraud. Could you please define voter fraud?
When people say voter fraud, it's really, it encompasses a large number of potential crimes. You might be a person who's not a U.S. citizen registering. Then there's crimes on election day, which include things like Double voting, voting in more than one state, voting under someone else's name, voting a fictitious identity.
The fictitious identity problem is significant in some states. Actually, voter fraud is substantial in Kansas. You only proved nine cases.
But here you get, so the cases we've prosecuted are just in the last two years using a very small legal staff. We haven't prosecuted all the cases that we could have if we had more attorneys. And we haven't prosecuted all of the many cases that we will never discover. There is no belief in actual voter fraud. What there is is an attempt to restrict voter access that is using the specter of voter fraud, which is hard to prove.
because it doesn't exist, so you can pretend that the reason no one knows about it is because it's been so effective. So you create this boogeyman that can only be disproven by another boogeyman. So I looked into how fraud of various kinds occurs, and in particular I focused in on one kind of voter fraud, pretending to be somebody else when you walk into a polling place.
I started the study in 2000, went through 2014. Out of a billion ballots cast, I found at the time that I was the only person in the country who had ever been a voter. 31 incidents, credible raising a hand. Somebody has pretended to be somebody else at the polling place.
When you dig in, when you actually look incident by incident, a lot of the allegations vanish. Another analysis found that out of 197 million votes cast for federal elections between 2002 and 2005, only 40 voters out of 197 million were indicted for fraud. As a percentage that is 0.00002%. That's not a lot. Most voter fraud allegations are driven by what some might term untruths, others less so.
generously called them the big lie. President Trump again this week suggested in a meeting with senators that thousands of illegal voters were bused from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. I can tell you that this issue of busing voters into New Hampshire is widely known. It's very real.
It's very serious. This morning on this show is not the venue for me to lay out all the evidence. Joining me now is someone who knows New Hampshire politics very, very well, a Republican who ran the state's party over the last decade, Fergus Cullen. You, sir, on Twitter, are offering $1,000 to anyone who can prove what Stephen Miller was claiming.
Do you have any takers? So far, shockingly, no one has been able to come up with any evidence, no pictures of one of these magic buses delivering hundreds of dollars. hundreds if not thousands of people from Massachusetts to New Hampshire.
No one has any evidence at all. You know, the bus is a red meat to some activists. I got a call from somebody going, hey, there's buses. They urged me and begged me to get over here as fast as I could to check it out. But I don't see any buses.
In New Hampshire, I've seen it. I've seen busloads of people. So this is where we keep coming back to.
Based on what I've seen with my own eyes, busloads of people coming in, whether they're illegal, meaning they came into the country illegally, or they're illegal voters. You saw that. Well, I know Josh has seen it. Yeah, and I've seen it too.
Josh, did you see busloads and busloads of people coming in from somewhere else? I wouldn't characterize it as busloads and busloads. Bill, are you sticking with that you've seen busloads or no?
I have seen busloads. Yeah, I guess I can't cite the busloads that I've seen and where I've seen them, but on television, I've seen it. Something significant shifted in America over the last decade or so. And it's pretty simple. It shifted from people thinking there was opportunity to thinking that opportunity is being taken away from them.
That others, you define that however you want, are coming across the borders or from wherever, and they are changing our way of life. One place I can lay that blame is to say, people are stealing elections. Those other people, that other party, those people that are trying to take stuff away from me are doing it illegally. Because people don't want to say it's, you know, people don't want to admit that life changes. Thank you very much.
So we have thousands of people outside trying to get in, but we should start. Do we agree? We're fighting vote fraud if you are interested in that. Of course, we are worried about vote fraud. Yeah, I am too.
We need that. But people will. They'll vote many times. Somebody coming up and voting 15 times for Hillary. He's gonna win unless the only way she can win is if she steals the election.
That's what I'm afraid of too, which is why you need to read that and decide. If you want to fight, vote fraud. If you care about it.
And I will not tell you to vote 15 times. You won't vote 15 times. In 2016, for the first time, a major party presidential candidate, Donald Trump, and his vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, were preaching the gospel of voter fraud and rigged elections.
Do you agree with your running mate, Donald Trump, that... polling places in this country are going to be rigged. In recent years, we've had instances, proven instances of voter fraud, and that's why... The 2016 election offered a perfect opportunity to see how the voter suppression playbook was working in real time.
The first stop, North Carolina. My name is Michael Evan Hiers. I'm a 100% disabled veteran. I'm not married.
I have the time, I have the skills, and have a desire to make sure that every American vote is legally... cast. The Voting Integrity Project is interesting. They've always had a bit of a gadfly, renegade, vigilante voter, broad, you know, crusaders. They claimed that thousands of non-citizens were voting in a state where they would challenge voters at counter- county boards of elections, and then they couldn't prove that really any of those were true.
Is there anyone in the audience today who received a notice that if they wished their name not to be removed from the voter rolls, they should be present? Stand up then and give us your name, please. Randy Burkett.
Jamie, okay, sir. John McGee. Well, North Carolina has a provision where a citizen.
can challenge the right of another citizen to vote. It's been on the books forever. Who else is gonna know who's registered to vote unless another citizen does it?
Some of the laws that wind up being discriminatory today had discriminatory intent when they were first written in the early 1900s as part of the Jim Crow laws. For example, voter purging laws to cleanse the rolls. And this was typically used in the Jim Crow era by whites who were trying to prevent newly enfranchised African Americans from going to jail.
from having access to the ballot box. Michael's methodology involves finding voters that the state identified as inactive. These people have missed two federal elections, so they were listed as inactive.
And I started sending letters to these inactive voters on the Cumberland County voter rolls. The ones that came back. marked by the post office as undeliverable are considered evidence that the voter no longer resides at that address. And Mike challenged those voters. Voter challenge envelopes were marked, Do Not Forward.
If a resident moves in the district... Even across the street, he or she will not receive the notice their registration is being challenged or even know to come to the Board of Elections hearing to contest the challenge. Now let's move on to Mr. John Lamont McKeithen, Jr.
Some people have the knack of spotting anomalies. It's kind of like seeing a lump of coal in a bale of cotton. It'll just pop right out at you. Let me just ask you, what do you want this board to know concerning your place of residence? I do live and have lived at 770. 7790, Stone Point Road.
It said 7790. Okay, this says 7770. Is there a possibility that people got struck from the roads mistakenly because the post office did not appropriately deliver the mail he stole? There is a small, small possibility on that. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give concerning this matter shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
So help me God. All the evidence shows that when someone is purged from the rolls, it's extremely unlikely that they're going to re-register. It's hard to get them to re-register.
And I worry that it will diminish the will to participate in the political process. And the danger is if states use unreliable information to take voters off the rolls, and if they do not give voters adequate notice and an opportunity to contest their removal, Then we could have a situation where hundreds or even thousands of legitimate voters are being taken off of the rolls without their knowledge. To reverse Mike Heyer's and Jay DeLancey's voter purge, as well as purges in other North Carolina counties, Reverend Barber and the NAACP asked the federal court to intervene.
Good morning. Persons were engaging in an attempt to get voters purged, especially African Americans. We are fighting this.
We believe and we hope that the courts will agree with us and we will have an immediate temporary restraining order. Reverend Barber, that guy's made a name for himself. I congratulate him on a well-funded, he has a lot of out-of-state funding money, and he knows how to play that race card better than anybody I've seen, and really since the heyday of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, he has played that race card so well. The NAACP filed a voter suppression lawsuit against the North Carolina Board of Elections, and today they won that case with a federal judge declaring that all voters purged from the voting rolls must be reinstated. The NAACP in North Carolina, they filed a lawsuit in federal court, and actually they went judge shopping.
They found a black female judge that they could influence emotionally. In my opinion, and not so humble opinion at that, Those of us who are the descendants of people who had their cars blown up outside of churches right here in North Carolina when they were inside the church organizing for voting rights, when you come from that kind of lineage, you're not going to allow some loudmouth bigot. to intimidate you. The courts have said, you know, you can't do any of this kind of stuff in the last 90 days. They're going to put all these names back on the roll.
We had a guy who worked for two years and got over 6,000 names removed in Cumberland County. And they claimed that we were targeting blacks. I would be glad to get drug into federal court, because that will give me the opportunity to expose the problems that we have in this state. I get three hots and a cot and full medical care if I go to jail. Except how are you going to put me in jail for following the law?
The next stop, Rock Springs, Texas. Here, a local sheriff seemed to be practicing an old-fashioned but effective voter suppression technique, voter intimidation. The whole idea is to make...
Voting seemed like a dangerous proposition, that it's something that might get you in trouble. And again, what that does is over a period of time, it insulates Republicans against the effect of African American, Hispanic population growth. In Edwards County, Texas, we received reports that the local sheriff who's connected to the militia movement and who prides herself on being, you know, this tough cowgirl sheriff, she had actually engaged personally.
in efforts to intimidate voters. The issue of voter fraud has been very prevalent since I've been here. They're tired of, you see it, you know it, everybody around you knows it.
Why isn't someone doing something about it? Who's 814? Frank, thank you for your meal.
Yeah. The sheriff has alleged people voting incorrectly that have not. She has threatened to investigate people for...
illegal voting that have not. She has someone in jail now. I'm not guilty of nothing because I did the right thing as I went to go do it.
I asked. The gentleman is under arrest for voter fraud and voter impersonation. He's accused of impersonating his grandfather. There's no way a 40-year-old man is going to be mistaken for someone who's almost 100 years old. In the first case, he went to prison for delivery of a controlled substance.
Once he was on parole, he pretty much knew he wasn't supposed to vote. It was just probably catch me if you can or ha ha ha. I don't really know the motive behind it. I guess maybe one day he'll tell us. But at this point, he's just kind of trying to play the victim.
I do feel that it was a mistake that was done by the ladies working the poll and not actually comparing the date of birth. The date is clearly stated on the registered list as 8-9-1915. Now, Manuel was on parole.
He should not have voted, but the election officials shouldn't have allowed it either. He asked if he could vote. That tells me that he didn't know if he could or not.
The intimidation comes in the arrest itself. Him sitting in jail would send a very strong message to a lot of people and intimidate a lot of people as to not to go out and vote. You have leg restraints or? Yeah, I think Sarah wanted him on leg restraints.
The sheriff, she has been diligently trying to root out the corruption ever since she took office over here. She already has. We've had more arrests ever.
Perhaps this might make some of the people who are entertaining the idea of voting ill. and may wake them up and say, hey, they're not gonna let me get away with it if I get caught. This county has the highest rate of voter fraud allegations with the Secretary of State and the Attorney General's Office than any of the other 254 counties in the state. Houston's got 10 million people in it.
We've got 1,100, and we have a higher rate of voter fraud? Please. And there was one additional stop before Election Day 2016. Jefferson City, Missouri, where state legislators were debating a voter ID requirement for the November ballot. In 2006, there were only two states in the country that had what I'd call a strict voter identification requirement. And then all of a sudden, after the 2008 election, we have a wave of laws, unheard of virtually.
that make it harder for people to participate and in almost every instance disproportionately hit precisely these segments of the electorate that are emerging. So it's hard for someone like me to look at that and think this is just a coincidence. House Bill 1631 has been from the very start about integrity in our election process here in Missouri, pure and simple.
House Bill 1631 is the implementation of photo voter ID in the state of Missouri. Implementing procedures to safeguard against fraud helps in that qualified registered voters votes are not diluted by unlawful activity. And what is that?
That is what photo ID is trying to do. So you think protecting against fraud is a bad idea? I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole, gentlemen. We have protections against fraud right now.
Stop trying to confuse people. Gentlemen. sensationalize an issue to back up your point of view. Be intellectually honest about what's going on.
What can you point to? What voter identification fraud can you point to that's happened in the state of Missouri that your bill would address? How do you, without this implementation in effect, gentlemen...
That's what we call a non-responsive answer because you did not respond. That's okay. I understand.
I would implore the body to think real hard about their vote on this and ask them to vote no. Thank you. All those in favor will vote yes. All those opposed will vote no.
Mr. Clerk, please ring the bell and open the board. Mr. Clerk, please close the board and tally the vote. By your vote of 115 yes and 41 no, you have sustained the gentleman's motion.
And so in order to maintain political control, in order to maintain the systems that we have that benefit white people, it means that we have to. as a country and as a system, be able to keep people of color from voting and from their full political power. To say that our intent is to try to disenfranchise any individual in the state of Missouri is is completely absurd.
That is a very serious accusation and very, it's something that I don't take lightly. Your vote is your own, and it's extremely important in a democracy. I'm just trying to put more integrity into our voting process. We're very honored to have the Reverend Cassandra Gould with us.
I wear this shirt. My mom's name was Carrie. My mom was, we, I was born in a little town in Alabama, 47 miles from Selma.
My mother was a voter rights worker. I really used to get sick of my mom. stories about what it meant to be in Selma and how she marched and how she was there before Dr. King.
Mom, I don't want to hear about Selma anymore. I mean we got it made now. We can actually go and vote.
So I thought, so I thought. Voter restriction laws are designed to take us back to the time that my mother was fighting in Selma. It's dancing on the grave of civil rights workers who gave their lives so that people could vote.
It is not just about photo ID. That is code word for let's cut out some citizens. And who are we talking about?
Who are the legislators to get to decide who gets to have a right that they already have? Let's vote no on Amendment 6. So you voted yes on Amendment 6? Oh, you voted no.
Okay, great. Yeah. In the summer of 2016, while Missouri mulled the pros and cons of voter ID, federal courts struck down or modified a number of the more restrictive voting laws passed after 2011. In another important...
story tonight. North Carolina's law requiring voters to show photo ID was thrown out by a federal court that said the law was designed to bar black Americans from the polls. This is the third time this month that similar law The other laws were struck down, the others in Texas and Wisconsin. These court decisions frustrated advocates of voter suppression legislation.
The next play would need to include changing the federal courts, but that would have to wait for another day. This is a Tuesday morning, but not just any Tuesday morning. Election Day. Good morning America! Election Day 2016. Election Day officially starts right now.
So who did you vote for? Tough decision. If Hillary wins, I'm done probably. I don't know what will happen, but it scares the crap out of me.
Because if she wins, I'm afraid I'll be hunted down like a dog. Okay, it took it. Thank you, ma'am, appreciate you coming.
Morning, my name's Michael Hiers. Michael Hiers, it's a pleasure to meet you. Well, you may not think so when you go back and research my name, but- I'm the fellow that's been following the voter challenges. Let's face it, there are unscrupulous people out there, and they could go to the polls and impersonate, and impersonate somebody.
I'll tell you what, if I could get more people of all, I don't hate to say it, race because we're all human race but more ethnic backgrounds involved in this that way people wouldn't be taking pot shots at me the naacp is hot as a pistol at me right now claiming i'm suppressing the black vote well i think you would they're accusing me of targeting minorities okay they're trying to throw mud on the wall and trying to get it to stick But if you're interested in getting involved, look up voterintegrityproject.com. I will remember that. Right now I have to go on note for work.
Okay. Well, have a good day. Right now we're delivering election equipment. I wonder if we can put that tabulator right here.
Ready. We can't let it drop. Sit down.
Hey. How's everything going? Good.
You on top? I don't know. Wherever God tells me to do, that's all it's going to be. What's the first president I voted for?
Al Gore. See how that turns out, right? You have your...
I got my documents. Alright. Voting with my son. Oh, yeah. First time, right?
Good stuff. What we're going to try and do is have data collectors sitting there passively collecting data on license plate numbers, see if we can figure out which people, if any, are going from voting location to voting location. The illegitimate reason would be if someone is what we call a serial voter and going from location A to B to C, using a different name at each one, and what we want to know is how prevalent is this?
You seen any vote fraud? Not yet. Gotta take this.
Hey, Jim. Have you seen any fraud, heard of any fraud? No, we have not.
No, with only six data collectors, the odds of getting someone who showed up at two locations are slim and none. What would you say to Jayden Lancy and Mike Hives? Basically, if you want to challenge me, you know, please contact me first. A challenge is a challenge.
And if I challenge you to a chess match, I need you to play with me. You know, at least come back, you know, show me what you got. So, you know.
Missouri becomes a voter photo ID state with Amendment 6 passing with 64% of the vote. It looks like it's going to be a loss for us, and it's really a loss for the people. I believe that the right to vote is sacred, so I'm really grieved in my spirit right now. Not a lot has turned around in Missouri in the last 40 years, except in the wrong direction.
Elliott, Republican, 61.8% of the votes. John Harris, 38% of the votes. Just blessed, really. How's Trump doing? Good?
Good. Awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States, Donald Trump. Thank you.
It's been an honor. God bless. Thank God. President-elect Trump has been quite active on Twitter.
And he said, in addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. The president-elect is absolutely correct when he says the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the popular vote margin between him and Hillary Clinton. Our next guest, Greg Phillips, first tweeted the claim that 3 million people voted illegally.
Do you know and can you prove right now that 3 million... voted illegally? Yes.
Do you have the proof? Yes. Will you provide it?
Yes. Can I have it? No. If you look at voter registration, you look at the dead people that are registered to vote, you're going to find, and we're going to do an investigation on it...
But three to five million illegal votes? Well, we're going to find out, but it could very well be that much. After the 2016 general election, I called all 50 secretaries of state, managed to reach 49 of them, and never found more than one or two.
at tops three or four suspected instances of fraud. Not proven, but suspected or alleged. Many states had none at all. Recall that what curtailed widespread voter suppression in the 2016 elections were rulings by federal courts overturning or amending many of the new voter restriction laws.
And now, with a Republican Senate and White House, Republicans could nominate and confirm their own judges. A new day was coming. welcome everyone especially the nominees and their families to today's nominations hearing We'll hear from four nominees to district courts.
President Trump has set a record for the most number of judges named to the courts of any first-year president ever in American history. But think of 145 district judges. That's world-changing, country-changing, USA-changing. And we have unbelievably talented, smart, great people being put in those slots. And so, Whatever protection against voter suppression is coming from the courts is going to be eroded by the impact of this vast wave of Trump judges.
And the Democrats are decades behind Republicans in terms of recruiting and thinking about how to control the judiciary. I mean, the Federalist Society in many ways is writing the lists of judges for the Trump administration to pick from. The Federalist Society is the creation of billionaire right-wing funders like the Kochs. They helped get it off the ground in the first place.
Republicans have found a formula that's allowed them to win, even though the demographics of the country are changing. We can reassure ourselves that those strategies can only work for so long, but the question is for how long? And what if so long is a very, very long time? The voter suppression playbook is complete. It's part and parcel of the same malevolent and dark strategy.
Cut a few voters here, a few voters there. Discourage others from even taking the time to cast a ballot. In short, undermine the sacred American principle of one person, one vote. So just to finish up, you see what's happening?
The process is rigged. This whole election is being rigged. As Donald Trump has said so many times, the elections are rigged, but in a much different way than he claims.
They're rigged to stem the rising demographic tide of non-white voters and to discourage younger voters. Clearly the voter suppression playbook is working all too well. We need all of our institutions of power to protect the right to vote. We need the legislature to protect the right to vote, we need the executive protect the right to vote, and we need the courts to protect the right to vote.
When you deprive people of the right to vote, the vote being the very fiber of this wonderful quilt we call democracy, when you begin to tear the threads away, saying this person can't vote, that person can't vote, that person can't vote, the next thing you know, you will not have a democracy. I think our founding fathers were brilliant, and I think they put in guardrails of democracy to keep the crazy out. Now I think we're being sorely tested, and we're going to see how strong those guardrails are. Because they've never been tested like this.
But that's the nature of democracy, that it does not, it's not static. It doesn't just stay free and open because it's a democracy. It's because every day you fight to keep it open.
Every day you have to put your shoulder to it. We have to dream about the democracy we want to have. We have to say whose side are you on in this fight for a robust democracy. People don't understand why it's so important.
That this experiment we call the United States continues. Then you say, well it's always been this way in my life, so I'm sure America is going to continue the same way. Well, are you? The right to vote isn't partisan. It is an important part, and it's in fact a bedrock part of our democracy, that people own the agency to participate in their government.
And until we can say without doubt, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Until that means exactly what it says, we are still working toward becoming a more perfect union. If you want to know more about what you can do to defend America's democracy, go to our website, riggedthefilm.com. I'm Jeffrey Wright.
Thanks for watching. Music