2020: The Good, the Bad, and the Dangerous
Topics Discussed
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Episode Resources
Jan. 6 Was Worse Than We Knew (The New York Times)
Trump lawyer's memo on six-step plan for Pence to overturn the election (CNN Politics)
Transcript
Beth [00:00:00] If the elections work, then you are going to have people of very diverse perspectives in Congress debating these spending bills, and we should be debating these spending bills. I am not at all down in the dumps. I loved what President Biden said about how everybody's frustrated. That's what being in government is.
Sarah [00:00:17] I know I did too. I loved that so much.
Beth [00:00:18] I loved that and I loved it when somebody said, you know, are you going to get that done by October 31st? And he was like, Who cares when it gets done? The point is that it gets done. And I thought this is the healthy perspective that we have been lacking in a lot of these conversations about how legislation unfolds.
Sarah [00:00:42] This is Sarah.
Beth [00:00:43] And Beth.
Sarah [00:00:44] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.
Beth [00:00:46] The home of grace-filled political conversations.
Sarah [00:01:09] Welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics. We are almost nine months out from the events on January 6th, and thanks to the congressional hearings, criminal investigations and investigative reporting, we're learning more and more about how close we came to a coup. We're going to process that in the first segment of our show today. And in our main segment, we're going to talk about voter accessibility, including sharing some of our conversation with the wonderful Michelle Bishop, who advocates for disability voting rights. And finally, we're going to talk about what's on her mind outside politics.
Beth [00:01:37] Before we get started, we have so appreciated your responses to our holiday gift guide, including a very lively discussion of hiring someone to clean your house on Instagram that followed that episode. If you have not had a chance to peruse it, we'll put the link here again in the show notes. You will find a very wide range of ideas that we hope are helpful to you.
Sarah [00:02:06] Over the weekend, the New York Times editorial board published an op-ed entitled "January 6th Was Worse Than We Knew" where they argued for reforms to the Electoral Count Act. Now, why are we talking about the Electoral Count Act? Well, that is the law that's been in the spotlight since the reporting of Bob Woodward and Robert Costa for their book Peril revealed the existence of a two-page memo written by John Eastman, a conservative lawyer trying to persuade then Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the Constitution and throw out the 2020 election results on January 6th, which he did not do. Before we get into the Electoral Count Act, Beth. I just want to say out loud, it is frustrating to have this conversation of like, is our democracy in danger? Do we need to act now knowing that the information we're responding to was for a book that the authors seemingly have known about for months and this information? You know what I mean?
Beth [00:02:59] And they got the information from other people. Lots of them, right? I think that has been the hardest thing about everything related to the Trump administration. The way you get the information makes you feel kind of gross about having it and reminds you constantly that it wasn't just one person, it was a lot of people. I thought the reporting about Mike Pence, his conversation with Dan Quayle was really fascinating, but that reminded me again how many people it wasn't just the inner circle. Lots and lots of people understood how serious this moment was.
Sarah [00:03:31] So if you're Dan Quayle, you think, Well, I told him not to, and he didn't. So I don't need to alert anyone to how close we came to subverting the voters of Arizona and in several other states that they were arguing we should just throw the votes out for.
Beth [00:03:47] I don't know how you make that ethical calculus, especially if you're Dan Quayle for a number of reasons. But it is troubling to me. You know this op-ed's headline just hit me right where I am, because I think I think my sense of how serious that event was keeps escalating. Even as for a good swath of the American public, their sense of how serious it was keeps fading right that there is more and more sort of there was just a protest. No big deal. And I get more alarmed the more I learn.
Sarah [00:04:23] Yeah, yeah. I think that's what's so hard is this information is coming at different levels, right? So we're learning more from the criminal investigations about the people on the ground, like how violent it was. We're learning more from the Capitol Police officers about what they were facing at the time. And so. That aspect of realizing like who the people were that were actually composing the crowds of January 6th is really difficult to take in, you know, even David French in one of his editorials was talking about like, we're learning, well, these were just regular quote-unquote everyday middle class people. I'm not sure I totally agree with that, but I think that's hard. I think learning about the sort of coordinated, organized efforts of the Proud Boys and some of the groups. I think understanding that these groups are being investigated and and prosecuted and still maintaining membership is hard to take in. That they're like continuing. They're still strong, basically is hard to take in. But then we have this whole other level of information where we're learning about sort of the elite people within the Trump administration and the people surrounding them, how much they were involved. And I don't think we know all that yet. I think we're going to learn a lot more from these subpoenas coming from Congress about the level of which they were organizing with the people on January six, how much they knew how much they were trying. But I mean, look, there's no getting around this two page memo where they were arguing to throw out the elections and give the election itself to Trump is terrifying. And we've talked about this on Patreon. Like, how much do you talk about it? Because it does seem like it's incredibly important, but there's also this moment and battle within anything related to the Trump administration is particularly considering that we all know he wants to run again in 2024. Like, how much air do we give this? Do we say the wall held the system held and that's what matters? Or do we say? No, we're not going to we're not going to give any more press to him because that's the problem. He gets too much press, right? It's just it's hard.
Beth [00:06:19] I think what we learn in this investigation will be hard. What do you do if you learn that members of Congress were explicitly coordinating with the Jan. six rally goers, especially those who became violent? What do you do when you're elected officials have participated in something that I think does violate their constitutional oath, but they're going to argue all day that they were defending their constitutional oath? Just this is a really messy situation. And that's why I think the New York Times editorial board is correct to suggest some legislative reform that makes clearer how we conduct this aspect of the presidential transition.
Sarah [00:06:56] Well, because I think what I appreciated about this is it's starting to piece apart the politics versus the process, because there are aspects of the politics, no matter how offensive you find them, no matter how dangerous you find them to our democracy, that at the end of the day they are political. And the answer is political. And I think that's probably what we're going to bump up against a lot when we find out the involvement of members of Congress. But then there's part of the process that is procedural and therefore essentially legislative. And so then the solution needs to be procedural or legislative, and that's what they're getting that they're specifically talking about the Electoral Count Act. Now, this was passed over 130 years ago as a response to another truly terrible electoral crisis, with the election of Rutherford Hayes over Samuel Tilden, the Democrat who won the popular vote. This is the moment where they basically said, Well, if you withdraw from the troops from the South and basically end reconstruction will roll over on the fact that our guy won the popular vote. OK, so they passed the Electoral Count Act, and it's just it's just crappy. Let's just thought the New York Times says it much nicer and fancier.
Beth [00:08:08] Filled with ambiguity.
Sarah [00:08:09] Right? That what they mean is it's crappy and badly written. I think that's fair, right?
Beth [00:08:14] And so they suggest some reforms to it. And these are reforms that people I listen to like from the Bulwark and other outlets have been talking about for a while. They say that you need to make the vice president's role on Jan. six or the date on which the votes are certified very clear. That this is a ministerial function, not a decision making function, that the vice president is not ruling on anything. The Vice President is opening envelopes and announcing what the papers inside them say, and that's it.
Sarah [00:08:47] Because that's what that two page memo was trying to get Pence to do is to basically rule some of these don't count. And so I'm here, and now I can say we're going to use the other counts, all the blessings to Mike Pence. How do you feel about Mike Pence? The more we learn about this? That's a question I have for you.
Beth [00:09:04] I don't know how I feel about Mike Pence. I am glad that he in this moment did the right thing.
Sarah [00:09:11] That's and it's a big moment. It is a very big moment. There's the enneagram 1 in me that's like, Man, this was the moment and he did the right thing. And there is a part of me that's like, maybe I've watched too many movies, but like at the pivotal moment when you do the right thing, are there too many accolades, even if you did everything wrong up until that point? I don't know.
Beth [00:09:31] Oh, I don't think there are too many accolades for this right moment. I just don't have a sense of Mike Pence as hero or a villain. I think he is a very tragic figure, and I think the more we learn about Mike Pence as time goes on, the more tragic that family is going to seem to us. I'm interested in. I don't need to rehabilitate him in any way, though, to say he did the right thing in this moment and listen, I think it would have been easier for him to do the wrong thing in this moment. I think that the the past five years are littered with people who talk to themselves into doing the wrong thing, and it would have been easy for Mike Pence to talk himself into doing the wrong thing here. And so I do give him so much respect and appreciation for doing the right thing.
Sarah [00:10:18] Well, and I guess that's what I want. I just want it to be abundantly clear and maybe I mean abundantly clear, particularly coming from the left that like, we respect him for doing the right thing because what I don't want is the next person to reach that pinnacle and say, Well, Mike Pence did the right thing and a lot of good it did him. They still acted like he was a villain. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to just enough of a narrative to be reminded of like he did the right thing. We should say that.
Beth [00:10:44] I think that there is a trend in politics where your political opponent who occasionally does the right thing gets villainized even more than the people you disagree with all the time. I think that's true about Joe Manchin. For Republicans, they think he occasionally does the right thing. So when he doesn't, he's the worst. I think it's true for Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, right? Because they occasionally do what you think is the right thing. When they don't, you think they're the worst. And so with Mike Pence, I think and Mitt Romney, it falls into this category, right? With Mike Pence. I think that there is a fat lot of good that people are going to say about him having stepped up to do the right thing for both his voters and people on the left. I think the best thing for Mike Pence to just sit in having done the right thing would be to back all the way out of politics now. I think this is his George W. Bush moment, like just recede from the stage and go think on your life.
Sarah [00:11:43] Yeah, but what's he going to do? He's got to pay his bills, man. I know he's not like independently wealthy.
Beth [00:11:48] I know it's tough. But someone will hire Mike Pence to do something nonpolitical. I'm sure of it, and I think that that would be the best option for him. I recognize, as I'm saying, he did the right thing when it would have been easier to do the wrong thing, and I give him all the respect for that. That doing the right thing was doing the absolute bare minimum that he could have done here, right? This this shouldn't be a difficult ethical call. It shouldn't be a difficult ethical call. But as you understand the pressure surrounding this situation and the incentives built in for him, it was a really difficult call, I'm sure.
Sarah [00:12:23] Yeah. OK, back to the reforms. So the Times also recommends amending the Electoral Vote Count Act to allow states more time to arrive at their final count so that any disputes have time to be resolved. I struggled with this one because I'm not looking to stretch this process out any longer than it already is, which seems to be part of the problem. I mean, I understand this recommendation with regard to this piece of legislation, but I think what this editorial was missing for me is the the macro assessment that the entire process is messed up, not just the electoral vote count suggestions, if there's a dispute, but how long our transition is generally.
Beth [00:13:02] I totally agree that the transition is too long generally. I also think this particular suggestion shows you how much it ties the hands of the federal government that states are in charge of the vote-counting process. Because to me, the best reforms here come at the state level and they take the shape of things like as soon as people start voting absentee, you can start calculating those ballots. You know, embargo the results keep it quiet, whatever, but you can start processing as soon as they come in so that you're not counting all the all the ballots that were cast on Election Day and then getting to all the early voting and absentee ballots. But Congress can't make that change. But this and this is what Congress could do.
Sarah [00:13:47] Well, it just to me so often I feel like we have conversations in America where I just want to say, do you know how many? How much are million is? Do you understand how difficult it is to do something times a million, much less times 10 million or 300 million? I think about this all the time with like stocking shelves with our conversation about supply chain, with our conversation about voting. Everybody's like, it's so simple. Have you ever tried to do something a million times? There's nothing simple about it. Like, and I just think we lose sight of how big our country is and how big when we try to do something all together that process is and I think voting is a perfect like reflection of this, we talk about it and we want to be like, what Dixville Notch like? And there's a box and a piece of paper in like, that's not where we're at anymore on almost anything America. And I wish we could just come to Jesus about that.
Beth [00:14:36] They also want to restrict the failed election provision to natural disasters or terrorist attacks. And even then, that failed election idea should be available only if there is no realistic way of conducting the election. The key point is that a close election, even a disputed one, is not a failed election. I think just in terms of vocabulary we could use this.
Sarah [00:14:57] Yes. Yeah, I thought that was really good. I thought that was a really good way to talk about it. And again, we don't spend enough time celebrating the fact that, like we do get elections out post natural disasters, there is very little that slows down our electoral process. So using the word failed is something that should happen very rarely.
Beth [00:15:15] And it's good to call back to you that Rutherford B. Hayes election just to remind us that we've had disputed elections for a very long time, we've had close elections.
Sarah [00:15:23] That one dang near failed.
Beth [00:15:24] Yeah, yes. And and we carry on anyway. And having our law reflect that, I think is really important.
Sarah [00:15:30] And then lastly, they say that any objection to a state's electoral vote should have to clear a higher bar than it's currently set out in the legislation now. Right now, you just need a member of each chamber. And so once that's why that was such a big deal. Once we had a senator willing to step up and say, Oh yeah, I'll challenge them because I thought the Senate was like, Well, they're not going to do that, Mitch says. Don't do it. And then the second we had one, then it was a problem. And The Times is arguing that, well, the ground should be much higher than that. It should be like one quarter or more of each body. So that's not just one person can turn the tide because again, in a political. When a political decision can gum up this electoral process we have a problem. And when you give that sort of stage, like when one member of a body can take the stage and gum up the process, well, then you've created a political liability, right? You're like politics has created a liability in this process because you're giving them the stage. It takes only one person to take the stage in a moment like that. And so I think that's what we saw that was like they made a political calculus. And so we need the legislative process to protect against that.
Beth [00:16:37] Sarah, this is another place where I'd like to take a slight detour and ask you how you feel about one person being able to gum up anything in Congress. I just think the unanimous consent era needs to end.
Sarah [00:16:48] Stop it because again, that's it. It's it back to the size of the size and the issue of our country and the complexity of the world in which we live in. That was real cute in the constitutional convention. We ain't there no more like we have moved on everybody. We're too big and complicated for stuff like that.
Beth [00:17:05] The editorial also asked how to ensure that frivolous objections are rejected, but legitimate ones get a hearing. And one approach, it suggests, is a panel of federal judges in every state to hear challenges to election validity or accuracy. If the judges determined that the results are invalid, they would lay out their findings in writing to prevent states from certifying their results. I don't. This is the one piece that I felt uncertain about because I think that our federal courts worked during this election process.
Sarah [00:17:39] Why do we need that? it sounds like that's what happens.
Beth [00:17:41] Exactly. And I and I worry that the more we create in terms of explicit structure to navigate election challenges, the more election challenges will be invited by it. Yeah, I think right now and you see the federal courts aren't done with the 2020 election. Some of those challenges have proceeded into the sanction stage, where lawyers who brought frivolous challenges are having to face the consequences of bringing challenges into court that didn't belong there. And I think that part of the process is really important. So I don't I don't love this idea, but the rest I am on board for.
Sarah [00:18:16] Well, I couldn't wait to ask you what you thought about the final recommendation, which is Democrats should push this through. And if they have to eliminate the filibuster to do it, that's what they should do.
Beth [00:18:26] I think that. The Electoral Count Act being modified is more important than just about anything happening on voting rights right now. Because all of the other reforms don't matter if you can ultimately sort of hijack the United States Congress via the vice president. So I think this is the top of the list. And I do think that securing elections and securing American's confidence in elections, which our whole system rests on is important enough to do via majority vote in a Senate where it doesn't seem like we can get to 60 around anything that has so many political ramifications.
Sarah [00:19:10] Yeah, yeah. I feel like if we've learned anything over the weekend and the continued conversations around both the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation is that. What I mean, lots of people have already been advocating for, which is the filibuster has got to go. It's got to go. It's not working anymore. How can anybody look at this and think it's really working, doing its job?
Beth [00:19:33] And look, I am more hesitant about eliminating the filibuster on big spending bills than something like electoral reform. Yeah, because if the elections work. Then you are going to have people of very diverse perspectives in Congress debating these spending bills, and we should be debating these spending bills. I am not at all down in the dumps. I loved what President Biden said about how everybody's frustrated. That's what being in government is.
Sarah [00:20:01] I know I did too. I loved that so much.
Beth [00:20:03] I loved that, and I loved it when somebody said, you know, are you going to get that done by October 31st? And he was like, Who cares when it gets done? The point is that it gets done. And I thought, this is the healthy perspective that we have been lacking in a lot of these conversations about how legislation unfolds. So I am not sure about some of those reforms around those spending packages because it is I mean, to me, it's just like a really big deal to look at the kinds of programs that are being rolled out, even those that I agree with. I think they should be heartily debated. I do not like things going through reconciliation when they don't have to, but around election stuff. I think that you just need the majority to do to do what needs to be done here, especially knowing that you have built-in protection against too much federal overreach in the form of states ultimately having so much control and states and counties having so much control over the way that elections are run.
Sarah [00:21:01] I think overall, I just appreciated the way this conversation was framed as this is an issue. It's important here's a legislative solution because I am frustrated with a conversation that's like five-alarm fire. Democracy is failing. I don't know where we're supposed to go from there. And that's what's frustrating to me. Like, I'm tired of that conversation because it becomes background noise. I mean, and that's what I'm worried about with the ongoing investigations and hearings about Jan. six is I don't want it to become background noise because I do think it's important. But you can emphasize something's important without making it an existential crisis.
Beth [00:21:35] And I am interested in what comes out of the hearings on Jan. six, because I do think it is going to frame up for us some of the most difficult questions about what it means to be a member of Congress that we've wrestled with in my adult life. And I think that is a really important conversation worth having and worth wrestling through, even if it results in some answers that I don't like. I have a moment every once in a while when I remember that people like Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene were duly elected by their constituents. You know, their their districts elected them. Now we can talk about the way districts are drawn. And, you know, a hundred pieces of how that happens. But I have to acknowledge that in any system, some parts of the country are going to send people to Congress that I don't like. You know, my senators, I do not think are doing a very good job. They were duly elected in this state and have majority support among voters in my state. And that's there isn't a fix for that and there shouldn't be. So how do you get the value of all of that disagreement in a system where you know that the process is going to be fairly administered? Yeah, consistently.
Sarah [00:22:49] Before we move on, I wanted to take a quick moment and give a shout out of solidarity to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. Olivia, who is a member of that union, reached out to us because that union has been trying to reach an agreement with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers. These are the crews at these film sets, at the TV sets. They're being asked to work insane hours, 14 hour days, work through the weekends, no lunch, and they voted to authorize a strike. And I know we have members of that union in our audience. I think they deserve better treatment. And so I just wanted to give a shout out of solidarity and bring attention to this issue. Thanks for reaching out, Olivia and solidarity for all the members of that union. Next up, we're sharing our conversation with Michelle Bishop about voter accessibility.
[00:23:53] We want to spend some time today thinking about voter ID laws and other obstacles to voting. This issue is really, really complicated, in part because rules vary by state. In just the past few weeks, we've seen lots of voter ID movement. We have a Republican-led effort underway in Michigan to propose new voter ID rules. In Pennsylvania, the Legislature is advancing voting reform measures and working toward a constitutional amendment requiring valid ID in order to vote. A North Carolina court struck down a 2018 voter ID law, saying that the law targeted black voters with almost surgical precision. We have Texas Senator Ted Cruz making headlines in a hearing during an exchange with an expert witness for Anita Tolson about voter I.D. laws and racism. And we have congressional Democrats leading the charge on bills that would set some standards for voting in federal elections.
Beth [00:24:43] It's hard to think of a topic that's more important than voting, so we wanted to give this issue some time today, and one of our guides in this conversation is Michelle Bishop.
Michelle Bishop [00:24:53] My name is Michelle Bishop, and I am the voter access and engagement manager at an organization called the National Disability Rights Network. We're based in Washington, D.C., but we're actually a national membership association for a network of organizations called the protection and advocacy organizations. They're federally mandated. So that means there's one in every state, one in D.C., one in each of the five U.S. territories, and a bonus 57th in the Southwest that represents Native Americans with disabilities. So wherever you are listening from today, we have an organization in your state or territory that exists just to protect the civil and human rights of people with disabilities. And I happen to be the person who has the honor of leading our work around voting rights and access to the vote for people with disabilities.
Sarah [00:25:39] Michelle's work, like all disability advocacy, is complicated because disabilities are complicated. There isn't one way to be disabled. Some people are permanently disabled. Some people are temporarily disabled. So there isn't one policy proposal that will make voting more accessible for everyone.
Michelle Bishop [00:25:54] Unless you are a person with a disability or you work in this world or you have a close loved one with a disability, a lot of people don't think of disability and don't necessarily know a lot about it. And people with disabilities, first of all, we're a huge community. The census would tell you we're probably up to 20 percent of the population the CDC or Pew Research Center would tell you we're more like 25 percent. So we're talking one in five to one in four Americans are a person with a disability. When we talk about voters, we're one-sixth of all eligible American voters. So it's a huge population and we're so diverse. We're so different on many, many levels. Disability is a really broad descriptor, and no disability is the same. You know what constitutes a barrier for someone who's blind or low vision isn't the same for someone who's deaf and hard of hearing isn't the same for someone who uses a wheelchair. And even, you know, two people who have the same disability don't experience it the same way. So we're so big, so diverse. We also disability really doesn't discriminate. Disability cross cuts, racial lines, religious lines, socioeconomic lines, gender lines, sexual orientation. We are represented among every other community and we're really realistically the only community you could join at any time. Whether or not you choose to because people acquire disabilities, especially as they age. So we're a much bigger community than most people realize in a much more diverse community than people realize. So we talk a lot to elections administrators and we talk a lot to lawmakers at the state and the federal level who don't necessarily have a full understanding of who our community is and that a lot of these problems there were solving. But they're not easily solvable and we haven't fixed them yet. This isn't a done, a done issue.
Beth [00:27:51] We know that many of the laws being proposed across the country right now are reactions to the pandemic. The 2020 election changed the opportunity to vote in so many parts of the country. And these changes seemed new to many of us. But Michelle and her colleagues have been advocating for some of what we saw in 2020 for years.
Michelle Bishop [00:28:09] A lot of the changes that we saw in 2020 were things that would always have benefitted voters with disabilities. And so it's it's it's both. It's being so happy that it's finally being leveraged and people finally see a value to it. But also being so frustrated that no one made those things a priority before so that all voters would be able to vote in. This happens to us a lot. You know, we saw a lot of expansion of vote by mail in 2020 that is beneficial to so many people with disabilities. But it wasn't something anyone was prioritizing before there was a pandemic, and it became everyone's problem. We've even seen Major Cities and election jurisdictions that say we are going to make our polling places 100 percent accessible, 100 percent compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which, first of all, they're already legally required to be and the fact that so many of them aren't as a huge problem. But some of those jurisdictions don't even do it for voters with disabilities. They did it because they bought new voting equipment that's too heavy to lift, and now they need a ramp to roll it into the polling places. And so we end up in this position a lot where it's like this kind of terrible. I wish they would have done it for us, but I'm not in a position to turn it down, either. So it's always a little bit of joy and a little bit of frustration, but sometimes that's just the nature of our work.
Sarah [00:29:24] Michelle's description of how these changes rolled out so quickly really struck us like the rant that went in just because of new equipment. A lot of the way we vote arises kind of randomly and sporadically and depends entirely on the state and sometimes the county where you vote.
Michelle Bishop [00:29:41] So much of the decisions about how elections are run or at the county level even and so, so much of how much access you have to the vote is determined by your state or by your county. And it's difficult. There are some states and some localities that I think try really hard and do an amazing job in some where we just like to see more effort, I think, and more willingness to talk to people with disabilities and open up their process and make their elections more accessible. So I think for a long time, I've been very interested in seeing more more federal oversight of elections, and I think we've seen some really important pieces of legislation that speak to elections. The Americans with Disabilities Act says that elections need to be accessible in addition to, you know, basically everything else. The Help America Vote Act guarantees everyone in the country the right to a vote that is private and independent, something so many people with disabilities go without. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had so many incredibly important provisions, and some of them are even about people with disabilities. That's the law that says you have the right to choose who comes and assist you to vote. You can pick someone you trust if you need an assistant. So there are so many things that I would love to see come out of Congress. But right now we're looking at the For the People Act potentially coming out of Congress, which is probably 95 percent amazing provisions that I think would be really helpful for voters with disabilities and five percent some stuff that we think makes our elections more secure. That will absolutely make our elections less accessible. So it's a bit of a double-edged sword. Who should be at the wheel when it comes to people with disabilities? We just don't have enough champions in the states or in Congress.
Beth [00:31:34] When we ask listeners about their experiences with voter ID laws, we heard from Samantha, who moved to Virginia from Ohio back in the spring. She had to schedule an appointment with the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a new ID because of COVID. And the earliest appointment she was able to get was going to be a full month after Virginia's elections. So since she didn't have a driver's license yet, she couldn't register to vote online and she planned to go into the Office of Elections with all the paperwork she would need to get a driver's license to see if they would register her to vote. When she wrote to us, she was making that plan and realizing that the Office of Elections closes at 4:30 every day and is closed on weekends. So getting there it was going to be tough.
Sarah [00:32:19] We also heard from Kat, who is an American living abroad, and she shared a bit with us about her experience voting overseas.
Cat [00:32:26] Hi, my name is Kat. I live overseas and so we have had the joy of figuring out absentee voting and some of my fellow expat friends who are from different states are able to, you know, email in a ballot, things like that. But from the great state of Texas, we have to print ours out and then take it in person to the American embassy or consulate in our city. And even being allowed to step foot onto those premises is complicated. And last time I almost didn't get to vote because my local forms of ID, my passport, my local visa were at a local government office for a visa renewal process, and they wouldn't take my Texas driver's license as a form of ID. So at the last minute, we figured out another one that I had that was from this government, so I was allowed to go deliver my ballot. But it is such a complicated process. I know the first year we lived overseas, we didn't submit our ballots, we printed them out, we filled them out and then we couldn't figure out how to send them in. So we didn't. So it's complicated even from afar, from out of the country.
Beth [00:33:26] So we have these problems and places where states are pretty clearly trying to make it harder to vote. The House of Representatives has twice passed the For the People Act, which aims to make voting more accessible. It's not getting through the Senate, so Senate Democrats are trying to negotiate compromise legislation with some Republican colleagues. But For the People Act is what we have out there right now, and we asked Michelle about that act. Her response gave us a lot to think about.
Michelle Bishop [00:33:54] So the For The People Act is clearly a very well-intended piece of legislation that's meant to make elections work for everyone, but it's also an 800-page bill that has a lot of stuff in it. And if you sit down and read all the way through, I agree you're going to see something in there that gives you pause. And for people with disabilities, there is an explicit requirement that every voter, whether or not they vote at a polling place or vote by mail or during early voting or on Election Day or however they vote, is going to have to mark a piece of paper to vote. And for many people with disabilities, that's never going to be something that's accessible to them. We have those really cool touch screen machines that you see in a lot of polling places now that help you do that, but they're not fully accessible. They don't work for all voters. Their predecessor machines that didn't require you to insert a ballot were more accessible. I talked in 2020 about voters having the option to get their ballot electronically. Many of them were also able to market and return it that way. You know, download it as a PDF and email it back, something like that. Taking the paper out of the process is what makes it accessible for so many people. Technology is changing the lives of people with disabilities all around, and I wish we would make a concerted effort to harness technology and use it to the best of our ability and know it scares some people that it could be unsafe. It could be insecure. I wish we had more conversations about how to make it secure and less conversations about running backwards towards the past and expecting everyone to be able to pick up a pen or pencil and mark a piece of paper when that's never been something that's accessible to everyone and it never will be. So we'd love to see something in those little less restrictive. Maybe create pilot projects to develop more accessible solutions, maybe allow people who are covered by the ADA. And also, I'd say you will have our military and overseas voters to leverage some of those other technology options, even if we don't open up to everyone. Just to ensure that people who need it most will have access to the vote. We think it's a great bill. We think there's a lot of good stuff in there. We want to see it be an even stronger bill and really work for everyone.
Sarah [00:36:12] It seems like everyone has a hot take about voting and voter ID laws and voter legislation these days. But most of those heartaches don't take into account issues like how can someone who is unable to use a pencil cast a secure ballot?
Beth [00:36:27] It was so helpful to me to talk with Michelle because I think we've gotten entrenched and sort of. Cable news talking points about voter ID laws where we're discussing. You either favor security or you want everyone to vote without any sort of ID, and some of us are stuck responding in kind of a rote way with telling people how secure elections are because they are and how infrequently voter fraud happens because it is very infrequent. There are definitely some bad faith arguments out there. There are also some genuine points to consider about how we can maintain confidence in our elections. We heard from Catherine and Emily, who are both listeners that have volunteered on Election Day in their states, and they shared with us their hopes for improving the system.
Katherine [00:37:13] Hi, my name is Catherine, and I'm thirty four years old and I live in the state of Maryland. I signed up to be an election judge when I was 21, and I've loved every opportunity I had to serve in that capacity. In the state of Maryland, we do not require fully registered voters to show ID at the polls as a matter of fact, when checking someone in at the polls if they happen to pull out ID, we were instructed to kindly have them put it away. We would then ask basic questions like their name, their birthday and their street address in order to confirm their identity. Now, I'm fully aware of the reasons why requiring a government-issued I.D. at the polls can disenfranchise marginalized populations, and I want everyone to have equal access to their right to vote. At the same time, I found it disconcerting to know that the way Maryland asked people to confirm their identity is so basic that my neighbor could vote as me. And I watched so many other voters express that same concern as I checked them in at the polls. Now, in my several cycles of election judging, I never had an instance where I questioned that the person at my station was who they said they were. But the potential is definitely there. So we need some kind of solution that gives everyone ease of access but still ensures security. I do not have the perfect answer or the solution, but there must be some way that we can create spaces where people are not disenfranchised, but they also feel secure in their elections.
Emily [00:38:36] My name is Emily Fisk and I've been helping people vote and register to vote since I was in high school. I live in Idaho, where our voter ID laws aren't overly stringent, but many voters don't realize that. Voters are told to bring an approved form of photo ID to the polls with them, usually a driver's license or some other government-issued photo ID. I work the polls this past November, and while many voters came through with no problem with their driver's licenses, university IDs, and concealed weapons permits, many others struggled for reasons the general public might not think about. One lady, in particular, struck me with how much sheer energy, time and commitment had gone into her decision to vote that particular Tuesday. She was elderly and disabled and had trouble even standing at my Check-In booth. I was serving as the Check-In clerk, which meant that I helped people certify their identification in order to get their ballot and vote. So this lady had chosen not to vote by mail, even though she was mostly housebound and wasn't able to drive and thus didn't have a driver's license. She didn't trust mail-in voting, she told me. A whole other issue that cropped up during the 2020 election with the rampant misinformation about the security of voting by mail. She had brought with her a bag, an enormous bag of personal documents in order to prove her identity. I'm not kidding you. The bag was like a large tote full of documents. She had yellowed pages from when she had changed her name when she got married decades ago. She had tax documents. She had renters agreements. She had just about every personal document you could think of. And as she stooped over my table, clearly physically laboring to even be there and to carry this big bag of documents, I was absolutely floored to realize she didn't have what she needed to prove her identity at the polls that day. Absolutely floored. She had a bag, y'all, a bag. However, one of the little-known options for voters in Idaho is to sign a personal affidavit. It's a little slip of paper that just says, I promise I'm who I say I am, and if you find out I'm lying, I know you'll come after me legally, blah blah blah, I sign here. But what struck me about this encounter was that this house-bound, disabled, elderly individual had worked so hard just for the right to vote that day. She could have easily decided she couldn't come and her vote would not have been cast. Voter ID laws might seem to make clear sense, but they also represent an enormous barrier for some people. And how we talk about voter ID laws also matters. She didn't know she could simply sign an affidavit because that information is buried in legal-sounding jargon on our Secretary of State's website. How many votes don't get cast because of barriers like these? How many individuals just choose not to show up?
Sarah [00:41:45] So what we're trying to do here and what we hear from all these listeners' stories and from experts is that we need to balance security with accessibility, but we also need to be honest about where the issues are and where they are not.
Beth [00:42:01] We know that many of you listening to this conversation are going to want some practical takeaways, and we love that about you. We asked Michelle how we can specifically advocate for better accessibility.
Michelle Bishop [00:42:13] Voters who went to vote and didn't have problems think that everyone had an easy as easy a time they did voting. You know, a voter who is in and out in 20 minutes can't really comprehend that some people were in line for like eight hours. Voters who didn't get the stumbling block over the really strict of ID requirement or who maybe already had the correct type of I.D. don't understand how hard it can be for other people to acquire them. So that happens all the time, and I just love I think the first step is exactly what you did. It's just being honest and being real about that and say, I don't know what I don't know. And I think step number two is talk to people with disabilities. That's what I tell lawmakers. That's what I tell elections administrators all the time. You don't have to have all the answers. I don't expect you to just wake up in the morning knowing everything there is to know about our huge, diverse community and knowing how to fix all the barriers. What we want you to do is to come to a conversation being open about what it is that you do and don't know, and listen to the voices of people with disabilities who will tell you the barriers that they face in the solutions that they see. And let's take that in on it and make an honest effort to really just bake that in to the way we run elections. And the solutions that we come up with, I think it really starts there. I talked about how big and diverse this community is. Even I do this for a living and could not give you all the answers. I think it's really about including all people with disabilities in all conversations.
Beth [00:43:44] So maybe one because our listeners love homework, maybe one action item could be we have a lot of listeners who volunteer at their polling places. Maybe just like putting in your mental checklist when you volunteer to look around at the space and ask questions of people with disabilities about what you see in the space or mention to your local elections board, hey, this seems to be a barrier for people. Something like that could be helpful.
Michelle Bishop [00:44:11] Yes, I love that. Yes.
Sarah [00:44:13] No matter what action you take, this is an important time to be talking about voting laws. There is still time. We still have time the ultimate resource to make improvements before next year's midterm elections.
Michelle Bishop [00:44:24] All those things that you see going wrong right before a big election is coming up. They get fixed and that election's over. Right? Yeah, exactly. Nobody's making changes right before Election Day. This is a time when we're actually probably doing most of our work because this is when if they're willing to, you know, adapt or move a polling place or try new voting equipment or change how they train their poll workers, this is when they'll test it out when they have lower stakes municipal election. And they're not going to get crucified in the national media or, to be honest, less likely to get sued. This is when they're willing to try new things. This when we do a lot of our work, and by the time people are actually thinking about going to vote right before a big election, at that point, we so much of what we do has already been done. So I love chances to kind of talk about that and really show people that there's folks who are out here working on this all the time, working, you know, every day of the year, whether or not it's a big election year to make sure when Election Day comes up, you're going to be able to cast your ballot.
Beth [00:45:23] You know, people love to say that decisions are made by those who show up and there is truth in that. We also need to just keep thinking about everyone who's trying to show up and has obstacles to doing that. We focus today mostly on people with disabilities because this is a huge percentage of the population that I think gets lost in a lot of the national conversation about voter ID laws. But voting access is a major issue for lots of people. People who have barriers to housing and transportation and people with criminal records.
Sarah [00:45:54] And there's also cybersecurity and privacy issues to consider. And when we think about all of those challenges and the ways in which we balance that security and accessibility, look, it's amazing that our elections run at all and they run pretty well
Beth [00:46:07] and we know that we can do better. So we hope that today's conversation gives us all some ideas about what doing better might look like.
Sarah [00:46:25] Beth, what's on your mind outside politics?
Beth [00:46:28] You can feel the weather changing here. I'm so happy to be coming in to fall for all of the cliche basic white woman reasons. I just really enjoy the fall season.
Sarah [00:46:41] I had two Pumpkin Spice Lattes this weekend. I'm not sorry about it. I'm sorry about it.
Beth [00:46:44] And I also am finding that I particularly appreciate the rain because as we have entered this frantic before times with after-times precautions in place period. Before time schedule with after time precautions in place, I am just running on empty. I feel like I don't have any margin in my days right now. And so to have a weekend when it's just rainy and you just feel like just stay in your house and don't get dressed up. I just appreciate that permission slip from the universe.
Sarah [00:47:16] Got to love it so much. There was a tik tok a while back and the girl talked about the sunshine industrial complex and how she wasn't going to let it control her, and I felt it in every cell of my being. Because when it is sunny and pretty outside, I feel guilty, like I feel like I should be outside enjoying this weather. I don't know where that came from, but I feel it profoundly. And so this weekend we had houseguests and it rained all day. Saturday, the kids played Dungeons and Dragons and video games. The adults watched not one but two movies, and these are friends of ours from college. And I was like, This feels like we're back in college and we just do what we want on a day and stay inside and watch TV. I loved it so hard. I loved it so hard. And then it was pretty the next day and we went for a hike and a hike was nice, but also would have taken another rainy day. I would have. I would have. I don't like being controlled by the Sunshine Industrial complex.
Beth [00:48:09] One of the things that made me fall in love with Chad. There were many, but one of them was that he on Sundays would pile up in his house with all of these friends and all of them would wear like, you know, shorts with elastic waistbands and t-shirts, and they would get Little Caesars hot and ready $5 pizzas stacks of them, and they would just watch football and play video games all day. And I thought it was like the most beautiful display of friendship I had ever seen. Just every Sunday, this ritual of these guys like basically sitting around in pajamas, watching football, eating pizza, playing video games kind of piled on top of each other like puppies. I just thought it was great. And I feel like we have far too little of that in our lives and in that casual sense of we're just going to be here doing nothing together. I love it.
Sarah [00:48:58] So nice is so nice. And it was just like, I don't even both movies weren't even that great, but who cares, you know, like I've been feeling recently, like if I don't watch TV and it's not like the pinnacle and I don't feel like every moment was amazing, then it was a waste. And I'm like, Let that go, because TV isn't always supposed to be spectacular. We had such a lovely time and it just, yeah, I agree. I just love the cooler weather and I love the rain. Listen, I'm pale. I don't need that much vitamin D. I could live in the Pacific Northwest and I would be happy about it. Unfortunately, I'm married to an olive complexion person who would shrivel up and die without that without sunshine. But I could do it. I could do it. I'd be fine.
Beth [00:49:35] Well, I couldn't. And I don't want to overstate it. I like the contrast. I think that that's what I love about these transitional moments when we're coming into any season. I like the contrast from where we've been. I will miss the Sun if this goes on too long. I don't like just persistent gray. But I really love just that rainy Saturday sleep-in be lazy invitation.
Sarah [00:49:56] I could do it. I love February, my husband. Actually, the month of February is an insult to him now. First of all, it's not about you. Yeah, they're not doing it. February is not doing it to you. OK, February just is February, but I freakin love it. I would take February over July anytime.
Beth [00:50:13] I'm sorry. You're wrong about that. Terribly, terribly wrong about that.
Sarah [00:50:18] Give me a fireplace and a book and a February gray day any day of the week. Any day.
Beth [00:50:24] I want like a few weeks of that December to January, and then I'm ready to move on because I'm excited for the transition. I'm excited for spring. Like, I love the shift. I think the shift is so beautiful.
Sarah [00:50:34] I love all seasons. That's why I live here. You people that live in seasonless wastelands where it's like 70 and sunny all the time. No, that's wrong. Human beings are not supposed to exist like that. Well, I do love a season.
Beth [00:50:46] Not to be like a wet blanket, but I recognize more and more that the seasons are changing and our expectations from the season are changing as the climate changes. And so I just feel such a profound sense of gratitude about weather now. When it rains, I think about wildfires and I feel so grateful for the rain. You know, and when it's sunny but not scorching, I think, Oh my gosh, we're so blessed to have this 72-degree sunny day. So I'm I'm trying to.
Sarah [00:51:17] But that feeds my guilt. So then I'm like, Go out there and enjoy it.
Beth [00:51:21] It's like, how do you take that? I don't want to be anxious about it all the time. I don't want to be grief-stricken about it all the time, and I want to feel guilty about it. So I'm trying to just bundle all that up in appreciation, just appreciating what is.
Sarah [00:51:33] While we bundle every episode in appreciation because we're always so thankful for you guys. Thankful you're here with us, if you like this show or any of our other shows or learn something new, please share it with a friend. It means so much to us and listen, that's how people find podcasts they love. That's the long and short of it. People find podcasts they love because a friend says you have to listen to this and we have a Pantsuit Politics 101 playlist on Spotify that we'll link to in the show notes that you can share with said friend. So just thank you for being here and this wonderful little community. We will be back again and your ears on Friday with a 5 Things You Need to Know about Section 230. Until then, keep it nuanced y'all.
Beth [00:52:20] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.
Alise Napp is our managing director.
Sarah [00:52:25] Megan Hart and Maggie Penton are our community engagement managers. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.
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Executive Producers (Read their own names): [00:52:36] Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs.
The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, David McWilliams, Jared Minson, Emily Neesley, Danny Ozment, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sarah Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Karin True, Amy Whited, Emily Holladay, Katy Stigers.
Beth [00:53:07] Melinda Johnston, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.