Voting

Activist Eleanor Smeal was the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) from 1977-1982. She is also the author of "Why and How Women Will Elect the Next President." Smeal's book examines the political "gender gap," women's political issues, organizing women, getting out the vote, and women running for election. Smeal joins the show to discuss the women's movement and the upcoming election in which Smeal endorses Walter Mondale.

Historian Alexander Keyssar. In his new book “The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States” (Basic Books), he examines the checkered history of our country’s right to vote, and how this right was not for a time extended to certain groups of people, from propertyless white men, to women, immigrants, and African-Americans. Even now, he argues, that the wealthy and well-educated are for more likely to go to the polls than the poor and under educated. Keyssar is Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University.

Kim Alexander is President of the California Voter Foundation, organized to pioneer new technologies to improve democracy. The group produces the California Online Voter Guide. Recently Alexander was part of the Task Force for Internet Voting put together by California’s Secretary of State.

Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot, says the new commission will keep alive the idea that voter fraud is rampant — despite the fact that "all the studies show the opposite."

In 24 states new voting restrictions have been implemented, disproportionately affecting minorities; 7 states are trying to expand voting rights. We'll talk about voting rights, and voting restrictions with journalist Ari Berman.

Mother Jones journalist Ari Berman says recent Supreme Court decisions on redistricting and the 2020 census citizenship question will help determine which party is in power in the next decade.

What if a blackout were to happen in a major city in one of America's swing states on Election Day 2020? Or if an error occurred while tabulating electronic ballots? How would the electorate respond if one of the candidates refused to concede the election? These are all scenarios that law professor and Election Law Blog founder Richard Hasen considered while writing his new book, Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust and the Threat to American Democracy.

In his new book, Let the People Pick the President, Jesse Wegman makes a case for abolishing the Electoral College. He notes that the winner-takes-all model means that millions of voters become irrelevant to a presidential election that is often decided by voters in key "battleground" states.

In her New York Times Magazine article, Emily Bazelon says it's estimated that it would take $4 billion to properly run the election in November; Congress has allocated only $400 million.

Freedom Summer, now streaming on PBS, focuses on the 1964 movement to get Black people to vote in Mississippi. Director Stanley Nelson and organizer Charles Cobb discussed the film in 2014.