period that i was there, but the surge and by reaching out to the sunnis, building up forces, establishing a unity government, killing zarqawi at the end the bring about the security. violence was way down, but unfortunately when we left the vacuum was filled by a rival regional power pulling it apart. the violence escalated. >> sunday night at 8:00 o'clock eastern on c-span q&a. >> tonight in book tv on prime time author interviews on "after words". next, the history of vote buying in the book "five dollars and a pork chop sandwich".

>> guest: i said, you can bring some of it by command i will read it. huge boxes of stuff over to the place where i was staying. and this was about when he was head of the fraud division, and they discovered that a lot of the campaign in the state and local elections were paying people for their vote. >> host: hang on one 2nd , when? >> guest: 2,000, 2,004. >> host: right after bush v gore? >> guest: yes. in fact, he was telling me, and i look in the documents and saw, he went by the house of this old black woman. they are in louisiana.

the vote buying going on. well, what are you talking about? well,well, do you vote? she said yes. so this preacher comes by and pics us all up in his car and takes us down and gives us a piece of paper and tells us who to vote for. numbers on it in louisiana. she tells us to talk to a particulara particular clerk in there and tell her that we need help with voting. we go over and vote these numbers. and we come out and they put us in the car and driver's over to the daiquiri shop in louisiana, driving daiquiri shops to buy booze, and he was a support chop sandwich and a drink and drive salmon gives us $5 apiece. i've been doing it since i was a girl. i didn't know it was illegal. politicians don't do anything for you. but at least you get your $5 and your pork chop sandwich.

and so i thought, "five dollars and a pork chop sandwich", this is corruption. i was at 1st thinking that what i would do was write about the people who sell their vote and how wrong that is how it violates the line every state. and then i thought about it and i thought, these, these people, these are the most marginalized people, poor people. zero people in nursing homes in chicago where i have absentee ballots and get them to sign in the alderman races and given goodies, a little glass of whiskey on the side. places in wisconsin one of the places i looked at where they tell people who are looking for public housing, if you want to be on the list you have got to vote your absentee ballot. and so i said no. it is to campaign. and i don't mean the legal

stuff that campaigns do, which they do with money, but, i mean, get some out using chump change to buy people's vote, which i think undermines democracy. >> this is about fraud. you are not known as a conservative. tell us about your background. >> the 1st thing i will tell you is that this is not about the fact that republicans talk about when they say there is voter id fraud, and that is one kind of voter suppression, which we should do everything possible to get rid of, whether it is litigation are protesting or whatever it is. this is something both parties engage in at the state and local level, and it is done by people in the war, and it usually is a go between who is a respected persona respected person in the community like a teacher

or preacher or somebody. in my hometown of nashville, like jelly donuts, had a barbecue joint. deliver votes, absentee or whatever. and this is all away of stimulating turnout because turnout is hard to get. you want to turn out your voters. it happened everywhere. it is bipartisan and nothing to do with painting someone party or anything. >> you are an academic. we will have an academic discussion, but a lot of democrats would say, why are you bringing up this? this is just going to john fund, and other people will latch on. voter fraud. therefore we need id. >> exactly. when i told my good friend, democratic party friend that

i was liking this, some in office, others are my students. can write that. i said no because the book is about voter id fraud. it is not about people pretending to be somebody they are not. it's about taking advantage of poor people by giving them a few dollars and the sandwich. the things that they should be able to get anyway without you this in order to simulate turnout. the college street money. other cities: walkaround money. every place you go, there are valid campaign expenditures, but what i am talking about is taking advantage of the old, the poor, minorities, so on, and the republicans can try if they want to to say that i said this, but if not, when

i let people read it and they looked at what i was writing, it's not bad at all. >> you talk about chicago, philadelphia. i you saying this is just limited to big cities? >> not at all. all over the country. south taxes among latinos. they do exactly the same thing, and when people ask about what they say, well, you know, we are just doing what the whites do. that is how you get turnout.turnout. you give people a little something and get them to turn out. alaska, every place that you can imagine, i looked at all sorts of places. west virginia, kentucky, virginia, kentucky, florida, and many of these communities, though, especially rural areas, your family fiefdoms run everything.

my family has had these offices for time immemorial, whatever party it is, and with the do is take care of the folks with aa little bit of something and whole families go and vote for them, and that is what they do. >> host: just so people understand the problem, you talked about greg malvo. who is henry anderson jones, the good jelly? >> guest: zero, right. in nashville good jelly jones, what he did was get money from the people running for office, the campaign, local campaign. he would take that money and promise to deliver to them on election day up to about 300 votes from each candidate from the poor blackboard, soft nashville. and what he would do is take care of people all year long. they don't just take care of you are election day. but also, if someone in your

family is sick, the dr. or whatever, give you something there. somebody gets put in jail and you can't make bail. so he took care of the people. because he did that, they have to vote, turnout and go vote, and all this required either using absentee ballots, which he would collect from the clerk and then take you to sign having someone in the clerk's office who was in cahoots with the person doing it and getting something from the campaign. >> host: that is just to verify that the person votes >> guest: actually did whatdo what they say. we had good jelly and little evil. he did the same thing for another community. ran himself and got on the council as well as delivering votes. the kind of thing that he did was something that was

pretty common all over and places that i looked. >> host: leslie and chicago had a rough or something? >> guest: she started having a raffle, not to tell people they had to vote for anyone in particular, but she turned out because in the last election in chicago with republican governor got elected, there were gray worries that he would when, and they wanted to increase democratic turnout. and so what they did, what she offered was the idea of having a raffle. anyone who gets and i voted sticker can come out and participate in a raffle. she was attacked by an opponent in the race that said it was fraud. the way the lotteries in chicago, itchicago, it sounded like you were not

supposed to do that. she backed off. >> host: what was wrong with the raffle? >> guest: i think it is a good idea. free coffee vouchers, vouchers, free anything once they vote and have an i voted sticker, that is great to get people to come out, but they said, this is wrong, and she didn't want to fight it so she backed off. it sounded like she might be doing something wrong, but i think it was a good idea. >> host: how about shuler? >> guest: they were of fiefdom in florida. they controlled the school board, controlled the council, controlled all the local government. what this is about is if you control the local government government you control patronage, all the jobs. and so what you do is tell people, and there was one particular family, the extended family that if you

don't get your whole family to vote for me you're going to lose your job, and you can lose your job because he did not get everybody to vote or can complain, complain, and they never did anything for the people in that committee, the kinds of things that they need. people often forget that most of what you need on a daily basis, state and local government. presidential elections are exciting time policy is exciting and all the rest of it. but it depends on them. >> so let's talk about local government. you get into a little bit. policing in terms of local my court fees. a variety of civil rights issues and others. development, education. tell us a little bit about turnout in terms of the

local election. his new notoriously low across the country, especially when you talk about people of color? >> historically low because they sense the politicians do not really do what they say they will when they campaign and tell you that they will do whatever it is, but the senses that it does not happen. >> presidential turnout around 60 percent. 27 percent or lower. as you know, and ferguson, large turnout, about 55 percent in terms of the presidential. a few months later in the local election turnout is like 6 percent african-american. >> you are making a good point, but it is totally different. at the local level, 1st of all, you do not have a huge registration turnout

apparatus. that is the grounding, whatever it is called. also, presidential elections are widely advertised in the media so that it is everywhere. the ads, the spectacle of the election. how can you escape the great spectacle of the election? the turnout in the presidential election is nothing to brag about, even when obama got elected twice , although turnout at the time was not his eyes people thought it would be when you look back in retrospect, but you get more people interested, more the more celebration is. more investment of resources. also, the people who do the registration and to get people to vote do not educate voters.

and one reason why they do not educate them -- and i hate to be cynical, but it is true. most candidates like the same people to vote over and over and to vote for them. we always hear talk about new voters. most state and local campaigns that i looked at, people don't like new voters because they don't know what they will do. >> so just to take it from the perspective of the candidates, increased turnout will mean more money that will be required to run the election. identify more people, and there will be more problems because the cost of the election is going to go up. >> and if you do instead the kind of vote buying that i saw, 1st of all, it is not that expensive. you still need campaign funds. the guys were doing all in and buying and all the rest

of it are middlemen. they get a cut from it. but you can buy of voter more cheaply than you can actually invest in educating voters and all that. >> and you run the risk if you were to educate the voters, which is what i think should be done, and they hold you accountable. what are you doing in the legislature? what is your problem? and you better vote for it, or we won't see you last time. free to wheel and deal with other people who have greater resources, another donor class which part of the money is used to buy these people and have freedom. with that voting over and over again in voting for you, and is cheap. that is what it is. your suppressing choice and democracy and doing it cheaply.

>> and just to be clear, about 90% of local elections are at a different time in the presidential. he will have large turnout in terms of presidential relative to the local. the local elections, very low turnout. >> not much, but we will see >> so in terms of scope, what part of the country, you have examples were a few different places, but how widespread is that? >> ii would say in the book, there is a study done by political scientists, which would say illinois has this kind of corruption. i don't know because i don't know how you measure it. i do know that i have the documents to show that it existed in the places that i saw it, and i did look at

every county and precinct in the country. i am not going to pretend i did, but enough places focusing in on louisiana because i have that affidavits and materials and witnesses and even wires that report information to the investigators and so on. so i know that, and it does not surprise people. they all sort of laugh and say let's go to new orleans. but elsewhere in other places like west virginia and kentucky and illinois and wisconsin and all of those places, you could see it happening there and nashville and atlanta and birmingham, other places, and if you think about it, people who either read the book i think about what is going on in their town, they will realize, they have money in that town to walk around money. people do stuff like that. it happens. >> there would be some

people who would say hey, we have to understand the scope of the problem to deal with it. in other words, you have people who would pick up some of these stores and they would say because of this vote buying or this fraud we need a photo id or because of xyz we need to purge voter rolls regularly. isn't the scope issue how big it is. >> it is one of those things that if you think about it now matter where you live or whatever you are doing, where the town's, and if you have any experience at all, you know that it happens already. you know that it happens.

they say, doggone. never imagine. i remember. then anyone can tell you that in chicago they know what happens. this there's know shoveled? and people can tell you in these towns what has happened to them. it would be great at a bunch of researchers would. find out in detail every indicator, but i would think a person like john, people in that category would be interested only in debunking are trying to figure out that only one party did it. >> host: the issue is buying voters or voter

impersonation. >> guest: voter impersonation is not a problem. >> host: it's not necessarily that it would prevent the problem, but some have said that we need id, not maybe to stop fraud but sue because of the appearance here of fraud and corruption, and it makes voters feel better, and legitimate voters will stay home if they feel is others corruption. and id made them feel better here. making people feel better. again, these sores lead to.

>> is going to make them feel more uncomfortable. but in fact, here is my take on that. yes, i support litigating these oppressive laws and think it should not be held, but i also think organizations and groups who engage in voter registration , get out the vote campaign, is to help people who cannot get ids and don't have the resources i don't understand it, to get them off to where it is expensive and get a drivers license or to clear your record or whatever it is that,that, in fact, there ought to be just as much of a campaign to help people get ids, raise money to do it, educate them, churches and sororities and fraternities and local organizations and naacp and aclu and all those

organizations ought to be just as interested in trying to help people get ids because why we fight it out in the court, it takes a while. there are primaries going on, elections going on. people need, as we all know, voter ids, picture ids for lots of things other than voting, and those who don't have it are marginalized. >> and so you are not necessarily supporting id but saying there is a reality out here and we need to adjust to it. >> guest: there is a reality, if you want to help poor, marginalized people, you ought to be concerned. i saw a man who could not get in the building were doctor's office wasn't was sick. he did not have any id. >> will i was on the daycare commission and dissented, this was the argument. we should just go ahead and

have a photo id because they need id anyway. my biggest concern was, let's look at numbers, the amount of impersonation fraud and compare that to, you know, the number of people who don't have id or won't be able to vote and look at the data and once we get that lets makethe thanks of decisions about id, but this was the argument that was made. poor people needpoor people need id anyway. let's go ahead and be proponents of voter id. >> your argument that they did not need them. >> let's look at the facts and the data can do a cost-benefit analysis and because poor people need id we can side of the campaign and give them id without saying, you need an id in order to vote. >> those who argue and say nothing at all about all of

the poor people who don't have any and can't get in the courthouse and can't get in the doctors office and are not the least bit interested in trying to figure out a way to help them do that, and i think that is wrong. >> is not always the case. providing energy assistance. you can be for that in terms of getting people heat in the winter, but also say, let's look at the underlying cause as to why folks don't have resources. anytime you're dealing with folks who don't have resources, there is no immediate issue and an underlying structural thing just because you want to deal with the immediate does not mean you're not dealing with -- that you are against doing with the underlying as well. >> of course. before making a great intellectual argument. they would debate this.

the reality is what poor people don't have id or minority people people, whoever it is marginalized, or our litigating, and i support the litigation financially and otherwise. there are elections going on that cannot be participated in, primaries, general elections. i am saying that we ought to be thinking about, isn't there some way to do something wildly make the argument that this is wrong and that it ought to be struck down, which it should be struck down that in fact as a practical matter we are not going to sit back and say, it reminds me of people who say, don't worry about medicaid expansion not being put in the affordable care act because eventually the governors will come around.

and i say, what about the three, four, five years when there are people who don't have help, any healthcare. they say, they will come around. look at the problem more globally. and i willing to do that, but i am just saying, there is always an in the meantime what is going on with people issue. >> and let's shift away. the voting rights act, and it dies down to this discussion that sucks the air, and you're talking about something different. spend more time on the idea as opposed to the bright, shiny object. >> and it is why i think it is important. i have done work on voting rights most of my life. both in terms of protesting, civil rights commission, holding hearings, bush v gore, the whole thing.

so any part of this issue, i think i am crushed aside from the one that i wrote about. i had no idea i would. but the reason why it is important is because anytime i find people taking advantage of marginalized people and getting away with it big time like the people i talk about in the case in martinsville, louisiana who did not hold aa local council election for 12 years because if they did hold one a black person would have gotten the seat and blacks would've had a majority on the council, and they would have controlled the patronage. and they were not going to put up with this, so they just did not have an election until they were actually forced to, and then even when forced what they did was use a lot of shenanigans of the condo talk about in the book to pretend they were voters who lived there, paid money to this person and that person

because they were not going to give up patronage. if the federal government had not been invoked, he got the feds come in and enforced that woman who was sitting in the seat you was -- her whole family held a seat from the time anybody could remember. nothing happened. and even after that it all that the mayor who history of what some of its of the office says, you want a black in the office, i have just the one for you and appoint someone who he knows does not know his way. he does not know his way out of a paper bag when it comes to try to do anything. when i look at all that i say that this whole part of the system, folks don't -- if you understood it you would understand why some people in town say they don't want to vote or are not interested in voting

because in their mind when people vote nothing happens. the people who still have all of the patronage of the power. >> have you shared this with abigail? >> no, i have thought. >> from the commission here. so in terms of law comeau what relevant laws on the books to deal with this problem? >> vote buying is illegal in every state. we have to remember because americans forget sometimes that under the constitution the mechanisms of elections are controlled by state government, not the federal government. the government step seven there is discrimination of various kinds under law. so that the -- every state has a vote buying law. you're not supposed to sell your vote, not supposed to sell your vote or whatever. it is not a question of law

not being here. the people who are supposed to enforce it our local das, and the local district attorney's would -- don't want to prosecute because they infected elected the same way by the same people and are all in it together. so therefore they find reasons not to. local judges in those communities are elected. that way the system just goes on the way that it always has gone on unless you make a federal case where there is discrimination of some kind and there are proposals to pass laws to give the federal government more power over voting in general. and there is a proposed constitutional amendment that folks have introduced in the congress. we know how hard it is to get a constitutional amendment, and so i think that my way which is that

explaining to poor and marginalized people what you can get collectively for your vote, as in ferguson northland, if you tell the vote buyers to go away and then figure out what you want and get candidates who you want is a better interim solution than trying to wait around to see if you are going to get a constitutional amendment for people decide to come to their senses. >> let me ask you from an enforcement standpoint make. i want to get to the solution later, but let's say we enforce these state laws and figure out a federal statute. obviously their prosecutions for bribery a state officials, even though they are not federal officials. let's say that there was a prosecution here. isn't there a problem with

authorities investigating political activity and that chilling legitimate participation? >> you can use that as a weapon, that authority to kill political participation if you are of our mind to use it for that. it is like using the irs. you can always vote and figure out a way to use whatever laws are passed to do something to benefit themselves as a weapon against the people they consider their opponents. >> isn't that a concern? i mean,, it is one of the reasons people say we don't regulate speech. we should not regulate campaign finances much because some officials will be on a witch hunt to kill legitimate participation by their opponent. >> and that is why it is a better remedy to come back to my proposal, to say that

the organizations that are concerned about voting should educate the people i'm talking about, use the collective power that they would have to get people they want to run, support them, hold them accountable, not to support the people who year after year give them these little bits of cities and go out and vote for stuff that has nothing to do with what they want, the burden, that is the way democracy ought to work, and that is why this corrupts democracy and i don't think the law will pass anyway, but itanyway, but it would be better than trying to pass any kind of law that can be abused by the power to use it. >> in aa, lds. >> churches. >> churches. fraternities, all of the organizations that get out

the vote. >> and registration. >> ought to be doing education and picking candidates and holding candidates accountable and showing people how to do it. >> so let me ask you about the role of race in the state. the role of race, the reason it is difficult is because, you, you know, there is a string of people of color violating the law and kind of casting a stone, so there is a common narrative of the civil rights narrative, access and inclusion and people just want to participate in there is this counter narrative which is those folks corrupt, along the border, just as they commit all that crime they are fraudulent in terms of the voting, etc. and so there is this kind of

racial narrative out there, and how does your book play or navigate, how his race factor in to the concerns addressed here? >> it is obvious, it ought to be obvious that the people, the black people and the latinos in this book and the poor white folks in this book in theand the old folks of all colors of being taken advantage of. that, inthat, in fact, very -- it is the folks who give the big money to the campaign, the donors who then use the money, dribble out little bits for all of these people who are the malefactors in this whole process. it is not -- and these are not colored folks. so we are doing this. and so they are, the people who are paying good julie jones money, all the

candidates were all white. so it has nothing to do with the black people being crooked, although i am sure there are crooked black people just like everything else and latinos, but the donor class to the people in office and running for office of the same people over and over often, legislatures and the local things in the families and so on, they are the ones who are corrupt and you are corrupting democracy, and the other people are not getting the benefit of it because they are not acting collectively to counteract it and have not found a way to counteract it in all of these years. >> okay. so what would you say to the argument, kind of the founders argument, and when i say republican, i mean, specific republican, not republican party, argument that this is why we want to limit voting to those who

are property, it can't be bought, who will vote their conscience. and this is one of the problems with these progressive reforms that expand the franchise. you have got people who are not paying attention to the issues and another argument would be, you have all these campaign-finance problems because you have to communicate with these people and persuade. before whenbefore when we just had a few folks voting hoover property landowners they were making decisions. we did not need this money to communicate. people stood for elections in may decisions. >> the fallacy of all of that is that it is not true. it is an inaccurate picture of what happens. there is no end to greed, no matter how much power.

power and conflict which occurred in our early history. since early history,history, you had people going out, having tools and killing each other. so stuff like that happened despite that. and when they made a universal men -- for white males to vote without having property that tells you that it has nothing to do with race or black people anything like that. they were still white, but they expanded the suffrage. >> there were a lot of people against that who said, we should not expand this to these -- >> guest: not a lot because if you have been to many would not have happened. [laughter] >> host: the notion of these people working in factories and villages do with the bosses tell them.

they are not going to vote their conscience and participate. >> guest: and even the wealthy class did not vote for conscience. but you are right, throughout our history, and i, and i talked about our versus train the book, there are people who favor limitations and limiting, and every turn even when we are expanding suffrage, at the same time there are efforts to try to constrain it. whether it is where people live or what language or whatever throughout our history. that is always the truth. thought that those were not educated. those who don't know enough shouldn't be voting, and certainly the illiterate should be voting, but we have argue that out, but i do not think it has been the main problem.

>> host: let's have a little academic aside. why is vote buying a problem? i mean,, the founders paid for beer and refreshment centers of people coming to vote for them, etc. you talk about australia doing something similar. what is wrong? >> guest: nothing. what is wrong is giving people that and not having them understand that the things that they complain about, which they do complain not getting done, that the goal of getting them done is undermined. by the acceptance of the $5 and the pork chop sandwich. >> host: you would not be saying that is fine as long as you have this disclosure,

have someone sign some disclosuresigns of disclosure agreement, right? >> not to vote. it would be better for them if they in fact -- >> i don't care if they at $5 and pork chop sandwich. that would be great for me. even a daiquiri. but the point is, the problem is when candidates use that instead of keeping their promises are doing something about the real problem of people and their constituency have an intel that we are not going to do anything for you because you got paid already. but all have to do anything for you. that is the part of democracy that is corrupted. you have somebody working -- representing you who is supposed to be representing the interest of the community but arei representing the interest of whoever else they are involved with, they are other significant others and all you are getting out of

it is this, and that is supposed to be enough. >> host: what is the difference between $5 and the pork chop sandwich to vote of particular way and the campaign promise, we are going to build his new bridge are putting this community center here? aren't both of those -- isn't there a quid pro quo in both of those? >> getting a campaign promise to build a new bridge for the community of the community needs is responding to the needs of the community. if the community needs a bridge. and if they just doing it because somebody no wants to make the money, which happens, too. >> to give individual voters , you get to go to the polls, some little something. and then you don't build a bridge they need, you don't

build the schools that they need, you don'tneed, you don't do any of it. you don't get medicaid expansion, anything, claim water. all you use that. and the voter is not educated enough, these particular voters are not educated enough, and those who care about them and have organizations that are supposed to be trying to help them don't educate them enough to know how you could get better police community relations comeau whatever it is you really need if you were to do it this way. when they guy comes by and says, let's not talk about that, gimme, gimme, gimme. that is not the way it is supposed to work. >> no problem with the lottery just a good turnout. and i voted sticker or anything like that in terms of pure pressure to encourage people to participate. that's fine. >> controlling their vote.

>> and not for their benefit >> although i would imagine you would say there was still be a problem there was somebody who said, hey,said, hey, we're going to do this that helps the community, butbut i know how my people are therefore i'm going to give them a pork chop sandwich and $5 so that we can get this big turnout for us so that we can give them they're bridge. eluding knowledge, that's not optimal. >> if you said you were running and for going to put the bridge up and you gave them a pork chop or whatever it is, each person a pork chop and then or something and told them, you are going to do the bridge and they all came out, that is just a little something on the side. it is not -- and you know your not going to even try to get the bridge built or

anything else. in the only thing you tell in this, this is what you get. >> this notion of taking choice. >> you are undermining choice. you are getting people to vote for someone who they probably wouldn't have even gone to the polls and voted for just by giving them some like that rather than discussing what the issues are more the policies are, what you stand for the like. >> this is going to be paternalistic, but hey, if i know you needed coding stamp but you don't know what coding is, here are the things you need to improve your community, but i have toi have to give each of the polls and using any means necessary, be the prince and do some, you know, shady stuff here. what was the guy in new york, the political classic?

i'm sorry, i'm missing it. there was a political classic about craft. my point is, hey, this is just politics, and in order to give over need to get we have got a kind of engagement, and this is how we get you to come out. >> i don't mind turnout incentives. >> it is a choice issue. >> a choice issue which is democracy is supposed to be about making choice. >> i hear you. >> you have fettered choices >> you have told us your take on the id, phyllis talk about this problem. well, president obama said, like when i was writing this book tour the end that he thought we should have mandatory voting and that

all of our problems would be taking care of. he did not say all, but most. and by the time i wrote that in the book and president obama said that, the next day he said, i don't think that's a gooda good idea. i guess he thought about it because i thought about it. that's not a good idea. what mandatory voting does is it makes people vote even if they don't like any of the choices. >> the answer to that is none of the above option. >> sure. it makes them go out of vote, and in some cases where they have it you vote for somebody. it does not matter who it is. and so i don't think people should be forced to make a choice from among people

that don't want -- if they don't want any and that just going out there and for the candidates and turnout it means that probably you don't have to do very much at all depending on how many people are on the ballot because they ought to come out and vote no matter what you do. >> well, in defense of compulsory voting, they are very much in the liberty in terms of this country. but as an academic matter, you know, don't we change the game for manipulating turnout, like whether that is mobilizing people to the polls were suppress the vote , to politicians making arguments on the merit about policy. so we know everyone is going to participate because they pay a fine if they don't, and therefore this isn't about gaming turnout. it's about the the issues in a real debate. >> you might get, but in australia and some other

countries with a have this, there is no evidence that the debates are any more substantive than the ones that we have here. so again, if we're going to talk about evidence we would have to research that and see what the answer was. >> host: this notion of taking the suppression piece off the table. >> guest: you wouldn't do that.that. if you had everybody registered from the day they were born or whatever and then wherever there was an election they all had to make a thumbprint vote, whatever, then you would not have a voter id issue. that will be taken off the table. whether or not it would make the politics more responsive , that is what i would havei would have to

look at and see what the evidence is. my feeling is based on just a couple places that i know that the debates have not been anymore, more accountability than they are here. >> how about the role of getting in the money and politics?

people and build, so when it came time for the election,

there would be more money in politics so we can engage with more than just up pork chop sandwich and $5. if we can gauge them with a real civic engagement. >> most of them aren't interested in engaging with the public and educating them. in fact, they're not interested in engaging them enough to hold them accountable for anything. that's where the education piece comes in. it's against the interest of the local candidate to do what you just said. that's too burdensome and intrusive. it means that they have to bring a burden on them to figure out what they want to do once they get in office than they would otherwise. you're just making it harder for them by doing this. it's a lot easier just to get the person in the office.

>> now as a law confessor, i have a hard time trusting the fact there is in a legals solution to the problem. >> number one you have to have, look, the community if the community, i was think about ferguson i was singing about of the people there were educated to understand how you put the pieces, when i say educated i don't mean they're uneducated, i mean educated, organized in such a way that they understood by putting these pieces together and voting this way we can get better producing whatever it is they want to get. i think that would be a solution to the problem. then you wouldn't have trouble with turnout. people would think they would be, too too often people say

things like why am i voting, nothings going to happen. a lot of young people say that. i'm not going out, and that's because of the experience that they've had or what they think they see is that not much happens around there. >> so what's your response to the response person who says frankly it's naïve to educate 200 trillion people about why they should vote and participate the political science suggest that the primary reason people vote is because someone asks them to vote and get out to vote some people would say this, i'm not saying it. some people are fowlers and sheep and other people are leaders, etc. and they mobilize

folks and we want to change the way they are mobilizing people. they shouldn't mobilize them by giving them a pork chop see much. they mobilize them in other ways. it is naïve to say that we are going to educate 200 million people about the virtues of civic engagement so that's kind of the paternalistic way to put it. the other way to put it is a lot of these folks are busy and they have real challenges and real lives and families and jobs et cetera. they made the cost-benefit analysis, there's political science on this, that doing that doing what they have to do during the day is going to benefit them more than the one vote that they have. >> i would say that you're absolutely right to make that argument but it's not what i'm talking about. you're not going to educate them

about civic engagement. they're not actually even getting use that word. you're not going to use the word educate. what you're going to do is, if you did what i'm saying, is in local communities in small places where people live, churches and other organizations that say here are the issues in this town that we've got whether it's the police or water or schools, how are are we going to fix it. we've been electing so-and-so to go to the council and he hasn't done a thing and all these years. what we want to do is pick somebody in here. we have anybody in here that we can all support. some of you say you don't have ideas but in the meanwhile let's get some vans together and take these people down to wherever it

is so they can register because we need you to vote. if we do that than we might have a chance to get, one of the three things we want, here in this community. it's got to be done community by community and social organization by social organizations. they should do that. if they do that then they can make some progress. i'm not talking about globally or the whole country or the whole world. using words like civic engagement or having a class called civic engagement and having people come for a lecture about the won't do it. i won't wouldn't even try. >> while i have enjoyed our time together so much. this is, again, a great book. it's fresh and neat which is one of the great things about this.

thanks for taking the time for chatting with us. >> thank you for asking me all those wonderful questions i wish i had found the answers. >> it was great. thank you. >> thank you very much. i appreciate it. >> we will have more book tv in prime time friday with highlights from recent book festivals. at eight pm eastern, a discussion about women and politics of marriage from the san antonio book festival. at nine talk radio host dennis kreger at the l.a. times festival of books. then a discussion about pandemics from the virginia festival of the book. at 11 eastern, we will to word the folgers shakespeare library in washington d.c. at midnight, the library honors williams shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death >> recently our campaign 2016

bus made a a visit to pennsylvania during the primaries topping at grove city college, slippery rock university, washington and jefferson college and harrisburg community college. students and professors learned about the road to the white house coverage in our inner interactive resources. students were also able to share their thoughts about the upcoming election. at the end of the week we honored severn ninth graders for their video submission. you can view all the winning documentaries that student cam .org. >> book tv has 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors every weekend. here are some programs to watch for. this saturday and sunday at 1:30 pm eastern, book tv is at the 13th national black riders

conference from brooklyn new york. the two day coverage features discussion on hip-hop and literature and race and gender with cora daniels, author of in-flight conversations. panels on diversity and writing programs and black right riders in the digital age. then at 730 eastern, they examine the intellectual maturation of thomas jefferson. from early influences to political ideology in their book most lesson of the patriots. then author of good for the money, my fight to pay back america. he discusses discusses former aig ceo revived the company after the financial crisis and help the company become profitable again. he was interviewed by bethany. >> he was the only person that thought this was possible,

essentially. the government didn't think this was going to happen. they were ready to sell it off for spare parts. certainly the american people had no x dictation that this was going to happen. the idea that the he was a little crazy, you you have to be crazy to put this on. he was the right kind of crazy. >> go to book tv.org for the complete schedule. >> jc, it's great being here with you. >> thank you. we haven't seen each other in a while. we use to see each other all the time i'm capitol hill when you were a congressman and i was covering the washington post. it's great being here with you today. >> thank you, when i saw that you were doing the interview, i was delighted it was going to be someone that i had a little bit of a background and history with.