that this nation that no state had a right to leave it. how ironic is it that that man's daughter wed mary robert e. lee of the great confederate general who came closest to destroy the nation that created the american revolution. >> i enjoyed your book $5

and the pork chops in which. justin terms to open that up what is this about? >> i will tell you where the title comes from. . .

right after bush v. gore and in fact he was telling me and i looked in the documents inside there, the transcript where he went by the house and the soul black woman who is probably in 90 now in louisiana and told her that there was vote buying going on and she said be talking about? he said well do you but in she said yeah, this preacher comes by here and he picks us all up in his car and he takes us down to the polls and he gives us a piece of paper and tells us who

to vote for. we go in and he tells us to talk to a particular clerk in there and tell them we need some help with voting and we go over and we vote his numbers and we come out and they put us back in the car they drive us over to the daiquiri shop in louisiana. they had daiquiri shops than to buy boos and he comes back with the pork chops and much in the drink and then he drives us home and gives us $5 apiece and she said i've been doing this since i was a girl. i do know is illegal. she said these politicians don't do a thing for you. they tell you they are going to put a ref on the schoolhouse and they don't or they are going to fix the road and they don't but at least you get $5 in the pork chop sandwich so i thought $5 a pork chop sandwich, this is corruption. i was at first thinking that what i would do was write about the people who sell their votes and how wrong that is and how it

violates the laws in every state for that to happen and then i thought about it and i thought these are the most marginalized people. these are poor people who have got enough problems. old people in nursing homes in chicago for they have absentee ballots they get them to sign and then they give them little goodies and maybe even little flask of whiskey on the side to use their name for votes. 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 in the list then you have got to vote to give me her absentee ballot it's so i said no it's a campaign and i don't mean the legal stuff that campaigns do which they do with money but i mean to get turnout using what i call -- to buy people's vote which i think undermines the vote.

>> host: this book is about fraud and voting. you are not known as a conservative. tell us a little bit about your background. >> guest: the first thing i will tell you is this is not about the stuff that republicans talk about when we say there is voter i.d. fraud. it has nothing to do with that. that's one kind of voter suppression which we should do everything possible to get rid of whether its litigation are protesting or whatever it is. this is something that both parties engage in at the state and local level and it's done by people in the ward and they usually use go-betweens who are respected people of the community like a teacher or a preacher or somebody or in my hometown of nashville a good guy called good jelly jones who liked jelly and who would deliver the votes for people who are absentee or whatever and

this is all a way of stimulating turnout because turnout is hard to get anyone to turnout your voters. it happens everywhere. it's bipartisan. it is not anything that has to do with one party or anything. host that you are an academic. we are going to have an academic discussion but i i think there will be a lot of democrats who would say why are you bringing up this problem? people are going to latch onto this and say even mary frances berry says there is voter fraud and therefore we need i.d. and therefore we need all this other stuff. >> guest: exactly. when i told my democratic party friends that i was writing this for my students, they said you can't write that. we are going to be used in i said no says the book isn't about voter i.d. fraud. it isn't about people pretending

to be somebody they are not. what it's about is taking advantage of poor people by giving them a few dollars and a sandwich or public housing are things that they should be able to get anywhere without you giving them this in order to stimulate turnout and in communities we use it to be in philadelphia they call it straight money. another watt -- cities they call it walk around money. baltimore in every place you go there are valid campaign expenditures to get people to the polls and the like but what i'm talking about is taking advantage of the old, the poor, the minority since the one and the republicans, they can try if they want to say that i said this but when i let people read it and they look at what i'm writing they say it's not about that at all. >> host: you talk about chicago and you just talked about philadelphia. are you saying that this is just limited to big cities and democratic areas?

what are you saying? >> guest: not at all. all over the country. south texas among latinos. they do exactly the same thing and when people ask about it they say well you know we just don't do with the whites do. that's how you get turnout. you give people a little something and you get them to turnout. in alaska every place you can imagine, i looked also at other places like west virginia, kentucky, florida and in many of these communities though especially in rural areas you had family -- you want everything. the family has had these offices from whatever party it is and what they do is take care of their folks with a little bit of something and whole families vote for them and that's what they do. >> host: just so people understand the problem, tell us

about comey talked about who is henry anderson jones and good jelly collects. >> guest: in nashville good jelly jones had a barbecue joint and what he did was he would get money from the people who are running for office, their local campaigns and he would take that money and promised to deliver to them on election day up to three and votes for each one of the candidates. from the poor black ward south of nashville and what he would do as he would take care of people all year long. they don't just take care of you on election day. they give you a little bit of something but also if somebody in the family says he can't afford to take them to the doctor he might get somebody to give you something there are somebody would be put in jail if they can't make bail so good jelly take care of his people

and because he take care of them they had to vote to turnout in go vote in all of this requires either using absentee ballots which you collect from the clerk and taken sign or having someone in the clerk's office who win in cahoots with the person doing it in getting something from the campaign. >> host: and that's just to verify. >> guest: actually there like they say. we had good jelly and we had little liebold jacobs recalled them. he ran for office himself and got on the cancel -- counsel. good jelly the kinds of things he did was something that was pretty common all over and places that i looked. >> host: leslie hairston in chicago, she had a raffle or something. >> guest: what she did is she started having a raffle.

not to tell people that they had to vote for anybody in particular but you just turned out because in the last election in chicago where the republican governor got elected to his office right now there were great worries that he was going to win and they wanted to increase democratic turnout but to get people to get out and vote so what they did, which he offered was the idea of let's have a raffle. anybody who gets that voting sticker come out and participate in a raffle. she was attacked iran opponent in the race that said it was tax fraud but in chicago the way the law reads in chicago it sounded like you weren't supposed to do that even though you weren't encouraging people to vote. >> host: what is wrong with that? >> guest: i think it's a good idea. think raffles, lotteries, giving people free coffee vouchers or free anything once they vote and

have and i voted sticker or whatever they give out in the town, that's 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 on it he does it sounded like she might be doing something wrong. i think it was a good idea. >> host: how about la quinta shuler. >> guest: man, the shuler's rest fiefdom down in florida and what they did is controlled the school board, control the council and controlled all the local governments. if you control the local government you control patrons. you control all the jobs so what you do is you tell people and there was this one particular family that i write about come of the extended family that in fact if you don't get your whole family to vote for me you were going to lose your job and you can lose your job because you didn't get everybody to vote or if you complained and they never

did anything for people in that community, the kinds of things they need, people often forget that most of what you need on a daily basis comes from state and local government. presidential elections are exciting and policy is exciting and all the rest, who is in the congress and so on but your day-to-day living depends on them. >> host: so on back, let's talk about local government for a minute. you get into a little bit of ferguson right and we know about policing in terms of local, court fees and a variety of civil rights issues and other issues, economic development, education. tell us a little bit about turnout though in terms of these local election. isn't it notoriously low across the country is pursuing to talk about people of color? >> guest: it's notoriously low because like the old woman in louisiana, the politicians don't really do what they say they are going to do when they campaign

and they tell you if you are going to fix the school or whatever it is but their sense is that doesn't happen. >> host: can't you make that same argument about the president? presidential turnout is her bout 60% and 60% and locally could be 27% are local and particular areas and as you know in ferguson large turnout, about 55% in terms of presidential and a few months later in the local election in 2013 turnout is like you know 6% african-american. >> guest: you are making a good point but it's totally different. at the local level 1 of all you don't have the huge registration turnout. >> host: you don't have the resources. >> guest: the ground game or whatever it's called that's put into play for presidential elections and also presidential elections are widely advertised

in the media. it's everywhere. the ads in the spectacle of the election. how can you escape the great spectacle of the election? so the turnout in the presidential elections is nothing to brag about. even when obama got elected twice although turnout wasn't nearly as high as people thought it would be when you look at it in retrospect but you get more people interested because there's more celebration and there's greater ground game and more investment in resources and local elections. also the people who do the registration and to get people to vote don't educate voters. and one reason why they don't educate them and i think you are cynical about this but it's true, most candidates like 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're going to do. >> host: just to play -- wythers back to the candidates hey increased turnout is going to mean more money and it's going to be required to run the election we'll have to identify more people and there's going to be more problems because the cost of the elections are going to go up and i'm point after race for money. >> guest: and if you do the vote buying that i saw first of all is its not that expensive. you still need campaign funds which you get from the candidate and the guys who are doing the calling and the buying and all the rest of it are middlemen. they get a cut from it so there make you money off of it. but you can buy a vote more cheaply than you can 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, they may hold you accountable. they may say well what do you do in the legislature? what is your problem? and you had better vote for it or we are not going to send it next time. you are free to wheel and deal with other people who have greater resources in the donor class which part of their issues to buy these people and you have freedom. with that little girl who is voting over and over for you and which is cheap which is why i call it voter suppression on the cheap. we don't think of it as that but that's what it is pretty were suppressing real democracy and you are doing it very cheaply. >> host: so now just to be clear about 90%, over 90% of local elections are different times in the presidential so we will have large turnout in terms of presidential at least relative to the local and then

these local elections have low turnout. >> not much publicity. >> host: not much publicity. in terms of what's part of the country and you have examples from a few different places in the country but how widespread is this? >> guest: i say in a book there was a study done by some political scientists would say illinois has more of this kind of corruption than anyplace else. 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 these places that i sighed and i didn't look at every county in every precinct in the country and i'm not going to pretend i didn't put enough places focusing in on louisiana because i have got affidavits and that that materials from witnesses and even wires with reported information to the investigator and so on so i know

that and it doesn't surprise people when you you say the least and a politics is corrupt. they say let's go to new orleans and get a drink but elsewhere in other places like florida and like west virginia and like kentucky and like illinois and like wisconsin and all those places you could see it happening there. in nashville and atlanta and other, birmingham and other places and if you think about it people who think about what's going on in their towns, they will realize yeah baby have straight money in that town or ground money and people who do stuff like that. it happens. >> host: now there would be some people who would say hey we have to understand this scope of the problem to deal with it. in other words you have people like john fund or others who would pick up some of these

resources that you say and because of this vote eying or this fraud we need a photo i.d. or because of xyz we need to purge voter rolls regularly. isn't this scope issue how they get is important? >> guest: it's important and i would think that some researchers that do this, but it's one of those things that if you think about it, no matter where you live or what you are doing and whatever town you are in and if you had any experience at all with voting in the campaign you know that it happens. you may not know how much it is or whatever but you know that it happens. it's not one of those things that when people think about it they say well i will be dog gone. i never imagined that that's what happened. i am a member of the ward and anybody can tell you that in chicago they know what happens. who gets their snow shovel first

and on what street and people can tell you in these towns what has happened to them that it would be great if a bunch of researchers come and maybe i'll have some graduate students started to find out in detail every indicator but i would think a person like john fund or person in that category would be interested only in debunking or trying to figure out only one party did it or something and given the history and that kind of research that he does. so would matter how many places you founded in. >> guest: you just said the issue was buying rather than voter impersonation so in other words -- >> guest: voter impersonation is not a problem. >> host: it's not an issue where i.d. is not going to present a problem you say. i think that some have said we need i.d., not for fraud but

because of the appearance here of fraud and corruption and it makes voters feel better and legitimate voters will stay home if they feel as though there is corruption so in i.d. actually makes them feel better here and that has been a rationale here, making people feel better. even if it's not connected. wouldn't some folks say hey you are elevating these stories and again these stories are going to lead to i.d. and it's not going to work or prevent fraud but it's going to make equal feel more comfortable about elections. >> guest: is going to make them feel more uncomfortable. in fact, here's my take on i.d.. yes i support litigating to get rid of these oppressive laws and

i think that it shouldn't be hard to do that but i also think organizations and groups who engage in voter registration get out the vote campaign are to help people who cannot get i.d.s and don't have the resources and can't get to the place and they don't understand it or it's way too expensive to in fact get a driver's license or to clear your record or whatever it is that in fact there ought to be just as much in the campaign to help people get i.d.s, to raise money to do it and to educate them and churches and sororities and fraternities and local organizations and double acp and aclu and all those organizations ought to be just as interested in trying to help people get i.d.s because why do we fight it out in the courts? it takes a while. there are primaries going on and there are elections going on in

people can participate in and people need is we all know voter i.d., picture i.d.s for lots of things other than voting and those who don't have it are marginalized. >> host: so you are not supporting i.d.. you are basically saying there is a reality of here. >> guest: there's a reality and if you want to help the poor and marginalized people you ought to be concerned. i saw a man the other day who couldn't get in the building where doctor's office was and was sick, because he didn't have any idea. >> host: when i was on the carter baker commission and this was the argument made that hey we should just go ahead and have a photo i.d. because poor people need i.d. anyway. i think by biggest concern was let's look at the numbers, let's look at the amount of impersonation fraud and compare

that do you know the number of people who don't have i.d. or want be able to vote so let's look at the data and once we get that lets make some decisions about i.d.. but this was the argument that was made. poor people need i.d. anyway and therefore let's go ahead and the proponents of voter i.d.. >> guest: your argument is that they don't need them? >> host: my argument is let's do a cost-benefit analysis and just because poor people need i.d. we can start of the campaign to give them i.d. without saying you need an i.d. in order to vote. >> guest: i would agree with that but i'm saying that those who argue against the i.d. laws and don't say anything at all about all the poor people who don't have any and can't get in the courthouse and can't get into the doctor's office, they are not the least bit interested in trying to figure out a way to help them to do that, then i think that's wrong. >> host: isn't that i is the

case when you talk about energy assistance for poor folks. you can be for liheap in terms of giving people their heat in the winter but then also said let's look at the underlying causes as to why folks on every sources to figure out some structure. the time you are dealing with folks who don't have resources isn't there the immediate issue but then there is this underlying structural thing and just because you want to deal with the immediate issue doesn't necessarily mean that you are not dealing with, that you are against dealing with the underlying issue as well. >> guest: of course and if i were making a great intellectual argument in my classrooms are with the faculty seminar of course to the debate this but i'm saying the reality is while poor people don't have i.d.s and minority people are old people or whoever it is, marginalized and while we are litigating and i support the litigation both financially and otherwise. i've been on the wards of all

these organizations forever. there are elections going on. there are primaries and general elections. i am saying that we have to be thinking about isn't there some way we can do something while we make the argument that this is wrong and 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 oh company well it reminds the people who say that don't worry about medicaid expansion not eating put in the affordable care acts because eventually the governors will come around to it. i say but what about the three, four, five years when there are poor people who don't have any health care? they say well, they will come around to it. you have got to look at the problem more locally married and i'm willing to do that but i'm just saying that there is always

and in the meantime what is going on with people issues. >> host: let me do this. let's shift away from i.d.. the voting rights act and then it just dies down. this i.d. discussion all the air out and you are talking about something different. let's spend more time on the ideas in your book as opposed to the bright shiny objects. >> guest: and why i think it's important. now i have done work on voting rights most of my life. both in terms of protesting and the civil rights commission, bush v. gore and the whole thing so isn't there -- there's in any part part of this issue i-touch aside from the one i wrote about in this book which i had no idea was going to write about but the reason why i think it's important 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 of saint martingale louisiana who didn't hold the local council election for 12 years because if they did a black person would have gotten his seat and blacks would have a majority in on the council and they would control patronage and they were not going to put up with this so they just didn't have an election until they were actually forced to and then even when they were forced to what they did was use a lot of shenanigans that i talk about in the book and pretend that there were voters who live there and paid money to this person and that person because they were not going to give up that patronage and if the federal government had not been invoked, he got the feds to comment because the locals weren't going to do anything, the local d.a. was part of it and force that woman who is sitting in the seat

whose whole family had held that seat from the time anybody could remember. something happened even after they did all of that the mayor who gets to appoint somebody to the office says you black people want in the office i have just the one for you and appoint somebody who he knows, he's a sweet guy and i love him but he doesn't know his way out of a paper bag when he came to trying to do anything for the people there. when i look at all of that i say this whole part of the system, folks don't understand them if you understood that you would understand why some people in town say they don't want to vote or they are not interested in voting because in their minds when people vote nothing happens. their lives and their people that follow patronage and all the power they go on and it doesn't happen.

that's glad you shared this with abigail thernstrom yet? i she said anything on this yet? >> guest: no i've not yet. >> host: what relevant laws are in the books to do deal with this problem? >> guest: vote buying is illegal in every state and we have to remember americans forget sometimes that under the constitution the mechanisms of elections are controlled by state government. they're not controlled by the federal government. that is discrimination of various kinds under the law. every state has a vote buying law. you are not supposed to sell your vote. you are not supposed to sell your vote or whatever so it's not a question of the laws not being there. the people who were supposed to enforce about the local das in the local district attorneys are elected in the local district attorneys which greg malveaux found out and it really upset him they in fact get elected the

same way by the same people and they are all in it together areas of therefore they find reasons not to. local judges in those communities are elected so the system just goes on the way it has always 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 that are in the congress and they propose constitutional amendments for folks that introduced into congress that we know how hard it is to get a constitutional amendment. i think my way which is that explaining poor and marginalized people what you could get collectively for your vote has and ferguson or flint 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 or people are going to decide to come to their senses. >> host: let they ask you this room enforcement standpoint. let's say we stepped up enforcement. let's say we actually enforce the state laws are we figured out a federal statute. obviously there are prosecutions for bribery of state officials even though they are not federal officials. let's say there was a prosecution here. isn't there a problem with authorities investigating political act to be the in that legitimate participation? >> guest: you can use that as a weapon, that authority, to

chill political participation if you are of a mind to use it for that. it's like using the irs to go after your political. those who have political power cannot figure out a way to use whatever laws there are to do something to benefit themselves as a weapon against the people who they consider their opponents. yes, that's possible. >> host: so isn't that a concern? that's one of the reasons would say hey we don't regulate speech and people say we shouldn't regulate campaign finance is much etc. because some officials will be on a witchhunt to chill legitimate participation by their opponents. >> guest: that's why it's a better remedy to come back to my proposal which is to say that organizations that are concerned about voting should educate the people i'm talking about and use the collective power they would have to get people they want to

run, support them and hold them accountable and not to support the people who year after year and give them a subtle bits of goodies and then go off and vote for something that has nothing to do with what they want or pass laws that are onerous, that is the way, that's the way democracy ought to work and that's why this corrupts democracy and i don't think a lot is going to pass anyway but it would be better than trying to pass any kind of law to be abused by those who have the power to use it. >> host: lds, churches. >> guest: churches, fraternities, i'll the organization's that to get out the vote and registration are to be doing education and picking candidates and holding candidates accountable and showing people how to do it.

>> host: so let me ask you about the role of race. the role of race the reason it's difficult is because you know there is a frame of people of color violating the law and casting a stone so there's a common narrative of the civil rights narrative which is access and inclusion and these people just want to participate and there is this counternarrative which is those folks are corrupt and it's kind of a long border just as they commit all that crime they are fraudulent in terms of their voting etc. and so there is this kind of racial narrative that is out there and how does your book play or navigate, how does race factor into the concerns? >> guest: it is obvious, it

got to be obvious that the people, the black people and the latinos in this book and the poor white folks in this book in the old folks of all colors are being taken advantage of. that in fact it is the folks who give the big money to the campaign donors who then use the money, dribble out little bits for all of these people who are the malefactors in this whole process, and these are not folks. that we are talking about who are doing this so the people who are paying good jelly jones to pass through these people who are voting for candidates who are all whites so it has nothing to do with the black people being crooked although i am sure there are crooked black people as their are anybody else but the donor class, the people who

are in office and running for office or those same people over and over very often in the state legislature and the local things and the families and so on, they are the ones who are corrupt and they are the ones who are corrupting democracy. the other people are not getting the benefits of it because they are not acting collectively to counteract it and they haven't found a way to counteract it and all of these years. >> host: okay so now what would you say to the argument, the founder's argument, the republican and when i say republican i mean civic republican, the argument that is way we want to limit voting to those who can't be hot, who will vote their conscience and this is one of the problems with these progressive reforms that expand the franchise and 82

negative things. one, you have people who are paying attention to the issues and i think another argument would be we have all these campaign finance problems because we have taken indicate with all these people and persuade. the four women ages had a few folks voting who were property landowners they were making decisions we didn't need all this money to communicate with them and we didn't have office campaigning for people who stood for elections and people made decisions based on their merits. >> guest: the fallacy of all of that is that's not true. first of all there is no end to grade no matter how much property people have for taking power and power and conflict which in fact occurred in our early district just as it has since our early history and people going out and having dual. >> in killing each other. that's how hamilton got killed.

it happens despite that and when they made the universal suffrage which was for white males in fact without having property it tells you it had nothing to do with race or black people or anything like that, the corrupting process. they were still white. posted that's true but there were a lot of people against that. there were a lot of people who said we should not expand this. >> guest: not a lot because of it would have been to many it wouldn't happen. >> host: i've got you. the notion of these people all working in factories etc. are just going to do with their bosses tell them and if they are not going to vote their conscience and produce a day. esco even the wealthy class didn't always vote their conscience. they are aristocrats but the whites throughout our history and i talked about that in the first chapter of the book, they

were all these people who were in favor and limitations and limiting suffrage. at every turn even we when we are spending suffrage at the same time their efforts to try to constrain it whether it's disenfranchisement or whether it's where people live or whether it's what language or whatever throughout our history. that is sized and chew and verifies and people who thought that those were not educated, those who don't know enough should be voting and certainly be a literate shouldn't be voting but there are arguments, we have argued that out throughout our history but i don't think that's the main problem in our politics. >> host: so let's have a little academic exercise here. you are an academic. why is vote buying a problem? i mean the founders paid for beer and refreshments in terms

of people coming to vote for them etc.. you talk about australia doing something that is similar, right? so what is wrong with $5 in the port chop sandwich? >> guest: nothing. what is wrong is giving people bad and not having them understand that the things that they complain about, which they do complain not getting done, that their goal of getting those done in is undermined by the acceptance of the $5 the pork chop sandwich. >> host: but you would save $5 a pork chop sandwiches fine as long as you have the disclosure. >> guest: not the disclosure. what i mean is it would be better for them if they in fact, i don't care if they get $5 a pork chop. you could at each polling place

and out $5 a pork chop sandwich and even a daiquiri. but the point is, what the problem is, when candidates use that instead of keeping their promises or doing something about the real problems that people in their constituencies have been telling them we are not going to do anything for them because you got paid already. we are to give it to you so we don't have to do anything for you. that's the party of democracy that is corrupted. you have somebody representing you who is supposed to be representing the interests of the community but in fact they are representing probably the interests of whoever else they are involved with, their significant others that they care about and all you are getting out of it is this and that is supposed to be enough and you were bought off in their view. >> host: what's the difference between $5 a pork chop sandwich to vote a particular way in a campaign promise we are going to build this new bridge or put in

this community center here? aren't both of those, isn't there a quid pro quo in both of them? >> guest: getting a campaign promise to build a new bridge for the community that the community needs is responding to the needs of the community. if the community needs a bridge and that they are not just doing it because someone they know wants to make some money building a bridge. but if we give individual voters who forget to go to the polls some little something and then you don't build the bridge they need, you don't build the schools that they need any don't do anything, you don't get that gate expansion and you don't get anything, clean water, all you get is that, that's where the problem is. and the voters and educated enough, these particular voters aren't educated enough and those

who care about them and you have organizations that are supposed to be trying to help them don't educate them enough to know that you can get better police community relationships and you can get whatever it is you really need if you were to do it this way and when the guy comes by and says oh let's not talk about that, let's talk about what i'm going to give you. give me, it is me, give me, that is not the way democracy is supposed to work. >> host: i assume like you said no problems with the lottery, just to get turnout, no problem with that i voted sticker in terms of peer pressure to encourage people to participate in and of itself. that's fine. just controlling their vote. >> guest: and not for their benefit. >> host: i would imagine you would say it would still be a problem if there was somebody who said hey we are going to do this that helps the community

but i know how my people are and therefore give them $5 so that we can get this big turnout for us so then we can give them their bridge you would knowledge that's not also pull. >> guest: if you said you were running and you're going to put the bridge up and all the people , he gave them a pork chop or whatever it is comic each person a pork chop and a dinner or something and told them you were going to do the bridge and they came out, that's just a little something on the side, the pork chop and whatever. it's not coming out tell them, and you know you try to get the bridge built or anything else. the only thing you tell them is this is what you get and that's what you get. >> host: this nation of taking choice from them. >> guest: right, you are undermining choice.

you are getting people to vote for someone who they toppled we would have gone to the polls and voted for it is just the thing them something like that rather than discussing what the issues are, what the policies are and what you stand for and the like to. >> host: this is going to be paternalistic but it is an academic year. if i know you need a coding boot camp but you don't need no coding isn't here are the things you need to improve your community but i have got to get to the polls and i have to use any means necessary. i have to do some shady stuff here. what is the political classic here? i'm sorry i'm missing it. there's a political classic about graft from new york that my point is hey this is just politics and in order to get

what we need to get we have got to kind of thing gauge and this is how we get you to come out. >> guest: this is how we get it to come out. i don't mind turn out incentives. it's a choice issue which is democracy is supposed to be about making choice. and you have choices. >> host: so you have told us what your take is on the i.d.. that's talk about solving this problem. how do we solve that? >> guest: he said he thought we should have perhaps a -- voting and all of our problems would be taking care of. he didn't say all of them but most of them would be taken care of if we did that and by the time i wrote that in the book the next day he said i don't

think that's a good idea and i guess he thought about it. i thought about it and i thought that's not a good idea. what mandatory voting does is it makes people vote even if they don't like the choice. >> host: is the answer to that and none of the above option? >> guest: at nixon go out and vote and in some cases where they have this you vote for somebody. it doesn't matter who it is. you can vote for whoever you want to so i don't think people should be forced to make a choice from among people, say they don't want any of them and they are just out there and for the candidate to turnout it means probably you don't have to do very much at all getting people on the ballot because they ought to come out about the matter what you do. you won't even get a pork chop sandwich for $5. >> host: in defense of

compulsory voting and i don't forget going to happen. i don't think it would happen but in an academic matter, you know don't we change the game from manipulating turnout, whether that's mobilizing people to the polls or suppressing the vote to politicians making arguments on the merits about policies. we know everyone is going to participate because if they don't participate etc., this isn't about gaining turnout, this is about the issues in iraq debate. >> guest: in australia and some other countries where they have this there is no evidence that the debates are in a more substantial if then we have here again if we are going to talk about evidence then we'd have to research that and see what the answer was. >> host: how about this nation of taking this a prescient piece

off the table. >> guest: if you had everybody register the day they were born and whatever you do someone ever there was an election day all have to make a thumbprint and vote, then you wouldn't have a voter i.d. issue. that would be taken off the table. whether or not it would make the politics more responsive that is what i would have to look at and see what the evidence is. my feeling is based on a couple of places that i know the debates haven't been any more, more accountability than they are here. >> host: how about the role when you get into money in politics, what is the role of money in politics? >> guest: first of all its donor money that's given to the campaign opposite to use part of it as street money and part of it to give to these folks legal

street money. that's where the money comes from. >> host: in america we. >> more on yogurt and we do on democracy and in politics so isn't it just the newest use -- misuse of money as opposed to money in and of itself teen evil? is that the misuse of the money? we could use money on mobilizing turnout legitimately as opposed to giving people these incentives. i guess my pushback is this is an early campaign finance problem in terms of too much money in politics, is it? >> guest: it is to the extent that a lot of money, depends on the amount we are talking about. people who are concerned about a campaign finance issue are concerned about what they call unlimited amounts of money being warden and they are mainly interested in presidential candidates. here there is money involved. we are not taking about enormous

amounts of money because not that much is being given to anybody but people are being taking care of all your long by the different boards and parishes in the local people who are there political operatives. it's not so much the money and that donors, it's what the money is being used for. >> host: wouldn't there be some people who would say that this is the cheapest way to get people out to win an election and that actually if we have more money then we could knock on doors five times a year and engage these people in real discussions so that when came time for the election that they would be engaged in that want to vote anyway and as a result we need our money in politics so we can engage them with more than just a pork chop sandwich and $5 we can engage them with real civic engagement. just go to people who are

campaigning in the state and local elections, most of them aren't interested engaging the public. they are just interested in them voting for them and in fact they are not interested in engaging them enough that they would hold them accountable for anything. that's her the education piece comes in. it's against the interest of the local candidate to do what you just said. it's too burdensome and is too intrusive. it means that they have that greater ergen in terms of figuring out what they want to do after they get into office than they would otherwise. you are just making it harder for them. it's a lot easier just to get the person to vote for you. >> host: as a law professor i have a hard time accepting the fact that there is not a legal solution to this problem. you talk about all the different

stuff. >> guest: the community, if the community, i was thinking about ferguson i mentioned ferguson i was thinking about if the people there were educated to understand how you put the pieces and when i say educated at home in their uneducated, i mean organized in such a way that they understood that by the putting these particular pieces together and voting this way, we can get better policing or whatever it is they want to get, i think that would be a solution to the problem. they wouldn't have any trouble with turnout because people would think -- too often people say things like why my voting, nothing is going to happen to me. a lot of young people say that. i'm not going out and that's because the experience they have of what they think they see and not much happens around them but

if they were organized better to understand it would be different. i hope. >> host: what is your response to the person who says frankly it's naïve to educate 200 million people about why they should vote and participate that the political science suggests that the primary reason that people vote is because someone asks them to vote and get out and vote and you know some people would coarsely say this. i'm not saying it. other people would say it people would say there are some people who are followers, sheep etc. and there are people who are breeders etc. here and they mobilize votes and we want to change the way that they are mobilizing people. they should mobilizing them bite you think them up for chop sandwich. they will should mobilize them in other ways and it is naïve to

say 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. a different way to put it would be a lot of these folks have real challenges and real lives and family, jobs etc. and they make the cost benefit analysis, the political science on this that doing what they have got to do in their day is going to benefit them more than that one vote. >> guest: i would say you are absolutely right to make an argument that is not what i'm talking about. you are not going to educate them about civic engagement. in fact you are not even going to use that word. you are not even going to use the word educate. what you're going to do, if you did what i'm saying is in local communities, small places where people live, churches, other

organizations would say here at the issues in this town whether it's police or schools or whatever it is and how are we going to fix fix it? and there's only one way we can fix fix it. we have been electing so-and-so to go over all these years. what we want to do is pick somebody. let's pick somebody here. we have somebody that we can all support in some of you say you don't have i.d.s and we are litigating that in the courtroom but in the meanwhile let's get some fans together and take his people down to wherever it is so they can register because we need you to vote and if we do that then we might have a chance to get the three things that we want. it's got to be done community by community, social organization by social organization. that's why they call them

branches or whatever they are and wherever they are. if they do that then they can make some progress. i'm not talking about locally. i'm not talking about the whole country or the whole world we are going to educate and using words like civic engagement or having a class called civic engage or at a lecture about civic engage meant. i wouldn't even try. >> host: i have just enjoyed our time together so much. this is again a great look and like you said fresh which is one of the great things about this and you know thanks for taking the time and sharing it with us. >> guest: thank you for asking out those wonderful questions. i wish i had known the answers. >> host: is great. thank you. >> guest: thank you very much.

appreciate it.

>> eric, thanks for talking about your book. your book is a war story, story about you as an interrogator engage didn't difficult experiences in iraq. ..