>> "washington journal" continues. host: we are back with peter grier, the washington editor for christian science monitor, who is here to talk about an eight-p art series and our spotlight on magazines segment, "democracy under strain." peter, thank you for being here. guest: thank you for having me on. host: what prompted an eight-pa rt series, "democracy under strain"? well, we are trying to find out what adds to the conversation. we look at all the stuff going wrong with democracy today. partisanship is out of control. isre is gridlock, nothing getting done. peter has been around a while, and he can look and see how these things stretch beyond the

trumpcare wreck how they started, and where they are going. host: so the most recent piece was entitled "block the vote: the history of efforts to change and contain and change voting practices in america." on voting access, and what did you find? thet: well, i started with vote. voting is of course the core aspect of democracy. it is how we participate, and there are a lot of issues surrounding voting right now. is onely voting rights that a lot of democrats and republicans are fighting about. the statesnd is that are really going into different ways. there are 15 states that are making voting easier. that is to say automatic voting registration, where you have to opt out. there are 25 states that have tightened voting registrations,

through the voter i.d. requirement. interactives process with a dynamic pulling the nation apart a little bit. host: what are the differences between the states that are expanding voting and the states to, i am noting going to say restrict voting, but states that are pulling back and trying to make sure their voting systems are tighter? guest: right, right. you will find what you have is, while they are not exclusively red and blue, there is a red and blue twist, and in recent years, republicans have made a real push to, in their view, tighten up a voting system that have gotten too loose. they want to have voter i.d. they want to purge people they

think are not really on the voting rolls anymore. america has a terrible history in terms of allowing selfridge and in terms of restricting the rights of minorities to vote, so you have to look at those or at least reactions to those actions in that context. host: one of the states you've focused on in this article was wisconsin. talk to us about what is going on in wisconsin when it comes to voting. guest: right. so that was a very interesting example in which you answered the question -- does it make a difference? does it affect the outcome? are they switching to votes? and people against voting restrictions would say yes. in wisconsin, it was very close. trump won by 20,000 votes. there were 60,000 fewer votes in the state, and of those, about 20,000 fewer votes in the city of milwaukee, which is a very democratic district. so you can say you know, that might have had an effect.

but political sides do not really agree with that. they will say we do not really know. barack obama was not on the ballot. that could have been a big reason for minority voters not to have turned out. in general, while restrictions may be bad in an ethical or a moral sense, they are not really switching elections in america -- at least as far as we can tell. host: if you want to join this conversation about voting rights in america, the eight-part series, "democracy under strain ," we would like you to call in. republicans, you can: at (202) 748-8001. democrats, you can call in at (202) 748-8000. independents, you can call in at (202) 748-8002. and keep in mind, we are always reading on social media. andwitter, we are @cspanwj, on facebook, we are at facebook.com/cspan. what are the 2020 implications ?f all of these

everything evolving around the next presidential election, is there an application around aning -- is there implication around voting? guest: there is. who is going to vote, what is the turnout going to be? of voters, 60% on a really exciting election. i do not know about you, but in 2020, it is already the excitement or the interest so buildup that it is going to be a record. so in that context, we do not really know what is going to happen. what happened if 70% of americans turn out to vote? the mix might be totally different. it will be interesting to see. host: ow, one of the things that you also wrote about is this divide and turning into a them versus us, but it is

not anything new in america, is it? is not.o, it in some ways, the split between the powerful rural voting block and cities is nothing new. it dates back to -- thomas jefferson you stop about "evil about," and the feel urban voters, they do not really mentality inthe the countryside that really counts. but that becomes a template to divide america into racial, ethnic, and social and cultural different groups. not usedknow, that is to necessarily have a partisan lott, because there were a of rural democrats, a lot of urban republicans, but increasingly, as america divides into a red and blue eyed a situation,

>> are we talking new york state versus say iowa? when you say rural versus urban, what exactly are we talking about? >> that's a good question. you really are talking new york state versus new york city as much as the a rural dominated state iowa versus new york. in state elections for instance, that has an effect, what does the upstate vote think.

it stems from state divisions as much as divisions between the states. in the 1960s the rural voter power in state elections -- that wasn't outlawed by the supreme court until 1964 or so. that deep division remains in a lot of state legislatures. >> you brought it up and i'm glad you did. talk to us about malapportionment. >> it's kind of like partisan jerry mangerrymandering but on level. the state decides where the divides for the districts are going to be. so if you're a rural legislature -- california is a great example of this.

in california the rural areas were extremely powerful. they controlled the state legislatures and they made sure that their districts included many fewer people. you could have -- let's just use low numbers as an example. you could have ten voters in california having their own member of the state legislature and the same number for an urban district would be like 3,000 voters. in essence, the rural voters had much greater power. again, it wasn't until the one person one vote ruling in 1964 that really ruled this out. >> we have a question from one of our social media followers who wants to know how many countries do not require an i.d. to vote besides the united states? >> that's a good question.

that sounds like the kind of question that the person who sent it in probably knows the answer to. to tell you the truth, i have not studied this in an international context so i'm not going to guess. in america that's actually a very popular change in terms of the voters. like 69-70% of voters will say, well, we think there should be photo id as a requirement. not everybody has a photo id. my 91-year-old mother-in-law has a hard time finding a photo id because she doesn't drive anymore. >> that brings us around to the national identification question that we've argued back and forth for years around congress and washington, d.c. should there be a national identification. would that help in any of these voter access issues? >> should there be a national

identification? that's a whole other can of ticks there. in america, i'm not sure that's something that's really reflective of our national creed. maybe it is. maybe everybody have a passport. i don't know. that's not a discussion i'm going to jump into. >> let's go to our phone lines. let's talk to dave from san antonio, texas, on the republican line. >> caller: good morning. i have a unique experience here in san antonio when i came to see my granddaughter graduate from high school. it was right in the election season. the high school parking lot was filled with cars. they almost unanimously had vote for hillary on the bumper

stickers. 90% of the parents there were illegal immigrants. the children were illegal. my grandchild was one of maybe 20 or 30 white and black students at the high school. i was curious as to exactly how serious are these people about wanting to vote. and there they were in november voting for hillary clinton. >> well, i will say you do hear this a lot. you hear people who have an anecdotal example of why they think there is in fact a lot of voter fraud. the fact is whether there is massive voter fraud in america has been studied for decades and there is no evidence that there is a large scale voter fraud in national elections. you can kind of see why that would be in the sense of how many immigrants it would take,

how many illegal immigrants voting it would take to actually sway an election or make any difference. it would be massive. now, you can believe there is massive voter fraud being covered up in america. i don't believe that. there hasn't been any real example of that. it doesn't mean things like that don't happen on a small scale basis or particularly in localized elections. this is a subject i've written stories about since the 1980s. there really is no evidence that there is large scale voter fraud on a national level in america. >> so when we have lawmakers who say we need to make sure our voting system is secure and people who are voting are eligible to vote, if we don't have that proof that there's actually voter fraud, then what are those movements about?

>> you don't have to have proof of voter fraud to feel you have to defend against voter fraud. you go into a voter line and you're standing there. how many people take out their wallets to take out a photo id? it's common. so perhaps that's just common sense thing that would make the population feel better about it. to a certain extent it's not about the fraud per se. it's about how we feel about the election system. do we feel it's fair? there's a saying from a political scientist i admire. remember, democracy is not about majority rule. democracy is about us all believing the rules are fair. nd and that's something i think voting restrictions could help with. >> diane from upper darby, pennsylvania, on the democratic

line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i have a few questions but i want to start with this one. last year and this year when i went to vote for school district, city council, et cetera, they had the same names on certain parts, like maybe for the school they had the same names, like four of the same names on the democratic side as they did on the republican side. so say the name was john smith. john smith was listed on democratic vote and then john smith was listed on republican vote. that threw me for a loop. either it's democratic or republican -- it's called a crossover of some kind. i did not vote for anybody that was a crossover. i'd like to know, is that

considered voter manipulation? there was about four names on one vote. you know, you get to vote for four on school, two on council or whatever. and i saw a lot this year. it upset me, extremely upset me. >> sound like she's talking about a local election where they might have different rules on how you vote in those elections. >> eighright. school district elections are a whole other country. i have no idea how they set up those votes district to district. so that could well be the case. there are elections which are supposed to be nonpartisan but the people running kind of want their partisan identity to be known. maybe that's an example of that. i can't speak to those particular cases. >> let's talk to brock from newark, new jersey on the independent line. good morning.

>> caller: good morning. thank you for your time. i just have two questions, guys. i'll make it fast. my first question is, how does the di vivisive rhetoric betwee democrats and republicans affect america's moral compass? second, how do second, -- >> those are excellent questions. as to your first one, i'll talk in general about what the partisan divisiveness means to america in general. obviously it's extremely corrosive. democracy erodes not all at once but bit by bit.

it can be helped along by elected leaders. it can be helped along by the way people talk to each other. in particular, what it does is it makes us feel that the other side is the enemy. when you feel that when you lose, it's a catastrophe because the other people are so bad. that is when democracy frays. that is really i think kind of what we're seeing in america today. people feel that when the other side wins, it's a catastrophe. of course, you asked about the economy. that reflects on that specifically as well. the second part of your question was about suppression and how that affects our children. first of all, i'll answer that literally. school age voters 18-20 or college age voters are among those who are most affected by

so-called voter suppression effort. that's because again they often don't have the voter id necessary to vote at elections. they sometimes aren't eligible to vote where they go to school. they have to go home. so to a certain extent that is aimed at them because their vote tends to be different than many of the areas where they're attending school. in general, of course, it also just makes voting seamleem less an everyday part of people's lives. for youngsters growing up, if they don't see their parents go to vote, if their parents aren't able to take them into the voting booth, that doesn't put in them a belief that in america they too can make a difference. >> one of the other stories you wrote was about the supreme

court and how the supreme court may be considered to be more and more political as the years have gone by. tell us who robert cooper greer was and how he falls into this conversation. >> that's dangerous. i wondered if they would alert you to this. you're a supreme court expert. i'm on dangerous ground here. robert cooper greer is considered one of the two or three worst supreme court justices of all time. my name is greer. i'm related to him. fortunately i'm only descended from his brother and not him directly. he was involved in one of the worst incidents in supreme court history. the dredd scott case. robert cooper greer voted for dredd scott. he's the only norer