the flow has shifted. that is the shifting dynamic. most of today's new illegal immigrants, because each year , theal in the u.s. majority are visa overstay years -- overstayers. there is a different spread it now. not necessarily a larger group. >> if you go back to the debate , marco rubioain brought up the point that it is fewer mexican and more central americans.

what does that do to the debate overall? are we talking about people primarily from mexico or from a troll america -- central america? >> i think it matters with the solution. the economy in mexico has improved, so people are not coming as they have in the past. we have supported a larger number, including those who were gang members in the u.s. central america is one of the unintended consequences of our 1996 immigration laws were we have deported a number of individuals convicted of gang activity. the violence of their has skyrocketed. honduras in particular has the highest murder rate per capita. we are now seeing people fleeing the violence. in terms of looking forward to solutions, we talk and the -- in the united states about comprehensive immigration reform.

there is comprehensive about the bills we have seen unless you are looking at u.s. foreign policy and you economic policy and economic investments. if we want to address future flows, we have to look at what is the kind of aid that is being invested in sending countries to try to diminish that. people don't want to migrate. people in other parts of the country and in latin america, there is a movement on the right to remain in your home country. people are being forced out either because of violence or economic reasons. >> that would be 4000 pages long instead of 2000 pages long. >> way in the back. am the director of -- i represented immigrant workers

who have earned 1$ - $5 per hour and they are afraid to speak at for their rights because of the fear that that will lead to incarceration and deportation. it sounds from the panel that there is a consensus we're not going to legalize or double migration or anything like that and we are not going to take a big, bold federal action through an act of congress in the next 12 months. the question is, what can be done now? it's clear that what can be done now is protecting the civil and labor rights of legal and undocumented immigrants so that their standards of the workplace go up and so that the standards of american workers who work alongside them can go up. i would like to hear from the representative of the chamber in the intermittent time while you have a respite and not running up to congress to pass immigration reform were be against it, whichever, -- could

we see some action from you to get your high road employers to come out in favor of basic worker protections for immigrant workers? which helps them and gets rid of the problem. from laura, i would love to hear specific policy initiatives now that can raise immigrant worker standards like the power act. mark, i have followed your work for a while, we talked during the hershey strikes and i am a against,hat you are but it's difficult to tell what you are for but you are for american workers. the one million guestworkers in the country, about one million work alongside 24 million u.s. workers. the 11 million work along side 150 million u.s. workers. what could you do to help

immigrant worker standards rise so we are released from the race to the bottom? >> let's start with randy. , and ing-term solution --t to make sure that there i cannot tell from what you there is the conflating of the undocumented workers and it sounds to me that part of your work is representing people who are legally here in guestworker programs. >> the legal guestworkers on visas very often are told by their employers or us assume that upon termination, they will be deported. we have rescued workers from bus stops for they are being put forcibly on buses back to mexico. >> with regard to legalization, that's the issue because of -- if they are undocumented they

will be in a position to be deported. employment laws apply to all these workers whether they are undocumented or not. i have had many arguments over this. there was a case that came down that said you had the protections but you could not get your back pay. we supported reversing hoffman plastics as part of senate negotiations. we have always put into negotiations making it crystal-clear what is already in existence that these people have these rights get private counsel, the same rights as american workers. if they are not being paid the minimum wage, go to the department of labor. tom perez, who are going after

my employers for more frivolous things, where we have examples of independent contractors not paying the minimum wage. go file a complaint. there are times when that's not easy to do. that's true about our american jurisprudence generally. how hard is it to exercise your rights? what are the risks? anyone who goes through discrimination has to deal with that. if the laws apply, we have robust enforcement agencies. i will say for example, if you want to google certain companies under the j-visa program, they have had to pay huge fines because certain employers have had to pay. you can google it. they run in these articles all of the time. also, if you're found to be in violation of the rules of these guestworker programs, you can be disbarred. if you look on the department of labor website, there have companies that have been debarred. yes, there are bad actors.

that is true of any program. we are a big country, 185 million workers. people have to exercise their rights. there are mechanisms to do that. as far as the undocumented, there are certain protections when you file a complaint from deportation while that is being processed. that was part of the senate negotiations as well. >> laura, do you want to start? >> there is a lot that can be done administratively. it is fortunate that the administration is putting together a task force that includes a lot of parts of the administration that normally talk to each other. the department of labor folks and eeoc folks are talking in -- and there are things that they can do that do not require

legislation. one of those things would be for workers to be able to come forward and apply for deferred action when they are in terrible cases like the ones you see. so there are ways we hope recommendations will help them make their way to the administration and can be enacted before the end of this administration. >> this is probably something that would be good to work on together. i think that high road employers are supportive of these things. those employers that are violating the law are undermining employers that are playing by the rules. along those lines, one of the parts of the executive action of the president included this interagency working group. frankly, while the daca is blocked in the courts, we would urge the administration that they do everything they can to use existing regulations for individuals for workers in a

labor dispute or are being exploited to come forward and get deferred action and get work authorization and be able to pursue their legal claims. legislatively, that's not an option now. you referred to the power act which is part of the senate bill would give people a u-visa. >> mark, i think we are out of time. i would suggest that maybe you and the questioner chat afterwards. >> let me say one thing -- guestworker programs are inherently exploited. they cannot be fixed and should be abolished altogether. you can do all the enforcement you want but it doesn't matter. some just workers, from a study -- guest workers, from a study a few years ago, looked forward to becoming illegal aliens because they would be able to earn more and have more rights basically in the workforce. the solution is get rid of guestworker programs.

>> they have the same rights as american workers do under labor laws. >> we will wrap it up now. thanks to the bipartisan policy center for hosting this. thanks everyone for coming. [applause] >> thank you too for the great questions. the live stream of this panel will be archived on her website. you can go back and revisit anything anyone said and it will be available there. check out our website at bipartisan policy.org. thank you all for coming. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

will haveinutes, we live coverage at the iowa state fair.-- see that at 5:00 p.m. eastern and after that we will take your comments and tweets. on friday, more from jeff that bush at the fair. a.m.,ill begin at 10:30 eastern. the first candidate to the today was on arkansas governor, mike huckabee. he appeared in this morning and talked about hillary clinton. here is a look. 17 republicans are coming to iowa to ask for your support in the caucuses. be democrats as well. hillary will probably not come,

she will e-mail in her appearances. [laughter] [applause] clintons.the i was warned in the same town bill clinton was born in. people wonder why so many politicians would come from one small town, i do not know. here is what i do know. the republicans that are decided to vote for, ao lot of the questions are, is there anyone on our side that has a good opportunity to take on the clinton political machine? i am and the only one that has ever done it. any election i have run in arkansas, every time, i didn't just run against an opponent, against then clintons. -- i knowst of you

thatmost of you think massachusetts, new york, new jersey these are big democratic states, but the biggest is arkansas. i was the only fourth republican there. in over 100 years when i was elected lieutenant governor i got the state capitol and they were so happy to see me, being the only republican in the state capital, that my door was nailed shut from the inside. [laughter] by the way, it stayed that way for my first 59 days. that was my introduction to the hardball politics that the clinton political machine knows how to play. any time i was on the ballot, hillary clinton and bill clinton came. and ever and made me better candidate. i took them on and i repeatedly

beat them and i lived to tell about it. [applause] mike huckabeet said today at the iowa take fair -- iowa state fair. in 45 minutes, more from des moines with remarks from martin o'malley. main goals outline for america and how to achieve them. that will be live at 5:00 p.m. eastern. this weekend on c-span, politics, books, and american history. on c-span live, presidential the soapbox,eak at beginning saturday at noon we will hear from rick and for him -- rick santorum and bernie sanders. and in the afternoon, more live with thenf iowa

carson at 5:00 and george pataki. on c-span2, we will hear from senator mccaskill. dinesh desousa talks about this book. , withpan3, sunday morning many presidential candidates visiting iowa, we will learn about the iowa state fair's history. and saturday evening at 6:00, on the civil war, historian and on the battle of mobile bay. get our complete schedule at www.c-span.org. >> next, a discussion with the nations ari berman, on his new book "give us the ballot: the modern struggle for voting rights in america".

from washington journal, this is worried by minutes. -- this is 45 minutes. , authorlcome ari berman of the new book "give us the ballot: the modern struggle for voting rights in america" -- good morning. guest: thank you. host: in your book you say that section four, issued a month after president obama's reelection, underscored the most contested right, the right to vote. guest: it is an interesting paradox, we have the first lack , atident -- black president the same time voting rights have been gutted and may have been under attack, since the 2012

election. a wave of restrictions have made it harder to vote. you think that all of this progress would settle the issue, but instead the more progress we comes to issues like race and political power, the more unsettled the right to vote becomes. host: and you two john roberts is a leading year. why? he -- guest: he has a track record of opposition to voting rights. rehnquist was the most conservative member of the or on civil rights issues, he was someone a administered literacy to block voters in arizona. was part of the court under reagan, he was very skeptical of civil rights. for another worked department that has lost against civil rights laws, especially to

voting rights act. roberts was riding -- writing memos trying to limit the power of the voting rights act and he had a fight with congress over this, he ultimately lost. but then you see three decades later, when he is chief justice on the supreme court, he is able to cut the voting rights act. in a 2013 whendo he was not able to do before. host: this is in the book, let me share with the audience what the chief justice issued in his statement in the case involving shelby county, alabama. " at the same time, voting exterminations fast discriminations exist, no one doubts that. the question is whether the is extraordinary measures,

including its disparaging of the and it mustinued -- be justified by current means -- needs. " guest: he downplays the voting discrimination. he struck down the formula that these were the -- states. block965 on, they had changes from coming into effect under this provision known as section five, that shows that voting discrimination did not end in 1965. they reauthorized the voting , 98-0 in the senate, but it's 2000, the congress has

put pressure on this, because what we thought is from a 2011-2015 there have been 468 new voting restrictions introduced in half of the states in the country. making it harder to vote. this might be cutting early voting, or requiring it a ,overnment issued id to vote when he didn't need that before. the strong protections of the voting rights act isn't needed, is what roberts said. i was reporting on all this, at the same time that the chief justice of the supreme court was saying that the voting rights act was a thing of the past. guest: you go into detail about what transpired inside the johnson white house. president kennedy assassinated in 1963, the civil rights act signed a year later, and then you included this excerpt.

-- the new president replied, what the hell is the -- for?cy or -- four host: what is interesting is that johnson was not supportive of these rights while he was in texas, but he did teach adding mexican-americans:, he knew about these instructions. he was not representing texas anymore as president, he was representing the whole country are you he knew that these problems had to be solved. he believed that the vote was something to give people the ability to change their circumstances. it is interesting because martin luther king junior comes to the 1964 and he says to johnson, we need a voting

says iact and johnson agree, but we cannot do it this year. then come again goes to, -- , people nearly died and johnson is shrewd enough to realize that even though he told king one thing, that the country was outraged and he needed to push this. nature of a right elbow for selma, but johnson after selma moved quickly and he pushed it through congress. six months after selma we had that voting rights bill. it was incredibly quick. anotherohnson, with congressman, encouraged king to make these demonstrations

public? host: he did. he said it to king, make me do it. dramatize thean discrimination, the easier it will be for me to win public support. it does not mean that lbj was crazy about the civil rights demonstrations, he wanted to exercise control, but nonetheless, the demonstrations were helpful in allowing him to push this through. in the book, lbj meets with john lewis who is chairman of the nonviolent coordinating committee. lewis in colorful language, you need to grab the bull by the balls, and it all of these guys registered. once lbj realizes that the voting rights act all caps, he became passionate about registering voters and making

the rights act real. he realizes this is a transformative thing. registering african-american voters and others. that conversation, another lbj recording is on our and some of these are blunt conversations. our phone lines are open. we have a line for republicans, democrats, independents. you can also find us on facebook. tony is in fort worth, texas. good morning. >> good morning. how are you? thesehinking about

changes and i think that black people came out because of president obama. this is a lot to do about nothing. when in the black came out and voted for obama, they went things and of these unless someone does something to address the black people in the u.s., we will come out again. there is a new candidate out there right now addressing what you are talking about. i think the new voting restrictions are given by a fear of changing demographics. , a most diverse electorate , so a people participated lot want to make a older and

wider and more conservative, as opposed to more diverse was a -- like it was in 2008. this is a director spots to the obama election, this kind of attempt to restrict the right to vote, this is not new. it has gone on for years. i have been for many decades after the voting rights act. the effort to make it harder to obamaook on urgency after came to presidency. guest: another caller. liar.hink this guy is a host: ok. we cut him off when he crossed the line. guest: he gave his opinion and that is what makes democracy great. host: a new color. it please be -- caller.

please be respectful of our guest. >> good morning. i wanted to start off, the republicans on this issue of voter id, that is nothing but fraud. they have been frauds for years. no one has called them out on it . when a were in power, these to voter- they used to have ids. why would the republicans be against that? they were always against motor voter id. will say something about voter id laws. there has been no evidence of voter impersonation to justify new voter id laws. there were one million votes voternd maybe 31 cases of

impersonation. i do not think that that is the problem. i do not want to even like i'm beingm like i am bipartisan here. passeding rights act was in 1965, it had overwhelming republican support. 1982, 2006, this was signed by republican presidents in the past with support. republicans have been key partners in the voting rights it, in the enforcement of and so the current effort to make it harder to vote, driven in large part other public and party, i think it is an example of the republicans turning their backs on the act and i think that they should be most proud of it. book,"you say in the

after 2008, it shrunk in florida, in ohio, both states banned voting on the sunday before guest: early voting was a keep of obama's election. particularly democratic constituencies that do not turn out. soles to the polls was critical because that was when black churches mobilized. it was an attempt to make it harder for some of the court democratic constituencies to vote. i can see maybe saying that 35 days is too much time, let us make it 20 days. cutting early voting days from 14 to 8 days didn't make a whole

lot of sense. on florida election night in 2012, we have to fix that. the long lines were in part due to the fact that florida had to cut early voting. host:, you spoke that in 2004 this might have given the way that you john kerry rather than george bush. there were not nearly enough voting machines in court democratic areas. -- in core democratic areas. inyou want to vote inner-city cleveland, for columbus, predominantly democratic and minority precincts, there were too few voting machines. if you want to a republican precinct in the summer, there were many more voting machines and the lungs were a lot shorter. -- the lines were a lot shorter. in columbus and cleveland, there

were lines that stretched for hours. many people left the polls without voting. hundred 74,000 people left without voting. 174,000 people left without voting. african-americans waited 52 minutes to vote compared to 18 minutes for whites. they were likely to wait longer and more likely to leave. that had an impact on the ohio 2004 result. .ost: the book by ari berman our guest from athens, alabama from the independent line. good morning. caller: i would like to think ari berman to getting the truth out to people, and just to ask question. i just don't understand what is it that black people did, particularly in america, to deserve and justify the persistent, never-ending,

symptomatically racism from voting rights, criminal justice, education, health care, you name it. we have never really gotten the right to the promises we were supposed to have gotten. can anybody explain to me, what is it that we have done to deserve that? guest: i think the color makes a good, racism has always been a problem in our society. -- the caller makes a good point. in all aspects of society. the voting rights act was about power. giving people who had been shut out of the political system power that they did not have before. that meant taking away from power from other people. wereafrican americans enfranchised in large numbers, that threatened the structure of the segregated south, the structure of white supremacy more broadly in america.

what that meant was that people were threatened by the emergence of new political power. they were threatened over a period of time. they were particularly threatened after the election of the first black president. a lot of people thought that obama's election would and the voting rights debate, because it in many ways was the pickle. nnacle.the call -- the pi you saw that the backlash increased. the right to vote, which should be the most settled right, remains the most contested. i think why it remains most contested, particularly for african-american voters, because there is real associated with the vote. when certain people get the right to vote, other people feel threatened by the fact. wrote, i wasr always skeptical about early voting, but one day during most

people's work hours isn't good, either. the fact that we vote on tuesday is a remnant of an earlier era when people were farmers and would bring their crops and. electionno sense that holiday,t a national that it is on tuesday and not a weekend. that it is november, which is not the most convenient time. all sorts of things that don't make a lot of sense. certainly having a week of early voting in every state so that people have the option inconvenience to vote when it is easiest for them is very important. a lot of other people don't realize that working people, people who can't get off from their jobs during normal business hours, they benefit tremendously from early voting. host: a guest from the republican line from the new york. caller: you kind of just stole

my thunder. here in new york, we have one day to vote in november. have you ever seen it new york in november? most republicans work, and it's harder to get to the polls. in california, they are registering illegal immigrants to vote when they get their drivers license. what do you think they are going to do with those of voter ids? thank you. guest: i don't believe that is actually true that california is registering illegal immigrants. they are allowed to have driver's licenses, but they are not allowed to be registered to vote. new york is behind the curve on early voting. states also have some thing called same-day voter registration, where you can register and vote on the same day. those two reforms combined significantly increase voter turnout.

places like wisconsin, minnesota, vermont -- they have voter turnout that is 10% higher than states that do not have it. i would like to see new york, a big blue state, adopt some of these reforms. host: in the book, you write " before the presidential election, florida said it 67 county election supervisors a list of 80,000 alleged felons to purge from the voting rolls." out that turned out to be littered with errors. guest: this was a huge issue in the run-up to the 2000 election. florida said tens of thousands of people were felons who were registered to vote and they needed to be purged from the voting rolls. that list turned out to be extremely inaccurate and fortunately african-americans -- and disproportionately towards african-americans.

i told the story of one guy who was a single vet -- a person vet who wasian gulf told he could not vote. this happened all across the state of florida. his 10-year-old son, he brought him to vote. he was told that he was a felon. out thatter found there was another felon with the same name. the felony occurred at the very moment when the registered voter was in the persian gulf. he could not have been the person that committed the crime, but nonetheless he was purged from the voting rolls and prevented from voting. what happened after the election, 12,000 people were wrongly purged of the voting rolls in 2000. 537 was 22 times bush's margin vote of victory.

we don't know if the purge determined the outcome of the election. what we do know is that small manipulations occur in the electoral process. with eddie work recommendation -- a viewer with a recommendation on the voting day, changes to april 16. guest: keep it in november to get more people time to vote, would be my recommendation. host: a caller from the democrats line, good morning. this is nothing new. this has been going on since the republican gop's redistricting, the laws of that some republican governors have in place. i am sorry to say, but racism is alive and well in america. i call it closet racism. you just had a caller from the new york, a republican color, --

republican caller, she put in a little snip that most republicans work. i worked all my life. my son is a democrat who died in pakistan. he was a democrat and he worked. it is so upsetting this day and , andor us to be so blatant they just get away with it. i'm so glad, and here's my little snip being a democrat. i'm so glad i'm smarter than half the people in the united states. calleri agree with the in the sense that attacks on the voting rights have been going on . that is a story that i tell extensively in the book. i also think that these efforts did escalate after the election

of president obama as a reaction of the progress we have made as a country. i think it is unfortunate that the right to vote has become so politicized. as i mentioned, there is always a strong bipartisan consensus in congress for the voting rights act, even republican presidents who were not crazy about it, people like richard nixon and george w. bush, funded reauthorization of the vra. i think it's disappointing in 2015, on the anniversary of the voting rights act, instead of celebrating the progress, we are instead of talking about efforts to limit the right to vote and limit the vra. host: follow-up from the earlier on lauren. you are an investigative reporter, why don't you go to california and see how many illegals are voting? guest: i don't think they are voting, it makes no logical sense. they are here to work. they do not want to show up and

vote because they committed a felony by voting. this idea that voting the by illegal aliens is rented -- i hear this all the time -- there is absolutely no evidence that they are. there is no reason that they would want to vote, either. there is no data to back it up and there is no reason why they would want to jeopardize their status. host: a caller from the independent line. caller: i am in favor of photo id verification. to go to the hospital and doctor, you have to be verified against your voter id. i am against using same-day registration simply because people have used their children's social security cards to set up charge accounts or pay utilities. has same-dayconsin registration in the 2012 election.

it was shown on tv, the reporter was interviewing a lady of color who said she hoped that this did not take long because she had to get back to chicago. there were two busloads in wisconsin to vote. guest: two things the caller brings up. number one is the voter id law. i think there are a lot of myths that are out there. thatf the myths is everyone has a form of id. not everyone has a form of id. look at texas, where there are two trials on the voter id. 600,000 voters. blacks and hispanics are 2-3 times more likely than whites not to have this id. not only this, but the law is drawn in such a way that you can only vote with a strict form of id. you can vote with a handgun permit, but not with a state

university issued id. i don't have a public requiring some sort of id, but one that not everyone has, a strict id, is a link that i think is wrong. you can get into a hospital with a state id. you can get into a hospital with various forms of identification. you don't just need a strict form of identification. if we are going to do voter id laws, we need to do it in a much more expensive way. what we see in states like texas is that people don't have things like birth certificates to get id, or they don't have a county that has a dmv office. 1/3 of counties don't have a dmv office. if you live in rural texas and don't drive, how are you going to get to a dmv to get the voter id that is suddenly required? and wisconsin and same-day registration, there is no evidence that that has led to higher prevalence of voter fraud. higher voter turnout, but it has

not led to a surge in voter fraud. host: we welcome our listeners on c-span radio, we are nation right on xm. -- we are nationwide on xm. our guest is ari berman, author of "give us the ballot." he is a graduate of northwestern university. linda from marx, mississippi. good morning. to vote is theht key to the power. ever since barack obama was elected president, republicans have tried all sorts of nonsense to block the black and the port from the voting. frome black and the poor voting. not everyone drives. not everyone has the money to

andrd a birth certificate get id. it is a poll tax. shame in this day and .ge easy. free and it is very difficult now. but i vote, i work, my family works. it is not anything about just republicans. they believe they are the only righteous ones in the world, the only one that work and pray and serve the lord. but we all live and work in this country and we all want the best for this country. i think it is a shame that they are tearing down just so they man from this black doing what he was hired to do. guest: a federal court in texas

did find that state voter id law was a tax, because you had to for the underlying documents to get a voter id. you had to have a birth certificate, for example. that costs money, anywhere from $22, and if you wanted expedited, it gets into the hundreds of dollars. texansund that poorer were not necessarily able to afford the underlying documents to obtain this id. there were real barriers and costs associated with getting one. think a lot of people don't realize the barriers associated with these laws, particularly financial barriers for poor americans. i think we should be asking ourselves, why are we doing this? if there is no evidence of voter then maybeion fraud, we are just addressing a problem that doesn't really exist. host: one other from your book.

-- other point from your book. written by president obama, a letter to the editor, he said i am where i am today because of the voting right act. you point out his final speech and 2008 before the election was in manassas, virginia. guest: that was no accident. that was the site of a very famous battle in the civil war, the battle of bull run. the fact that you have barack obama, who would become the first african-american president in virginia, in the site of this famous battle for the civil war, which is incredibly diverse crowd -- black, white, latino, asian, it was a very powerful moment. it represented the progress we had made as a country. obama was someone who carried 3 states from the confederacy where he would likely not have

been able to vote in 1965. the fact that obama won north carolina and florida and virginia just shows the remarkable progress that we have made as a country. i think many people bought that settled the debate over voting rights. but as the president noted, five years after his election, the voting rights act was gutted. there was this new wave of attempts to make it harder to vote. it shows of this issue was not dead. the voting rights act remains a contested piece of legislation. the vote itself is contested. obama's election didn't end this debate. host: a tweet from a viewer -- does your book touch on election fraud? guest: there is no real evidence of election fraud. the only evidence we see is absentee ballot fraud, which i address in the book. many of these voter ids except absentee ballots. i don't think there is good faith efforts to crack down on

voter fraud. if they were, they would go on the fraud that is most prevalent, which is absentee, instead of voter impersonation, which every study shows doesn't really exist. absentee ballots are exempted from these voter id laws because some court republican constituencies tend to vote absentee more often, particularly older people and levers of the military. if we were making a good-faith effort to deal with the small amount of voter fraud that would bebsentee voting what we would go after. host: noncitizens are registering to vote through the motor registration forms, someone says. guest: i don't see the evidence that noncitizens are voting. i don't see the evidence that is happening. you're anderstand why noncitizen, and you're here exquisitely to work, you would risk voting getting caught with

a felony and getting to put it. it doesn't make any logical sense. host: a caller from the republican line from virginia. caller: i wanted to remind people of mayor daily and the california redistricting gerrymandering in the 1980's and 1990's. i also wanted to point out that congressman moran's son was caught on tape telling somebody how to forge utility bills in order to vote. to also run people about the provisional ballot. in 2004, in washington state, voted in the, i primaries. when i went to vote in the general election, i wasn't on the list. i had to fill out a provisional ballot, which is not counted

unless there is a margin of voting that is so small that they have a recount. host: thanks for putting those issues on the table. guest: i think you have to find more recently samples of fraud than 1960's chicago. i don't see any real current evidence of the voter fraud in any large numbers affecting american elections today. as to provisional ballots, this is something he help america vote act mandated in florida. you would be given a fallback ballot. provisional ballots are always supposed to be considered. the problem is many of these provisional ballots are in fact, not counted. that doesn't relate to voter fraud, just the fact that once you are given a provisional ballot, you have already in some way not met the qualifications.

what we are seeing as part of these restrictions is that there are are more provisional ballots . in states like north carolina, provisional ballots are dramatically increasing and not being counted in very large numbers. host: talking to ari berman, the book is called "give us the vote." our caller from cambridge. caller: i want to see everyone in the u.s. to vote, including every president and every homeless person. people that want to these voter things, that would be fine. except the people that are homeless have no way to get these. i see in wisconsin that they have a free id you can get, but the place to get it is only open certain days, and it is miles to travel. guest: that is a very good point that the caller makes. it is not just about voter id, but the availability of id.

you look at wisconsin, which has a strict voter id law in effect for the 2016 election, very few dmv offices in wisconsin are open on the weekend. they are open during the week during very limited hours. the people that are more likely not to have this id will be less likely to get there during normal business hours. i think there is a real burden associated with these laws. we also know in a state like wisconsin that hundreds of thousands of people don't have government issued ids. it will be a big factor in the election and in other states. host: democrat's line from the massachusetts, you're next. caller: thanks so much for writing this book. i hope it has an impact on the 2016 election. chief justice roberts, when he was in the reagan administration back in the 1980's, he wasn't

even against the voting rights acts even back then. and scalia saying that the voting rights act was actually an entitlement for black peo ple./ it is just outrageous. paper, and all the republican governors and and all those who they want to change the laws all over the country. ari, could you please comment on that? thank you for writing the book. guest: what you see with the justice scalia, justice roberts, they came of age in politically reagan years, when there was this big backlash against civil rights laws in the 1960's, big backlash against the voting rights act more broadly. they have a long history of hostility, not just to the voting rights act, but also to address the efforts to deal with

a long history of this commission. -- history of discrimination. when john roberts was nominated memose, he would ask that he wrote criticizing the voting rights act, he said he had no problem with it, but he has made it his mission as chief justice to roll back the efforts of the 1960's. host: ben from midway, georgia, independent line. caller: good morning, all. thank you for taking my call. mr. berman is a pretty smart gentleman. written isthat is written with a slant. there are a lot of things i want to point out. voter registration is open year

round. i am recently retired from the military. i voted in most major elections, not many midterm elections, but i am able to vote now. i had to go through some things to be able to vote. i was willing to do that. being that i am originally from south carolina, it wasn't that hard to get back home and vote. go id drive home to vote. when i was in the military, i would take time off. the last year in the midterm, there wasn't a date off for that. do think everyone should be voting and there should be no excuses, but i think voting should be a right and not a privilege. we should be making it easier for people to vote, not harder.

i see all of these new barriers which are unfortunate. it is obviously still possible to cast a ballot and participate in the political process, but it is just become harder to do so. that is a necessary -- that is on the necessary and unfortunate. -- that is unncessary and unfortunate. we have horrible voter turnout. we should be tried to fix this, not find ways to make it harder for people to participate. host: in the book you say the following, "what changed in recent years wasn't the south, but states like kansas, pennsylvania, and wisconsin had adopted southern born barriers to the ballot box. when the valley -- when the voting rights act was needed the most, the majority of the court believes that the illness had been cured." guest: that is the central irony of the court. they struck down the voting rights act at the very moment when all the states across the country had passed new voting restrictions.

instead of saying, maybe we should expand the voting rights act, or modify it to encompass new things. but instead, purging the voting rolls. id,tead the supreme court sa we will take away the most important remedy to prevent dissemination. they said, because you are not stopping everybody, you can't stop anybody. those states with the worst history of dissemination, that history has not ended in 1965. -- history of discrimination. they need federal oversight, while recognizing that new states have gone into the act of voter suppression, places like with constant -- wisconsin, kansas, and ohio. we have to deal with those as well. instead we are moving backwards on this issue. instead of expanding voter rights more broadly, we are

seeing states tried to restrict the right to vote. country's first black president, that is very unfortunate. nation"i berman of "the magazine. we take you live to the iowa state fair where governor o'malley is speaking at the soapbox. he will have 20 minutes to speak and take questions from the public. after that, we will be taking your favorite -- your phone calls, tweets and facebook posts. >> just leaving office in january. governor o'malley, welcome to the registers soapbox. gov. o'malley: thank you very much. let's give it up for carol hunter and the des moines register.