if you had less than 50% voter registration or turnout of all --ers, not just black voters in the 1964 presidential election, and you had a prior tester device. when they read new section five, 68, and 72the 64, elections. after that, congress never updated the coverage formula. they did not do it in 2006 when they were looking at it again. looked at it, not a single state would've been covered. because, both systematic and widespread official discrimination that was happening was ended. just a couple of things. >> black registration and turnout was higher than in the

unregistered parts of the country. blackates with the fewest elected officials were states that had previously not been covered by a section 5 like illinois and delaware. the court was fully justified in saying, history did not stop in 1955. there was no evidence that were soike georgia different still today from places like massachusetts. discriminationif occurs, not only can the justice department firefighters sue they cantion two, but get that under a pre-current regime. something not often mentioned is section three. if you can prove a section two

case and you go to the judge and say, we think -- we have willnce this jurisdiction try -- we think you should put them under a five-year regime but they have to get an ok from you or the justice department to make a change in voting rights, the judge can oppose it. equitablemuch more way in putting in a preclearance requirement based on actual evidence in that jurisdiction of allblanket covering these states -- shelby county, alabama county that filed the suit, the county government, they've never had an objection filed in the history of the voting rights act. map.w you all can see this this is from the 2013 census reports.

see these green areas that cover the southeastern united states? those are states where the census bureau said that black americans outvoted whites by anywhere from -- up to 6% more. those are the states where conditions are best today. there's been no evidence of section five. if there is a problem, you consume under section two and get a remedy from a court. >> tom, let me turn to you. one of the lines in the majority opinion in shelby is set the voting rights act imposes significant current burdens, so it needs to be justified by a showing of current need. is that not correct? thatthink the premise

there is some significant burden from preclearance is one that is totally unproven, what the court's majority talked about at length was stigma and equal sovereignty. in many ways it is the quiz -- quintessential states rights case. what was not given due attention are a number of things. with respect to the burden of section five preclearance, there was a ready mechanism used in many jurisdictions that could have used in shelby -- by shelby county, the entire state, if they could prove that they had complied and not have and objected to change over a period of time, they could a allowed. that's what the supreme court in the earlier case, municipal utility district number 1 c ase, rested its decision upon. there was a ready mechanism used

by a number of --to get out of preclearance. let's talk about what burdens may be. main provision of the voting rights act is section 2. it does permit the federal government or private litigants to challenge practices. there are two problems with section 2. often you have to have the evidence of implementation of the practice to demonstrate the discriminatory effect. that means you have to suffer through a number of elections with folks deny their votes before you have a chance to realistically go into court and have that change overturned first. everyone in this room, as lawyers will understand, that section 2 is a notoriously inefficient way of adjudicating these matters. since 1982 when congress acted to reauthorize the voting rights act, and 1986 when the supreme test upheld, the operative

or prevailing in a section 2 case is quote, unquote, totality of the circumstance. a lawyer in any area of the law what must bed involved in satisfying a totality of the circumstance. sidesare experts on both at great expense and consumption of time before you have an opportunity to overturn what may be clearly discriminatory changes. while shelby county was being decided, shelby county had two cases being adjudicated under section five and section two. one involving redistricting, the other involving a voter id provision made much more draconian that it had been previously. in those cases, the state of texas chose to bypass the

administrative process of preclearance and let the u.s. district court in washington, d.c. in those cases there was permitted -- presented tremendous evidence of intentional discrimination by the texas legislature to prevent the power of latino and african-american voters from increasing. the judges concluded that was very strong evidence of intentional discrimination. as a result in shelby county, those cases are today two years after shelby county, still being litigated with those provisions potentially in place, which fortunately on redistricting , but was a resolution those provisions could be in place, even though judges had concluded there was intentional discrimination, and that is h or monster ball -- demonstrable

difference between section two and section i've. lawyers in the room should understand that in addition to being the most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever enacted, the voting rights act in section five had one of the earliest and most effective alternative dispute resolution mechanisms ever put into federal law. that's how we should see preclearance straight it is an efficient and timely way of resolving disputes around electoral changes. .imeliness is important to vote ise's right denied and an election happens, you can't unring that bell and do it again if a judge or judges later decide it would have the most discriminatory. you have to have a timely mechanism to resolve these disputes. efficient because all that preclearance involved was submission of the change, and the data, to support the

potential effect of the change to the department of justice. the department of justice in the vast majority of cases would approve the change and it would be implemented. that would be much more cost-effective and efficient means of resolving these to use -- disputes than section two under the totality of the circumstances. >> todd mentioned we have a room full of warriors. we do have students from that same real cap school. where are they? we would like to welcome them into the room, as well as illinois. as well as illinois state representative paolo ruiz harris. [applause]

what impact has the voting rights act had and is it still important? >> the voting rights act has been significant. i have some statistics from the representative on the increase in the number of people voting in the number of minorities in particular, african-americans in office. there are some real things you can understand around a couple things i want to touch on. i want to remind people that this argument around states rights and the importance of states rights, how that argument was levered against the civil .ights laws as well historically, the idea that balancing states against civil rights, and it's important to remember the role of federal government in overcoming that

and recognizing there are some things, first of all, constitutional protection that has to come from the federal government to balance against state rights. is --her thing he's done that thought troubles me a little bit -- it's like, look, the voting rights act worked, african-americans are being elected to office. it is the argument behind, look, we have an african-american president, that is great, we are good now. the idea that we do not need those protections is that false understanding. we are good because we have those protections because we had preclearance. the immediate response to shelby, which was states immediately going -- states like texas, north carolina --

immediately pursuing restrictive voter id laws would indicate to you that the protections of the preclearance reviews were critically important. the other thing people need to remember is that, about the voting restrictions that preceded the voting rights act and that the voting rights act recognized that voting is a very local activity. the restriction of voting is a very local activity. congresswoman waters touched on it, but the idea is, you pass the law, you say, great, we will have voting rights. at a local level there is a lot of opportunity to restrict voting rights. that is why we put in preclearance to say, forget it, you can't change it because we cannot get to every single one of the thousands of jurisdictions where you could be discriminating. we're not going to allow you to change it. it is that protection that we are missing because, as tom pointed out, we all know them as lawyers, particularly the litigators, litigation takes a

long time. while that litigation is happening, elections are occurring where rights are being limited. >> bringing what i think is a quote that justice ginsburg said, that if you have an umbrella in the rain and it is keeping you dry, it is not the time to close the umbrella. [laughter] >> the point is, if you're going to say a certain number of states have to be under federal supervision, then you have to provide evidence of current, systematic, widespread discrimination that would justify it. that has not been shown. let's talk about voter id. it is a myth that this all suddenly occurred after the shelby county decision. i will remind folks that the georgia voter id law was passed in 2005. indiana's was passed after that.

georgia's law has been in place since the 2008 election. indiana's voter id law has been in place since 2008. they have had election after election. the data on georgia, a large african-american population, about 30%, shows that after the voter id law went in place, the turnout of black voters and hispanic voters went up dramatically. it went up at a higher rate than the turnout of white voters. same thing happened in the 2010 election. in 2008, when indiana's voter id law was in place for the first time, in place because their case went to the supreme court. it was upheld by the court. it was 6-3. justice john paul stevens, a stalwart liberal, provided the majority opinion. barack obama won indiana with their photo id law in place.

first democrat to win the state, i believe, since the 1964 election. folks have also complained about cutbacks in early voting. first of all, a large number of states do not have early voting. it is a relatively new phenomenon. new york does not have it. on friday, you probably know, i think it was the last day of the trial in north carolina, over the fact that they had changed their early voting days from 17 to 10, although they had the same number of hours. the justice department had a lot of trouble in that case because they had put experts on more than a year ago when they tried to get a temporary restraining order to keep that change from being in place for the 2014 midterm elections for the primary and general election, they had experts in place who said, if this early voting is in place, the turnout of voters that are black will go down because, the experts said, "that black voters were less

sophisticated voters" and "it is less likely to imagine these voters can figure out how to avail themselves of other forms of registering and voting." i find that to be the most patronizing and frankly bigoted attitude. the cutback in early voting times was in effect for the may primary in north carolina and the general election. in the may primary, black turnout went up 30% over the 2010 primary, when that change was not there. the white turnout went up 14%. in the general election, the black share of the vote went from 38.5% in 2010 to 41.1% in the election. in a general election -- the midterm congressional election last year, turnout was down all across the country.

it went down all across from the prior midterm. one of the only states where turnout went up was north carolina where these suppose it voting changes have kept people from voting. all the data from the state, the turnout data show voter id does not keep people from voting. changes in early voting don't keep people from voting. in fact, and you all can google this, the university from wisconsin, several professors just put out a study and the conclusion, this kind of counterintuitive, it is that it hurts turnout. they concluded that it may decrease turnout from 3-4%. the reason being the campaign spends the majority on get out the vote effort.

if they have to spread the money out over a two-week, three-week, four-week time, it is not as intense and effective, and apparently people who would normally go vote on election day keep saying, i can vote tomorrow, i can vote the next day. apparently, it is enough to hurt turnout by a small percentage. it is not me saying this, this is a study at the university of wisconsin and a number of other studies that have said that early voting may hurt turnout. >> mark, let me respond. the first -- the headline i will be taking for today is that apparently voter id restrictions are measures to increase turnout. [laughter] >> that is what i heard you say. >> i did not say that. >> just one second, just one second. >> opponents have said -- >> you are employing that here and elsewhere.

>> since the supreme court's action in 2013, stricter voting laws have been passed in alabama, arizona, georgia, mississippi, texas, and virginia. over the summer, some states have been challenged on that and overturned some of the state laws. for example, "new york times" headline said, "texas agrees to soften voter id law after court order." what exactly took place in texas? >> that was a prolonged fight over a law in texas like many others that required voters to produce specific id to cast a ballot. this has been up and down the courts and, in the most recent decision, the u.s. court of appeals decided this law had a discriminatory impact and that there needed to be greater

opportunities for people who had trouble getting these ids to obtain them. there have been meetings between the plaintiff voting rights advocates and the state, and they came to an agreement which effectively ended the photo id law and allowed anybody who has difficulty in getting an id to still vote by signing an affidavit at their polling place saying that they could not reasonably obtain one of the documents. so that was a big change. >> and north carolina's fourth circuit court struck down the voter id law there. in the court argument one of the judges questioned the intent of the voting laws. here's a couple minutes of that. >> all of this rhetoric. evidence that there was a search in african-american registration 10 years prior and the law was

changed and they claim that you are adversely affected. it means, in this case, could be that the republican party got control of the house and the senate and the governorship and the opportunity changed those pretty liberal voter registration provisions with shelby. it looks pretty bad to me. in terms of purposeful discrimination. >> i hope that i can persuade you it was not a nefarious thing. certainly, the judge found it was not. there is a couple premises in

your questions that i have to challenge. there is a correlation between same-day registration and 17-days of early voting and out of precinct voting and preregistration and the increase in the black registration or participation rate during the 2008 and 2012 election. now, i have never been in a trial with more experts from m.i.t. and harvard and every university in the country, and they did what is called a cross-state analysis where they give opinions on whether election practices on the cause of an increase in turnout or registration. at the preliminary injunction stage, none of them had done a cross-state analysis to try to opine on whether these practices had caused an increase in turnout or registration.

and they were put on notice that there was evidence that there were states like north carolina, virginia, where the black turnout and registration numbers went up at equivalent rates and virginia did not have same-day registration, out of precinct voting, and 17 days early voting. so at the preliminary injunction stage, they had failed to give a causal link between these repealed practices and the increase in participation by african americans. >> you can listen to the entire fourth circuit argument at c-span.org. michael of the "new york times," what occurred in north carolina since that court ruling? michael: that was a remarkable ruling, in that it not only said north carolina's voter id law and other changes had eight discriminatory impact, but that they actually were intended to disenfranchise certain blocks of

voters and that is a very unusual and very strong ruling. since then, the state board of elections has handed down some rules for local election boards on how they should restructure their voting in order to comply with the appeals court decision and that has not always gone well. in one of the first meetings on a local level in guilford county, north carolina, the voting board actually, in the view of many critics, tried to make an end run around the appeals court, doing things like cutting back on sunday voting. sunday voting is broadly used by minority groups. blacks who go to churches, they go to church and then a bus picks you up so you can exercise your constitutional right to vote.

by cutting back on sunday voting, it was just one example that limits the opportunities of minorities to vote, or so the critics would say. in that county and others, there has been a large outcry by citizens. some of these meetings on voting rules were absolutely packed. in the case of guilford, many of those efforts to place new restrictions on voting were withdrawn. >> michael wines of "new york times," thank you for joining us. here's more about recent changes to voter id laws. >> she joins us to discuss voter identification rules. how many states are trying to impose more stringent rules this cycle? where could voters see this?

jennifer: in fact, there are 15 states in which voters when they go to the polls this november will be facing new restrictions for the first time in a presidential election. those 15 states are part of a larger trend since 2010 where we see voters in about 21 states, almost half the country, are facing new restrictions over the past five or six years. >> are they the same kind of voter identification rules? or are some more stringent than others, where voters could see them in november? jennifer: there is a range. some of them are voter id laws as you have identified. the ones that are truly concerning are what are often referred to as strict voter id laws. under those types of laws, voters can show only one of a very small number of government-issued photo identification documents to vote. if they do not have anyone of those documents, they are out of luck.

they oftentimes cannot cast a ballot that counts. we have seen states such as texas and wisconsin, over the past few years, attempt to put those kind of strict photo id laws into place. in addition to voter identification restrictions, we're seeing different kinds of restrictions. cutbacks on early voting opportunities. elimination of the opportunity to register to vote and vote in one trip, which is referred to as same-day registration, and we have seen things such as making it more difficult for those with prior criminal convictions to get their right to vote restored. it runs the gamut. >> some of the folks trying to roll back some of the restrictions have seen several victories in recent court rulings. can you walk us through for those who may not have seen the stories in recent weeks? jennifer: sure. you're right. in the past couple weeks, we had

really seen courts stepping in to protect the right to vote in november's election. one of the state i have already mentioned is texas. texas passed a strict photo id law in 2011, it was blocked by one court and it went through a very long litigation process to end up where we are today, which is that two weeks ago, the fifth circuit court of appeals, a federal appellate court, said the texas law discriminated on the basis of race. it has a disproportionate impact on voters who are african-american and latino in texas and so texas will not be able to enforce its law as written this november. in fact, voters need to have an opportunity to cast a ballot with other types of identification that are not one of those limited number of photo ids from the government i talked about. in addition to texas, we have seen some pushback in wisconsin,

where we had seen two court cases over the past couple of weeks. one is somewhat similar to the texas decision in effect, in that voters without photo identification will have to be given another opportunity to cast a ballot this november. and, we have also seen some in wisconsin against restriction against early voting opportunity there. wisconsin passed a law making it harder for municipalities to offer early voting. in addition to those states, we saw a big victory against restrictions in north carolina, where about a week and a half ago, there was another federal appellate court that issued an opinion, saying north carolina's omnibus restriction law which was passed a few years back and included photo identification to vote, restrictions on early voting and same-day registration, and a bunch of other restrictions, that federal courts said that law was passed

with the intent to discriminate against minority voters in north carolina. so, that law has also been wiped off the books although north carolina has said they are going to take that up to the supreme court. in addition to those, we have also seen a court in north dakota say that that state cannot enforce its photo id law, and there was also a litigation victory in kansas. in kansas, there has been a concerted effort to push forward documentary proof of citizen requirement, which many voters did not show when they register to vote so they are being taken off the rolls. a court recently said at least in part, those voters have to be given the opportunity to vote. there has been a lot court decisions in the past couple weeks that really push back on these restrictions. >> for those who are more visual learners, a map of where the major legislation that can impact voter access is taking place.

the light blue states, where there were recent litigation victories, and the dark blue states, where challenges to restrictive voter laws are taking place. for those who want to join in on this segment, questions and comments for jennifer clarke at the brennan center. republicans -- reminders with the brennan center is. jennifer: the brennan center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan law and policy institute. we are housed at nyu's school of law. we were founded to defend the two pillars on which our country was built, democracy and justice. in addition to work in voting, we do work in other areas such as justice reform.

responses to liberty and national security issues. >> have you have been involved in these various litigation efforts that you were just talking about? jennifer: yes. our attorneys for some clients in the texas case that i talked about. in the other cases, we have not actively participated in litigations. we have filed amicus briefs and -- i serve as one of the plaintiffs attorney in the texas case i talked about. host: susie, good morning. caller: here are a few things when you buy to present id -- cigarettes, alcohol, to apply for welfare, food stamps, apply for medicaid, social security, unemployment. to rent or buy a house. to drive or buy a car.

to get on an airplane, get married, purchase a gun, adopt a pet, and on and on. so what is wrong with when we vote which is an important thing, to present photo id? i do not see the problem. host: thank you for the question. jennifer? jennifer: sure. you're right. voting is an incredibly important thing and people should have to be able to prove that they are who they say they are. i think everybody agrees that electoral integrity is of the utmost importance. i think everyone is on the same page with that. the problem with the types of laws i was talking about, the strict photo identification laws, comes in the strict photo identification part. there are a large number of americans who simply do not have those id's. a lot of them do not board

airplanes or do some of the other things you mentioned. they are not homeowners. or they are able to use other types of photo identification that is not accepted under these laws. for example, in texas, you can not use a drivers license from another state to cast a ballot. you cannot use a drivers license that is expired more than 60 days. those things were true under the strict version of the law that courts have said texas cannot use for this november's election. but up until that was issued, those are types of ids many people use for things you talked about. in the litigation, we ran into a lot of people, particularly older people, who did have identification but it expired five or six years ago because they do not drive anymore so they had no need to renew their driver's license but they kept their expired driver's license or they could show it when they needed to. but, that was not an id they

could use to vote in texas. those people who spoke at the trial were not alone. there were multiple experts who did statistical analyses of voters in texas and found that over 600,000 registered voters in texas did not have one of the ids that you can use to vote under the law. so, that is a sizable portion of the electorate simply being blocked out because they do not have the id. so, proving you who you say you are can be done in other ways that does not disenfranchise people. host: john, you wrong with jennifer clarke. caller: i have a commented at the end i have a question. the brennan center is a far left, quasi-socialistic organization that has always been for the main objective of allowing illegal immigrants to vote. i worked for the government 20 years ago. i saw illegal immigrants and i know this for a fact, i cannot

tell you how, but where i worked, there were getting voter registration cards and they were in the country illegally. the whole objective of this is to allow anyone to vote whether they are a citizen or noncitizen. if it is a noncitizen, that disenfranchises my vote. when people talk about disenfranchising, i don't care about that 600,000 that are probably half illegal. the women give you 20 things you have to have a license -- and the 600,000, really? it does not affect any of them? i have a question -- >> i want to give her a chance to respond. jennifer: the brennan center -- and i don't think anybody else who works in elections thinks people who aren't eligible citizens should be voting. that is the basis of elections in this country is making sure

that it is eligible citizens who vote. certainly, that is what i believe and what the brennan center believes. that is the baseline. election integrity is the most important and if folks are not eligible to vote, then they should not be casting a vote. there are plenty of ways other states makes sure that people who they say they are such as allowing them to provide other forms of identification. not one of a very small limited number that a good percentage of americans do not have. >> back to you for your question. caller: illegals have been getting drivers licenses from throughout the united states for a number of years now. just because you have the voter id law does not mean you are a citizen. in florida, all you have to do is check off a box you are a u.s. citizen. there are no voter police who go out there and verify this information. i know this for a fact because of where i used to work. and back in the 90's, illegal immigrants were getting voter

ids. jennifer: you did point out a disconnect between some of the strict photo id laws, what they are saying and what they actually do. there are many states where people who are not legal citizens can get driver's licenses, and it is not because they are doing something wrong. there are people here on a green card who can get driver's licenses and there are plenty of folks who are not u.s. citizens who get driver's licenses and are licensed to drive. there is nothing intrinsic about showing a piece of identification that proves that you are in fact a u.s. citizen. what does prove that you are a u.s. citizen is that when you register to vote, you have to swear you are a u.s. citizen and the penalty for that is quite severe. in fact, there are some prosecutions of people who ended up registering and often times you get election officials

talking about what they see and oftentimes people make a mistake. they think because they got handed a voter registration pamphlet, perhaps with their application for a drivers license, they think they are able to register to vote and they end up on the voting rolls. there are protections, and if that is something you saw during your time in government, many of those people have been affected and many times it is a simple innocent misunderstanding. >> how often does voter fraud happen per election cycle? jennifer: there are statistics on that. it is important to think about what we're talking about when we say voter fraud. it gets used as an umbrella term. to break it down, for example, the type of voter fraud that gets stopped by something like the texas law is called in-person impersonation fraud. i go to the polls and pretend to be somebody else. that type of fraud is very rare.

there are numbers on it. we have a few studies on it. one is a study that was published in the "washington post," where there was an extensive look and they found 31 credible instances of this type of in-person impersonation fraud between 2000 and 2014. that is out of about one billion ballots cast. 31 instances. that is an infinitesimally small number. in the texas case, when texas passed its strict voter id law, the legislature had evidence before it that between 2000 and 2010, there were two instances of this kind of in-person impersonation fraud and that us out of millions of ballots cast in texas at that time. that type of fraud is incredibly rare. when it does happen, people get caught. there's a reason it is rare.

it is not a very good way to have an outcome on the election to vote as another person. it doesn't really have that much of an effect and the penalties are very severe. tens of thousands of dollars in fines and potential jail time. host: from maryland, a republican. good morning. caller: good morning. a couple things. the first lady was very articulate. add to the list of things that it is my understanding that you need id for, obamacare. i find it very difficult to believe that in this day and age, there are people who do not have voter id, and i am very disappointed that i feel like my vote is being discounted because of a lot of the nonsense going on. thank you very much. host: jennifer clarke, any response? jennifer: sure.

certainly, there is nothing wrong with having people prove they are who they say they are. a useful distinction between what texas had on the books before this court decision came out, which allowed you to use one of several pieces of voter id, which a good number of taxes did not have, versus what they will put in place for this election after the court decision came down saying that law was racially discriminatory. so under the new proposal, you can use a paycheck that has your name and address, you can use another government document what your name and address. you can use something called a voter registration certificate, which is something texas actually mails to people when they register to vote. it comes to them at the address they put on the voter registration, so if they haven't, it means they live at that address and they got it. that is a much broader range of documents. people have those documents and allowing them to show them at the polls means that their

voices will count. the caller expressed a dismay at the feeling that your vote does not count and that was a very real thing for these people who did not have one of the small number of voter ids texas required. we heard them testify on the stand at trial about how they attempted over and over again to use the documents they did have to get one of the acceptable identifications and they failed because they did not have the money that they needed, because they ran into trouble with transportation, or perhaps they had a mistake in one of their underlying documents. their name is spelled one way here and another way there, they weren't able to reconcile and it put them in this loop where they could not get one of the very small numbers of voter identifications and that made them feel their voices did not count. it is about making sure every eligible citizen can vote. >> a lot of viewers waiting to talk to you. we will try to move them as fast

as they can in our last 20 minutes or so in this segment. a democrat. good morning. caller: yes. a quick comment. people have died and given their lives so that we can all vote. i think it is something we need to hold as a precious jewel and treasure. people should have the proper identifications to people to vote and government should not pass laws to try to suppress people from voting. our vote is all that we have and we should exercise that. states that pass these hard laws to stop people from voting are doing a disservice to their constituents, to the people who live in the state. >> what is too much, in your opinion?

caller: in florida, restoration of criminal rights to vote after they have served time. they should have an opportunity and the right to be put back into society and exercise a right to vote for whomever they choose, whether it is democrat, republican, or independent. i don't think they should be cast out anymore but should be brought into the fold. jennifer: so, the caller has identified florida as a state where it is particularly difficult for people with prior criminal convictions to get the right to vote restored. that is true. it is one of only three states in the country where you are facing potential lifetime disenfranchisement. the right to vote is incredibly important. it is a right and responsibility.

we are seeing that states are doing a lot of things to increase turnout to try to make it more likely people will be invested in their democracy. it is a shame to see those efforts undercut and see some states doing quite the opposite, which is making it much more difficult for certain segments of the population, which you have seen in the court decisions in the past couple week, disproportionally tend to be minority voters to make it harder for those people to vote. host: adam is an independent. good morning. caller: in the texas case in particular, the seven forms of identification required, what are they, and are there mechanisms in place for people to get those forms of identification? in pennsylvania, if you are a non-driver, you can get a non-driver id. i am sure that is the case in a lot of other states, including county id.

jennifer: under the texas law that was recently, at least as it was written on the books, struck down by the court, the types of photo identification that were allowed under that law were a texas driver's license, a texas non-driver's license, a state photo id, which is what i think the caller was talking about, where you go to the department of motor vehicles and if you do not drive you get a state id, you still have to pay for that id. also, a u.s. passport was accepted, and about three other documents with identifications and a photo on it. texas did create something called an election identification certificate, which was a card that had a photo identification on it used for voting purposes only and that was supposed to be the cost-free alternative for people who did not have any one of these ids.

however, you needed a birth certificate and other documentation inergy get back, and what we saw was people do not have the original or certified copy of their birth certificate anymore. these were primarily people who were older and had moved around a lot and lost that document or perhaps had been born outside of a hospital setting and did not have that document to begin with. so, although there was a free voter id provided, getting it wasn't free and that ended up being a problem for people and texas did not make a lot of effort to get id in those people's hands. other states, there was more of an effort. the caller specifically mentioned the idea of using county ids and things issued at the local level. in new york city, there is a new york city id where the city made a big push to get the ids in people's hands. under the texas law, they did

not allow any government issued documents except for the ones i already mentioned. if you had a county id with your picture, if you were a government employee and you had in employee id with your picture on it, you could not use it. host: robert is a republican. you are on with jennifer of the brennan center. caller: first, i would like to say that the brennan center is not nonpartisan. it has never supported a conservative cause. second, 40% of california driver licenses last year were given to illegals. now, if you can get a driver's license and you are an illegal born in a foreign country with limited ability to speak english, no birth certificate, how difficult is it for someone who was born here and has a birth certificate? the other point is, in alabama,

you have to have a photo id. if you do not have one, the state will come to your house and issue one free. you must provide proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in the first place. jennifer: the first comment, the brennan center is nonpartisan. we do not support conservative or liberal causes or any cause attached to a particular party. in my time there, i have worked with republican legislators and democratic legislators and legislators who are independent or of other third parties. this is not about partisanship in any way. the idea that we all go to the polls if we're eligible citizens and we vote for whoever it is that we support, that is fundamental and it crosses party lines.

every elected official who was put there by voters should feel very passionately about making sure that all eligible citizens can vote. i cannot believe that feeling is actually a partisan feeling one way or the other. it is about the fundamental right to vote. host: have you worked with mark ilias before? jennifer: i have not. i do know he is bringing some lawsuits, but i do not know him and have not worked with him. host: i bring it up -- the "washington post" today has a front-page story calling him a go to lawyer for democrats. he is now taking a somewhat controversial place among the coalition of groups challenging a wave of state election laws rewritten in recent years. his efforts explicitly on behalf of democrats -- besides joining the efforts of civil rights groups, he has also made efforts

in states that are important to hillary clinton's campaign and the future democratic candidates. the question is, does his work in this area concern a group like yours that is nonpartisan and trying to work on this in a nonpartisan way? jennifer: i think these fights should be kept nonpartisan to the extent possible. that is very important. the idea that there are more hold that people need to step in and fill with litigation is not shocking. what we saw this in 2013 the supreme court in a decision called shelby county struck down part of the voting rights act and gutted part of the voting rights act. it made it much easier for states that have a history of discrimination at the ballot box to pass laws such as the one in texas, the one in north carolina, the one in virginia, and elsewhere, to make it harder

for people to vote. so, now that we do not have the full protection of the voting rights act and it is the first election in 50 years without those protections, we have seen an uptick in the number of states passing restrictive laws and so, of course as we see those laws go up in number, it certainly makes sense that more lawyers are coming to the table because there are more people that are reaching out because they have lost the right to vote. it is not surprising people are stepping in to fill the void. what should happen is that the congress should restore the voting rights act to its former power and pass a voting rights amendment act which the brennan center and others have been working on with bipartisan support for the past few years. host: victoria's waiting on the line for democrats. caller: good morning. i tuned in a little bit ago.

i don't know if you mentioned -- we have been voting by mail for years out here, for all of our elections, local and national. now we have the motor voter law and people have to provide a lot of documentation when they go to the department of motor vehicles and they can register their, and it is an unaffiliated registration if they choose not to affiliate with anyone. as far as i know, you get a voter pamphlet for every election so you can really read up on the issues. it is so easy for people, especially in the rural areas. why doesn't every state do something like that and make it easy? jennifer: you mentioned a new initiative in oregon which goes by the new motor voter law.

it is actually a form of automatic registration in which eligible citizens who interact with eligible agencies get registered to vote unless they say they don't want to. currently, the default in many states is that the voter has to take the initiative to get registered to vote and a lot of people end up falling through the cracks as many states a very long registration deadlines and people simply miss the opportunity to get registered to vote. so you mentioned, why isn't everybody making it easier for people? that is a great example of a state trying to make it easier for people to get registered and participate. in the first few months of the implementation of this automatic voter registration program, oregon has seen not only the registration rolls jump up, where more and more eligible citizens are getting put on the rolls, but they have also seen turnout jump up among those people who were automatically registered.

so that is a great example of a state making it easier rather rather than more difficult for people to get into the participation. host: pleasanton. california, grace is waiting. republican. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. the reason i call as i work for i saw what happened during a union and election years. i saw our representatives giving out registration forms and having illegals fill them out. they would fill out the voter information so that these people that didn't know how to speak or write english would vote for the right people. how do you stop that? jennifer: certainly, people who are not eligible to vote should not be registering to vote. if there is somebody that is

perpetrating that, that is something that should be reported, certainly. i do not think any of us want to stand for that kind of fraud being perpetrated, so i would encourage people who actually see something like that happening to reach out to elected officials and let them know what is going on. however, that is not a widespread problem. the studies that have been done looking at instances of different types of voter fraud often include instances of folks who are not eligible citizens who end up on the voting rolls. a lot of times that is a mistake. they think because they are allowed to get a driver's license that means they are allowed to vote, and they had up on the rolls because there is confusion. many times, they do not attempt to vote. that is something that does in fact happen sometimes, and those people, often, the mistake is

brought to their attention and they are taken of the roles but that is also not a widespread problem. there is a study out of arizona where they looked at instances from 2000 two 2012 of voter fraud, and they used that term very largely. another part of it was looking at in eligible people ending up on the roles. they found that it happened, but they found that out of one million ballots cast over that time, that the number was below 1000. so it does happen, but is a small problem compared to the number of votes cast overall, and certainly, every effort should be made so that people are not accidentally signing up for something they are not eligible to sign up for. host: helen is an maryland.

a democrat. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i am listening to ms. clark speak, and my mom and most of my family live in alabama and florida. there were some things that took place in alabama last year where they shut down most of the mva where people could not go in to even get to the building and make their vote at all. my mom right now is still alive and doing very well. she is 91 years old, she has always voted when she got the opportunity. but now with all these restrictions, people do not understand that a 91-year-old woman brought into the world by a midwife is not going to have a birth certificate, but she is still a citizen of this country. we should make it easier for people to vote.

the biggest violations are the ones who are making it difficult for people not to vote. my last opinion on this is, in the workforce in alabama, where a lot of my family work, their where a lot of my family works, their hours are shifted on voting days. some of my family members are told not to vote. off, a lot of those days were shut down, too. is your organization looking at these things taking place as well? host: jennifer clarke? jennifer: you mentioned alabama specifically, where your family lives. and there is a lawsuit that is tooing in alabama right now push back against the voter id law.

it does not look like we will necessarily have a decision before this november, but there is an ongoing lawsuit. of those states that recently made it harder for citizens to vote despite the fact there are people without the id you need to vote in alabama. you talk about your mother. it is wonderful that she still cares so passionately about her right and responsibility to vote at 91 years old. that is wonderful to hear. at the trial in texas, we saw a lot of people exactly like her, that were born 80 plus years ago. specifically if they were african-american citizens, they were not born in a hospital. plenty of them were born in places that would not take african-american women to give birth. they were born here in the united states. those people have worked very they need ande id

have still often come up short. we saw a woman named sammie bate s in texas that had to save $42 to get her out of state birth certificate. applicationail an for the birth certificate and paid to get it mailed back to her. that cost $42. live on ar husband fixed income of about $300 a month where they are feeding a family on that. they saved for six months to put money aside in an attempt to get her birth certificate. they eventually did, but the cost of voting should not be so high for people who are eligible citizens and simply want to use the same rights they have been using since they turned 18 or 21. host: we will take a couple colors in a row. row.llers in a lynne is in richmond.

caller: i would like to speak with ms. clarke about the federal prison system and the state prison system. i did some work with a sheriff down in jackson county, kentucky. i would like to let her know about something she might want to look into. that is the candidate id numbers, just to make sure they have not been compromised. those candidate id numbers in directly toed unverified illegal immigrants in the political's -- political system. denny payman came up from kentucky. those candidate id numbers were tod, every one of them,

unverified illegal immigrants in the prison system. host: is that something you looked into? jennifer: that is not something i have looked into or heard of. again, i would really urge callers who have firsthand seen something like that to reach out to their local election officials. local election officials are very invested in the system, truly want those who are eligible to vote to be able to vote and want to make sure that the elect oral -- electoral pr ocess is secure. i cannot speak to that incident, but i think your local election officials are a wonderful resource if you need to ask a question of somebody or if you have a first-hand experience of a concern about integrity. tennessee, as in republican. good morning. caller: i really enjoy listening to you.

i have been watching your program every morning. because there are so many states that have so many different issues regarding id verifications, my suggestion is years, when the presidential election is up for grabs, that the people in each state would submit certain issues, certain problems, regarding id verification issues to be put on the ballot. overonce the elections are and the various issues from all the states are combined and put on the ballot, people vote for them. every state has the same issue, basically, but different issues in depth. that way, all the people throughout the united states can vote on.

everybody should be able to vote. fighting this stuff legislatively would take 20, 30, 40 years. every state has the same issues, but they are inherently different. vote on it once and for all. in the meantime, work with your legislators. host: jennifer clarke, i will give you our last 30 seconds. states actually have the power to set qualifications for voting in each individual state. that is something that, under our constitution, they are given authority over. that is why it has to be decided on a state to state basis. that authority is still locked in by the voting rights act and the quality -- constitution. you cannot pass laws that violate voting rights under federal protections such as the voting right act. those are the losses we are

seeing now, when states have crossed the line and gone too far. host: jennifer clarke is a council at the brennan center for justice. find them on twitter. thank you so much for your time this morning. jennifer: thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> we invite you to watch all the arguments and issues in their entirety. watch more from the courts and congress in our video library at c-span.org. >> members of congress returned to washington from their summer break in eight days. in the meantime, joe wilson started a bus tour today in his district. says, gratefulhe to begin my tour in aiken. great to talk with stephanie at aiken rotary. gary peters of michigan began a

tour of his state today. his message says, a right along was the perfect start. before taking it summer break, the senate voted for a second time to block funding to prevent and combat the zika virus. may, when our democratic colleagues asked us urgency, today, they turned down the very money they argued for last may and decided to gamble with the lives of children like this instead of protecting them. as i said, they ignored their own calls to get this done

quickly. they have refused to pass urgent measures that would protect our country from a public health crisis. as i said when i started, mr. yresident, this is a test toda to see whether our democratic colleagues care more about babies like this or special interest groups. they fail the test. it is as simple as that. planned parenthood, an organization where hundreds of thousands of women go for their care -- do you think they will have a rush of business now? women in america today want to make sure they have the ability to not get pregnant. why? mosquitoes ravage pregnant women. the logic of my friend,

the republican leader, they do not need to go to planned parenthood. they can go to their doctor someplace in las vegas or chicago or lexington. they can go to an emergency room and say, i am sorry. i did not get birth control. can you help me? that is what planned parenthood is for. the vast majority of women who need help, that is where they go, planned parenthood. under the legislation we got back from the house, there is not money to be provided for that. >> this thursday, a preview of four major issues congress will debate -- zika funding, defense policy, gun violence, and the impeachment of the irs commissioner. an update with washington examiner's senior congressional correspondent thursday at 8:00

p.m. eastern on c-span. animal rights activists discuss the relationship between humans and animals, animal testing, and switching to meatless menus in schools and hospitals. from the animal rights national conference, this is two hours. >> i asked them, coming from corporate america, what my directive was. they said, we want you to get out and save a lot of animals by helping institutions like universities take animal meat off the plate. they said to do it as big as you could go.

territory, like the united states? there.id, yeah, start [laughter] >> one of my first projects, i was contacted by a student at arizona university by the name of cat gross. university is the largest university in the united states. they have 75,000 students with over seven dining halls and four campuses. wanted to do was sort of like what we do at the university of north texas. 30 days after we started our dialogue, we met with the instructor and said, this was a good idea. , they opened 2015 a concept called daily route. it was so popular that that spring of the same year, they

decided to put it on all four campuses. it continues to be their number one most popular concept on campus. [applause] mr. botts: that same year, another huge thing happened. we have a great honor of running into the executive chef from harvard university. we met him at a conference that we did. it was really exciting. he said, i want some kind of training. how do we do this? nobody really is doing this. can you help us? i said, no problem. we have this two-day training program. wendy want to do this? he said, let's do this in january. i went back to the office and asked, can we do this? is it ok? they said yes. it was a great success. from that moment was born what

has been one of our most successful concepts for a campaign. last year, we worked with over 20 universities around the united states. not only universities. 12,worked with hospitals, k- and institutional food service operations, training there -- their chefs. since the first training, we have trained so many universities that we cannot keep up with it now. as a matter of fact, over the next three months, we have 14 of these culinary programs in place. weeks, we will be doing our first training at a military base. [applause] botts: i'm expecting to hear something in the news from the senators in iowa. , we willd of the year

have shown 700 chefs how to make plants taste great and take animals off the plate. [applause] team, and itour has grown since i have been with the team, there are 30 amazing people who range from various backgrounds. we have a registered nurse, two registered dietitians, and a chef. helped open up the mean greens dining hall at the university of north texas. she is awesome. we are in the process of hiring another chef and more folks who share a passion for saving animals, as all of you do. in addition to universities and working with k-12 school districts, the government, and more. politico recently said that the

humane society of the united states is hitting the meat industry where it hurts. they are convincing institutions to cut the amount of meat they are serving, and it is working. [applause] botts: none of this would be possible without all of you. we are making the world better place one plate at a time. [applause] >> ken botts, ladies and gentlemen. good evening. my name is martin rowe. i am going to be your moderator this evening. this part of the planner is

entitled effective strategies for farm animals. it, am calling mansplaining ending factory farming. if anyone found a lost silver macbook, please contact me after the plannery. martika or contact clare staples on facebook. i will leave that information at the information desk. silver macba lost ook. to the person who lost in the silverback, it is right here.

here to talk this evening is a distinguished panel that represents the x-y chromosome. each will speak with 15 minutes. i will introduce the first speaker. piro was one of the founders -- [applause] martin: the more you clap, the less he can tell you. vice president of animal protection at the humane society of the united states. he wrote the introduction to a vegan anthology published by lampton books. here now is paul shapiro. [applause] paul: give it up again for ken

botts. wasn't he amazing? thank you for coming out. you sacrificedof so much for the animal movement. many of you donate your time to the movement. many of you donate your money to the animal movement. there are two people in the audience who have donated their genetic material to the animal movement. give it up for my parents. [applause] paul: my father is saying -- what did you say? it was a fun time? ok. my father said it was a pleasure. interesting. my mother did not say anything. [laughter] there goes the first 60 seconds of this talk. seriously, the last year

has seen some amazing transformations, some huge points in our movement's efforts to change the human-animal relationship. whether it was the killing of harambe the gorilla in the cincinnati zoo after it appeared he was helping a boy that fell into his enclosure and the massive outrage that poured throughout the world because of his senseless killing, for the slaughter of cecil the lion, putting a hideous practice into the spotlight, cowardly american so-called trophy hunters who gallivant around the world to slaughter innocent and exotic wild animals -- we saw the outrage that ensued because of that killing as well. or the animal movement's humongous victory. brothers finally

announcing it is getting rid of its elephants. [applause] these are tremendous flashpoints in our movement's progress towards a more humane society. yet, if anybody were to objectively assess the last year and think about what kind of year it was for animals, you would have to concede it was the year of the chicken. [applause] more specifically, it was the year of the battery caged chickens, with more progress for these long-suffering birds than the last two decades combined. from legislative campaigns to corporate campaigns to advance their interests, and now, in massachusetts, because of a

grassroots efforts because of hundreds of activists gathering signatures to put a measure on this november's ballot, we are seeing real progress. one person who lead that effort, rachel atchison. give it up for rachel. [applause] this is rachel after a long day of signature gathering in massachusetts. two days ago, because of rachel and so many other people's efforts to put this measure on the ballot, the pork and egg industry did not like it that much. they did not want voters to vote on this. so they sued. they sued the state of massachusetts, trying to boot a soft develops. supreme courttts ruled unanimously against the egg and pork producers.

chanceusetts will get a to make history for farm animals this november. [applause] losses ledstring of rite that the entire animal movement has been successful in pushing its agenda. it makes it very clear that our movement is an ascendant movement. as important as it is to reduce the suffering of animals at factory farms, it is not enough to reduce the suffering of animals at factory farms. we have to get at the root of the problem. pecking athousands the branches of evil. we want to prevent animals from going onto factory farms in the first place. [applause] how do we do that? we need to help people move from

--animal-based diet [laughter] paul: to a plant-based diet. there are lots of ways to do this. primary focus has been to persuade lots of people to change their diets. how do we do it? you can be like one hero of mine, john camp, who passed out more than one million booklets. [applause] if my arms look like john, i would be wearing a tank top giving this talk. probably the only person in the room that has bigger arms than john is david carter. he will beginning a big talk tomorrow. [applause] paul: john's method focused on passing out brochures. david gives speeches to students about why they should be involved with plant-based

eating. other people do pay-per-view. all of these are important. it is critical that we change hearts and minds and diets when it comes to individuals. it is same time, important not just to change individuals but also to change institutions. just like what ken was talking about, in addition to getting individuals to change their diets, we can get hospitals, the military, even prisons -- where they are serving huge amounts of meat. we can work with them to slash the amount of meat they are using. the person pioneering this is giving a talk tomorrow on this topic, christie middleton. [applause] paul: let me give you just one example of how this works. metw years ago, christie

with the los angeles school district. they serve 700,000 meals every single school day to students. christie helped persuade them to adopt meatless monday. it is almost all vegetarian for k-12. imagine how many speeches you would have to give to equal that amount of meat reduction. it is completely vast. this is what the meat industry is afraid of. christie and her team are working with food services companies and implemented a meatless campaign in 900 hospitals. now they are expanding it to 2000 corporate client sites. y,amark went to meatless monda tuesday, wednesday, or

thursday. their main competitor is saying, once a week, skip meat. compass group has worked with hampton creek to switch all of their cookies, mayonnaise and dressing, all their pancakes, to vegan products. millions of eggs removed from the market because of one institutional policy. how may people do we have to persuade to get that kind of demand reduction for eggs? that is the power of these institutional policies. movementhat we as a can do when we effectively and strategically organized together. in san diego, the board of education voted to make their k-8 schools meatless on monday. in detroit, christie worked with them to go meatless on monday.

they liked it so much, they are now meatless two out of five days a week. noted that animal welfare advocates are zeroing in on the next targets to cut the amount of meat they serve, and it is working. [applause] news noted that the anti-meat campaign is taking its toll on the beef industry. this is the work the industry is afraid of. they know we can eliminate the swaths.n huge these are reflective of trends going on in the country. it is all about plant-based substitutes, luring investors into new realms. general mills, the student

conglomerate recently put millions of dollars into substitutes. when asked why general mills is interested in beyond meat, the vice president said, if you look at overall trends, half the population is trying to avoid meat. for years, the animal protection movement has been on the right side of the debate about factory farming. now we find ourselves on the winning side time and time again. this is why nasdaq is advising investors how the death of meat could impact your per folio. meat consumption is declining, which could play out into long-term profit potential. [applause] all of this is indicative of the fact that our society is moving forward. we are moving toward a better

in which our relationship with our fellow creatures on this planet is no longer going to be based on violence and emanation, but rather on compassion and respect. when people think about harambe, and it helps them to recognize these individuals are individuals, that animals like cecil have families that mattered to them, it is our job to help them recognize that it is not just celebrity animals that have families, but all animals have families that matter to them. all animals want to live and want to be free from suffering just like you and i do as well. all animals, whether they be companion dogs or prairie dogs, have families. yes, chickens have families too. these animals have lives that matter to them.

where do we get off treating them as if they exist as commodities to exploit however we may want? it is time to recognize that the animals of this planet are here with us, not simply for us. we are realizing this so much. whether it is with brown bears, cows, these or animals have the same spark of life that we have. the birds in our barnyard and factory farms, they may come in different shapes and sizes. they may come with fur or feathers, but they have that same consciousness that we have. they want to avoid suffering and the exploitation we too often mete out on to them. , we have been waging war on other nations, an

unprovoked and unconscionable war on them. just in the same way that copernicus and galileo showed us we are not the center of the physical universe, it is time for us to realize we are not the center of the moral universe. this war goes on on the land, underwater, and inside of our factory farms. our movement is making history and bringing us to a day where we will end the war. they where we will be peacemakers between the species and have a more peaceful relationship with the animals with whom we share the planet. i know how difficult it is to imagine this kind of a world. but it may have seemed impossible to imagine that someone would go to jail for 30 years and come out and become president of his nation. that is what mandela did.

it always seems impossible until it is done. a decade ago, they would have told you that getting rid of battery cages was impossible. now people in the egg industry say it is inevitable. it was made possible because animal advocates became smarter, more strategic, and more effective. if being right were enough, we would have won a long time ago. chesteasy to pound your and talk about how we are right and they are wrong. animals do not need us to be right. they need us to be right and ineffective. there is a big -- and effective. there is a big difference. we are making history for animals. nation,s ago in our people would have said it was impossible to imagine a world without slavery. that was a legitimate debate 150 years ago, whether one person

should be able to own another person. a legitimate debate was whether half of you should be able to vote. 50 years ago, a legitimate debate was whether whites and blacks should be able to share the same tricking fountain. 10 years ago, illegitimate ay americansether g deserve the same rights as other americans. if you were to take that position today, you would be a social pariah. today, what might be possible for animals tomorrow? what is a legitimate debate about animals today that we can achieve? in 10 or 15 years, people are looking back in utter revulsion and saying, yeah, it was inevitable. you and i know it is not inevitable. we will only create a more humane society is each and every one of us in this room works together to make it happen. thank you very much.

[applause] martin:martin: paul shapiro, thu very much. our next speaker, making his way to the front, is michael webberman, who oversees the reducing approach to and eventually eliminating the number of animals raised for food. he is also one of the main organizers of this conference. so give it up for michael. [applause] thank you very much,

everyone. thank you so much for that introduction, martin. sorry you are seeing me one more time on this stage. theooks like paul is not only one that has genetic humans in this room. i believe my mother is in this room as well. is that correct? i do not see her, but she assures me she is here. i texted her to confirm it. here, to be to be on this panel with paul shapiro. we need a mass of people making a difference. why are my slides going backwards?

apparently this one works opposite as i thought. farm's mission is to create a world where animals are no longer killed or used for food ever through public education campaigns. we do this work for two reasons. one is the numbers, the seriousness of the situation. 100 billion animals are killed for food globally every year across the world. it is a number so large that we have no way of wrapping our head around it. another way to think about it, by the time this panel is done, 10 million animals will have been killed for food across the world. 10 million animals. so it is critical that we do all the work that we need, all the important work we can do to fight for farm animals. it is critical that we change young people on this issue. they are the future. we cannot just have people eating less meat and not knowing

why, just having it be something that was snuck into their food system. i am all in favor of that. it saves millions upon millions of animals. but if we are going to build a world in which animals are not raised and killed for food, we need a generation who believes that animals are part of the inner circle. [applause] so what i am going to do is just give a few simple tools for how we can create what momentso call lightbulb for people, the moments that it makes sense. moment cameightbulb when i was 14 years old. and i was in my french class, freshman year of high school. we learned how to say the name of farm animals in french. we learned how to say the noises they make in french.

then we learned how to say there cuts of meat in french. for me, i had never really thought about the fact that the meat i was eating was euphemisms for body. i went vegetarian overnight. i was already involved in antiwar activism. it was easy for me to get into advocacy. in the 15 years i have been doing this, i have come across a few things that i think, even if we are not going to be full-time advocates, a few simple things that will make our work more effective, make it easier for us and others not to eat animals. peoplethem is to find where they are rather than creating them where you want them to be. find bored people. if people have something better to do than talk to us, they might stop for a second.

they might stop for a quick second. it is all intimate now. but really, it is going to go in one ear and out the other. if you find people in a classroom where you are going to be more interesting than the teacher they are seeing everyday , you are going to be a lot more effective at having them engage with you. have them listen to what you are telling them. we have seen this time and time again. we get hundreds of thousands of pledges from people when we make a captive audience of them. a second little tool, this might seem totally intuitive. for some of us, it will be totally the opposite. evidence shows it is true -- the focus on the animals rather than the other issues related to this. when we think about the issues that make people move towards a thetarian or vegan diet,

reason we should eat fewer or no animals, the ones that come up animals,vonnt, and the health of other humans. when you look at younger people when you look at the one that is likely to get them to actually pledge, it is the animals almost every single time. not only does back at the initial conversation more meaningful and deep, but evidence shows that people who nimalsfor a -- vegan for a stay that way for longer. a third simple tool that is talked about a lot at this conference but might as well be said in a room of 600 rather is to knowe or there how to make the right ask. about to whatate degree we should be using baby steps. the reality is we do not have to pick. you you make the right ask,

can be honest about what you want in your long-term goals of people while making it easy for them to take the baby steps it will take to feel comfortable moving towards a fully vegan diet. even when we use these tools, a big issue that comes up, an issue that has not gotten enough attention in our movement, is the fact that a lot of people that stopped eating animals return to eating animals. a lot of them. if you asked me five years ago how many people i thought who tried a vegetarian or vegan diet went back to eating animals -- my guess -- [dog barking] [laughter] michael: is that dog a vegetarian? i would have guessed that probably one out of 20 people

who tried a vegan diet left it. obviously, that is not ideal, but it is not the end of the world. research started coming out around that time. unfortunately, it started to look more like it was three out of four people who tried a vegetarian or vegan diet went back to eating animal products. a few organizations, including mine, mercy for animals, the humane research council, started saying, we need to look at this more deeply. we need to really see how vast this issue is. so there was a large study released last year that was funded by a number of organizations in the animal rights movement. what they found was worse than i probably would have imagined. 2%y found that, in the u.s., of current vegetation -- vegetarians, 10% are former

vegetarians. for every six people who try a vegetarian or vegan diet, only one sticks with it. five out of six are going back on their commitment to a vegetarian or vegan diet. this is not meaningless. this is real. at theseften said conferences, this wonderful statistic -- right now in the u.s., 400 million fewer animals are being slaughtered every year because of the fantastic work this movement is doing. you can clap before we get to the "but." [applause] michael: imagine if every one of those people who tried a vegetarian or vegan diet kept with it. rather than 400 million fewer animals, it could be a billion. s billion.e 2-plu we could be talking so many fewer animals every year if we

find a way to make going vegetarian or vegan easier, which is a lot of the institutional work people are doing. have seen a lot of these tools in action actually work. on our 10 billion less program, program,o -- lives what we do is we find bored people waiting in line at rock concerts, college campuses, where watching our video is more interesting than the things they could be doing. we offer to pay them a dollar to watch a four-minute video on animal farming. when we showcase this information, their first reaction is shock and horror. they did not want to believe their diets are contributing to what their diets are continuing to. that is the first reaction. we found that by holding them what begins ass, shock turns into more of a

persuasion reaction. they initially recoil. when we did not pay them, they would recoil and walk away. when we started paying them to recoil, they engage. afterwards, it is easy to talk with them about these steps. it is easy at that point to say, do you want to make a pledge to move towards this? right now, 250,000 people have made this pledge. [applause] on one of the years, we did a one year later follow-up survey. we had a group that did not see the video that was asking people, would you like to take a survey? we gave an incentive. we also had a group, did you see the video on the truck? what we found is that 60% of the people that watched the video maintained their pledge to move

towards a vegan diet. [applause] michael: what we also found is that, in the group that did not see our video, some of them had become ex-vegetarians. in the group that watched the video, not a single person became an ex-vegetarian. [applause] michael: when these people make these pledges, it is possible to get them to keep these pledges. by sending them weekly recipes, they were 30% more likely to maintain their pledge. by getting more of that "why" information, reminding them why it is important, that was another way we actually help them keep their pledge. i think my favorite thing that we learned in this process of what we call sustained vegan advocacy, my favorite thing that has come out of it is one theme that comes up in the animal rights movement.

of pragmatism versus pu rity. it was supposed to say pragmatism versus purity. pretend it says pragmatism versus purity. i am going to go to the previous slide. one thing with the sustained vegan advocacy approach is we do not need to choose whether to be right with our message or our data. the fact is that it is an approach we have found a way to be completely honest about our goals. we want you to go completely vegan, but we are willing to support you along the way. we are using evidence-based approaches to not just be right, but be effective without having to compromise the message that you can be both right and right

at the same time. [applause] michael: while i have been obsessed the last few years with learning how to be more right, make our programs more effective, at the same time, i think we all get locked in our ways. we find something we feel is working. it is easy for us to become engrained in that. what this slide was going to transition into was the best ted talk i have seen in the last three years. there goes. pragmatism versus purity. talk i have seen in the last few years is why the scout mindset is crucial to good judgment. this woman used a metaphor, which is not my preferred metaphor -- in the army, soldiers are told their job is to win. scouts, their job is to learn

what is true whether the general wants to hear it or not. isthere is another team that going to ambush you, you need to know that information. the scout mindset is the idea that we should take pride in being wrong. when we are wrong, it is an opportunity to be more right than we were before. it is funny, but it is also true, right? every time we are wrong, that is an opportunity for growth. when of the best things farm has been doing the last five years is being proud of being wrong, fixing it every single time we get the chance. [applause] michael: i am going to close on -- one of the things i think we have learned the most with sustained vegan advocacy is that one of the things we have been the most wrong about is

this notion that if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. it is not true. we have this idea that if we just show people what is on the inside of these farms, they will automatically do the right thing and become vegetarians or vegans. it is not true. it is hurting animals to believe that. it is hurting animals to believe that all we have to do is show someone that information one time and hope they will do the right thing. true, we would have billions of vegetarians already. if we want to bring about a better world for these animals, we have to learn how to be right and right at the same time. thank you very much. [applause] martin: you can remove the red

wall of death. knowt wanted to let you there are lots of seats over here if you want to find a seat. you really want to find a seat for our next speaker, bruce friedrich. [applause] formerly of people for the equitable -- ethical treatment of animals. now the director of the good food institute and founder of new trust capital, focused on replacing animal products with farmed or culture-based alternatives. he is the co-author of the animal activist handbooks, also published by lampton books. [applause]

bruce: thank you. where is my clicker? sweet. that billu all hear gates bought the seattle times this morning? morning.t every [laughter] kevin looks disgusted. my favorite joke. such an honor to be at this conference again this year and to look out and see all of you. it is a packed room of people who care about animals, and nothing could warm my heart more.

it is a pleasure to be here chatting with you about using market and food technology to eliminate farm animal exploitation. [applause] bruce: specifically, i am going to talk a little bit about what we are upt at theo good food institute. for those of you who have your mercy for animals magazine, there is a spread about the good food institute. c)3are our own separate 501( organization, but we are the brainchild and launched by mercy for animals. [applause] the ben andyou had jerry's vegan flavors yet? when you went and got the vegan

flavors, how many of you bought them because you figured they would taste delicious? [applause] bruce: you were rewarded. how many of you looked at the price and considered the price and decided whether you are going to buy the ben and je4rry's vegan flavors? will the foundational observations of the good food institute is that pretty much everybody, when they are determining what it is they are going to eat, they take price into account and they take taste into account. there has been about a gazillion surveys to determine why people make the food choices they do. pretty much 100% of those surveys came to the conclusion that the primary factors people incorporate into their food decisions, the primary factors are taste and cost.

health is a little further down. obviously, if the food is not convenient, it is not going to be there. the good food institute is focused on making alternatives to animal products as delicious asconvenient, and inexpensive as possible. [applause] bruce: the second foundational onervation of gfi is based -- five years ago, these companies were formed. creek, and, hampton in possible foods. meat, hamptonyond foods isd impossible to compete with animal-based food on the principle deciding

factors for 100% of the public. basically, they are creating the product that has become the default. they create the products that people want to buy. these three companies have raised more than $400 million. they are valued, combined, at over $2 billion. all of that money is spent on competing with animal agriculture. they are not trying to get you to go out and buy impossible burgers. they are trying to get people who would otherwise be eating meat to consume these products. they are doing animal rights work using market and food technology. bill gates pointed out in an essay he wrote called "the we havef few -- food," only employed a percent of the world's plant proteins as meat alternatives.

fors an area that is ripe innovation and growth. [applause] bruce: the ceo of pinnacle foods, a multibillion-dollar food conglomerate, bought gardin. meets are plant-based in the beginning of a macro trend, similar to how soy and cmond milk changed the soy ategory. this is pinnacle, which brings you hungry man and potted meat. are two pointlks $2 billion out of a $24 billion industry, roughly 9%. meat, $500 million on an almost $200 billion meat

industry. i was trying to go backward. okay. all right. oh, good. i'm going backwards. how exciting. i am conquering technology. what he is saying is that we can -- what both of these guys are saying -- is that we are going to be closing that gap. rityly reaching dairy pa takes us from .25% up to 10%. the schmidt was speaking at global conference six weeks ago and was asked to reflect on innovations he thought would improve life on earth by a factor of at least 10 fold. he picked six things. five are what you would expect the ceo of the parent company of google to be talking about.

3-d printers, driverless cars, watches that tell your doctor that you are sick before you know you are sick. the first innovation he talked about was revolutionizing the meat industry. metalked about plant-based at. it takes nine calories in a chicken to get one calorie out. calories.sting eight he talked about climate change polluting isleast and, going from the