marriage project on the role of fathers in american society. in the los angeles times will discuss how the iranian government and its people are responding to increased tensions with the u.s. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal live at 7:00 eastern sunday morning. join the discussion. >> on newsmakers, house budget chair of kentucky discusses efforts to reach deals on multiple spending bills, including those that would fund at the pentagon and the departments of labor and health and human services. 10:00 a.m. sunday at and 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we are back with peter grier, the washington editor for christian science monitor, who is here to talk about an eight-p art series and our spotlight on

magazines segment, "democracy under strain." peter, thank you for being here. guest: thank you for having me on. host: what prompted an eight-pa rt series, "democracy under strain"? well, we are trying to find out what adds to the conversation. we look at all the stuff going wrong with democracy today. partisanship is out of control. isre is gridlock, nothing getting done. peter has been around a while, and he can look and see how these things stretch beyond the trumpcare wreck how they started, and where they are going. host: so the most recent piece was entitled "block the vote: the history of efforts to change and contain and change voting practices in america." on voting access,

and what did you find? thet: well, i started with vote. voting is of course the core aspect of democracy. it is how we participate, and there are a lot of issues surrounding voting right now. is onely voting rights that a lot of democrats and republicans are fighting about. the statesnd is that are really going into different ways. there are 15 states that are making voting easier. that is to say automatic voting registration, where you have to opt out. there are 25 states that have tightened voting registrations, through the voter i.d. requirement. interactives process with a dynamic pulling the nation apart a little bit. host: what are the differences between the states that are

expanding voting and the states to, i am noting going to say restrict voting, but states that are pulling back and trying to make sure their voting systems are tighter? guest: right, right. you will find what you have is, while they are not exclusively red and blue, there is a red and blue twist, and in recent years, republicans have made a real push to, in their view, tighten up a voting system that have gotten too loose. they want to have voter i.d. they want to purge people they think are not really on the voting rolls anymore. america has a terrible history in terms of allowing selfridge and in terms of restricting the rights of minorities to vote, so you have to look at those or at least reactions to those actions in that context. host: one of the states you've

focused on in this article was wisconsin. talk to us about what is going on in wisconsin when it comes to voting. guest: right. so that was a very interesting example in which you answered the question -- does it make a difference? does it affect the outcome? are they switching to votes? and people against voting restrictions would say yes. in wisconsin, it was very close. trump won by 20,000 votes. there were 60,000 fewer votes in the state, and of those, about 20,000 fewer votes in the city of milwaukee, which is a very democratic district. so you can say you know, that might have had an effect. but political sides do not really agree with that. they will say we do not really know. barack obama was not on the ballot. that could have been a big reason for minority voters not to have turned out. in general, while restrictions may be bad in an ethical or a moral sense, they are not really

switching elections in america -- at least as far as we can tell. host: if you want to join this conversation about voting rights in america, the eight-part series, "democracy under strain ," we would like you to call in. republicans, you can: at (202) 748-8001. democrats, you can call in at (202) 748-8000. independents, you can call in at (202) 748-8002. and keep in mind, we are always reading on social media. andwitter, we are @cspanwj, on facebook, we are at facebook.com/cspan. what are the 2020 implications ?f all of these everything evolving around the next presidential election, is there an application around aning -- is there implication around voting? guest: there is.

who is going to vote, what is the turnout going to be? of voters, 60% on a really exciting election. i do not know about you, but in 2020, it is already the excitement or the interest so buildup that it is going to be a record. so in that context, we do not really know what is going to happen. what happened if 70% of americans turn out to vote? the mix might be totally different. it will be interesting to see. host: ow, one of the things that you also wrote about is this divide and turning into a them versus us, but it is not anything new in america, is it? is not.o, it in some ways, the split between the powerful rural voting block and cities is nothing new. it dates back to -- thomas jefferson you stop about "evil

about," and the feel urban voters, they do not really mentality inthe the countryside that really counts. but that becomes a template to divide america into racial, ethnic, and social and cultural different groups. not usedknow, that is to necessarily have a partisan lott, because there were a of rural democrats, a lot of urban republicans, but increasingly, as america divides into a red and blue eyed a theation, that slips onto rural/urban divide, too, so you whata deep gap between rural area voters want and what urban area voters want. host: when you are talking about rural, are we talking upstate new york versus new york city, or are we talking new york state versus iowa?

when we say rural versus urban, what exactly are we talking about? guest: that is a good question. you really are talking new york state versus new york city as much as the different states, a rural-dominated state, like iowa, versus new york. in state elections, for instance, that has an effect. what do they think? ofmany ways, the sort partisan gerrymandering stems pace divisions as much as divisions between different states. up to the 1960's, the power of rural voters in big elections was much greater. if you think partisan gerrymandering is that on a national level, it was outrageous on a state level. that was not outlook and the supreme court -- that was not outlawed in the supreme court until 1964 or so.

these divisions remain in the state legislature. host: you brought it up, and i'm glad you did. talk to us about malapportioned it. ment ismalapportione kind of like gerrymandering, the state gets freedom to divide up their own political power. who is going to vote, how many people will vote, where the districts are going to be, so if you are a rural legislator -- california is a great example of this. in california, the rural areas were extremely powerful. they controlled the state legislatures, and they made sure that their districts included many fewer people, so, you know, au can have, let's just use loadable as an example, 10

voters in california, a member ure, andtate legislato that same number for an urban district would be, like i'm a 3000 voters. so in essence, the rural voters have much greater power. until the one person, one vote rule in 1964 to really rule this out. host: ok. going back to voting rights, we have a question from one of our social media followers, who wants to know if you know how many countries do not require an i.d. to vote? guest: that is a good question, and it sounds like the question of the person who sent it in probably knows the answer to. to tell you the truth, i have not used this international sense of us are not going to guess, but in america, that is a very popular change in terms of the voters. light 69% to 70% of the voters

will say well, we think there should be photo id as a requirement, but not everybody has a photo id. y 91-year-old mother-in-law have a hard time finding a photo id, because she does not drive anymore. that is a little bit harder. host: that brings us to the national identification question we have had back and forth, should there be a national identification? would that help in this voter issue? guest: should there be? that is a whole other can of ticks there. you know, in america, i am not that ist is something really reflective of our -- make everyone have a passport.

i don't know. that is not something i am going to jump into. dave, who isalk to calling from san antonio, texas, on the republican line. dave, good morning. caller: good morning. i have a unique experience here in san antonio, when i came to see my granddaughter is way from high school. it was -- graduate from high school. it was right during graduation season, and the high school parking lot was filled with cars. they almost unanimously had "vote for hillary" on their bumper stickers. all of the parents there, 90% of illegals there were immigrants. the children were illegal. ofgrandchild was maybe one 20 or 30 white and black students at the high school. i was curious to exactly how serious are these people about wanting to vote. and there they were, in

november, voting for hillary clinton. host: go ahead and respond guest. guest: well, i will say this, you do hear this a lot. you hear people who have an anecdotal reason of why they think there is voter fraud. the fact is that whether there is massive voter fraud in america is something that has been studied for decades, and there is no evidence that there is a large-scale voter fraud in national elections. you can kind of see why it would be in the sense of how many immigrants it would take, how many illegal immigrants voting it would take to actually sway an election or make any difference. it would be massive. there iscan believe massive voter fraud being covered up in america. i do not believe that. there has not been any real example of that. it does not mean things like that do not happen on a small scale basis, particularly in localized elections, but, you

know, this is a subject that i have written stories about since the 1980's. there really is no evidence that there is large-scale voter fraud on a national level in america. host: so when we have lawmakers who say well, we need to make sure our voting system is secure , and people who are voting are eligible to vote, if we do not have that proof that there is actually voter fraud, then what are those movements about? guest: well, again, let's -- you do not have to have proof of voter fraud to feel that you have to defend against voter fraud. honestly, you go to a voting line, and you are standing there, how many take up their wallets and take out, say, a photo i.d.? it is common. perhaps that is just a commonsense thing that would make the population feel better about it, because to a certain thent, it is not about

fraud, per se, it is about how we feel about the election system. fair?feel it is remember, democracy is not about majority rule. democracy is about us all be leaving the rules are fair. somethingk that is that voting restrictions could help with. host: let's talk to diane, who is calling from upper darby, pennsylvania, on the democrats line. diane, good morning. caller: good morning. i have a few questions, but i want to start with this one. last year and this year when i went to vote for school etc., we city council, had the same names on certain parts, like maybe for school

counselor, for schools. the had the same names on democratic side as they did on the democratic side. ,o, say the name was john smith john smith was listed on democratic, and then john smith was listed on republican vote. either it is democratic or republican, not both. it is called a crossover of some kind. i did not vote for anybody that was a crossover. i would like to know -- is that considered voter manipulation? i saw it last year a little, but this year a lot. there were four names on one vote, and you get to vote for four on school, two on counsel, whatever, and i saw it a lot this year, and it upset me. it extremely upset me. host: it sounds like she is

talking by local election, where they might have different rules and how you vote in a local election. guest: right, like school districts. school district elections are a whole other country. i have no idea how they set up those votes. that could well be the case. there are elections which are supposed to be nonpartisan, but the people who are running kind their i.d. and party identification to be known. on theet's go to brock independent line. rock, good morning. caller: good morning. , guys. good morning, mr. grier. thank you for your time. i just have two questions, guys. how does the divisive rhetoric between dems and republicans delayed the progress of america and respects to economic growth and its moral compass? and second, how does voter

suppression and the lack of adequate public education access undermine the future of our children? thank you. guest: thank you. those are excellent questions. as to your first one, i am talking in general about what the partisan divisiveness means to america in general. obviously, it is extremely corrosive. erodes, not all at once, but bit by bit. it can be helped along by elected leaders. it can be helped along by the way people talk to each other. particular, what it does is it makes us feel like the other side is the enemy, and when you feel that when you lose , it is a catastrophe, because the other people are so bad, that is when democracy phrase. -- frays.

and that is really i think kind of what we are seeing in america today, that people feel it when the other side wins, it is a catastrophe. and he asked about the economy, that reflects on that specifically as well. the second part of your question was about suppression and how that affects our children. first of all, i will answer that literally. 20, orage voters, 18 to college-age voters, are among byse who are most affected so-called voter suppression efforts, that, because, again, they often do not have the voter i.d. necessary to vote at elections. they sometimes are not eligible to vote where they go to school. they have to go home. and so to a certain extent, that is aimed at them, because their

vote tend to bes different than many of the areas where they are attending school. it makesl, of course, -- it just seeks -- it makes voting less of an everyday part of people's lives, and for youngsters growing up, if they do not see their parents going to vote, if their parents are not able to take them into the voting booth, that is not put it is -- that host: the supreme court and how the supreme court may be considered more and more political as the years have gone by. tell us who robert cooper greer was. guest: that is dangerous. i wondered if they would alert you to that. you of course are a supreme court expert. isert cooper grier

considered one of the worst supreme court justices of all time. to him.ated fortunately, i am related to his brother. he is involved in one of the worst supreme court incidents in history, the dred scott case, in which african americans had no role in american life. robert cooper grier voted for dred scott. he is the only northerner who voted for dred scott, and he did that in a conspiracy with the incoming president, president james buchanan. they thought that if dred scott lived to be a national decision, that a northerner would vote for it as well, the issue of slavery would be done with. there would be no threat of a civil war. what that showed of course was the limits of the power of vistaprint court decision to, you know -- power of the supreme court decision to change, you

know, the mood. to tear the country apart. that is a cautionary tale today. obviously, slavery is a huge, divisive issue, but the supreme court cannot go beyond the national consensus. they can take action to tear the country apart, and in that sense, you know, they are a political body, but they are also reflective of the national climate, maybe, not the national weather, but the natural climate. host: and we have seen the supreme court has had to jump into more issues, because it seems like congress is not handling the, so it goes to the supreme court, which once again makes it seem like they will be more political, because they are dealing with issues that congress has not made an issue decision on one way or the other. guest: that is correct. supremebout the springboar court as political, and some people do not like that, but ports are political.

laws do not address everything. they have to make judgments on their own feelings, and that is political. the actual political structure, when congress does not solve issues, a lot of that ends up in the lap of the supreme court. host: let's go back to our callers, and go to scott, who is calling from new york good morning. on independent line. scott good morning. , caller: good morning. hey. good morning. happy father's day. i am glad that we are americans and not united states people. i went on record in the summer of 2015, when everybody was laughing at a man by the name of donald trump, and i predicted what was going to happen, and exactly what i said was going to happen in 2015 happened in the fall of 2016. now is feeling is saying we're not going to have to worry about the 2020 elections, because we are already in a

trumped up situation which come within a year, we are going to have it into a state of martial law, and at that point, we will not have another presidential election, so the history of america will be our first president cannot tell a lie, and our new one could not tell the truth. guest: he is not alone in believing that. you hear liberals who get together and worry about, or this case, independent people, who worry about the vote, saying that. but i believe american institutions are stronger than that. i believe that if you try to do enough of aould be pushback, enough of a revolution, that would be prevented from doing that. host: let's go to kevin, who was calling from staten island, new york, on a democrat line. kevin, good morning. caller: good morning, c-span. thank you for this interesting conversation.

mr. grier, you're opening comments were about low voter turnout in the country. highou examine oregon's voter turnout, their voting by mail turnout? and also, what is your opinion on why the public has not supported voting by mail. as you must know or probably know, oregon have a very high, i think it is over 90% voter turnout. i will listen off the air, and thank you again, c-span. guest: right. i did not examine not, per se, but i am certainly aware of that. first of all, i think voting by mail is in fact popular. generally speaking, efforts to make it easier to vote are also pretty popular. people can be in favor of voter and voting by mail and automatic voter registration. so in that sense, i think, you know, the public does support

what you are talking about. and in oregon, they have very high turnout. making it easier to vote increases the turnout, so, yes, it would do that. but of course in america, voter gettingis not -- it is newer voters to turn out, not all voters to turn out. so it is focused on the things that help them, not the things that help everybody. host: let's go to bob, who is calling from alabama on the republican line. bob, good morning. caller: good morning. good morning. mr. grier, hello? host: go ahead, bob. we hear you. caller: mr. grier, i mean, you 12w, i do not have but a grade education, but it is real simple to me that only voting, to cut down on voter fraud, use what god gave you, your

fingerprint. take your fingerprint, go up to your election place, and they will issue you an idea that coincides with your fingerprint, .it when you walk in the vote, mass your fingerprint, it pops up your name, you get a free iv that they are going to give you, you presented to the people arehere, and if you vote, legal, you vote, if you are illegal, you do not vote. host: what do you think of that, not only voter idea but the government collecting fingerprints? matter,s a practical there is not going to be a national bank of fingerprints of every american. i think that is something that, again, i do not want the federal government just to collect my fingerprints, and there are many other people who would feel the

same way. so that is not going to happen. host: let's go to hilda who is calling from tampa, florida on the independent line. nilda?ilda or caller: it is nilda, with an n. i have been listening for so long am i feel like jumping from one thing to the other. my father is 90. the mrs. going to the election spot now, because of his walking disabilities. to go back to why i originally called, for 19 years, before my grandson was born, i worked the election faithfully. wass one of the people that behind the desk that voters would show identification. people -- it had just gotten nationalized, which come

citizenshipational papers, so that they would not have a single problem. they had with anything to prove and show, passport, drivers license, letters with address and envelopes they were and ints of their state, just want to say is that there is a big difference between the ones that hold up the line, because they do hold of the line, if they do not come with any identification. the process is supposed to be quick. you want it to be quick. there is no reason why a person doesn't -- if they drive a car, they are not supposed to be driving without their license. host: go ahead and respond real quick. guest: a lot of states do not a lot ofter i.d., and states are different as to what counts and what do not. host: we would like to thank

peter grier, of "christian science monitor," for their great series "democracy under strain." , theming up sunday morning national redistricting director for common cause discusses the legal battle over the citizens are question being included in the 2020 census. also joining us, brought wilcox, director of the marriage project on the role of fathers in american society. and the los angeles times will discuss how the iranian government and its people are responding to increased tensions with the u.s. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal live at 7:00 eastern sunday morning. join the discussion. most of us when we think of

winston churchill, we think of the older man sending younger men to war. but no one knew better and few knew, as well, the realities of war, the terror and the devastation. and he said to his mother after the second war, you can't gild it. he absolutely knew the disaster that war was. >> sunday night on q&a, historian candace molnar talks about the early military career of winston churchill in her and, "hero of the empire" the making of winston churchill. >> and he says give me a regiment. i want to go and i want to fight. so he ends up going with a regiment on the day that it fell to the british, and he takes over the prison and he frees the man who has been his fellow prisoners. he puts into prison his former

jailers, and he watches as the flying is torn down and union jack is hosted in his place. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q&a. >> democratic presidential candidate senator amy klobuchar of minnesota spoke at the new hampshire institute of politics, politics and eggs event on monday. this is an hour. reporters. i want to welcome all of you here this morning. the i want to thank all of the sponsors you see the banners here they are the ones that provided the breakfast at no cost to all of us so they are all corporate