ingtonpan's "wash journal." coming up sunday morning, the director of the center for the history of medicine is -- at the university of michigan will discuss covid-19 and what can be learned from the pandemic. susanter baker and glasser talk about their new book, on the life of the former secretary of state jane baker. watch live at 7:00 eastern on sunday morning. join with phone calls, text, and tweets. host: joining us now from atlanta is carol anderson. she is the author of one person, no vote. how voter suppression is destroying our democracy. ur dem.

good morning, professor anderson. guest: good morning. host: we point out you are also a professor at emory university in african-american studies -- in the african-american studies department. you detailed voter suppression efforts in 2016 and 2018. what did you see then and what are you seeing now in 2020? guest: actually, i am seeing it double down. what i saw then was an effort coming after the shelby county holder's decision in 2013 by the u.s. supreme court. the clearance provision of the voting rights act. and what i saw immediately afterwards, two hours afterwards, texas implement it a law that the court said is racially discriminatory. i saw alabama implement a voting rights law one day after the shelby county decision.

in the preclearance state, almost 1200 polling stations have been shut down. places where people go to vote. millions had been purged from the voter rolls. for reasons that federal law says you can't be removed. i saw these states really doing whatever they could to remove american citizens from the voter rolls and to block american citizens right to vote. and the framing of all of this paul claims, assertion. he was the cofounder of the heritage foundation. when he said i don't believe in

i don't wantnt, everybody to vote. because, frankly, our leverage goes out as the voting populace goes down. that is what i am seeing -- i .aw in 2016 in 2018. we are seeing it now in the midst of a pandemic. where states are not figuring out -- there are states that are going you have your right to vote and we will protect that and your safety in the midst of a pandemic. instead, we are seeing a version of the old jim crow days. if you are going to vote, you will risk your life to do so. by making it harder, i requiring voter republics. you have to have your absentee ballot notarized, saying that covid-19 is not an acceptable for wanting an

absentee ballot. host: phone numbers on the bottom of your screen for our guest, carol anderson. republicans, call (202) 748-8001 . .emocrats, (202) 748-8000 .ndependents, (202) 748-8002 carol anderson is in african-american studies professor at emory university in atlanta. author of one person, no vote, how voter suppression is destroying our democracy. take us closer to where you are in the state of georgia, making a lot of news in the recent days and weeks. we have seen long lines. tell us what is happening in your home state right now. we have seen the long lines in georgia. to vote. really --long lines we make it sound like it is either voter enthusiasm or that happenstance

because the first day was a holiday. officials knew the first day of early voting was a holiday. election officials also knew that there was incredible demand to be able to vote this year. that voter turnout was going to be probably record-setting. because we saw that in the june primary. what we found in the june primary, a study was done. and it found that voting precincts that were 90% or more minorities, that the wait time was 51 minutes. on average. but in voting precincts where the 90% of the eligible voters were white, the weight count was six minutes. -- wait count was six midst. that is -- minutes.

that is a disparity in poll workers and the size of the precinct. all of that is feeding into the long lines that we saw here. you also saw people's determination to vote, which you should not have to wait in line for 11 hours to vote, that is a failure of the state to provide the kinds of resources necessary for a free and fair election. before we get to the calls, i wanted to read you some comments from the heritage foundation about mail-in voting. we have been talking about early and mail-in voting this morning. one person writes that advocates of vote by mail do not understand the extent of snafus on american voter rolls. they don't understand the hundreds of thousands of duplicate registrations that exist. they don't understand the problem of placeholder registrations where many registrations do not have full addresses. those who do not understand have chosen to turn a blind eye to these and other glaring problems.

add that the simple fact of vote by mail is entirely dependent on whopostal service, routinely delivers you your neighbors mail, any thoughts about that? guest: yes. so many. universally, vote by mail is used in five states in the united states. .nd they don't have a problem they are able to do it. the pointing out of the post office is really fascinating, given that president trump said that he is withholding funding from the post office so that it cannot deal with the exponential increase in mail-in ballots. that you had louis dejoy, the postmaster general, ordering the dismantling of sorting

machines that could provide ways for the post office to really do this work. and again, what we have here is that the voting rolls are managed. in fact, they are overmanaged. millions ofremoving eligible voters from the rolls. a concern about mail-in ballots. generally, republicans use mail-in ballots much more than democrats. this is the fact that in the that of a pandemic, democrats are moving toward mail-in ballots as a way to protect their right to vote and their right to be safe. to be healthy. use by democrats incredibleogged this

-- caused this incredible search ofut concern -- surge concern about mail-in ballots. trump has said mail-in ballots are corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. he urged his republicans in florida to use mail-in ballots. it is not the message

let's go to robert in pittsburgh. old.r: i'm 84 years i have seen a lot of elections. i have a problem with all of these people calling for trump. documentthat you could , all of these things, if this was obama doing all of these things, no way he would've been president. is votingmain topic

rights in the campaign, 2020. any observations? guest: people call in for trump, i would like to hear her remarks. guest: the reason we are seeing all of these voter suppression policies in place is that -- i'm going to do a quick history lesson. 1960's, the southern democrats who have been blocking civil rights legislation, it was

part of the old -- the anti-party of lincoln. they were absolutely dis-effective. they are hunting. they are looking because they cannot believe they are in a party that believes black people have rights. opportunity, to break open the solid democratic south. get more congressional representatives that were previously blocked off to them. thising they could control topic of white supremacy that is the foundational principle of the southern democrat.

do we expand our policies or do we suppress? they had an evaluation in 2004 and 2005. they had another one after mitt romney's loss. what the supreme court do.sion allowed them to this is why in north carolina saidourth circuit judge north carolina's voter laws targetedos

african-americans with almost surgical precision. this is why in texas, the judge ruled that the voter id laws not only had a racially discriminatory impact, they had a racially discriminatory intent. how do we, in this growing, diverse america, how do we stem the tide? how do we keep as many of those voters away? how do we make voter suppression voter depression? where it feels like it is impossible for your vote to have

a difference? so, we will put as many barriers up there to dissuade you from voting. to make it difficult to vote. that is the game plan. host: our guest is carol anderson who is an african-american studies professor at emory university in atlanta. author of the book one person, no vote. how voter suppression is destroying our democracy. we will take phone calls for just under 30 more minutes with our guest. we have sharon. sharon is on the line in california, on the republican line. thank you for waiting. caller: good morning. i am listening to a lot of the conversation. one thing, right off the bat, since we have gotten it put through that virtually everybody in the unite states will get a mail-in ballot, right there, don't we sort of solve any of the problems of any kind of suppression that might be taking place at voting stations, etc.? that is points number one. point number two, the cdc came out with a statistic saying that even seniors, 95 plus percent of

them will survive covid. why is it dangerous at all to go and vote regularly? if you are a virus person, you can do the mail in. all of us managed to get to the grocery store and everywhere else we need to get. if we wanted to vote in person, we could do that. my third point is, you know, you seem like a smart, lovely woman. but why are we telling our brothers and sisters, our children, our african-american and american children or our latino american children that they are not smart enough to go get ids and vote? i think that anybody that wants to vote certainly can vote. i guess you guys all know who i'm voting for. who i believe loves all americans. that's it. god bless. host: carol anderson, i saw you shaking your head at your last

comment. what did you hear that concerns you? guest: so much. we are not all having massive mail-in ballots. one of the things that is happening, we have states putting barriers in mail-in ballots. so that, in the midst of a pandemic, where over 8 million americans have contracted the where over 210,000 have died. we are telling folks that they they are going to need to get witness signatures on their mail-in ballots. we are telling folks that they are going to need to have their mail-in ballots notarized so that the social distancing that was part of the underlying architecture for the need for these mail-in ballots, in the midst of a pandemic, are being undermined.

and so the myth that everybody is doing mail-in ballots is not accurate. the second point, i can't even remember it now. i will go to the third point. the third point that why are we telling black children or latino children that they are not smart enough. let me explain how voter id works. the way voter id works is that it is there for the middle-class norm that everybody has a voter id. that is what it is so effective. the way that the legislatures have written these voter id laws, it is not that every id counts. in fact, these states, like north carolina, have racial data on who has what type of id.

and then they decided, based on that data, to privilege the kinds of ids that whites have. and to exclude the kinds of ids that african-americans have. so, it is not every id. there is an intent behind this. and what it also does not deal with is that the structural barriers, the economic barriers to access these ids. so, for instance, in georgia, to get your id, you need to have three different types of documentation. and that documentation from a passport to a resident has -- and a bank account -- has racial implications, given the

structural inequalities in the united states. given the income disparities in the united states. given the wealth disparity in the united states. so, this is like the poll tax of the days of old, where it can be discriminatory -- it cannot be discriminatory because everybody has to pay it. but everybody does not have to go through centuries of slavery and unpaid labor. everybody did not have to go through the black codes which was slavery by another name after the civil war. everybody did not have to go through sharecropping and the theft of your wages. the theft of your labor in that system. on the surface, you get equity. but you pull back the lairs of -- layer of that wonderful democratic language and what you

see is a cesspool of inequality that our leadership has tapped into in order to skew access to the ballot box. ♪ todaynd defend her still because there ain't no doubt i usa this land god bless the from the lakes of minnesota to acrossls of tennessee the plains of texas from sea to shining sea from detroit down to houston