- [announcer] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy, and by claire and carl stuart. - i'm evan smith. he was the first millennial elected to statewide office in the united states, a former army captain and now rising democratic party star who's president of the voting rights group let america vote. he's jason kander, this is overheard. let's be honest, is this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly? how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa and elsewhere? you could say that he made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. you saw a problem and, over time, took it on. let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak. are you gonna run for president? i just got an f from you, actually. (audience laughing) this is overheard. jason kander, welcome.

- good to be with you. - good to see you. when did voter suppression become a thing? i mean, i know that over time there's been efforts to restrict the votes of some people, laws have changed, we hope that we're in a society where everybody is allowed to vote. but it seems like overnight it went from being a thing here and a thing there to being an epidemic. - yeah, i mean, this latest iteration, obviously throughout our history, as you mentioned, there's been different times, but this latest iteration, it's interesting because after 2000, after what happened in the election of 2000, you had the help america vote act. you really had us sort of going as a country in the direction-- - in the right direction. - right, in the right direction of making sure that everybody got a chance to vote. and then, what happened was, and just to be real about it, is that the republican party decided, "wait a minute, that doesn't really work for us." so, they decided that they were gonna basically target folks who were really unlikely to vote republican and make it harder for them to vote. - let's be specific about who you're talking about. when you say folks, you mean? - i'm talking about minorities, i'm talking about low-income americans, i'm talking about the elderly, i'm talking about, increasingly, young people, students. - and the assumption is these people would all vote democrat. - right.

and so, what happened was is that's when you saw photo id laws, that sorta thing come around, because what didn't happen, what they claim is that it has to do with voter fraud. you are statistically more likely as an american to be struck by lightning than you are to commit voter impersonation fraud. so, this is a political strategy is what it is. they pretend that it's a policy disagreement between the parties; it's not. it's a political strategy no different than when they decide where to send mailers, whose doors to knock on or what to say in tv ads. - so, let's talk about specifically the kinds of suppression efforts you're talking about. voter id, you've alluded to; i wanna come back to that in a second. purging of voter rolls is another big thing. voter intimidation. putting onerous requirements on just the voter registration process to begin with. all of these fall into the bucket of the things that you're trying to do. - and there are others too that people may not necessarily think of. so, for instance, we've seen, in special elections where, in urban parts of a district, if the folks running the election are, if it's the republican party, they will do things like consolidate polling places so that all of a sudden, let's say you voted in one place

in november, the special election comes along and now you're voting in a different place. - you might in fact go show up at that first place to vote- - frequently. - be turned away and not go back to the other place. - right, and they'll consolidate 'em and so you'll have this really long drive to make, that kind of thing. unfortunately they're getting really creative about it. - this question of voter id specifically, let me ask you about that. so the counter-case to the case that you make that voter id is bad, and you've heard this, is you have to produce a photo id to cash a check. does anybody cash checks anymore? i guess probably some people do. you have to put a picture id in front of somebody to get on an airplane. why would you not have to put it, why is it so bad if you have to do it for other things, why is it so bad to vote? - well, i'll just talk about my state for instance. i was the chief election official in missouri for four years- - secretary of state. - right, and there were over 200,000 eligible registered voters in my state who didn't have the kind of id that they wanted to require in order to vote. as to why it's different than the other things, well the other things aren't a constitutional right, period. that's the reason. i went to afghanistan not for your right

to check into a hotel. that's one reason, but the other reason is that it would be one thing if there were a purpose in doing this other than trying to keep those people from voting. - as far as you're concerned, there is no other purpose. - no there's not. - no matter what anybody says. - right, they are trying to create the idea that there's this widespread epidemic of voter fraud. there's just not. it's just an out-and-out lie. - and again, the things you're talking about are things that are put into law. this is not like donald segretti in watergate dirty tricks. this is not sending people a note telling them when the date of the election is, but it's the wrong date deliberately to keep them from voting. this is actually stuff that legislators are going into session approving, governors are signing, this is actually put into law. - this is them deciding that they're going to create the appearance of a problem when the real problem we're trying to solve is black folks, hispanic folks, low-income folks, the disabled, they tend not to vote republican. that's a problem for the republican party,

so if they can't vote, problem solved. - you've been dismissive of the suggestion that this is about voter protection as opposed to voter suppression, because that's the way that this is couched. the branding of this on the side of the people who support these measures is that it's voter protection. we have a voter fraud problem. you totally- - yeah, it's a lie. you dismiss that, okay. but of course, they'll produce data. they'll say, there are x number of cases. they'll point to particular cases and they'll say, well here's an example of somebody who did exactly the thing we're talking about, we do have a problem to solve. - well okay, a few days ago, i refer to the president's election integrity commission as the voter suppression committee to re-elect the president, cuz that's what it is. - tell us what you actually think. - that's what it is. so the voter suppression committee had its second meeting the other day. they had it in new hampshire so that they could lie and claim that there were all these people who voted who shouldn't have been voting. - well in fact, that was the precipitating event for the creation of that commission, was it not. the president's claim some months ago that the number was three million, am i remembering? - three to five million. conveniently, a very similar number to the margin of loss. - the popular vote of victory of hillary clinton.

but that there was some bus involved, that they were busing them into new hampshire to somehow vote illegally. - yeah, the president's been making a lot of stuff up. i mean, that's not news to anybody probably. - we interrupt this broadcast, right. (laughter) - this, i argue, is the biggest lie that a sitting president has ever told. the commission was created to justify the lie. that's what it was created for. then that morphed into another way to undermine faith in american democracy so that you can then suppress the vote. that by the way, is how this works. it's a three-part playbook. part one is you undermine faith in american democracy. part two, you put up obstacles to voting. part three, you put up obstacles to the obstacles. you're mentioning, they mentioned cases of this. i was there when they were having this a couple weeks ago, this meeting in new hampshire. we had 200 people there protesting, which was exponentially more people than secretary kris kobach from kansas who's the real leader of this commission,

has actually convicted of voter fraud, despite the fact that he spent an enormous amount of taxpayer dollars trying to do it. - investigating it, looking for people, looking for the real killer as it were, right. kovach is, as you say, the secretary of state of the state of kansas. he is your bestie, right. you guys are like america's fun couple. you could not be more opposite- - he's the bizarro of me. in your perspective. he is the bizarro. he's vice-chair of this commission, but he's really effectively, he's running it. - he's running the deal. - you're not a big fan of his or of the rvf. - yeah, i don't have any of his records. (laughter) - i keep wondering why the conversation is about voter fraud of the sort you're talking about and not like people hacking into the election. why is that not the voter fraud commission? - well i think that's kind of obvious, i guess, but unfortunately, right. - but it's a reasonable question. i mean, if you step back from politics. - the answer to your question is, the reason that the questions that are being asked are being asked by the trump administration is because they're trying to get certain answers. they don't like the answers to those.

- or maybe they're diverting attention and distracting attention from trump. - of course, it's the same reason that president trump is running a misinformation campaign against both the american intelligence community and the media. he doesn't like the answers they're coming up with, so he's gotta make sure that they're not believable to the american people. - so there are a couple aspects of this. there's the voter suppression part, but then there's also this more general problem of people don't vote, and maybe the reason that they don't vote is not because of voter id. maybe it's not because of onerous registration requirements. it's just that we haven't put in place measures that actually give people a motivation to vote or an incentive to do it. i looked up two things that are of particular interest to me, motor voter and online voter registration, as we were getting ready to talk today. motor voter is now in 10 states. this is where you get signed up automatically to- - it's also known as automatic voter registration. - register when you get a driver's license and i think there was some, more than 30 states currently have some legislation on the books now to either create motor voter or to expand. 35 states have online voter registration, making it easy. people in office, republicans, democrats, talk about we want more people to participate in this democracy, but then we don't necessarily

in every place, create the means to do that. we're sitting today in a state, texas, that does not have motor voter and does not have online voter registration. - people in charge here don't want folks to vote. - well, i'll let you say that. - it's okay, i'm just- - what i will observe as a data point, we have the worst voter turnout over the last four election cycles of any state in the country. - you do the data, i'll tell people what it's about. - play-by-play, color commentary, that's it. you be my troy aikman, that's fine. the point is, there are measures that could be put in place proactively, if you really want people to vote. that's how you let america vote, right, is you give people the means to do it. - it's 2017. and i can tell my phone to tell my tv at home. i'm from kansas city, i'm a huge royals fan. i can tell it to record the royals game so i can watch it when i get home. but i got to wait in line for two and a half hours to vote sometimes. - what about the question of the tech is not sufficient, from a security standpoint, to allow people to do that? - right, i'm not saying you should be able to vote on your phone. what i am saying is that the world we live in, naturally, there is a certain level of customer expectation.

if you see a product and you're like, i want to get that, you go to your phone and you've got it a couple of days later. if you want to pay a little more, you got it the next day. what that means is, is that this conversation has got to be about the fact that at least when it comes to elections, that's one of the few areas where everybody in the country is a potential customer and should be treated that way. what that means, if you look at states like oregon, where you have mail-in voting, you have automatic voter registration. you have the whole smorgasbord, it's basically the gold standard of how to do an election. that should be our goal. - and voter turnout in oregon is actually pretty good. - it's really, really high because of it. that's the first part of folks not voting. we should actually strive to make it convenient. we should treat them like customers. but then the second part is, sometimes i think when folks don't vote, that's a vote. i think that politicians have a tendency, and i'm a politicians, but i tell my fellow politicians all the time, i say, whenever we talk about it like why don't these people vote, and we put it on the voter.

that's like a lawyer blaming the jury when they don't get the verdict they want. you didn't make the case. the reason i say it is a vote is because at some level, people have said this is not worth my time. you're not going to deliver on what you say. some of that is solved by us just being more genuine and getting more done, frankly. - right, let me layer one more bit into this conversation before we turn it over to sort of the jason kander story, and that is redistricting. a lot of people in this country have decided on in red states and blue states that elections are rigged. the reality is, when you gerrymander to the point that the major party not in power doesn't even bother to field a candidate, or you know that based on the way that district has been drawn, there's no chance in hell that your party's going to win. are they wrong to think that the election is rigged? that's why some people stay home. - yeah, that is exactly why some people stay home. unfortunately they're not wrong. how do you fix that because people in power who control those levers, they want to stay in power. they control those levers to remain in power. - absolutely, well first of all, you take it out of their hands. i mean, the idea that we have politicians

drawing their own district lines is like having inmates serve on their own juries. it doesn't make any sense. if you look at what california has done, it's really interesting. they've done a couple of things. one, they've brought citizens into the redistricting process. they've had actual citizen-oriented redistricting. i would go further, this whole thing where everybody tries to bring in a certain amount of democrats, a certain amount of republicans. i think you just bring folks in, just regular citizens, and you can have a judge instruct them, right. it's not unlike a jury situation. - you trust the public to do this? - absolutely, if you've ever watched a jury, if you ever watched a judge instruct a jury, the jurors come out of there and they take it very seriously as a civic duty. they also aren't elected officials or tied to elected officials. - they have no stake in the outcome except for democracy. - they don't care that representative jones and representative smith live two blocks from each other. no, the district belongs to the people who live in it, not to the people who are elected to represent it.

the other thing that they do that i think is very interesting, is they have the true open primary system where everybody runs in the same ballot regardless of party, so if you have a district that, and it'll happen regardless of redistricting. some districts where it's overwhelmingly r, or overwhelmingly d, the general election still matters because if your district- - you're talking about top two finishers, what they call top two finishers. - long story short, you gotta make the general election real competitive again. what that does is, it forces you to represent your entire district. now does that mean you necessarily move to the middle. no, that's not the point of it. the point of it is, you gotta listen to everybody, you gotta court everybody. - it's not just a base election, a subset of a subset. - you gotta come back with results. it goes back to, remember when people used to brag about being bipartisan? - you're talking about customer service, right, if you don't produce customer service they go, they find another company. - exactly. - okay, so let's do your story. you were raised outside of kansas city, in the suburbs right. parents were both juvenile probation officers. go to american university, then you go to georgetown law school. you joined the rotc when you were in law school.

- yeah, it was right after 9/11. - right after 9/11. so you were a reservist for awhile, and then you voluntarily deployed to afghanistan. - that's right. - you served for four months, come back, at 27 you run for state legislator. at 31, you run for secretary of state. at that point, you're the youngest statewide elected official in the whole country. - you got this down, this is good. - then at 33, you run, i have a tv show. (laughter) - well, they should let you keep it. - and then at 33, you run for the senate. - that's right. - what's your hurry junior? i mean, there is like- - i was just trying to get here. - let some old people have jobs. oh, is that right, this is the goal. let some old people have some of the action here. - after this, i'm done. i'm going to go take a nap. - why didn't you screw around? why didn't you go to europe with a toothbrush in your backpack? explain. - i went to afghanistan instead, i guess. - well, i guess you kinda did go overseas, just not the same way. - so look, for me, anytime that i've run for office, it's been because there's been a change in the world

that i wanted to see, and there just happened to be an office between me and that change. i ran for state representative because i was really upset that there had been really deep medicaid cuts in my state. i had just come back from an experience where, you know, look, i grew up comfortably. there was no politician making a decision that was taking food off my family's table, so the first time i ever had that experience. a lot of people, that's their first memories, is feeling let down in that way. i was in my mid-20s in afghanistan in a vehicle with no armor before i really understood the consequences of these decisions. then i come home, and i'd already been thinking about running. i see the deep medicaid cuts and i wanted to do something about that and some other issues, so i ran. secretary of state, just like now, i wanted to stand up against voter suppression, stand up for voting rights. and then u.s. senate, i wanted to protect obamacare, i wanted to look out for my fellow vets, i wanted to make college more affordable. the answer to your question is, when i see something i want to change

and there's an office between me and that change, i do it. right now, the biggest thing that i want to fight is the fact that president trump is trying to in a large way, get rid of real elections in this country. that's why i'm (crosstalk). - (crosstalk) it's noble but for a lot of people, when they see a problem, they go looking for somebody else to solve it. they go look for somebody else to run, and in fact, we have spent the last i don't know how many years, smack-talking public service and running for office and politics. the point that we have made it an unattractive career path for people, so i think i worry honestly that we're going to lose a lot of young people who don't look at public service as a thing that they want to do themselves. but you cut the other way on it. - i mean, the motivation was no different than why i decided to volunteer for the army and to volunteer to deploy. i just, i thought something needed to be done so i wanted to go do it. - why are you a democrat? - i'm a democrat because i fundamentally believe that we should reward hard work. i fundamentally believe that our best days are not behind us. that's to me, the root of progressive.

- aren't you painting all republicans with the same brush by saying that? the implication is that republicans don't care about our best interests. - i'm just painting democrats. i'm just telling ya, i'm a democrat because i fundamentally believe, and i guess this sounds very politician-y, but i'm very optimistic about the future. i'm really particularly optimistic about this rising generation. so to me, it's about the idea that tomorrow should be better than today. today should be better than yesterday, and that's why. - so you run as a democrat in a state that is a red state. missouri wasn't always a red state, but it's a red state now. you knew that you had an uphill battle. in fact, what happened in 2016. hillary clinton didn't break 38% of the vote in missouri, right. - president trump won missouri by 19. which i recently realized is like 10 points more than he won texas by, which is pretty staggering. - right, texas is more competitive than missouri. let's just contemplate that for a second. but the reality is, you only lost by about three? - two point eight. - two point eight, so you actually over-performed the democrat ticket by about 16 points,

in terms of the margin, right. in theory, if i'm doing this properly, there are probably trump-kander voters. - 220,000 of them, more than any other competitive race, senate race in the country last year. - what did they see in him and see in you? build the bridge for me. - yeah, i hear you. look, the real particularly interesting thing about that, i guess, is that i wasn't out there pretending i was a conservative democrat. everybody in my state knew that i was more progressive than the state, frankly. but i'm out there telling people what i believe. the thing is that that's what voters are looking for. voters are looking for you to just tell people exactly what you believe. the test really for them, i think a lot of politicians think that the competition is, can you pretend that you have enough of the same positions as the voters. voters, they're not looking to be tricked.

- they can see through that. - here's the thing about that. that's politicians trying to act. if you were a good actor, you would not be a politician. you would be an actor. the truth of it is that americans see a lot of acting, good acting, tv, movies, that kind of thing. when americans see bad acting, it doesn't look like bad acting. it looks weird, and it makes people uncomfortable. that's what happens when folks do that. so for me, people looked at me and they said okay, i don't agree with everything this guy's saying, but i know he really believes it. here's the really important part, and this is probably the reason for why i outperformed by 16 points, i think people knew that i believed it because i cared about them. i didn't believe it because i cared about somebody else in some other place, i truly believe that these things are the best policies for the people of my state. look, i'm a democrat because i think that's the best approach for every voter, not just some. that's what people are looking for. they're looking for everyday courage. people who will just tell them what they really believe.

- now that's a really good answer. it's a long answer and it's a thoughtful answer. i thought when i asked you why did you do so well, you were gonna say, the ad. i thought you were going to talk about the ad. you had on, during your senate campaign, what is generally accepted to be the best campaign ad of the entire 2016 election cycle in any race, in any part of the country. it featured you with a blindfold on, assembling a- - an m4, basically an m16. it was an ar 15, it's a rifle. - a rifle, and you did this in part because, running as a democrat in red state missouri, you did not walk away from your belief that there needed to be background checks. you think there need to be some limits. but you're also second amendment guy. you served overseas, you believe in- - i had an f rating from the nra. - but you believe, well that's what they say about you, but what you say about you is, you do believe in gun rights, but you believe in responsible gun rights. - what that ad was to me, it was me saying, i'm right about background checks and the nra is wrong,

and by the way, i know what the heck i'm talking about. - because i've actually handled a gun, have they, have you. - right, in the ad i specifically say, in the army i learned how to use and respect my rifle. that's what the point of that ad was. the reason i didn't bring that up is the reason, is because to me, that was just one of the ways in which it was just me being me, and me saying, this is what i believe. the funny thing about that is, i had an f rating from the nra. they were spending millions of dollars against me. wayne lapierre, the president of the nra, personally came to missouri to campaign against me. - you poked the bear with a stick, i mean, that's not that surprising. - sure, so the bear shows up. what happened is, and everybody started reaching out and suggesting i do one of those ads where you shoot a really big gun and talk about how much you love hunting and pretend to be a republican. but that's not me, i wasn't going to do that. i didn't get into politics to play a character on tv. the ad was me just doing what i did in the rest of the campaign

and have always done in politics, which is, look here's what i believe and here's why i believe it. - well, it was a very great and memorable ad. actually, there have been a number of ads in this cycle featuring people who, like you, had served and were running as democrats, and are saying basically it's not incompatible to be a democrat on the one hand and to be in the military or to have guns or whatever else. you sorta started a trend, it seems like. - yeah, it was basically just- - it's your kanderesque ads. - well, i'll take that. - if nothing else happens, but there's an adjective, kanderesque, that's probably actually good. so in the last couple of minutes we have, i want to ask you if something else is going to happen, because there's all this talk about the next election cycle, presidential election cycle, 2020. it would be easier for us to make a list of the people who are not talked about as potential candidates, but your name has actually been on that list. i suppose that given how unlikely the outcome of the last election was, experience in politics does not necessarily mean you're going to win an election or lack of experience is not necessarily a deal killer. you would not seem on paper to be the obvious choice

to run for president, but these are not obvious times. are you thinking about it? - i'm very flattered that people ask this question, obviously. - you've heard it a million times. - yeah, it's flattering. i am really focused on making sure we still hold elections right now. - first part. (applause) if i'm successful in that, maybe i'll be in one, one day but this is really where my focus is. - right, i want to observe, you did not just say no. - you never say never. - right, would you consider running for a different office other than president, potentially? you got a new, he won when you lost, republican governor of missouri, you could very easily go home and run in four years against him. - it's not something that i'm thinking about. like i said, i've run for office when there's been some change i want to see and there's an office between me and that change. i really think what i'm doing right now is the most important thing right now. - but of course, you are actively traveling the country, talking to groups that happen to be in many cases, states that conveniently hold early primaries. - i'm going where i'm invited.

- you're going where you're invited. so then if you're going to be demure and aw shucks about this, let me ask you to tell us one or two or three people- - i've never been described that way, but it's great. - first time you've heard of it. who in your party is doing it the right way now? if it ends up not being you, who do you like out there making good moves and saying what you think needs to be said? - there's a lot of really great people. we could spend a whole show talking about it. - tick off a couple, we have two minutes. - i'll give you one and i'll give you a story. i think a lot of people make some assumptions about senator elizabeth warren, that she wouldn't play outside of certain circles. she came to missouri and campaigned for me. i asked her to come, she did, and people loved it. her message absolutely resonated. we campaigned together and we saw an uptick in volunteers. - what did she say specifically that spoke to again, a state that's largely republican at this point in its electorate? - she talked about the fact that, well, you've heard her message, that the economy is rigged against people who are working hard right now. she talked about college affordability.

she talked about the issues that are affecting people's lives. that's important, we as democrats have to make sure we realize that issues, people don't experience issues one at a time. people experience life. usually that's several issues at a time. we have to be able to talk about the way that affects people in their lives. i think she does that very well. - you and donald trump don't have a lot in common but you both may have this in common. you'd both like elizabeth warren to be the democratic nominee in 2020. he'd be tweeting about pocahontas 50 times a day, wouldn't he actually. - he does awful things, and that would be one of them. - i'm just going to let that hang out there as an upbeat end to our conversation. - i think we shouldn't leave out the fact that that's a totally racist thing for him to say. - what's amazing is not that it's abnormal but that it's in some respects, the new normal. - he's made some really terrible things (crosstalk). - it's fun to get to talk to you. - yeah, enjoyed it. good luck with the important work you're doing with regards to what happens. jason kander, give him a big hand. thank you very much - thank you. (applause)

- [evan] we'd love to have you join us in the studio. visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, q and as with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. - i got a lot of personal friends who voted for trump. they're republicans. i talk to them about this, about photo id, about voter suppression, and here's the thing. they're not republican elected officials, so they agree with me, and not just cuz they're my friend. they agree with me because they're like, that's wrong. no party should change the rules for the purpose of trying to win the election. - [announcer] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy, and by claire and carl stuart.