hello i'm joe i'm going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture all across america republicans are actively engaged in voter suppression drive prime's trying to prevent millions of americans from voting on election day what's at the root of this all out war on voting and what needs to be done in our country to ensure that every citizen has the opportunity to cast their vote that and more bigger picture discussion the war on voting also with all the voter suppression going on across the nation is it time lawmakers in washington established an actual federal right to vote was that question to the panel in tonight's big picture rumble and what can

you do to stop the corporate masters of the universe from completing their quest to take over the united states of america i'll tell you that i believe. tonight we have a special bigger picture discussion on the war on voting from pennsylvania to florida arizona to wisconsin all across america your right to vote is being attacked by republican backed and billionaire backed frankly voter suppression efforts in the voting rights act was signed into law and nine hundred sixty five it was intended to ensure that all citizens had the right to vote and the minorities like african-americans latino americans were no longer disenfranchised but fast forward nearly fifty years and those same minorities along with millions of other americans are again having their voices silenced sadly it looks like hallway rick the founder of alec the american legislative exchange council the co-founder of the

area's foundation is getting his way when it comes to who gets to vote. how many of our chris have what i call. wrong good government they want everybody to vote. i don't want everybody to vote elections are not won by a majority of people they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. leveraging the elections quite candid like. owning. and this is one of the guys who ran reagan's campaign in both bush's campaigns and then i suppose you will get to the root causes of the voter suppression efforts that are plaguing our nation and discuss ways to again ensure that every american citizen has that right to vote and that their vote counts on a bigger picture discussion panel tonight barbara ehrenreich president and executive director of the lawyers committee for civil rights under law hilary shelton washington bureau director and senior vice president for advocacy the end he and katherine culliton good solid senior attorney and director of voter

protection the advancement project and thank you all for joining us is. appreciate let's start off with the voter suppression from the columbus dispatch reported today that there is a data glitch in cuyahoga county democratic leaning county. and that it has to a data sharing this is just a coincidence that i'm not sure who to direct it if any of you know are familiar with this. by saying we don't know is a coincidence or not but it's a problem and very well we have to make sure this doesn't interfere with people's opportunity to participate in this electoral process it would move towards tuesday . a c.p.s. deployed monitors into cuyahoga county as well as the justice department we're very happy to announce as also deployed official federal monitors into total counted to look into this issue an issue that concerns the bottom line here is that we have to make sure we do everything to prevent any obstacles to full voter participation in

cuyahoga county about the state of ohio and any place else for that matter but i think it's very. interesting why is it that all of these glitches happen in minority communities and have for decades and have for decades and why before he has and which led to in miami the one thousand los black voters votes i mean i think that we have to really make sure that the election protection effort that we're part of and that that whole coalition that we keep our eyes on every single jurisdiction because what's happening is that people are being told they even though they registered that they are not only registration this that's been the problem in ohio and it's happened in franklin county as happened in cuyahoga county were suddenly people who registered are not being found that they've been error and well it's actually it's deeper than that is that the way they search for names and the way they searched for data to find so my only registration rolls is incomplete and they're doing

a poor job of it and it's turned out that many people who they have told are not registered are in fact registered so they have been down to go back behind the scene and give those people absentee ballots and give them v.s.s. to the ballot but it just so huge that we need in this country serious electoral reform an order to provide for the opportunity for every voter to be able to vote and have that vote count we have so we do barbara could you briefly tell us what your organization yes the lawyers committee for civil rights under law is a fifty year old civil rights leader organization will be celebrating our fiftieth anniversary in two thirteen we were founded by president john f. kennedy to make sure that the private bar of private lawyers gave their pro bono resources to promote civil rights and racial equality and equality for those who are disadvantaged by income so we have been out there fighting these problems we've been part of the battle to pass the sixty four civil rights act the one nine

hundred sixty five voting rights act and we fought for it. the results and we've been in the courts challenging killing these horrible voter id voter suppression laws we were to kill the one in south carolina for this here at least it will not be in effect and to kill the one in. texas for this certainly for this year and i don't think that they can come up with another law that they can pass we've also been able to through the department of justice is actions put on hold mississippi and alabama so that their laws don't go into effect indeed of the eight laws that were passed come up with this restrictive voter id the amazing story for the civil rights community and that includes the advanced of the lawyers community in the a.c.l.u. and all of the fighters the brain and center that we've been able to have those eight laws we've been able to stop six of them it's great catherine. first call your thoughts on what we've been discussing at this point and also about what your

organization is is doing you know we've been also doing litigation in florida and ohio have done some litigation in cuyahoga county ohio and across the country and working in coalition with other groups and this year we have really seen an unprecedented wave of voter suppression and now we're at the stage where we've won a lot of our lawsuits i guess that's because we're right on the facts and on the law that voters won't be confused we're going to be out there you know thousands of us on election day to make sure that voters don't feel intimidated we've seen a recent wave of deceptive practices so advancement project and some other groups you know what a case against a purge in florida and now a private individual has that letters out to folks saying you need to prove your citizenship unable in order to vote we've seen a lot of a lot of discriminatory impact on latino is this year because there are big voting bloc and african-americans in another's and so there's a lot that's been happening the last couple of weeks these disappearing names registration problems and you know just the familiar tricks but they're sort of ramped up a little bit this year because we've had to fight back so hard so we really hope

that everyone doesn't feel intimidated that they come out and vote and they know that we've got their back. you know we're going to see even now we found out that the family foundation it just came out the right wing family but have you heard that they they have something new they have gone from the big stable billboards now to they had billboards sides of the day out on big old professional billboards old big old vans that say stop voter fraud and they are parking in front of minority precincts and prominently displayed moles and red white and blue and trying to scare and stop voter fraud is you can go to jail at all right and the and the problem is that nobody knows c. the average citizen when you say voter fraud they don't have any idea what you're talking about so people are thinking maybe if i go in and i just check the wrong box or actually i'm going to end up going to jail if there is that's a hassle that's right listen in our communities because the police have such strained relations system in our communities people do go to jail for the obvious

reasons for looking you know insubordinate all of these other crazy things are communities really do not trust law enforcement when it comes to voting and be membered that especially the left people community where you have the military has blocked people from voting in the past in many of those countries that the presence of law enforcement is really threatening hillary this is nothing new i mean in a very real way chief justice rehnquist former chief justice rehnquist made his chops in the republican party in the late fifty's and early sixty's in phoenix arizona those surrounding areas showing up at election precincts during elections in principally native american and hispanic areas he was a big tall guy six foot two showing up and threatening people you know showing your idea you're basically intimidating them away from the polls and this is how he made his name in republican politics this been going on for a long time for all too long as a matter of fact you've given the p.g.

version of the kind of. things that rank was responsible for the reports of going to rank was lester maddox and so many others were those politicians of that day that made their names actually intimidating voters call them axe handle brigades ax handle the reason they call them that is because it's obvious to actually carry one that's exactly right because axe handles are hard enough to really hurt but they say they want to use a baseball bat it would naturally create long term damage to the person you were chasing away from the polls it was that kind of intimidation we saw then and many ways we've seen the same kind of intimidation in a more high tech fashion now we talk about issues along the lines that barbara on one very clearly we talk about the kind of intimidation that misleads people given the wrong day to go to the polls to vote since robo calls telling you that if you that if you are you because you're such a good voted for in the past you can actually vote over the telephone right now and don't have to show up at the polls to vote on election day all kinds of things that

i think they've already voted they think they've already voted they don't turn out and it creates all kind of problem and now we discover that the romney campaign is training their poll watchers which are going to be the first people you encounter as you walk into the poll training them and many people probably believe this with the very best of intentions in states that don't require photo i.d.'s or don't require multiple i.d.'s where you've already registered their signatures enough training them that they have to ask for photo i.d.'s are going to be challenging oh well one of the things you know the election protection coalition is a nonpartisan you know are going to say send the and it's a coalition of many many organizations one hundred fifty of us plus you know two hundred law firms that you know put thousands of volunteers out into the streets to help protect voters and we are very worried about the mistreating poll workers and it's not just you know campaigns we're also see and for the vote doing the same kind of misleading mis education we're seeing and other organizations doing this i

don't think it's an accident that they get a lot lot. wrong and that they have people so you have that whole incident it one city where people were challenging somalian naturalized citizens as they went to vote because stake said they did not vote they did not speak english whale now thank you everybody there's something called a voting rights act and it has a section too old to read it is a bilingual provision for people who are bad for allies so the soon certain who want to you know have english assistants and so it's just a crazy notion but they actually were challenging people tell them they couldn't vote because they did not speak english well and i think that's the racism i mean we can't get over the fact that there's this hidden sub conscious of blame and old sometimes it's illicit racism where people really believe that folks of color are not the people who should be the beneficiaries of this democracy and should not

be participants in it and purposely so what you confederacy never really want to way nellie this is just a modern version of there you go more of tonight's bigger picture discussion on the war on voter after the break. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call. the guy who cares about what you. are you know what that is my tears. want to see the future of the on liberty the first place you. can really sort of. you know support you to distract us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industries that sells

a sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i'm. abby martin and we're going to break that. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. i will write all that i also promised that i'd like every single day for you to.

write. my own. back to our bigger picture discussion on the war on voting on our panel tonight barbara on wine and president and executive director of the lawyers committee for civil rights under law hilary shelton washington bureau director and senior vice president for advocacy at the end he and katherine. cullison gonzalez senior attorney and director of voter protection at the advancement project let's get back to it. to the three of you are attorneys and i'm i'm just curious the the constitution mentions the phrase right to vote several times and it's been amended

with the phrase right to vote several times but it's always been in in very near. people should not be denied the right to vote based on race people should not be denied the vote right to vote based on gender it. is there in my misreading that is there no explicit federal right to vote does anybody or should there be katherine well there definitely should be there isn't an explicit right to vote in a numerated right to vote in our constitution and we're one of the few countries that doesn't have you know iran doesn't have. and we don't south africa has a numerated right to vote in so it's an explicit fundamental right and since bush v gore many of us have been thinking that we really need to do a count pain to have an explicit constitutional right to vote in the in the decision from the supreme court explicitly pointed out that there's no specific numerator great right and then we won't have a patchwork quite but it was from that that i just jackson jr actually introduced legislation to create an amendment to the constitution that would establish an

affirmative right to vote though certainly not a bridging the right to vote is acceptable now and very clearly no one's vote should be a bridge in any way in the other ways interfered with but having that affirmative right would be more deliberative. this is this is barbara this this is one of those vestiges of slavery and of in the very beginning just just like the electoral islam system i mean you know it's one of the problems that we have in this country is that we have fifty states with fifty different election loss and that is a huge problem because it creates all kinds of confusion because nobody can say to a neighbor to a neighbor or to a friend in the different state what their law is because the law their state is going to be totally different than one so it doesn't make sense that if a somebody who is an ex-pat one in one state can vote. but leaves that state and moved to florida and all of

a sudden discovers they can't vote in the right these are the kinds of inconsistency is that we seek and repetitively in this country so what we need in this country is massively electoral reform to make our uniform state laws more uniform forward to be more open for voters more assessable for voters and we need to do away with all of this history of federal slavery i mean most people don't realize that all of the felon disenfranchisement laws are based in slavery they don't know the electoral college is based in slavery was to protect the slave states exactly because without the issue of slavery they were never would be an electoral college in the united states that's why we got this anomaly in our democracy where we don't have a direct democracy instead so is this going to require a constitutional amendment or is this something that can be done you suggested or the you know jesse jackson to introduce legislation is that enough for the legislation would also would actually kick off the amendment process i so there's

a process to about here so we do need. it would be to admit if you fly because there are not a lot of affirmative rights in the constitution mostly it is as president obama said when he was campaigning in two thousand and eight the right wingers went crazy about it but he said it's a negative bill of rights and basically is it's a list of the things that the government can do to us but but not so much here's what anyway katherine you're going to guess it also would stop this you know how much work of laws that barbara spoke about so eloquently is that we have counties that run elections too we have thirteen thousand counties and over and over again you know the voting rights community the civil rights community how to bring lawsuits and how to you know really keep an eye on thirteen thousand different counties to try and protect our most fundamental and precious right in this country it's really the foundation of american democracy and really when we all go to vote it's a day when we're all supposed to be equal it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor or what you're raised or what your aid. a lot of these laws are difficult for the elderly or for students who are supposed to have an equal voice in our democracy

that's the foundation of america so it's about time we heard of the numerator we have been winning our lawsuits but we think that's because we're right and we might as well make it an affirmative constitutional right and get rid of this this mess that we're in right now absolutely agree. and and it's an important thing to what extent is citizens united playing a role in all of this barbara this this this avalanche of money coming in is it funding voter suppression efforts is is that is this compound in the problem of the right to the well you know what i am worried about in this election i mean we all saw that a.p. report from last week showing that prejudice anti-black prejudice against african-americans in this country has increased from two thousand and eight and it's also increase anti hispanic preferences has also increased and i think a lot of that's because in a lot of these verdicts ment's the super pacs and others are doing there's

a lot of hidden racial coding for sure and that it's not so much that prejudice has increased but the willingness of people to express it to a pollster has increased our was no i think the environment has been created now we're it's more it's sceptical for people to feel that they can express their racism when you have people members of congress yelling in the will of congress during a state of the union the president you lie when you have you know these kinds of you know express the you know all of this you know what pains of limbaugh when on so many others say i think it creates that atmosphere and then when you have these you know these ads talking about food stamps and talking about welfare we know what they're talking about they're not talking about the majority of the real recipients who are white but is in the minds of people that is those other people who come code blue it is. cawood and i think that's the problem that i see all sole is that

not only are they in this whole pro-business movement but they also have this movement that is very gracefully based now and this was i mean the democratic party certainly is you know no angel in this historically they were the party of slavery that flipped with nixon's southern strategy when the republican party said ok you know the democrats are going to go for civil rights let's pick up the the white racists in the south. this i realize none of your organizations are partisan you're none of you are here as representatives of partisan organizations and so feel free to pass on this if you want but it seems to me as as an observer as somebody who's been in the news business for a lot of years and now more of a commentator but whatever that this is much more a strategy of the republican party to suppress minority votes than it is the democratic party. how do we deal with that partisan dimension of this and to what and to what extent might i be right in this let me just say that we're nonpartisan

we don't endorse political candidates a political parties but we recognize who's doing the wrong doings and quite frankly said unfortunately more of that is being done by those that want to suppress the african-american vote and all the race of the minority votes unfortunately as we look at this issue maybe is fortunately if you look at the number of african-americans that are members of the democratic party the republican party is not endorsed and this is the reality if we look at those who participated in the last convention the same thing that's also true quite frankly if you look at who actually crafted the platforms for the democratic party's convention twenty six percent were african-american but we look at who actually crafted the platform for the republican party it was two point five percent in essence that was a huge difference in that involvement and as we look at the policies who's going to support which platform now and quite frankly who's going to support which candidate now it is that kind of suppression of targeting african-americans. call it what you want to call it we still call it disenfranchisement still call the targeting of

african-americans we call it problematic right and it's a losing strategy absolutely well over time over time because over time because demographics are our shifty eyes and we have a we have a graphic of who who has photo id in america photo id is very much a you know if you if you've never had the money to own a car why have a driver's license right for example and so we see here african-americans in the united states twenty five percent of the african-american population is eligible old enough to vote doesn't have valid photo id twenty percent of the asian twenty one thousand percent of the college students eighteen percent of them don't seniors they have abandoned their cars are no longer driving people earning less than fifty thirty five thousand dollars and then we get down to whites eight percent and so it seems like there is a real difference here and it's almost like you know paul weyrich could play the clip earlier he said i don't want everybody to vote somebody set down this chart and said ok let's just pick off these groups. and is this is this a paranoid you know no comments but we have the right thoughts that's why we're

winning our case because these are a form of poll taxes some people could afford to pay the poll tax and the our greatest civil rights legislation the voting rights act of one nine hundred sixty five said that poll taxes and literacy tests and obstacles the manipulation of the vote that have a discriminatory impact are also illegal in this country so that's why we're winning our case is this is on the republican party platform let's just you know be upfront about it we're nonpartisan but certain politicians are manipulating voting rights for their own political gain and certainly trying to and this raises the question of you know basically getting away with it i mean there they look at katherine harris knocked depending on whose numbers you're looking at twenty to eighty thousand african-americans off the voting rolls in florida before before that five hundred thirty seven count came out you know and and and nobody ever prosecuted nobody ever even discussed it but. so. we found in the years if you go

to jail for this kind of stuff yes that's why we believe in the anti deceptive practices act should be passed that's why we believe in voter registration modernization were you know people are automatically registered because ninety percent of all problems on election day or registration related automatically register when you're going to so security number and as soon as that eighteen boom boom like you do for selective service yes i mean why not i mean we think that you know there are these really great reforms that should be there and that these sort of things i also want to effect note that there's another community that's really impacted by these laws and that's the does the community of people with disabilities right we also don't argue all the car exactly sniffin numbers and sold we just have to really understand how this broad sweep is a plus it's a problem in search of a plaintiff in search of a problem there's no voted fraud that's why we keep winning the case that it was a link so more people died last year from televisions falling on their head that's committed voter fraud seriously on

a thirty six versus thirty one we have just thirty seconds left catherine final thoughts here this is been an excellent panel is certainly hope that people aren't intimidated by this wave of voter suppression and get out and vote we're going to be with the election protection coalition and protecting your rights absolutely people into a promise to call one eight six six our vote one eight six six our boat call and good instructions as though any problems going on throughout the country yes and so here and americans we are so proud of you you've taken the voter suppression laws and you said that that's motivation the early vote you have shown them that these strategies don't work so called on a six six hour vote to get it how you all were expanding is great thank you all for being with us but i want you. to see this discussion again go to our web site of conversations the great minds dot com. after the break should the government be doing more to combat the effects of the. climate change and could that climate change be caused by the great phenomena of mars wobbles that

and more like it.

i will fight. and that i also promise that i every single day on earth.