we will also speak with mother jones senior writer ari berman about ballot initiatives that would ease voting restrictions in seven states. all that and m more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. saudi officials are preparing to say that after nearly two weeks of denials, prominent saudi journalist jamal khashoggi was killed by mistake during an interrogation gone wrong. the change in the official saudi narrative over khashoggi's disappearance came as turkish for an sick investigators wrapped up the research of saudi arabia's consulate in istanbul nearly two weeks after prominent journalist and "washington post" columnist entered the building and vanished. turkish officials have said khashoggi was tortured and murdered by a squad of 15 saudi hitmen, who dismembered his body. video filmed outside the consulate monday showed workers carrying buckets, mops, cleaning products, trash h bags, and a cacarton of blea i into ee buildingng hours ahehead of the arrival of turkish crime scene vestigators,s, who repororted ty smelleled

for more on the issue, i spoke a brief time ago with ari berman, a senior reporter at motherjones andk at the national picture, republicans say they want to combat voterfraud. will republicans say they want to combat voter fraud. will cover voter id laws achieve that in the mid—term elections? when you look at the data, voter fraud is elections? when you look at the data, voterfraud is a rare problem in american elections. it happens from time to time, but it doesn't happen at anywhere near the frequency that republican officials are claiming. the realfear with these voter id laws in 2018 is that it could lead to a decrease in voter turnout, particularly among democratic constituencies that might not be able to comply with these new laws. you have said that georgia is the epicentre of the voter suppression battle. what is happening there? there you have a republican state with a secretary of state who was also running for governor against a democrat who is trying to become the first black woman ever elected governor in the states, stacey abrams. and a republican has put in place a num

. >> i am joined by donna brazile, back at the table, and ari berman, a senior reporter for mother jones, the author of "give us the ballot: the modern struggle for voting rights in america" and a journalist who has been tracking this for a long time, long before it was actually in the national spotlight. donna, when you look at this, is this targeting black voters and minorities and native americans, as you see there? >> yes, sadly, it is. not only in georgia, the purging of people in the state of indiana, the failure to process voter registration cards in miami-dade, the failure to understand that some of the voter registration forms, as you know, today is the deadline to register to vote in several states, including maryland, where there's an important gubernatorial race. yes, this is systemic. it has been going on for decades. but it's getting worse. everybody should vote, but we should not have to, not only protect people's right to vote, at the same time, we're asking people to vote. because it really sends a message that, why bother? >> and in georgia, ari, you've seen this laid o