My name is Hannah, I'm Dan, I'm Ben, and we are Group Love. If you're dealing with stress or anxiety, or just need some help, cal Hope is here for all Californians with free mental health resources to help you navigate this uncertain time. Go to cal Hope dot org, to lat Chat with one of their incredible listeners, or call their warmline at one three three three one seven Hope. That's one eight three three three one seven h O
p e hopeless here in California. I'm Colleen with joined me the host of Eating Wall Broke podcast while I eat a meal created by self made entrepreneurs, influencers, and celebrities over a meal they once eight when they were broke. Today I have the lovely aj Crimson, the official Princess of compin Asia, Kidding and Assia. This is the professor. We're here on Eating Wall Broken. Today, I'm gonna break down my meal that got me through the time when
I was broken. Listen to Eating Wall Broke on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple, pod Cast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tanya Sam, host of the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood. This daily podcast will help give you the keys to the Kingdom of financial stability, wealth and abundance. With celebrity guests like Rick Ross, Amanda Sille's Angela Ye, Roland, Martin, JB. Smooth, and Terrell Owens. Tune in to learn how to turn liabilities into assets
and make your money moves up in Billy Boy. Subscribe to the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenland on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure you leave a review. So our most urgent request to the President of the United States and every member of Congress is to give us the right to vote. The right to vote is very basics. We're going to neglect that right in there. All of our talk about freedom is the right to vote has never
been just granted freely. It has always been fought for. We do not want our freedom gradually what we want to be fretting now it's been fat for her on the streets. It's been fat for This is not a partisan issue, is wrong. This is an American issue, deadly wrong.
To deny any of your fellow America the right to vote in this kind because our democracy is found it or ensuring that every eligible citizen has access to the ballot box by John We've got to fight even harder for the most powerful tool that we have, which is the right to vote. This is how in America we get voting right. I'm Katie Curic and this is Turnout, a podcast exploring America's voting record, past, present, and future.
Voting is a cornerstone of our democracy. We the people have a say and who governs us and what happens in our communities and in our country. But the reality of how voting works in America and who gets to do it has never been as fair or as clear cut as the story of this nation promised. In fact, the act or even attempt to vote is often described as a fight, a struggle, sometimes even a war. But how did this happen? And who has been waging this battle?
Who's been fighting to make every generation's path to the ballot a little less arduous? And who among us has taken up the baton? These are the questions at the heart of this series, and the only way to start is at the beginning. For all of our imperfections, the nation was conceived in an experiment of liberty that would remove the American experience from the monarchs, the nobles, the inherited power or of the old world. And who better to begin with? How are you John all right trying
to save America? You know then one of this country's leading historians and biographers, John mitchum I invited him into my zoom studio to find out what our founding tells us about the continuing war over voting, religious liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press. These were essential liberties that the founders believed in were willing to die for. What were the hopes and dreams, John,
of the founding fathers. The hope was that we would be a popular government, not necessarily a democracy, but a government that literally was based on the authority, the ultimate authority of the people. And so the work of Philadelphia in seventeen eighty seven through the ratification in seventeen was to find a way for the people to be sovereign. Comma. But and so much of America hangs on the comma. But they believed that the people could ultimately be trusted
to choose their rulers. They did not believe that the people themselves could rule from day to day. And they believe that those rulers would be manifestations of the people themselves, and the people were subject to appetite and ambition, and so, as Madison said, ambition had to be made to counteract ambition, which is why you have the electoral College, you have the Senate, you have divided kinds of representation to try to find a way to achieve that most elusive of things,
which was balanced. When the founding fathers set up the system, it was predicated on a lot of these ideas of limited government, a social contract, popular sovereigntry. But it was far from a perfect union. How so, well, let's see, if you were an enslaved person, you were counted as three fifths of a person, which was particularly insulting when you think about it, because you were being counted as a unit of power for those who owned you. That
was a major imperfection. The perpetuation of slavery, the removal of Native people's women until n we're not granted the suffrage. So that's an imperfection. So we defined we, meaning white men, defined citizenship quite narrowly and largely for ourselves. So that's the largest imperfection. And all in these other implications all flowed from that. Why were the founding fathers so narrow minded, John, we see them as limited, We see them as actively standing in the way of the creation of a multi
ethnic democracy in our native region. You're from Virginia, from Tennessee. We did not have a presidential election without some form of apartheid until nineteen sixty. But I'm careful about glibly condemning the past. King George the Third of England said of George Washington in seventy three, if Washington actually gives up command of the Continental Army and retires, he will
be the greatest man in the world. Because the voluntary surrender of power to these republican lower case our institutions was for its time quite radical. The story of the country, though, and the reason you're doing this is it has been an unfolding story, bloody, tragic, slow, painful and provisional, but an unfolding story of applying the implications of that initial declaration in seventeen seventy six that we were all created
equal and should therefore be treated equally. Was the fight for voting rights, John, there from the very beginning, and who were the people who were waiting in Abigail Adams wrote a letter to John Adams in seventeen seventy six saying to her husband, remember the ladies trying to seek more rights for women. There was an immense amount of tension. Seneca Falls was eighty eight. The rights of black people to vote was even more complicated because of the slave states.
That was an immensely complicated political situation. But the Fifteenth Amendment tells you that during the reconstruction years after the Civil War, there was a full expectation on behalf of the national authorities that the suffrage was a fundamental element of citizenship. When you look back at Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Alice Paul and Frederick Douglas, these generations of reformers, you know, we look at them
now and they're kind of statues and postage stamps. These were human beings struggling trying to get just enough attention and to convert that attention into real reform. And so the story of the country, in many ways, is the story of this remarkably tumultuous battle for power from generation to generation coming up. Voting rights is about power. Voting rights has always been, and we will always be about power. Some of the weapons waged in America's voting wars. That's
right after this. Hi, my name is is Lindsay Louis. Call Hope is here for you with free mental health resources. Go to cal Hope dot org to chat with a live person called their warmline at one eight three three Hope. I'm Tanya Sam, host of the Money Moves Podcast powered by Greenwood. This daily podcast will help give you the keys to the Kingdom of financial stability, wealth and abundance. With celebrity guests like Rick Ross, Amanda Sells, Angela Ye,
Roland Martin, JB. Smooth, and Terrell Owens. Tune in to learn how to turn liabilities into assets and make your money move up and parties. Subscribe to the Money Moves Podcast powered by Greenland on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure you leave a review. The NFL podcast Network is your home for all things football. Do you love hearing analysis around the league with a touch of mirth, or maybe you enjoy breaking down X and os in the college scouting scene.
Did you breathe, sleep, and eat fantasy football? Perhaps you love the funny headlines that emerge each week. What if you want in depth new coverage with reporters, or what if you want to know exactly how each team got its name While you're in luck because the NFL Podcast Network has a show for everybody. Our best network, because the NFL's best talent, bringing you right into the action
each week. There's always room to add more football into your podcast rotation, and our vast group of shows will surely keep you up to date with everything you need to know surrounding the National Football League. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I'm talking about vote suppression, I'm talking about intentional or reckless steps to deny eligible voters the
right to vote and their ability to vote. Wendy Wiser is the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank focused on defending systems of justice, vote rights and elections being a big part of that. There are a variety of tactics that have been used, some using the arms of the state, some using private vigilantes, but any attempt to interfere with the ability of an eligible person to vote and to make it hard for them to do so, or to
prevent them from doing so. Is vote suppression and is anathema to our constitutional system into our system of government. Voter suppression is not new. Guilded Daniels is a voting and civil rights expert, an author of Uncounted, The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America, which just came out this year. Historically, we have seen literacy tests, whole texes, vouchers, fell in disaffranchisement,
voter intimidation, economic terror. When I tooked to my grandmother, asked her, you know why didn't she vote before the nineteen sixties, right, She was in her forties when she voted for the first time, and she said, black people didn't vote. In Black people didn't vote because they can lose their land, they can lose their lives. They were all these barriers. The thing is, these voter suppression tactics
aren't just a relic of the past. They're as current as the phone you're probably using right now to listen to this podcast. What has changed, says Gilda Daniels, are what these voter suppression tactics are called. Today. We see restrictive voter I D laws, voter purges, proof of citizenship laws, voter deception. We still have Felion disenfranchisement, which certainly became a source of voter suppression at the turn of the
twentieth century. We see it in the twenty one century as well, where there are more than six point one million people who do not have the right to vote because of Fellon disenfranchisement. Voting rights is about power. Voting rights is a whole aways been and will always be about power, and to the extent their people with the power, and they understand the power of the vote. Whether those persons or Republicans or Democrats, what the name of the
party is doesn't matter. People who have power want to keep it and want to keep folk from They want to keep folk from exercising that saying power. But just as there have always been those who try to suppress the vote, there have been those fighting to reclaim it, to expand that power among the people. That Wendy Weiser
says is what democracy is all about. If democracy is a a group sport, it requires us to all participate and defend it, and if we don't invest ourselves in it, it won't be able to hold itself up without us. The right to vote has never been just granted freely. It has always been fought for, and when think it about what most impedes access to the ballot, Wendy says, we have to consider the very thing that grants us
that access in the first place, voter registration. The United States does have among the lower voter participation rates among the world's major democracies. One of the reasons actually is our voter registration system. We actually are unique in the world for the most part, requiring voters to take the affirmative step of registering themselves to vote rather than the government signing them up, and then to keep their registration
up to date. There is a strong argument to be made at voter registration itself was created as a way of suppressing the vote. This is Charles Stewart, founder and director of the m I T Election Lab. What if you just all you had to do was to show up the vote. That's a good question. Why do people have to register to vote in the first place. It turns out voter registration is also a relic of the
ass that's still in use today. Voting has always happened in this country, even before the revolution in the early seventeen hundreds, Voting was a social occasion with drinking and dancing. When it came time to vote, the colonists who were eligible would gather together and signify their choice by standing or saying something. But that's the thing. It was always those who were eligible participating, which was for a long
time just white male landowners. As more and more people came to the New World, colonists wanted to ensure the electric continued to be just white male landowners, so they started to make it more official. In Massachusetts, in seventeen forty two, voters had to present physical proof of land ownership before they could take part. By eighteen hundred, Massachusetts made that process unofficial law, and it became the first
voter registration law in the country. Registration laws didn't really catch on until after the Civil War, when formally enslaved black people as well as immigrants started flooding northern states and cities. The registration laws that got enacted in the eighteen eighties in eight nineties were almost all in the cities were always all intended to keep immigrants from southern
Europe from voting. They're enacted by legislatures, state legislatures dominated by rural interests and trying to keep the city vote down by nine hundred. Registration laws spread west, south and into rural areas, always with the intention of keeping certain people out of the voting process. So the history of voter registration is one of exclusion, which begs the question in the twenty one century, why have registration at all
if you care about access to the polls? Coming up a governor who had that very same thought, we want people to participate. There should not be a litmus tests for participating in this very fundamental act of democracy, the act of voting, and how her state finally turned the tide on voter registration. My name is Hannah, I'm Dan, I'm Ben, and we are Group Love. If you're dealing with stress or anxiety, or just need some help, cal Hope is here for all Californians with free mental health
resources to help you navigate this uncertain time. Go to cal hope dot org to lave chat with one of their incredible listeners, or call their warmline at one three three three one seven Hope. That's one eight three three three one seven h O p e Hopeless here in California. Get the t you need on the podcast to teas in a pod. Join ex housewives Teddy Mellencamp and Tamored Judge as they watch recap armchair Quarterback and breakdown all
things real housewives. Who better to rehash housewives than you know? Right, well, obviously two girls that are no longer on there we loved it might be a little better. Listen each week as Teddy and Tamara watch and recap as only they can, giving you all the inside dirt. Each week, we're going to be recapping whatever housewife is currently airing. So lucky for Tamarra, we're gonna start, Oh my god, I know with Orange County. They've lived it, they've been through it,
and they share exactly what it's like. No holds barred because it takes a housewife to no housewife, and X is no best. When I watched the shows that I'm not on, I generally watch as somebody who's curious and likes to see different lifestyles and see different behaviors. Listen to two teas in a pod on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is Roxanne Gay, host of the Roxanne Gay Agenda, The Bad Room, and his podcast of Your Dreams now, what is the Roxanne Gay Agenda, You might ask what. It's a podcast where I'm going to speak my mind about what's on my mind, and that could be anything. Every week I will be in conversation with an interesting person who has something to say. We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books, and art, food, pop culture,
and yes, politics. I started show with a recommendation. Really, I'm just going to share with you a movie or a book, or maybe some music or a comedy set, something that I really want you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well. Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The Roxanne Gay Agenda, The Bad Feminist Podcast of Your Dreams, every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you wanted to look for a model of a state actively trying to open access to the ballot box, look no further than Oregon. In Oregon, we actually really believe that your vote is your voice, and every single voice matters. Governor Kate Brown has been leading the state since two thousand fifteen, but her passion for voter access can be traced back to the nineteen nineties and the beginning of
her career in public service. It actually began with my first election to the Oregon State House, and I literally won that election by seven votes. And I have to tell you, over twenty years later, I have people come up to me on the street and they now call me Governor. Of course, heay, Governor Brown. Governor Brown, I was your seventh vote. I was the reason that you won your race. And it's absolutely true. Everyone who voted for me, everyone who volunteered for me, they were the
reason that I won that race. And so I am living proof that every vote matters and that every vote needs to be counted. And I brought I have brought that with me every step of my career in the legislature as Secretary of State and certainly as Oregon's governor. And two thousand eight, Governor Brown was elected Secretary of State, and that role she was in charge of Oregon's voting process and was focused on removing barriers to the ballot. Oregon was the first state in the country to be
all vote by mail. The creators of vote by Mail, their vision was that every eligible Oregonian should be able to have a ballot be put in their hands, that every Oregonian should receive a ballot in the mail, and we wanted to frankly extend that vision and make it more accessible to register to vote. We implemented online voter registration, and then the concept of automatic voter registration came about, and we wanted as many people to participate as possible.
We wanted it to be an inclusive process, not an exclusive process. So we moved forward with a proposal that literally automatically registers every eligible Oregonian through our Department of Motor Vehicles, and then folks who don't want to participate, they can sign a letter and opt out. As a result, we have over of eligible Oregonians registered. We went from being one of the lowest states in the country in terms of people of color being registered to now the
second in the entire country. We also see that the electorate has diversified. We have more people of color, we have more folks from more rural communities registered, and honestly, we just have the bash folk of Oregonians registered. And that's a really good thing. Why is this working so well because it's easy, I think so. I literally had legislators asked me, it's already so easy to register to vote. Why would we make it easier? And the answer to
that is really simple, because we can. We want people to participate. There should not be a litmus tests for participating in this very fundamental act of democracy, the act of voting. Was it a struggle? How hard was it to get get it past? Hi? You're laughing at me? It was absolutely a struggle. I first introduced the legislation in it crushed my heart when it failed on the
state Senate floor by literally one vote. But we worked hard during that election cycle and picked up another Democrat in the election cycle, so I knew as we moved into the legislative session that we would have the votes that we needed. And then we knew that this was a first in the country system. We knew that there were other states likely to follow our lead, so the implementation and was really a challenge. We created a blueprint.
We wanted to be make sure that if this was a success, that other states could follow and I think we've had seventeen or eighteen other states follow our lead. I was gonna say, you have had now at least eighteen states who have followed your lead. That must be a pretty good feeling. It feels really really good. But what I think is most important is that we work throughout the entire country, frankly, to make voting as convenient and accessible to our voters, that we make sure that
it's safe. I know in two thousand, nineteen thirty eight collected registration and turnout numbers in eight states that have automatic voter registration and found that overall turnout was still significantly higher for those who registered themselves. What do you make of that, Well, I think it's really important that we get people registered, and that automatic systems mean that
more people will participate. We know that UM in our first election with automatic voter registration, we saw roughly forty of these newly registered voters participate. I think it's important that more voices participate and that we make it easier rather than harder, for people to have their voice be heard. I think it's as simple as that. In fact, ultimately five eight found that automatic voter registration contributed to a
boost an overall civic engagement. I think that's absolutely right, and I think that's a good thing for our country, and I think particularly right now with what we're seeing on the ground with the pandemic, with the clarion call for racial justice. I think it is so important when the fabric of our society is fraid, it's key that the foundation of our democracy remains strong and ensuring people
can exercise this very fundamental right is absolutely fundamental. A lot of countries give people the day off to vote, and they say it's a national holiday, and they do everything they can to make it easier for people if they do want to go to the polls, to go to the polls. Why hasn't the United States done something like that. I love the idea of a national holiday for election Day. I know that we are seeing companies across the United States of America giving their employees this
particular day off. They are encouraging their employees to be poll workers. You're probably aware that the vast majority of our elections holding officers and poll workers tend to be volunteers, and they tend to be in a generation that's particularly susceptible to COVID and so we really do need, i'll say, other folks to engage in this critically important process. My daughter, who is twenty four is going to be a poll worker. That's so great. We know that if we can engage
young people, particularly those under the age of um. The earlier we engage them, we know that we will create lifelong voters. And I think that's so important if we want our democracy to be successful. Oh honey, she is engaged. I'll bet she is. I'll bet she is. Why is voter access so critically important, not just for Oregon and other states, but for the country at large. Well. We are wrestling with a number of difficult issues right now.
We know that the pandemic has impacted our historically underserved communities of color Uh and low incommunities disproportionately than others. We are seeing wildfires erupt in the West and states like Oregon, California, Washington, in Colorado, these devastating fires are also impacting our communities that are on the economic edge. And I think it's so important in this day and age that in order to tackle these issues, that we
get as many voices to the table. And I think that voting is the easiest way to begin that process. We have got to open the door to make this process more inclusive and ensure that Americans understand their right, their fundamental right to vote. We talk about the rights to free speech and the right to exercise our freedom of the religion. We don't require you to sign up for either one of those. It's just given to you by virtue of your citizenship. The fundamental right to vote
should be the same. By virtue of your citizenship, your residency, and your age, you should be able to access this right. And I absolutely think that America is stronger and better when we all participate. Once again, John met Chum, the wider the vote has been wielded, the stronger we've become. We became the most powerful country in the history of the world as more people were allowed to participate. It's just a fact. We have always grown stronger the more
widely we've opened our arms. So why doesn't everyone get on board and make it easier to vote for the good of the country. That's a question will continue to explore in this series through conversations with the people who have been and continue to fight for voting rights. Next week, on turnout, Mississippi looked up and said, Lord, we got all these black people, and if all these black people are really voting, it's going to transform Mississippi. We can't
have that. If so, you saw this move to eliminate African Americans from the electorate, how America's fight for voting rights is wrapped up in the fight for racial equality. Hey, listeners, before you go, I just want to remind you there's still time to check your registration to make sure you can vote in this election, and while you're at it, check your parents, your friends, your cousins and ants. To make that process easier, I'm partnering with the social justice
organization Do Something. To find out how to check your registration or to register to vote, text Katie to three eight three eight three. You can also go to vote dot org to find out where and how to vote in your state, and subscribe to my morning newsletter Wake Up Call for the latest election information. Turnout is a
production of I Heart Media and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Katie Curic and Courtney Littz, Supervising producers Lauren Hansen, Associate producers Derek Clements, Eliza Costas and Emily Pento. Editing by Derrek Clements and Lauren Hansen, mixing Derrick Clements. Our researcher is Gabriel Loser and special thanks to my right hand woman, Adriana Fasio. You can follow me in all my election coverage at Katie Currect. Meanwhile, Yes, I'm
Katie Currect. Thanks so much for listening everyone. We'll see you next time. I come here to urge every person under the sound of my boss to go to the polls on the third of November and vote. Hi. My name is Lindsay Louis. Call Hope is here for you with three mental health resources. Go to cal hope dot org to chat with a live person. Call their warm line at one eight three three Hope. Hey, Lead the
listeners take here. Last season on Lead the Lit, you might remember I came to Hollow Falls on a mission clearing my aunt his name and making sure justice was finally served. But I hadn't counted on a rash of new murders tearing apart the town. My mission put myself and my friends in danger, though it wasn't all bad. I'm going to be real Ify Tig, I like you, But now all signs point to a new serial killer in Hollow Falls. If this game is just starting, you
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