Is American Democracy Secure for the Next Generation?

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: With less than a year before the 2022 midterms, here in the United States, President Joe Biden says that he suspects support suspending the filibuster to protect voting rights. This comes after a push by Republicans for an array of new proposals that critics say will disproportionately impact voters of color. Ted Johnson is a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. His latest book is “When the Stars Begin to Fall.” And he joined Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the existential threat racism poses to America and democracy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARI SREENIVASAN: Bianna, thanks, Ted Johnson, thanks again for joining us. Let’s talk first about voting rights right now. According to a voting rights roundup of 2021 released recently by the Brennan Center for Justice, between January 1 and December 7, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting. More than 440 bills with provisions that restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states in 2021 legislative sessions. State legislatures enacted far more restrictive voting laws in 2021 than in any year since the Brennan Center began tracking voting legislation in 2011. How concerned are you about this?

THEODORE R. JOHNSON, BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE: Extremely, very concerned. Look, some of these laws are about reducing access to mail-in balloting. Some of these laws close the window for early voting. Some of these laws make more stricter voter identification requirements about which ones can be used and which are not permitted. And so, these are laws, measures, crafted to shape the electorates such that those — the party that holds power in these states, and most of them are Republican Party, folks hold onto that power even if they don’t win the majority of the public vote. So, these are measures meant to complicate access to our democracy in order to wait the advantage, the electoral advantage for one party over another, which is, in my view, inherently undemocratic by complicating people’s access to the polls just so that you can win elections. This is why the Freedom to Vote Act is so necessary because it standardizes a number of these issues that it would then make these state laws invalid or at least open to challenge. So, let’s take voter identification for example. Voter identification in and of itself is not inherently racist. The kind of voter identification that is allowed, however, can shape the electorate such that people of color have a more difficult time voting than those without. For example, in Texas, the — if you have a gun license, that is an acceptable kind of voter I.D. But your student I.D. at the University of Texas system, which is a government entity is not. 80 percent of the people in Texas with gun licenses are white. More than half of the people with a University of Texas student I.D. as their primary form of identification are young people of color. So, even if it you don’t mean to be racist in choosing which I.D.s are acceptable, the outcome of that is that you make it easier for one group of people to vote and make it more difficult for another. So, these laws are very troubling. I mean, things like passing out water to waiting people waiting in line in a mini black community, people were waiting eight, 10 hours online, that’s outlawed in Georgia. There are states that are considering laws that would give the state assembly the power to overturn the popular vote in that state in a presidential election and send their electors to whoever the state assembly decides they want to win. That is both undemocratic and it is, in my view, unconstitutional. So, these laws are extremely troubling and the idea that 2022 may hold more in store that 2021 may just be the tip of a new iceberg to disenfranchise eligible citizens from participating in elections is, you know — this is the issue of the next year and certainly, probably the one that’s most central to ensuring we can secure our democracy for the next generation.

SREENIVASAN: Right now, people are also wondering, I don’t know if it’s necessarily democracy fatigue. But that optimism is waning when they see, for example, Joe Manchin, a senator from a very small state, elected by about 290,000 people who has equal if not greater power than Joe Biden who was elected by 81 million people. And ultimately, what we’re talking about is policy that affects 300 million people, right? So, this notion of one person one vote are some votes perhaps more important than others? Those kinds of questions creep into people’s minds. And why does it matter if I have the right to vote in this state, this all seems beyond my control and the system is going to do what the system is going to do?

JOHNSON: Yes. So, you’re right. I mean, there is a study done a couple of years ago by the Knight Foundation that surveyed the 100 mill Americans that do not vote. And among the top reasons were they had no faith in the people running, had no faith in the process or institutions or don’t feel like their voice, their vote made any difference at all. But I would say, tell that to the million casualties in the civil war, the enslaved black folks who ran away from plantations to fight for the right to vote. And then, within a decade after the 15th Amendment was passed, many of them were stripped of that right. Tell that to the women suffragists who fought for the right to vote for decades and only got that right 100 years ago, 140 years after the nation was founded. Tell that to the civil rights movement activists there, the scores of immigrants and native Americans who have demanded access to democracy. So, I know it feels a little theoretical, abstract, maybe a little like quicksilver to feel like we have the power to make changes in our government. But I would say two things to this. One is in the second paragraph of the Declaration it says that we should have a government that derives its just power from the consent of the governed. We are the governed, and the way we give our consent, one of the primary ways we give our consent is through participation and democracy and by voting. The second thing I would say here though is if you exit the voting process, if the average person walks away from democracy and suggests that it isn’t working for them and they don’t want to participate, then the product they will be delivered is not a better democracy, it won’t even be a status quo democracy. In fact, it won’t be a democracy at all. And so, our form of government, our way of life, our national identity is contingent on people participating in the democratic process. And government, whether at the local, state or federal level should not hamper that process.

SREENIVASAN: You know, I should (INAUDIBLE) myself and that there has also been a tremendous amount of excitement and energy from the conservative base for getting involved in local elections, not just running for it, but also wanting to be part of local elections board or electors. And do you see — are you concerned about that?

JOHNSON: So, I’m not concerned about Republicans participating in local government. I am concerned about people who don’t believe in rule of law, who don’t believe in the constitution, who don’t believe in election integrity, running for these election offices in hopes that they can subvert the outcome of elections if they don’t get the results that they want. And, in fact, the Britain Center (ph) has researched this very issue, looking at the kind of laws that different state assemblies are passing and they were passing laws intended to subvert the expressed will of the public via election outcomes, via the number of ballots casts. I am worried that there are more of those folks, especially after January 6th, that are now basically storming the election process in every state in hopes that when someone, a losing candidate, contests the results that they will have essentially agents of sorts seeded in the process to undermine the will of the public and frankly, undermine our democracy.

SREENIVASAN: You know, it’s been less than a year since January 6th. Yet, there are competing narratives about exactly what happened. We literally have commissions in Congress who are subpoenaing and interviewing and deposing witnesses and are going to come out with the report. At the psalm time, the very process of looking into it, how bad it was, whether or not these were, you know, rebels, protesters storming the capitol or whether they were freedom fighters and whether they should be treated as martyrs, this is in the public square and it’s not settled.

JOHNSON: That’s right. And it should be. You know, on January 7th of this year, it was largely settled that what happened the day before was bad. And that the people that had acted to storm the capitol, overtake capitol police officer to face the people’s (INAUDIBLE), these were not people that we should revere or aspire to be like. And then, slowly but surely, after an initial set of condemnations, people started to say, we need to move on. And then, as more time went on and those who committed a crime on January 6th and violated the capitol, as they were arrested, suddenly these are being called political prisoners. And now, there’s the sense that, as you mentioned, that it was kind of heroic what these folks did. And I want to be like as clear as I can, especially as a military veteran, what happened on January 6th, there were no heroes involved in the folks that stormed the capitol. There were no heroes involved in those who tried to overturn the election results of an election by all counts was decided fairly and squarely. And so, to sort of create a new lost cause narrative in the same way that folks have tried to reinvent the confederacy, the way folks tried redefine, you know, what happened in Germany and the holocaust, we are seeing a little bit of that now where people are using a new narrative to redefine the thing that we saw with our very eyes and too many folks are beginning to believe this new mythology that these were defenders of the realm, these folks who stormed the capitol, only hoping to protect the constitution.

SREENIVASAN: One of the questions people have is also how the laws are applied and to whom are they applied equally? I mean, in the realm of criminal justice reform, we have had several different high-profile cases, of course, from Derek Chauvin and George Floyd trial, to Ahmaud Arbery, Kyle Rittenhouse and others. When you look at how these high-profile cases have impacted the country, what stands out to you?

JOHNSON: Yes. It’s a mixed bag, to be honest with you. I will say that the summer after Floyd’s murder, I found hope and optimism in that moment. For every day, for weeks to an end across the country and every state in the union and then some, Americans were protesting for racial justice and against the abuse of state power that was on display for the world to see in Floyd’s murder. But then we get an election result that’s unfairly or unjustly, you know, inaccurately contested. January 6th, Ahmaud Arbery is killed and only — you know, there was a sigh of relief when the vigilantes that killed him were convicted as well as Chauvin who murdered George Floyd was convicted. But then, Kyle Rittenhouse in Wisconsin is acquitted. And I can tell you in black America, that felt very much like when George Zimmerman was acquitted. When you have a crime clearly committed on camera, for Rittenhouse anyway, and the killer gets to walk away free and then thinking a about if race had played a role in this, if the man holding the gun or in Zimmerman’s case, holding the brick was a black man and the victim was a white person, would the outcome have been the same? Because we have to ask these questions and because feel relief when justice is done after some of these tragic killings, that suggests to us that our system is not operating the way it’s supposed to, that racism still plays a role in who gets arrested, who gets convicted, who gets parole, how many years one gets. And then, the recidivism rate and the opportunities available to folks to include voting once they leave. So, I find lots of hope and optimism in organizations that are fighting to extend justice to folks, activists on the ground at the local level who are doing the work to ensure justice and democracy are available to people. But I will say that I am very sober, again, about the lengths people to which people will go to ensure either the status quo remains as is or that we take steps backward to protect certain interests.

SREENIVASAN: You know, briefly in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, gun ownership, gun control became part of the conversation. And then you can point to any number, sadly, of mass shootings that have happened in the United States that catch our attention for a day or two where it surfaces again. But what are you looking out at, say, whether it’s the Supreme Court or whether it’s legislation? Because we seem to understand that some portions of it need to be altered and there seems bipartisan agreement on that, but we can’t, as a country, seem to take that step.

JOHNSON: This is one of the big tragedies of — political tragedies of our nation today. Though there was wide public support for these kinds of measures, Congress has not been able to act or has been unwilling to act on it. Meanwhile, as you mentioned, mass shootings continue and cases like the Rittenhouse case show the damage these kinds of things can do. A couple points here, one is that after Floyd’s murder, George Floyd’s murder last year, there were — and the defund the police movement began to gain traction, there were a number of conservative legal scholars who began arguing for a more expansive conception of the Second Amendment. Because the idea was that police may be abdicating their duty for fear of being called racist for just doing their job. And so, citizens needed to take up their arms at even higher rates to ensure their own personal security. If you remember, there was a couple in the news in Missouri during a Black Lives Matter march who came out to the edge of their property with guns just in case any of those protesters decided to get out of line. This is not what a well-functioning democracy does. And a more expansive conception of the Second Amendment facilitates these kinds of actions. Secondly, there is a Supreme Court case, this term, looking at the Second Amendment, and it will be depending on its ruling it — well, no matter the ruling. It is the most consequential case on the Second Amendment since the Heller (ph) case, you know, some dozen years ago. And the argument it’s New York State Pistol and Rifle Association, I think, is sort of the short form of the case name, but it’s about gun ownership and open carry and these sorts of, you know, where people can have guns and for what reasons. And it this conservative leaning court decides to create are more expansive conception of gun rights than what Heller (ph) provides, we are going to have a very different country. A country where the brandishing of guns at places where we currently believe they should not be, like near where voters maybe congregating or — and sort of very public democratic convenings, maybe these things begin to get tested. We also know from research from a number of legal scholars that just the very presence of guns in places where peaceful protest is happening kills the protest, the people’s ability to exercise their First Amendment rights. And so, the Second Amendment is no more important than all the other ones.

SREENIVASAN: We have talked about a number of things from criminal justice reform to gun right to Supreme Court, democracy. Where do we start? I mean, how do we tackle, well, maybe help fix some of this?

JOHNSON: Well, you know, I will sound like a broken record here because the first place to start to address any issue in our public sphere, any issue that can be resolved via public policy is to allow people to participate in the process of democracy. Which means, protecting our right to vote and ensuring that the process of democracy is protected against those who tried to gain it, in any number of ways from gerrymandering all the way through dark money, et cetera. So, voting rights is the most important thing to do in the nearest term to ensure all the other things we care about like infrastructure, like social safety net programs, like education, the economy, criminal justice, et cetera, these other things don’t get addressed if you don’t have a government that is responsive to the will of the people. And the way to ensure that government is responsive to the will of the people is to ensure that you equip people with the tools and the processes and the institutions that will accept their participation, recognize their voice and then, elect people who will hear that voice and act on behalf of the people to carry out its expressed will. This doesn’t mean there won’t be contentious arguments around these debates, but it means we will have a process that will facilitate consensus building and compromise in a way that our current version of democracy doesn’t have the capacity to permit good nuanced public policy conversations or debates.

SREENIVASAN: Ted Johnson, thank so much for joining us.

JOHNSON: Thank you.