Why There May Be Trouble This November at Your Polling Place
Authors Ari Berman and Michael Waldman talk about the unequal history of voting in America, new voting rules and their concerns about what may happen later this year.By Theresa Riley | March 31, 2016
In reporting on some of the voting issues that have risen during the party primaries in New Hampshire, North Carolina and Arizona these past few months — namely waiting lines as long as five hours and confusing new voter ID rules — The Nation’s Ari Berman often reminds his readers that the 2016 election is the first in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. His 2015 book, Give Us the Ballot, chronicles the events that led to the creation and passage of the landmark civil rights law, and the decades-long effort to undermine it.
The Fight to Vote, another book published just last month, explores the history of suffrage even further, all the way back to America’s founding. Author Michael Waldman, president of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, notes that from the very beginning, and at every step along the way, Americans have sought the right to vote and others have fought to stop them.
Just after the March 15 North Carolina primary, which saw that state’s new voter ID law in full effect for the first time, Berman and Waldman joined us to talk about the history of voting in America, the alarming number of new laws restricting voting rights passed in more than 20 states since 2011, and some hopeful news about states that are working to make it easier for every American to cast a ballot.
We started by talking about North Carolina, where it’s estimated that 218,000 voters who lack the proper ID may be shut out of voting this November. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
remainder: http://billmoyers.com/story/will-your-vote-count-in-2016/
= new reply since forum marked as read
I know that You Know this...I just had to rant. 
It's been going on slowly for a few decades now, but ratcheted up by the Repub Crazies yelling "Voter Fraud" and RW Radio, Koch Bros./ALEC and their allies in the Conservative Wings of the Repub Party, in most of our states these days, trying to take us back in time to institute Voting Restrictions on POC, Students, Elderly and others with the new "Voter I.D. Laws.
Then, add the Gerrymandering done to Dem Districts in many States..since Dems lost the US House starting in 2010 and followed downhill the Supreme gave us "Citizen's United Decision. Then, top it off with the Supreme Courts decisions to overturn the "Voting Rights Act" protections instituted against the "Jim Crow Laws" that President Lyndon Johnson managed to get through and you have the "Recipe for Disaster" that we are now living through.
Since Supreme Court halted the Florida Recount and gave the 2000 Election to George Bush II ...the Right Wing/Special Moneyed Interests have never Given Up Working Their Lobbyists Butts Off trying to deny our Citizens the Right to Vote. And, remember we don't actually have a Right to Vote in our Constitution! Even after the 2000 Fiasco where angry Voting Rights Activists did catch the momentum and tried to get a movement for "Right to Vote" (as a Constitutional Amendment) ....we have Yet to Succeed!
