--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: I'm Patricia Murphy. I'm a writer for The Daily Beast. I'm in Atlanta, Georgia, and I've been reporting on the Georgia governor's race.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's a pretty good one, right? It looks like it's going to be exciting and historic either way.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: So it's historic because Stacey Abrams, who is the Democratic nominee, is the first woman of color to be a nominee for a statewide election like the governor's race in Georgia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The race itself is also a lot closer than many governor's races that we've seen in recent years.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: The Republican Party has really dominated statewide elections since 2002. And this is really the closest governor's race or statewide election that we've seen in some time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tell me a bit more about Stacey Abrams, her background, her policies, all that.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Stacey Abrams was minority leader in the Georgia State House, the highest ranking African-American official in the state.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: She's a well-known quantity in the state of Georgia and has chosen in this race to diverge from past Democratic nominees for governor.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Most of the times when you see somebody running statewide in Georgia, especially for the governor's office, it's sort of a battle between two centrists.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And she's a very outspoken progressive. By electing a progressive in 2018, we can prevent another decade of gerrymandering, expand Medicaid, decriminalize poverty, and protect voting rights.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And that's just the beginning. She's a really just no kidding progressive, I would say.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tell me about the guy standing in the other corner, Brian Kemp.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: So Brian Kemp is a conservative Republican.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: He has been the Secretary of State since 2010, elected in 2010, rather.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: During the course of the Republican nominating process, Kemp came blazing out of the gates with a television ad that most of your listeners have probably seen.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: It was him polishing his rifle next to a teenage boy, and he was joking with him about dating his daughter.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: I'm Brian Kemp. This is Jake. Two things if you're going to date one of my daughters. Respect and a healthy appreciation for the Second Amendment, sir.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so the image of a nominee and a gun sort of set the tone for the Brian Kemp campaign.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: The lieutenant governor of Georgia was expected to be the nominee, and Kemp came kind of out of nowhere with the support of Donald Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Suddenly, in a race that is typically between two centrists, we have an extremely conservative Republican and a very progressive Democrat battling out in a state that is kind of seen as trending more purple.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it'll be a fascinating test case this year and then for 2020 as well.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: It sounds like these two candidates present a really clear choice for Georgia voters and that there isn't even that much overlap on their policy positions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there one policy that really synthesizes both of their platforms? You don't have to look far.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: The issue of voting rights is the issue that Kemp has been working on as Georgia's secretary of state.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Stacey Abrams has run a nonprofit to register new Georgia voters in the state for many years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This has been the issue for both of these two candidates for the last eight to 10 years at least.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And it has really become a flashpoint in the race itself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Look no further than voting rights and you will see the DNA of each of these candidates.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: What has Brian Kemp done in terms of voting rights since he's been Secretary of State?
--:-- Patricia Murphy: So he has done a lot to make it easier to register to vote online in a lot of cases.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: He created online voter registration, which has been very helpful to younger voters in the state and anybody with access to a computer.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: However, the most sort of visible things that he's done as secretary of state has been a purge of the voter rules in the name of voter integrity and integrity of the ballot.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: I think hardworking Georgians should decide who their governor is, not people here illegally like my opponent wants.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Atlanta is a very transient city. It's not unusual to have a lot of people coming and going and moving out of the state.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: So he has said it's a necessary thing to do to clean up the voter rolls, to make sure that there aren't people on the rolls who shouldn't be.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: But there's a lot of concern among minority rights groups that if you're purging more than a million people from the rolls, which she has done, that you are going to invariably purge people who are registered voters and legal voters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And is there any evidence that that's happening in Georgia?
--:-- Patricia Murphy: There has already been some evidence, a lot of local reporting, that people have just checked their registration online and they're not on there and they don't know why.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And because they've been voting, they haven't changed their name. Nothing really is different.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And why am I not able to vote anymore?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What has gotten a lot of attention recently has been the state's exact match law.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: What's that?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was a law that was passed in 2017 by the Georgia legislature and really championed by Brian Kemp.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And it says that when you register to vote or if during these voter purges, if your voter registration document, you know, that you fill out when you're getting a new driver's license or if you've actually filled out a voter registration application, if the name on that document does not match existing state documents in your name, then those have been put on a pending voter list.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And you need to do more to prove to the secretary of state's office that you are who you say you are.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Now, basically, your registration is put on hold and you may not be able to vote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're not talking about major details like your address.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: We're talking about simple misspellings, a rogue hyphen, a nickname on one form and your full name on another.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there was an AP report that there are about 53,000 voters on that list.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And of that 80 percent of those are people of color
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That obviously raised a lot of red flags for civil rights groups in the states I spoken with voters who are on that pending list and they don't know exactly what to do to get themselves off the pending list
--:-- Patricia Murphy: So going into Election Day, there's concern there's not enough time to get these people's pending status taken care of.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And even in that case, the people on the list don't know either what they're supposed to do or they don't know what's wrong.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: They've called different state offices and they're not getting the response to sort of get this resolved.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's the concern that's going on in the state right now.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Because Brian Kemp championed that legislation and Stacey Abrams opposed that legislation, it's obviously become a big flashpoint in the race itself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Where exactly did this idea for an exact match standard come from?
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Is that homegrown in Georgia?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: We'll hear argument first this morning in case 1296, Shelby County versus Holder.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: That required states like Georgia to get pre-approval to make any changes having to do with access to voting.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Any racial discrimination in voting is too much.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: But our country has changed in the past 50 years.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Once the Supreme Court struck down that language, Georgia was free to go ahead and make changes to the code.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This decision represents a serious setback for voting rights and has the potential to negatively affect millions of Americans across the country.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And so the secretary of state's office, along with the Republican legislature, put the exact match language into the code and passed it in 2017.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what exactly will exact match mean for voters on November 6th?
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Next. Anybody whose voter registration document, you know, that you fill out when you're getting a new driver's license or if you've actually filled out a voter registration application, if the name on that document does not match existing state documents in your name, then those have been put on a pending voter list.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Asian Americans, if their last name is listed first or first listed last, you could also So point to women who are either married or divorced and choose to change their name.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: I can give you an example of a young woman I spoke with.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: She's a new citizen. She was sworn in as a U.S. citizen earlier this year.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: When she checked the Secretary of State's office to see if she was registered, was flagged as pending.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: She thinks that's because she is Latina and she, on previous government documents, had listed her mother's name as a part of her last name.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: On her voter registration, she listed it as her middle name.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: She thinks that's why it's been flagged, although she doesn't know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what does that suggest?
--:-- Patricia Murphy: It's mostly women and minorities that this is going to affect?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, and the EIP report sort of backed that up.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: 80% of the names on the pending list are people of color.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They didn't break it down by gender, but there's good reason to think that women who changed their names in that period also would probably be people who were flagged.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And so the EP report backed up what Democrats were worried about in the first place was that even though the law applies to everybody, it has ended up applying differently to groups of people with names that are not traditional Western male names.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sounds like me and my super hard to spell last name might have a hard time voting in Georgia right now.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: What's the point of this?
--:-- Patricia Murphy: What's the argument being made for doing this?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The argument being made for doing it by Brian Kemp himself is that it's about voter integrity, that there should be no problem.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: If you're just using your name, you should match up with who you are in the state database.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Anyone who meets the requirements that's on the pending list, all they have to do is do the same thing that you and I at home have to do.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Go to your polling location, show your government ID, and you can vote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It doesn't really allow for the fact that the state database could be wrong or that your names are being transposed or you've changed your name and somehow it's just not getting matched up.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Ryan Kemp is both the secretary of state and the Republican nominee for governor, both a candidate and the person who's going to certify the ballots.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: That has been raised to me as a real concern among voters to say, I just don't know that the standard is being applied fairly, nor that the votes will be counted fairly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's when you get into just a huge, huge problem in a state where people are losing confidence that their votes are going to be counted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, that sounds bananas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just to be clear here, the candidate for governor will have to certify the election if his opposition comes out with more votes.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And at the same time, he is promoting legislation that is making it harder for people to vote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes. He says he's making it harder for illegal voters to vote.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Is there a history of a problem with illegal voting in Georgia?
--:-- Patricia Murphy: I think this is a national talking point in a push for tighter access to the polls.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: There's really very little independent reporting that there's any kind of massive voter fraud or any significant voter fraud or any insignificant voter fraud happening.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does Stacey Abrams feel about her fate as the possible governor of Georgia being in the hands of her opponent?
--:-- Patricia Murphy: She's called on him to resign his position.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: She says it frequently, almost every chance she gets, that he should have resigned.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: Quote, Brian Kemp needs to resign his position so that Georgia voters can have confidence that their secretary of state competently and impartially oversee this election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's also, I think, a very fine line that she needs to walk in not making Georgia voters feel like there no point in voting that their vote won be counted anyway so what the point of going to the polls
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And so when I have gone to report and visited with Abrams volunteers or volunteers for the Democratic Party, they're telling me that they talk to people on the phone to call and say, have you registered to vote? Are you voting early?
--:-- Patricia Murphy: And they've heard from voters to say, why should I vote? I don't even think my vote's going to be counted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's an area that can be really tricky for the Democrats, but it's kind of most important for the state itself to make sure that those votes are counted properly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's also really important to know that Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp have been on the opposite sides of the voting rights issue for years and years and years.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: He very recently has accused her of trying to register undocumented immigrants to vote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So my question is, why are you encouraging people to break the law for you in this election?
--:-- Patricia Murphy: This is not their first rodeo and it's not the first fight they've had over this.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: This is a man who had someone arrested for helping her blind father cast a ballot.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: He raided the offices of organizations to stop them from registering voters.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: That type of voter suppression feeds the narrative because voter suppression isn't only about blocking the vote.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: It's also about creating an atmosphere of fear, making people worry that their votes won't count.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they're really going back to where they've always been on this issue.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: For the Georgia governor's race to come down to a worry about voting rights for a law that he championed, the same law that she opposed and voted against.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In many ways, this is where, you know, the governor's race was always going to end up.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: This disconnect between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams on voter laws feels very much of the moment, Georgia 2018.
--:-- Patricia Murphy: But it has everything to do with history.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's next on Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe you've heard of a guy named Jad Abumrad.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's like the godfather of podcasts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's the only guy who's ever won a MacArthur Genius Award for making podcasts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He makes Radiolab.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He makes More Perfect.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I named that show for him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're welcome, Jad.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he's got a new podcast coming out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's called Unerased.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can subscribe and hear the trailer now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Unerased is all about the history of conversion therapy in America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You might be familiar, there's a movie coming out about conversion therapy right now called Boy Erased.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Over 700,000 people have been subjected to conversion therapy in America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's also known as praying the gay away.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's treatment to turn gay people straight.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In this new podcast, Unerased, people who have been through this process tell their stories.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's being made by JAD, which means you should listen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Unerased. Hear the trailer now. Subscribe.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: New episodes start coming out on November 2nd.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How long has this kind of voter suppression voter purging whatever it might be called been going on in Georgia?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It sounds like this isn't the first incident.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean to be very honest and it's not a flippy answer it really is as old as the state itself and the civil war and the civil Rights Act and Jim Crow laws.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, there's just, it is so deeply embedded in the state concerns about unequal access to the polls for African Americans versus white Georgians.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's something that was at one time very out in the open and very deliberate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then it's newly in the headlines nationally right now, but it's a story that has never ended in Georgia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How bad were things before the Voting Rights Act?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, my goodness, you know, there were poll taxes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Before the Voting Rights Act in 1965, people stood in unmovable line.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sometimes people were asked to cut the number of jelly beans in a jar.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Literacy tests.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Lawyers, doctors, teachers, college professors flunked the so-called literacy test.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Voter intimidation at the polls, either overt or more subversive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Many people were jailed, beaten, and some was even killed for trying to register and vote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Georgia also used to count counties instead of people in statewide elections.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was called the county unit system.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was largely seen as a way for rural, more white counties to count more in statewide elections.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that changed in 1962 as civil rights leaders raised many objections to it because it really was seen as being a deliberate way to have less influence from Georgia's more populous, more diverse counties in the Atlanta metro area in particular.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So how did the Voting Rights Act of 1965 change the situation in Georgia?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 changed a lot in Georgia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It not only required full and equal access to the polls for every citizen of the state it also codified into law that the Department of Justice needs to give preclearance to the state of Georgia for any changes that the state makes, either in access to the polls or any legislation having to do with voting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was a change to that in 2013 when the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that said the Department of Justice would not need to give preapproval to those kinds of changes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So now the court is saying the test you had in place is outdated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It goes back to 1965.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So much has changed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our culture has changed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our society has changed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you're going to do this, you have to rewrite the test, if you will.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And certainly we've seen a number of changes to legislation in Georgia having to do with voting, including the exact match law in 2017.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All of that's happened since the Supreme Court struck down that portion of the law.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Have there been voter suppression tactics used in recent years in Georgia?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Outright voter suppression is not something that we hear about in kind of in modern times in Georgia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: However, as the election in Georgia draws closer, as early voting has started, we've heard just smaller examples of groups not having equal access to the polls.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was a group of African-American voters on their way to the polls in North Georgia from a senior center.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've got a rally inside.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People are singing and chanting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're on your way to the polls.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're on our way to the polls.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And just as we get ready to pull off, the bus gets stopped.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The director of the center came out and stopped flagged the bus down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's when we were told that someone had passed by, saw the seniors getting on the bus, called the county commissioner's office.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The county administrator had called the director and said those folks need to get off the bus now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The bus was stopped.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: News Channel 6 spoke with Jefferson County Administrator Adam Bradd about why seniors were told after getting on the bus that they had to get off before going to vote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's a political event.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're during early voting in a very contentious election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's a political event, and we don't allow that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You just don't like to see a large group of any minority on a bus stop from voting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It just is something that, in a state with our history, for African Americans just brings it back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We did get a letter from the Secretary of State's office, and they did say that it's under investigation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How do people in Georgia feel about these laws right now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, you've got Brian Kemp, who's the guy behind them, and you've got Stacey Abrams, who's fighting them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Where do the people stand on this?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, I think as with a lot of things across the country, how you see this issue has a lot to do with your partisan affiliation and probably your life experience, to be fair.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If somebody has been living in Georgia their whole life, they're white.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's never been a problem to vote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not something that really raises a red flag for them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For African-Americans, some people that I interviewed for a recent story talked about being the first or only black kid in their high school, the year that Georgia schools were integrated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Their chemistry teacher who was white didn't give them the homework assignments, so they failed chemistry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is very real personal recent history for a number of African-Americans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so to believe that they could be on the list because their name is unusual or to see groups, Latinos or Asian-Americans or African-Americans affected differently by a law that the Secretary of State is pushing, it just, I think, increases their anxiety about the vote and also in some cases makes them less likely to vote, which in itself is sort of an indirect form of voter suppression.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think it has a lot to do with your life experience as to whether you're really personally worried about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So who do you think is going to win?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I have no idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nobody knows.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not been seen as viable for a Democrat to be elected governor in Georgia at least since 2002.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the fact that it's even close is a real testament to the changing nature of the state and the changing nature of the state's politics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Testiment to the voter turnout operation that C.C. Abrams has been building for the last decade, and kind of a testament to the changing politics in the state.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The fact that she could be elected governor, I don't think it's a situation that maybe even she herself would have believed possible four years ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Even if she didn't win, it's a major change in the state that she could win, And that in itself is going to be notable no matter what happens on Election Day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Patricia Murphy is a writer for The Daily Beast.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramos from This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Caitlin Tiffany and Ashley Carmen, it's been a week.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've been talking about your Verge podcast, Why'd You Push That Button, about all the conflicts that technology presents every day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Caitlin, yesterday we heard about one of your favorites from the archives.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ashley, you're up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we have a bunch of episodes, but one of my favorites is kind of nerdy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's about why you ignored someone's Facebook event invite.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I don't know if you realize this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One, a surprising number of people didn't realize that if you click on the Facebook event and look at it, other people can see that you've seen it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We actually talked to a Facebook product manager who explains why that dang scene receipt exists.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ooh.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tell me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because it's ruining lives.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I can't tell you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You have those in the podcast.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Where do I find it?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, all the places you normally find a podcast.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Stitcher, Google it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cool.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Google it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why'd you push that button?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks, Caitlin.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks, Ashley.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bye-bye.
