Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20160410

Fox news host Juan Williams and a Washington Post columnist. Click the book fairs tab on our website for more information. After words is next. This week, former u. S. Civil right commission chair, Mary Frances Berry. She discusses illegal voting practices with a professor. Host host just in terms of opening it up, i thought your book was original and fresh. Can you tell us what it is about . Guest well, the title, first i will tell you where the title came from. A fellow named greg malgo, a black who was the chief Fraud Division in the state of louisiana from about 20002004. So we are talking recently. Not back in the day. He ran into me in city hall when i was down there doing research. And he said i have all of these documents i want to give you because i want you to write about. And i said what is it about and nothing lick ed in my head. He brought about ten boxes over and to place i was staying. I read them. And when he was head of the Fraud Division, they discovered a lot of the campaigns in the state and local elections were in fact paying people for their vote. Host and this is 2004 . This is after bush beat gore . Guest right after bush beat gore. And in fact, he was telling me and i looked in the documents and saw the transcript there where he went by the house of this old black woman, who is probably 90 now, and told her there is a vote buy going on. And she said what are you talking . And he said do you vote . And she said yeah, this preacher picks us up, takes us to the polls and tells us who to vote for. We go in and he tells us to talk a particular clerk and tells us we need help. We come out and they put us back in the car and they drive us to the daiquiri shop. In louisiana they have drivein daiquiri shops and he gives us pork chops and a drink and drives us home and gives us 5 a piece and said i have been doing this since i was a little girl. I didnt know it was illegal. She said these politicians dont do a thing for you but at least you get 5 for a pork shop sandwich. So i thought 5 and a pork chop sandwich. This is corruption. I thought i would write about the people selling their vote and how wrong it is and how it violates the law. Then i thought about it and i thought these are the most marginalized people. These are poor people who have enough problems. Old people in Nursing Homes in chicago where they have absentee battles they give them to sign and give goodies, maybe even a flask of whiskey. Places in wisconsin where they tell people looking for Public Housing if you want to be on the list you have to vote this way. So i said it is the campaign. I dont mean the legal stuff campaigns do which they do with money. But i mean to get turnout using what i call chump change to buy people a vote which i think undermines democracy. Host this book is about fraud. You are not known as a conservative. Tell us a little bit about your background before we go on. Guest first thing i will tell you is this is not about the stuff republicans talk about when they say there is voter id fraud. It has nothing to do with that. That is one kind of voter surpression which we should do Everything Possible to get rid of whether it is litigation or protesting or whatever it is. This is something that both parties engage in at the state and local level and it is done by people who use gobetweens who are respected People Community like a preacher or teacher. In my home town of nashville it was a guy called good jelly jones who was a ward boss and had a bbq joint and delivered for people. This is all a way of stimulating turnout because turnout is hard to get and you want it turnout your voters. It happens everywhere. It is bipartisan. It is not anything that has to do with painting one party. Host you are an academic. But i think there is a lot of democrats who would say why are you bringing up this fraud thing . This is just going to john fund and others will latch on saying even Mary Frances Berry is saying there is voter fraud and we need id and other stuff. Guest and exactly. When i told my Democratic Party friends i was writing this, some are in office and others were my students, and they said you cannot write that. And i said no, because the book isnt about voter id fraud or people pretending to be somebody they are not. What it is about is taking advantage of poor people by giving them a few dollars and a sandwich or Public Housing or things they should be able to get without you giving them this in order to stimulate turnout. And in communities, they use it. Philadelphia they call it street money. Other cities they call it walk around money. Baltimore, every place you go there are valid Campaign Expenditures but i am talking about taking advantage of the old, poor, minorities and so on. And the republicans, they can try if they want to, to say that i said this but it is not. And when i let people read it, and they looked at what i was writing, they said it is not about that at all. Host you talk about chicago, philadelphia, are you saying this is just limited to big cities . Black communities . Democratic areas in big cities . Guest not at all. All over the country. Southern texas among latinos they do the same thing. When people ask about it they say well, we doing what the whites do. The anglos are doing it. That is you you get turnout. You give people something and get them to turnout. In alaska and every place you can imagine. West virginia, kentucky, florida. And in many of these communities, especially in rural areas, you have family systems who run everything. The family has had these offices from the time they were born, whatever party it is. And they take care of their folk with a little bit of something and then whole families go and vote for them. That is what they do. Host just so people understand the problem, tell us about who is Henry Anderson jones . Good jelly . That is good jelly. In nashville good jelly jones had a bbq joint and what good jelly did is he would get money from the people running for office. Local campaigns. And take that money and he promised to deliver to them on election day up to about 300 votes for each one of the candidates from the poor, black ward of south nashville. What he would do is he would take care of people all year long. That is what ward bosses do. They dont just take a view on election day but they give you something. If someone in the family is sick and you cannot afford to take them to the doctor they might get somebody to come see them or give you something. If somebody is put in jail and you cannot make bail they will help. Good jelly took care of his people. And because they took care of him they had to turnout and vote. All of this requires either using absentee ballots which you collect from the clerk and take and sign or having someone in the Clerks Office who was in cahoots to the person doing it and getting something from the campaign. Host and that is to verify the person did what they say . Guest in nashville we had good jelly and little eagle who did the same thing for another community and actually ran for office himself and got on the council as well as the delivering votes. The kind of thing good jelly did was something that was pretty common all over in places that i looked. Host Leslie Harriston in chicago was an older woman and had a raffle. Guest she started having a raffle not telling people to vote for anyone particular but if you just turn out. Because the last election in chicago where the governor got elected who is in office and a grave worry was he was going to win and they wanted to increase democratic turnout to get people to get out and vote. What they did was, she offered the idea of lets have a raffle. Anybody who gets an i voted sticker come out and you can participate in the raffle. She was attacked and it was said that is fraud. But the way the law reads in chicago it sounded like you were not suppose to do that even though you were not encouraging people to vote and she backs off. I think it is a good idea. I think raffles, lotteries, free coff coff coffee vouchers or anything once they vote that is great to get people to come out. But they said, nah, this is wrong. She didnt want to fight is so she backed off because it sounded like she might be doing something wrong. But i think it waw was a good idea. Host what about the shulers . Guest they were a system down in florida. What they did is control the school board, control the council, control all of the local governments. See that is what this is about. If you control the local government, you control patrons. You control all of the jobs. So what you do is tell people and there was this one particular faculty i was going to write about, the extended family who complained that if you dont get your whole family to vote for me you will lose your job. You can lose your job because you didnt get everybody to vote or if you complain and they never did anything for people in that community. People often forget that most of what you need on a daily bases comes from state and local government. The president ial elections are exciting and policy is exciting and who is in the congress and so on but your daytoday living depends on them. Host on that, lets talk about the local government piece for a minute. You get into a little bit of ferguson. We know about policing in terms of local, court fees, and variety of civil right issues and Economic Development and education. Tell us about turnout in terms of these local electrics. Isnt it notoriously low across the country especially people of color. Guest yes, it is notoriously low because like the woman in louisiana was taught, they sense the politicians dont do what they say they will do. They campaign and say they will fix the school, over whatever it is, their sense is it doesnt happen. Host cant you make the same argument about the president ial turnout that is about 60 and local is 27 or lower in particular areas. As you know in ferguson, large turnout, about 55 in terms of the president ial and a few months later, turnout is like 6 africanamerican. Guest it is totally different. You are making a good point but ferguson is a totally different ball game. Host tell me why. Guest at the local level you dont have the huge registration turno turnout. That is the ground game putting it into play for president ial elections. Also, president ial elections are widely advertised in the media. It is everywhere. The ads and spectacles of the election are everywhere. How can you escape the great spectacle of the election . The turnout in the president ial election is nothing to brag about. Even when obama got elected twice. Although turnout was high it wasnt nearly as high as people thought it would be when you look back at it. You get more people interested because celebration and more ground game and more resources than in local elections. Also, the people who do the registration and who get people to vote dont educate voters. And one reason they dont edge educate them, and i hate to be cynical, most candidates like the same people to vote over and over and to vote for them. We hear them talk about new voters. In most state and local campaigns, people dont like new voters because they dont know what they are going to it. Host right. Taking into respect of the candidates increased turnout means more money is needed and we will have to identify more people and the cost of the elections will go up and there is more problems because i have to raise more. Guest and if you insist on the vote buying i saw, it is not that extensive. You still need Campaign Funds which you get from the candidates. And the guys doing the hauling and buying are middle men and they get a cut. They are making money off it. But you can buy a voter cheaper than you can actually invest in educating voters. Host especially when turnout is so low already. Guest right. And you run to risk if you were to educate the voters, which is what i think should be done, they may hold you accountable and say what are you doing in the legislature . You didnt vote for medicare expansion. What is your problem . You better vote or we will not send you next time. You are free to wheel and deal with others who have greater resources, another donor class, which part of their money is used to buy these people, and you have freedom. If that lady voting over and over again for you and it is cheap, which is why i call it voter surpression on the cheap. That is what it is. You are suppressing choice. And suppressing real democracy and doing it very cheaply. Host so now, and just to be clear about 90 , i think over 90 of local elections, are at a different time than the president ial. So large turnout for president ial, at least relative to the local. And then the local elections have a low turnout. Guest not much publicity. Host right. In terms of scope, you have examples from a few different places in the country, but how wide spread is this . Guest in the book, there is a study done by political scientist and it would say illinois has more of this kind of corruption than any place else. I dont know because i dont know how you measure it. I do know i have the documents to show it existed in these places that i saw it. And i didnt look at every county and every prestinct in the country but precinct but enough places focusing in because i have affidavits and reported information to the investigator. So i know that. It doesnt surprise me when people say louisiana politics is corrupt. They laugh and say lets go to new orleans and get a drink, too. But elsewhere in places like florida, west virginia, kentucky, illinois and wisconsin you can see it happening there and in nashville and atlanta and birmingham and other places. If you think about it, people who read the book or think about what is going on in their town, they will realize they have street money in my town or walk around money. People do stuff like that. It happens. It happens. Host now, there would be some people who would say hey, we have to understand the scope of the problem to deal with it. In others words, people Like John Fund or others would pick up the stories you say and because of this vote or fraud, they need a photo id or because of xyz we need it purge voter rolls regularly. So isnt the scope issue how big it is important . It is important and i would think that some researchers could do this. But it is one of those things that if you think about it, no matter where you live, or whatever town you are in, and if you have any experience with voting fraud you know it happens in your town. You may not know how much it is but you know it happens. It is not one of those things with people think about it they say i could never imagine that is what is happening. They say i remember that. Anyone can tell you in chicago they know it happens. Who gets their snow shovelled first . You know, what street. And people can tell you in these towns what happened to them. It would be great if a bunch of researchers they have graduate students starting on to find out in detail every indicator. But i would think a person Like John Fund or people in that category would be only interested in debunking or trying to figure out only one party did it or something given the history of that kind of research he does rather than it would not matter how many places you found it in. Host you have said that the issue of buying, whether than voter impersonation. Guest voter impersonation is not a problem. Host so it is not a situation where id will prevent the problem. Guest right. Host but i think some said we need id, maybe not to stop prod, but because of the appearance here of fraud and corruption. It makes voters feel better in that legitimate voters will stay home if they feel as though there is corruption. So an id actually makes them feel better. That has been a rational; this making people feel better even it is not connected. Guest right. Host wouldnt some folks say you are elevating these stories, and they are going to come to the lead of making people feel more comfortable about these elections. Guest it is going to make people feel more uncomfortable. Here is my id thinking. I think organizations who enge in voter registration, get out the vote campaign, ought to help people who dont have ids or the resources get them. Or where it is expensive to get a drivers license or clear your record or whatever it is. Whatever it is that the justice march campaign to help people get ids and raise money to do it. The naacp and aclu and all of those organizations ought to be just as interested in trying to help people get ids because while we are fighting it out in the court it takes a while. There are primaries and elections going on and people cant participate in them. And people need, as we know, vote picture ids for lots other than voting. And those who dont have it marginalized. Host so you are not supporting id but saying there is a reality out here and we need to guest if you want to help poor, marginalized people you ought to be concerned. I saw a man who could not get into a building where his Doctors Office was and was sick because he didnt have id. Host when i was on the cutter Baker Administration this was the argument made we should go ahead and have a photo id because poor people need id anyway. I think my biggest concern was lets look at numbers, lets look at the amount of impersonation fraud, and compare that to, you know, the number of people who dont have id or wont be able to vote. Lets look at the data and once we get that we will make the decision. But this is the argument, poor people need id so lets be proponents of id. Guest is your argument they dont need it . Host no, mine was lets do an analysis. We can start a campaign it give them an id without saying you need one in order to vote. Guest i would agree with that. But i am saying those who argue against the id laws and dont say anything at all about all of the poor people who dont have any and cant get in the court house, cant get into the Doctors Office. And they are not the least bit interested in trying to figure out a way to help them do that i think that is wrong. Host isnt that always the case you talk about the organization that provides Energy Assistance for poor folk. You can support that forgeting people heat in the winter but say lets look at the underlying causes of why folks dont have the heat. Any time you deal with sources who dont have resources isnt there this underlying immediate issue and then the structural thing. And just because you are dealing with the immediate thing doesnt mean you are against dealing with the underlying issue. Guest yes. I am saying reality is while poor people dont have id, or minority people, old people, whoever it is. While we are litigating, and i support the litigation and i have been on the boards of these organizations forever, there are elections going on and they cannot participate in. Primaries, general elections, and wherever it is going. I am saying we ought to think about isnt there a way we can do something while making the argument this is wrong, and it ought to be struck down, which it should be, but we will not sit back and say oh well. It reminds me of people saying dont worry about Medicaid Expansion but being put in the Affordable Care act but eventually the governors will come around and i said what about the five years the poor people dont have Hillary Clinton health care. And they say they will come around. You have to look at the problem globally, mary. I am willing to do that but in the mean time there is what is going on with people issue. And l host let me shift away because i have a conversation about the voting act. You are talking about something that is different. Lets spend more time on the idea you thought as opposed to the bright shiny object. Guest and repeating why i think it is important. I have done work on Voting Rights most of my life in terms of protesting, civil right missions, bush beating gore, whole thing. So there is no part of this issue i dont think i have touched aside from the one i wrote about in this book. But the reason i think it is important is any time i see someone taking advantage of marginalized people and getting away with it like the people in the case in louisiana who didnt hold a local Election Council for 12 years because if they had black people would have got the seat and had the control of the council. They were not going to put up with this and so they just didnt have an election until they were forced to and once forced they used a lot of shenanigans to pretend voters lived there and paid money to this person and that person. This whole part of the system, if you understood it, you would understand why some people say they doubt one of voter they are not interested in voting because in their minds, when people though, nothing happens. There are people who still have all the patronage of the power and they just go on as if nothing had happened. Had to share this about the gulf torture them yet . I have not appeared in terms of laws, what relevant laws are on the books to deal with this problem . Guest its illegal in every state. After we number because americans forget sometimes and the mechanisms of election are not controlled by the federal government. Government steps in on this discrimination of various kinds in the world so every state has a boat law. Youre not supposed to sell your boat. And so its not a question of the laws not being there. The people who are supposed to enforce at our local das and the local district attorneys which really upset him dont want to prosecute because they in fact get elected in the same way, by the same people and they are all in it together. Therefore, they find reasons not to. Local judges in those communities are elected. So the system goes on the way it always has gone on unless you make a federal case where theres discrimination of some kind and there are proposals to pass laws to give the federal government more power over voting in general better in the congress. And they proposed constitutional amendment that folks have introduced in the congress. But we know how hard it is to get a constitutional amendment my way, which is that explaining to poor and marginalized people what you could get collectively for your boat and in ferguson nor flinch or any other place if you tell the vote tires to go away. And then figure out what she wants is a better interim solution than trying to wait around and get a constitutional amendment or come to their senses. Let me ask you this from first standpoint. I want to get to your solutions later, the left say we actually enforce these state laws really figured out a federal statute. Obviously there are prosecutions for bribery of state officials, even though they are not federal officials. Lets say that there was a prosecution here. Is there a problem in the trillion let them legitimate participation. Guest you can use that to chill political participation a cr of the mind. It is like using the irs. You can always vote with political power and figure out a way to use whatever law to do something to benefit themselves as a weapon against the people they consider their opponents. Yes, thats possible. Host is not a concern . That is one of the people say we dont regulate speech. We shouldnt regulate Campaign Finance is much et cetera because some officials will be on a witchhunt to chill legitimate participation by their opponents. Guest that is why its a better remedy to come back to my proposal which is to say that the organizations that are concerned about voting should educate the people im talking about to use the collective power they would have to get people they want to run, support then, hold them accountable. Not to support the people year after year gives them goodies and then go off and vote for what they have nothing to do with what they want or pass laws that are onerous. That is the way democracy must work and that is why this corrupt democracy and is better i dont think the allies going to pay us anything. It would be better than passing any kind of law that can be abused by those that have the power to use it. Host so maa, lgf, churches. Guest sorority, fraternity, of the organizations that get out the vote. And registration not to be doing education and picking candidate and holding candidates accountable and showing people how to do it. Host so let me ask you about the role of race in this space. The reason its kind of difficult is because there is this frame of people of color violating the law and kind of casting a stone. There is this kind of common narrative, and civil rights narrative which is access and inclusion in this people just want to participate and that there is this counter narrative which is those folks are corrupt. Its kind of a law and order. Just as they commit all that crime, they are fraudulent in terms of their boati, et cetera. Theres this kind of racial narrative that is out there and how does your book play or navigate . How does race factor into the concerns addressed in the book. Guest it is obvious and not to be obvious that the people, the black people and latinos in this book and the poor white folks in this book have been taken advantage of. That in fact it is the folks who give the money to the campaign, the donors he then used the money to dribble out little bits for all these people who are the nonfactors in this whole process. These are not colored folks. And so, the people who are paying money to pass through these people were all the candidates are running the wrong way. So it has nothing to do with the black people be encrypted although im sure theres crooked black people just like everybody else and latinos. But the donor class are the people in office than running for office and the same people over and over very often and the families and so on are the ones who are corrupt and they are the ones who are collect in democracy. The other people are not getting the benefits of it because they are not acting collectively to counteract. I havent found a way to counteract all these years. Host so now what would you say to the argument, kind of the founders argument, the republic when i say republican i mean civic republican. The argument that this is why we want to eliminate voting to those who are property, who cant be bought, who will vote their conscience. This is one of the problems with this progressive reforms that expand the franchise. They did to negative things. One, youve got people paying attention to the issues and i think another argument is that got all these other campaignfinance problems because you got to communicate with people and persuade. Before when we had a few folks voting who are property landowners, they were making decisions we didnt need all this money to communicate with and we didnt have all these Campaign People stood for election and made decisions based on merit. Host the fallacy of all that is that its not true. Its backwards. Most of all, there is no end to greet no matter how much property people are seeking power and power and conflict which in fact occurred in our early history just as it has since our early history. The people going out and killing each other. So stuff like that happened despite that. When they made universal men of suffrage, white male in fact without having property, it tells you that it had nothing to do with race or black people or anything like that. They were still white, but they expanded suffrage. There a lot of people against that. A lot of people said we should not expand this to the property. Guest some, not a law. Host theres this notion of these people work in factories, et cetera. They will do if their bosses tell them and they will not show their conscience and participate. Host even the aristocrat aristocrat but you are right. I talk about that in the first chapter of the book. Throughout our history theres always people in favor of limitation and limiting suffrage. At every turn, even when we affect at the same time there are efforts whether its the franchise world where people live or what language or whatever broader history. That is always been true. There is always people who thought those were not educated. Those who dont know enough should be voting and certainly the illiterate should be voting. We have argued that throughout history. But i dont think thats the main problem in politics. Host so lets have a little academic exercise. You are an academic. Why is that so a problem . The founders paid for and refreshments in terms of people coming for them, et cetera appeared you talk about australia doing some thing, so what is wrong . Nothing. What is wrong is giving people that and not having them understand the things they complain about, which they do complain, not getting done that their goal of getting those done is undermined by the acceptance of the 5. Host 5 on it for chuck same time besides you have disclosure. Guest it would be better for them i dont care if they give 5 for a pork chop. You could at each polling place hand out 5. That would be great for me. Even a daiquiri. The point is the problem when candidates use that instead of keeping promises for doing something about the real problems that their constituents may have and tell them were not going to do anything because you got paid already. We argued gave it to you. That is the democracy that is corrupted is that youve got somebody representing him who is supposed to be representing the interest of the community. But in fact, theyre representing probably the interest of whoever else is involved with their other significant others they care about and not you get out of it is this and that is supposed to be enough. Host whats the difference between 5 a pork chop sandwich to vote a particular way and a Campaign Promise were going to build this new bridge or put in this Community Center here. Both of those, isnt there a quid pro quo in both of those . I get in a Campaign Promise to build a new bridge that the Community Needs is responding to the needs of the immunity. If theyre not just doing it because somebody they know wants to make money building a bridge. That the individual voters hed get to go to the polls and then you dont build a bridge, you dont build a school that they need. You dont get Medicaid Expansion. You dont get any clean water. All you get is that. Thats what the problem is. But these particular voters that educated enough and those who care about them and love organizations that are supposed to be trying to help them dont educate them enough to know that you could get Better Police community relations. You could get whatever it is if you are to do it this way and when the guy comes by and says lets not talk about that. Lets talk about what im going to give you. That is not the way democracy is supposed to work. I assume no problem just to get turnout. No problem with them i voted sticker or anything like that in terms of peer pressure to encourage people to participate. That is fine. Controlling their vote. Host i would imagine you would say it would still be a problem if there was somebody who said we are going to do this that helps the community, but i know how my people are and therefore we will give them 5 just so we can get the big turnout for us so that then we can get them their bridge. You would acknowledge that its not millette would imagine. Host if you said you are granting that youre going to put the bridge up and all the people you gave them a pork chop or whatever it is, each person a pork chop or a dinner and they told them you were going to do the bridge and they all came out, that is just a Little Something on the side. It is not you know youre not going to even try to get the bridge built or anything else. The only thing you tell them as this is what you get. You are undermining choice. You are getting people to vote for someone who they probably wouldnt have even gone to the polls and voted for just by giving them some thing like that rather than discussing what the issues are, what the policies are, what you stand for. Host this is going to be paternalistic, but being an academic year. If i know you need a coding boot camp but you dont even know what it is, if you are the things you need to improve your community, but ive got to get you to the polls and use any means necessary. Ive got to do some shady status here. What was the guy in new york, the political classic either im sorry, theres a political classic from new york. My point is this is just politics and in order to get what we need to get, we have got to kind of engaged and mrs. Holly get you to come. I dont mind turn out incentives. Its the choice issue, which is democracy is supposed to be getting about choices. Host so youre told us your take on the idea. Lets talk about solving the problem. Guest first of all, mama said when i was writing the book keep that we should have mandatory voting and all of our problems would be taken care of. Most of it would be taking care of when we did that. By the time i wrote that in the book and president obama said that, the next day he said i dont think thats a good idea. I guess he thought about it because i thought about it and i thought thats not a good idea. But mandatory voting does is it makes people vote even if they dont like any of the choices. Host isnt the answer to that none of the above option on the ballot. And makes them collide above. You vote for somebody. Doesnt matter who it is. You can vote whoever you want to. I dont think people should be forced to make choice from people if they dont want any of them and theyre just going out there, and means probably you dont have to do very much at all depending how many people are on the ballot. You wouldnt even get a pork chop for 5. Host in defense of compulsory voting and i dont think its going to happen. We are very much in liberty. I dont think it would happen. As an academic matter, dont we change the game for manipulating turnout, whether thats mobilizing people to the polls are suppressing the vote to politicians making arguments on the merit about policy. We know everyone is going to participate because they face a fine if they dont participate, if better at and therefore this isnt about gaming turnout. This is about the issues in a real debate. Guest well, in australia and its another countries where they have this, theres no evidence their debates are the most sensitive than the ones we have here. If we are going to talk about evidence with whom we have to research and see what the answer was. Host how about the notion of taking the suppression piece off the table . Guest you would take, if you had everybody registered from the day they were born or whatever year it was and whenever there was an election, they all had to make a thumbprint and vote. Then you wouldnt have a voter i. D. Issue. That would be taken off the table. Whether or not it would make the politics more responsive, that is what i would have to look at it and see the evidence is. My feeling is based on the couple places i know that the debates have it then with more accountability than they are here. Host you get into money in politics. Whats the role of money in politics . Guest first of all, the donor money is given to the campaign operatives. We use quite a bit of straight money to give to these folks, legal street band and part of it to give these people. Thats where the money comes from. Host in america we spend more in yogurt than we do democracy in politics. Isnt it just a misuse of money is supposed to money and another south being equal . Guest its the misuse of the money. We could use money on mobilizing turnout legitimately as opposed to giving people these incentives. I guess my pushback is this isnt really a Campaign Finance problem in terms of too much money in politics, is it . To the extent it depends the amount we are talking about. People who are concerned about the Campaign Finance issue that concerned about what they call unlimited amounts of money and theyre mainly interested in president ial campaign. But here, theres money involved. We are talking about enormous amounts of money because not that much is being given. People are being taken care of all your wrong and the local people who are political operatives. It is not so much the money and the donors. It is that the money is used for. Host wouldnt there be some people who say this is the cheapest way to get people out and win an election and actually if we had more money than we could knock on doors five times to hear and engage these people in real discussions so when it came time for the election that they would be engaged in want to vote anyway and as a result we need more money in politics so we can engage them with more than just a pork chop sandwich and 5. We can engage them with real civic engagement. Host the people guest most of the people arent even interested in engaging. They are just interested in voting for them. In fact, they are not interested in engaging them enough that they would hold them accountable for anything. As for the education piece comes from. Its against the interest of the local candidate to do what you just said. Its too burdensome, too intrusive. It means theyve got a greater burden in terms of figuring out what they want to do after they get in office than they would otherwise. Youre just making it harder for them. Its a lot easier just to get host is a law professor i have a hard time except in the fact that theres not a legal solution to this problem. You talked about fraternities and all this other kind of stuff. Guest look, the Community Community i was thinking about ferguson. I was thinking about if the people there were educated, to understand how you put the pieces when i say educated adult being uneducated. I mean organized in such a way be they understood by putting these particular pieces together in voting this way, we could get better policing or whatever it is they want to get. That would be a solution to the problem. Then you wouldnt have any trouble with turnout because people wouldnt think they would be turning it. Too often people say things like why am i voting . Nothing is going to happen. A lot of young people say that. Thats because the experience they have of what they think they see is not much happens around there. But if they were organized better to understand that, it would be different. Host what is your response to the person who says, you know, frankly it is naive to educate 200 Million People about why they should vote and participate, that the Political Science suggests that the primary reason people vote is because someone asks them to vote and they can get out to vote. Some people would say this. Im not saying that. Other people would say there some people who are followers in sheep. Other people who are kind of leaders, if better here than they mobilize votes and we want to change the way that they are mobilizing people. They should mobilize them by giving them a pork pork chop sandwich. They should mobilize them in other ways. It is naive to say we are going to educate 200 Million People about the virtues of civic engagement. So that is kind of a paternalistic way to put it. A different way to put it would be a lot of folks have real challenges, real lives, families, jobs, et cetera and they made the costbenefit analysis. Theres Political Science on this day doing what theyve got to do in their day is going to benefit them more than the onevote. You are absolutely right to make that argument. But its not what im talking about. You are not going to educate them about civic engagement. In fact, you are not even going to use that word. What you are going to do and not 200 Million People. Would you are going to do if you did what i am saying is that local communities, small places where people live, other organizations would say here are the issues in this town that weve got, whether its police are schools, whatever it is. And how are we going to fix that . And one way we can fix it because weve been a lack of soandso to go and he hasnt done a thing in all of these years. Lets pick somebody. We can all support. Some of you say you dont have ids. We litigated that, but in the meanwhile, lets take these people down wherever it is that they can register. If we do that, we might have a chance to get the three things we want. Its got to be done community by community, social organization, whether they call them branches or whatever they are and they should do that. If they do that they could make some good progress. The whole country, the whole world. Civic engagement are having a class called civic engagement