Is U.S. voting set to change forever?

0:00If you've ever wished someone would explain what's going on with reproductive rights without feeling overwhelmed and alone, hi, welcome. I'm Jenny Wetter, host of Repros Fight Back, where we make sense of the headlines from shifting abortion bans to contraceptive fights and attacks on LGBTQ rights and gender affirming care. We talk to experts on the front lines and share real actions you can take. You'll walk away thinking, OK, this is hard, but I'm not alone. And it's all making a little more sense. Listen to Repros Fight Back wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Katie, Paul, I want to kick things off with a quick word association game, okay?

0:39So I'm going to name a few words that some people are using to describe a recent event here in the U.S., and I want to see if you can figure out what I'm talking about. Sounds fun. All right. You ready? Yep. No. Go. Erased, eviscerated, demolished, gutted. What do you think we are referring to here? The soul of every family of the Toronto Maple Leafs. No, I was going to say my soul. My soul in this moment. The facade, the nameplate at the Kennedy Center. Perhaps the feeling of lightning's fan. You know, in this moment in America, honest to goodness, it could be absolutely anything. In fact, these are words to describe something far more serious.

1:22These are words that have been used to describe what's happened to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Indeed. Last week, the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, made a decision that will at the very least narrow the Voting Rights Act, or VRA, as some call it, which is one of the most important legal achievements of the civil rights era in this country. But many other strong words have been used to describe this decision. Donald Trump called it a big win, and others have described it as progress, a lifeline, and a win for fairness. So there is a lot to unpack. And today we're asking, will the Supreme Court's decision on the Voting Rights Act reshape elections in this country?

2:03I'm Willie Lowry. I'm Paul Hunter. And I'm Katie Simpson. We are CBC's Washington Correspondents, two blocks from the White House.

2:18Paul, first things first, what is the Voting Rights Act and what do people really need to know about it? I'm so glad you tossed that out. Just an easy one for you. Uncle Paul. We have this thing in the Bureau we call the self-op booth, which is self-operating booth. Is that what it stands for? Yes. Where we go to voice all our reports. I don't know if you guys have surely seen the sign up on the wall, which I think is a remnant from the Stephen Colbert, John Stewart rally for sanity back in 2010 or whatever it was called. And people held up funny placards. And so there's this placard in the self-op booth that says LBJ did it.

2:58And it's meant to be a joke on Kennedy conspiracy theories that somehow that LBJ shot JFK. And I'm not starting a conspiracy theory there. But read the question. You're wondering why are you telling me all this, Paul? Because LBJ did it. LBJ brought in the VRA, the Voting Rights Act, in 1965, effectively, as it's commonly known, the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. In effective and practical terms, it was meant to sort of end and prohibit racial discrimination in voting, you know, aspects of which went back to before the Civil War and after. And even though after the Civil War, things were meant to be all equal, didn't quite turn out the way in a number of states and a number of places put up a number of hurdles to prevent, again, effectively speaking, African-Americans to put hurdles up in terms of voting.

3:54We could get into the weeds on that, poll taxes, literacy tests, things to make it harder for black people to vote. And the VRA, the monumental piece of legislation that it was in 1965, aimed to even the playing field and to put an end to those practices. It's a big, big deal in this country. It absolutely is. And I have a question. Do we have anything similar in Canada? Well, yeah, Section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. You just had that off the top of your tongue. It's just stuff that I know, Willie. It's the way I am. Look, I mean, the issue, Canada is not, it's not like it has no history of such stuff in different ways and at different times.

4:38But it's never been as politically explosive an issue in Canada as it has been here. But Section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms effectively gives every citizen of Canada the right to vote. Has it been challenged at different times in different places? Yes. But as I say, never as explosive as it is here. So there are protections in a different way. I mean, people here have long said that's the whole, you know, the VRA Act was meant to be the protections for the rights to vote for all people in this country. It's been challenged multiple times, say many. It's been slowly, slowly chipped away at by some in this country.

5:16Death by a thousand cuts. Death by a thousand cuts. And now this big one from this big, big latest one from the Supreme Court. This the case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, Willie, it was all about redistricting efforts in Louisiana. Bring us up to speed on the back story. What were both sides arguing in this case? Yeah. So following the 2020 census, we'll remember these are these the census happen every 10 years. And often there is a redistricting that happens after the census to reflect the changes in demographics, the changes in populations. So after that 2020 census, the Republican led legislature in Louisiana essentially tried to create, again, six districts, which there were in the previous census, but with one majority black district and five majority white districts.

6:08A group of black voters challenged that, saying that they essentially should have two districts. Eventually, that kind of wound its way up through the courts. And then eventually, the state redrew those lines to reflect the kind of court's decisions to reflect two black majority districts with four white majority districts. And part of that argument was that a third of the population of Louisiana was black. So a third of the seats, if you look at if there are six districts, a third of the seats should be representative of the people that live there. Exactly. It is to fairly represent the population.

6:44But of course, I think one of the issues that people would argue is, is that the demographics aren't necessarily confined to specific geographical areas. Right. And so following the redrawing that had two black majority districts, a group describing themselves as non-African American voters challenged the state. And that case went all the way up through the Supreme Court. And then just last week, we had this really landmark, and it truly is a landmark ruling. So let's get to the Supreme Court decision, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in this case. It was a split decision. Shocker. What did the majority of judges decide?

7:27Yeah, it was Justice Samuel Alito who wrote the opinion for the majority, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court right now. And it essentially argued that this second minority majority district, it was deemed unconstitutional and that it violated the rights of the complainants, as Willie described. The complainants in this case described themselves as non-African American voters. And the court's decision said, you know, this specific district, this second black majority district was deemed to be unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. Gerrymandering, again, I think we need to repeat this for a Canadian audience, is when the district, when voting maps are drawn to give someone an electoral advantage.

8:12Typically, what it is, is the party in power is drawing a district to ensure that, you know, they can maintain and retain control. And so there's a long history of it in the United States. Both Democrats and Republicans do it. Which is very different than how we do things in Canada. With Elections Canada, exactly, which is nonpartisan. And we can get into that. The difference between what goes on in Canada and what goes on down here. It's completely different systems. It's completely different systems. And, you know, I do wonder if we're going to get to a point in Canada where people start to question the integrity or not the integrity, but whether people in Canada start to question the authority of Elections Canada because we are in a moment where people are questioning institutions.

8:54In Canada, we have not seen politicians torque up election results. We see people concede. We see people accept results. And I think because, you know, Canada doesn't have this partisan gerrymandering sort of element to elections, even though elections are so super important, they are volatile, they are explosive, but in a different way in Canada. And it really sort of it is such a massive difference in sort of the tone and the tenor of politics in Canada versus politics in the U.S. But the kind of worms just park that over there. Yes, we're going to get we'll get back to that. But, you know, this decision from Justice Samuel Alito, you know, this law in its when when this law was passed, it was aimed at protecting the voting power of racial minorities, particularly in places where there is polarized voting.

9:43Think the U.S. South. Think Louisiana. Exactly. Think the U.S. South. It's not just Louisiana, but this is essentially where it was, you know, aimed at sort of protecting the power of minority voters. And traditionally, I know that, you know, voting landscapes have changed, particularly with the most recent election of Donald Trump. But if we look at historically, typically it has been black voters supporting Democrats, not in all cases, but typically it has been that, and white voters supporting Republicans. So this is sort of the context and the pretext around all of this. Now, the ruling also sort of reinterprets how the Voting Rights Act is supposed to be understood.

10:23And it speaks to intent. Are the lawmakers that are making, are drawing these boundaries, is their intent to discriminate on racial basis? And critics of this decision say it's really hard to prove that someone is standing up to draw a district and they're intentionally trying to be racist because how do you prove that unless they stand up there and say, I want to be racist and I want to do this. It's really hard to prove. It's not outcomes anymore. It's intent. And that was actually a major part of Justice Elena Kagan's dissent. She called it racial vote delusion. And I'm going to read a little bit of it because her words, quite frankly, are better than mine.

11:04She said under the I know, right? Shocker, shocker, shocker. Under the court's new view of Section 2, a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens voting power. Of course, the majority does not announce today's holding that way. Its opinion is understated, even antiseptic. The majority claims only to be updating our Section 2 law as though through a few technical tweaks. Anti at 26, 29, 32. But in fact, those updates eviscerate the law so that it will not remedy even the classic example of vote delusion given above. To me, the intent thing is at the crux of it all.

11:49That effectively what the court is saying is that you have to prove that this was intentional, an intent to racially discriminate against, in this case, African-American voters in Louisiana, but can be applied broadly. So what does the left and the right think of this? What do conservatives and liberals or progressives, whatever you want to call them, think about the way this has gone? Well, people on the right, the conservatives, and that would be the majority of justices in this case, say, look, the country has changed. Like you don't need these protections anymore. And the black people, African-Americans don't necessarily vote in a block.

12:26Like it's like we're beyond that. The flip side is it's back to this intent thing. It is – the law, the VRA, the Voting Rights Act, was not only passed in 1965, but it was reinforced by subsequent actions on Capitol Hill because it was deemed so vital and so important to this country. And now you are de facto weakening it by – it's not really reverse onus, but it seems like the cousin to reverse onus. A little bit though. You know, the impetus becomes on – You have to be able to prove it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Which is, affects, say, many on the left, effectively impossible. And so you've set the country back in time, back to, if not back to 1965 and before, to a time when this wasn't, you're just making voting harder.

13:14I mean, I've done stories over the course of years, and I mentioned this has been chipped away at over time. How many stories have we done on voter ID, right? And reducing the number of polling stations in different states and say many put up hurdles to certain people from voting. It's been a forever problem in this country, reinforced, would say, many by this decision last week. Perfect segue because, you know, Katie, you've already alluded to gerrymandering, but, you know, this could lead to something of an electoral map redrawing arms race, no? And we're already starting to see that, right?

13:51Like, gerrymandering and redrawing districts, typically it happens, you know, after a census is conducted. As you mentioned, a census is done every 10 years. They take a look at the population and they're supposed to, you know, redistrict in a way that reflects, you know, population shifts. A legit thing. That makes sense. Absolutely. But at the same time, it has become this partisan battlefield where it is both parties are out for blood and will do anything to remain in power and anything to give themselves an advantage heading into the midterm elections. And by the way, sort of jump in, reinforced by the Supreme Court, which has said it's okay to do so on a partisan basis, which plays to the Louisiana thing.

14:35They're saying, you know, the party in power is going to want to redistrict to keep certain people to allow incumbents to retain the seat. There's nothing wrong with that. And it's just like it creates this vicious cycle. And as you said, we're seeing it play out. The other thing is it's not going to stop, and it also plays into the fact with Donald Trump is openly called for states, Republican states, to change their electoral maps, to give Republicans an advantage heading into the fall midterm elections. Donald Trump is very afraid that Republicans are going to lose control of the House. The Senate is a different question.

15:07That's a tougher race. They're statewide as well. That's a different thing. But when it comes to the House, Donald Trump knows that if Democrats control the House, that they are going to launch impeachment proceedings over and over and over again. Not only does it make it harder to pass his legislative agenda, but he's also going to have to deal with the embarrassment and the headache of impeachment proceedings. It's still a thing that Donald Trump doesn't want to have to deal with. And this could all play into that. And here's the thing. Where gerrymandering leads is to a place where nothing ever changes.

15:42Right. Or nothing ever matters. Nothing ever, where voting doesn't matter. Right. The districts, I'm going to draw this in the air, get turned into pretzels almost in order to maximize and to make it so that the other party cannot win that district. So I'll throw you a trivia question. Please, I'm ready. 435 districts, or in Canada, seats, districts as they call them in this country. How many do you think are – can go either way right now that aren't gerrymandered to a point where the outcome is predetermined effectively? 16. 16. 20. Good guess. Very good guess. But isn't this by a count? Can you – It's wild.

16:32Let's just think about that. 16 districts in play. And that's not entirely the result of gerrymandering, but that's where gerrymandering leads. We talk about red and blue states and purple. Those are the ones that can go either. It's getting fewer and fewer places in this country where voting on a district level makes a difference. And it kind of leads to this feeling of voter disenfranchising, right? Yes, why would you bother? Which is in part what this whole, a lot of the concern on the left is over what we just saw the court decide because it kind of decreases the impetus for black people in Louisiana to vote because they have less of a chance potentially of influencing the results.

17:23If you've ever wished someone would explain what's going on with reproductive rights without feeling overwhelmed and alone, hi, welcome. I'm Jenny Wetter, host of Repros Fight Back, where we make sense of the headlines from shifting abortion bans to contraceptive fights and attacks on LGBTQ rights and gender-affirming care. We talk to experts on the front lines and share real actions you can take. You'll walk away thinking, OK, this is hard, but I'm not alone and it's all making a little more sense. Listen to Repros Fight Back wherever you get your podcasts. One other thing that critics have pointed out about this decision that they are really deeply concerned about is that what is this going to do to the makeup in Congress?

18:04If there is a race to redistrict a bunch of different places, which, by the way, in some places there are races on to to redraw the maps. But in other places, some primaries have already been held. So it's really sort of a mixed bag in terms of what we're going to see before the fall vote in the midterm elections. But is this going to change visibly the makeup of Congress? Are we going to see fewer people of color actually representing places in Congress if places that are Republican controlled and want to sort of, because traditionally we have seen more candidates, people of color running for the Democratic Party?

18:42Democratic Party than we have seen on the Republican side. I believe right now in the House, there are four black Republican House members. I believe it's four. And on the Democratic side, it's a larger number than that. But are we going to see fewer people of color representing communities? That is one argument some critics have made. Other critics are arguing that is not necessarily what the concern is here. The concern is related to thinking that voters based on race vote in blocks, and it's about partisan advantage. And Republicans and critics of this have argued that, you know, this is just something that Democrats have tried to use to their advantage.

19:22Byron Donalds, who is a black Republican congressman from Florida, has argued, you know, Democrats, his argument, his quote was, Democrats don't care about representing black people. Democrats care about representing Democrats. And that was an argument he made. Willie, you raised Florida. What's going on there? Yeah. So, I mean, Florida is a classic example of kind of what we're seeing sporadically spread out across this country. Just this week, following obviously the Supreme Court's decision last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a new congressional map for the state of Florida, which essentially potentially could give Republicans an extra four congressional seats.

20:02In a tightly contested Congress, that could be the difference maker, really. And all of this, though, is leading to really kind of fierce and strong rhetoric from the elected officials in Washington. I want to take a brief listen to Hakeem Jeffries. We are in an era of maximum warfare everywhere, all the time. And we're going to keep the pressure on Republicans in every single state in the union to ensure at the end of the day that there is a fair national map. He actually got criticized for using the term maximum warfare, but he defended his right to use the term and said, you know, basically the gravity of the situation required it.

20:58in a country that has long shouted to the rest of the world, effectively speaking, if we didn't invent democracy, we perfected it. And that's what I think Jeffries is getting at. And that's what Democrats are effectively saying is at risk here. But we should add. It's real. I mean, it is. I mean, to use those words, I wrote down two when I was listening and it was maximum warfare because that's what it effectively is. But, you know, it's important to add, right? This is not just Republican-led states that are doing the redrawing. Both parties. Both parties are playing the same game. California, exactly.

21:32But it's eye for eye, though. It was eye for eye. This gets down to the warfare. If you're going to do it, then we're going to do it. Then somebody else does it. Florida, then somebody else, and somebody else, and somebody else. And all you end up with at the end of the day, again, are places where voting doesn't matter, where the districts have been drawn in such a way that the outcome is predetermined. And is that – so I would say critics of that, is that democracy? And one other thing that stands out to me about that Hakeem Jeffries clip, he says, Democrats want a fair national map. What on earth does he mean by that?

22:04I think that Democrats in this moment, in terms of their legislative power, they don't really have a lot of options when it comes to members of Congress who are sitting there. And even when it comes to redrawing these districts, it's, you know, this is a state led thing. Like he says these things, but what what can he actually do to change that? Or to toss something else into the mix. I don't mean to throw a new angle in here, but it's people tend to migrate to places where there are like minded people. And so what you end up with, as we've seen play out in this country, Democrats tend to live in urban centers and Republicans tend to live in the countryside or rural areas.

22:45And that just gets. And so as voting patterns change because of gerrymandering, because of everything we've been talking about, so to do migration patterns. and you end up with an ever more divided country that I don't – They can't relate to each other. They can't relate to each other. Exactly. And then you can throw into the cost of living crisis and the housing crisis and then you've got people in the city moving out to places where they can maybe afford to live and then they're in a place where they feel like their vote doesn't matter and what kind of – And then they just don't vote. And then that kind of thing.

23:16It's a vicious cycle. It underlines how volatile this is. And it sort of just speaks to the polarized moment we exist in. Paul, Democrats like Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, they're arguing that the Supreme Court's decision is actually a threat to democracy. Make no mistake. This ruling harkens back to the darkest days of the Jim Crow era when black Americans were kept out of rooms of power. this is one huge step backwards for racial justice and for the health of our democracy. What do you think people should make of that? That what will play out is everything we've just been talking about, that it'll be one battle after another again, like I was saying earlier, as it was before the Civil War, during the Civil War, after the Civil War, before the Voting Rights Act, and now after the Voting Rights Act.

24:15I mean, I've met Senator Warnock when he was running against Herschel Walker in 2022. Remember that? Some people say he may make a run for the presidency in 2028. He says these things knowing his stature. And like with Hakeem Jeffries, it's a forceful position to take in this country to say this is a threat to democracy. But that's the way it's viewed, certainly by people on the left, Democrats. It's here we go. I mean, is the short answer to the question. And it will get into hyperspeed and call it maximum warfare. Call it whatever you want. That's what this at the end of the day. That's what this decision sets this country on a path toward, which is just more fighting, more battling over ways to retain and maintain power.

25:01On that not very cheery note, I think we're going to have to end it there. But I have a feeling we'll be talking a whole lot more about the redrawing of electoral maps in the weeks and months to come. Just a little something called the midterms, of course. But before we go, we have a quick listener question for Paul after last week's episode about the shooting at the Correspondence Center. And if you missed that episode, you really should go check it out. It was pretty gripping to hear what Paul experienced. Scott Gillespie writes, OK, but the big question is, what happened to all that food? Did you eventually get dinner or did you have to get something after you got back from the hotel?

25:42And did you steal any of the wine off the table? Great question, Katie. I want to know. The people want to know. No, didn't get dinner. I had a couple of bites of salad. Had cheese and crackers once I got home. But interestingly, so there was a ton of food left over that never got served. And I mean, I guess it's a good news story to report that it ended up going to shelters for abused women and children. It was kind of flash frozen so that it wouldn't go bad. Good question, though. But it's important to note that it went to a good cause, all that food. I just want to, since you raised it, I just wanted to say that I had a ton of mail after that episode, you know, email after that episode last week.

26:21And with countless people asking if I was okay. And I'm fine. So that's that. And what I wrote to as many people as I could was how grateful I was for that sentiment and the amount of kindness shown at a time where kindness has become a rare thing. And so I appreciated all of that to everyone. And we are certainly grateful that you're doing well. After a brush with death, you chose cheese and crackers. You chose cheese and crackers? I'm a little disappointed in that. I was like, I probably would have lived a little dangerously and had something else. But hey, to each his own. If anyone else listening out there or watching this on YouTube, if anyone wants to ask us any questions or have feedback, maybe question Paul about his choice to have cheese and crackers.

27:13You can send us an email to WashingtonPod, all one word, at cbc.ca. That is WashingtonPod at cbc.ca. Or leave us a comment on Spotify. And if you like what you're hearing, spread the word. You can tell a friend about our podcast and follow us on your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode. Thanks, guys. This was, as always, a great time and insightful conversation. But I have a quick question for both of you. Please describe yourselves, your nationality to me quickly. Canadian? Canadian. Exactly! So, you should be rooting for the Montreal Canadiens. There we go. You had to go there, didn't you?