Seinfeld's Jason Alexander asks: “What’s the deal with H.R. 1?”

This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.

This is Larry Lessig. This is a special episode of the podcast Another Way. In this episode, we replay an event that happened on June 4, hosted by Jason Alexander, aka George, from the extraordinary 1990s. If you can remember the 1990s series, Seinfeld, Jason has been a friend of mine for at least eight years. He first appeared in my office totally out of the blue, knocked on the door and opened the door and asked how he could help take the corrupting influence of money out of politics. And since then, he's worked in many different contexts to raise the awareness around this issue, and he was eager to help us raise the awareness around HR1. And over the course of this hour and some conversation with me and the extraordinary Elizabeth Hira from the Brennan center, we talk about the issues that have been raised about HR1, some of the questions, some of the problems, and exactly what the chance is to get this law enacted. Stay tuned and enjoy this show with Jason Alexander, Elizabeth Hera and me.

Well, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome to this wonderful conversation on HR1. What's the deal with it? What is it? Why is it? Where is it? What's happening? We have an amazing panel of people to discuss this with today. Very smart people, of which I am the least qualified. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jason Alexander. I am an internationally beloved comedy superstar and television icon from the 1990s. However, the other two people joining us today are the real reason you're here, and I'm very happy to introduce them to you. Elizabeth Hera is a Spitzer Fellow and Policy counsel with the Brennan center for justice and a leading voice in the democracy reform movement. Elizabeth worked most recently as a lawyer in the US Congress, first for Senator Kamala Harris and later serving on the Committee on House Administration to develop the first version of HR1 for the 116th Congress, which means she literally helped to write this bill and worked for the Vice President who is now leading the White House effort to get it passed. So she is a rock star. Also a rock star, but perhaps on drones, is Lawrence Lessig, who I can call Larry. Lawrence is the Roy L. Fuhrman professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, which is a small, private, struggling institution in the Cambridge area. For the last 15 years, which is about 25% of his life, he's been trying every insane idea possible to help build a movement to pass fundamental reform of our democracy. His shrink tells me that HR1 used to be all he dreamed about. He dreams about other things now, but I really don't want to know. Would you please welcome Professor Lawrence Lessig and Elizabeth Hera. I see Lawrence, I see Elizabeth. Welcome. Hi, Elizabeth. Just letting you know you're muted and you don't need to be because anytime you want to talk over me is perfectly fine. So we're going to be obviously spending the next hour or so chatting about all the ins and outs of HR1. But just so we have a little bit of context, just so we know where we are, Adam or Kevin, can I ask you to play video number five with Senator Lee about. This bill is rotten to the core. This is a bill as if written in hell by the devil himself. By the devil himself, my friends. So the opening question has to be, okay, if I've never heard of this thing, what the hell is HR1? What's in it? What does it stand for? What's it trying to do? What is this devil's brew? And I guess, Larry, I can start

with you if you like.

So here it is. HR1 is the biggest, most ambitious democracy reform package considered by Congress, I think forever, certainly the most important since the voting rights of 19. Voting Rights act of 1965, the way I like to think about it is kind of a three layer cake with really great icing around it. So the first layer of this cake has voting rights reform that would basically reverse the efforts that are going on in the states to make it harder for some people to vote, to encourage all to be able to vote. That's layer one. Layer two is gerrymandering reform so that we can't have partisan gerrymandering in the drawing of congressional districts. And layer three, what is most important to me is a package of anti corruption in money and politics reform so that congresspeople can run their campaigns without depending on large donors to run their commits. Those are the core features. And then the icing is a bunch of election security and ethics reforms that all together make this, I think, again, the most important thing we've seen Congress consider to restore faith and integrity into our democratic process.

All right, so that is, and it has been called a very thick, dense. It's a cake, but it's a very, very rich, heavy cake. Could put a lot of weight on us. Elizabeth, a lot of people were talking about a skinny bill, a smaller, pared down version of this. Why is that a good or bad idea?

I think Larry's thinking about cake because he just had a birthday. So happy birthday.

That's right, Happy birthday.

But I do I think just to kind of zone out, like we said, it is a big bill. It's, I think currently it's 817 pages. But the reason that it needs to stay together and the reason that it's such a big bill, and I like to remind folks of this, is that Congress is actually just doing its job. And anybody who was paying attention to the elections in 2020 probably saw a lot of stuff that they really just were like, how is that happening in 2021, honestly? So why are people standing in line for 10 hours? Why can't we figure out how to get elderly people access to vote by mail? They're just common sense things that are wrong with our democracy that the bill largely fixes. And so, honestly, as you know, Mr. Sarbanes, who is a primary sponsor of the bill, always likes to remind people that John Lewis wrote the first 300 pages of the bill. Pieces of the bill are actually functional all over the country. The idea here is like, let's make sure every American voter has the same fair rights, the same basic baseline standards of accessing the vote as everybody else. And so the reason the bill is so big is because America has a lot to fix. And I don't remember a time that we've said, hey, if we can fix everything at once, let's just do it piecemeal instead. It's almost like renovating your house. Like, why would you leave the bathroom broken if the rest of your bedroom is getting put together? So I think people who are talking about the skinny bill, frankly, are distracted because they don't realize the thing we need to do is just get this over the line. And there's been a lot of focus on one senator in particular. We need to move. And I'd like to remind everybody that there are 50 people who are behind this bill.

Right.

At least at a minimum. Right. Including the Vice President, United States, who can get it over the line. So there is no reason to break up the bill sort of thematically for that or strategically for that reason, but just thematically. And I think this is an important point to sort of level set for our whole conversation. The best parts of the bill beat back all the nasty voter suppression laws that we've been hearing about all across this country. Right. So we've seen. The Brennan center has noted, as of this month, 48 states have moved 389 bills to restrict the right to vote. So that's what you've been hearing about. And you probably have been thinking, oh, that's overwhelming. The great news is we don't have to have 48 fights. We can have one fight, and that fight is HR1. So that's part one. That's the nasty voter stuff that's in the bill. The reason the bill needs to stay together is that making sure that you can still access your vote, even despite the color of your skin in the country, should be table stakes. So beating back voter discrimination is one part of the bill, but the other amazing part of the bill is actually building a forward and inclusive democracy. And that's the campaign finance reform that Larry and I will be thrilled to chat with you about. But this is a narratively cohesive bill that belongs together and will just help all Americans.

So I'm going to drill down on that just for a little bit more because there are so many components to this bill. Are you saying that the voting rights package that is layer one of this cake in and of itself would be an insufficient or is not worthy of its own focus? Regardless of the gerrymandering and the reforms? Do you feel that they all have to be connected as one package at this time? Because to divide them at this point is to erode it to a point where it doesn't make sense. Is that what you're putting forth?

Yeah. And I want to hear more of what Larry has to think about. I think, again, table stakes are 1965. Let's just protect voting rights for every person in America, regardless of the color of their skin. So that seems like it's really simple, but you are doing forward looking and important inclusive work to actually build a democracy that works for everybody. So that's why all the pieces of the bill really need to put together.

Yeah, I mean, I would just add that, as Elizabeth said, why would we break it up? We technically just need one more person in the Senate to line up with the other 50 who've already endorsed it. And then it would have a chance to get through the Senate and get a signature of Joe Biden. And when you start thinking about, like, what are the things we get rid of, like some of the things people are talking about getting rid of are among the most popular things in the bill. Absolutely. Everybody in America is frustrated with the role of big money in politics, conservatives as well as liberals. And so the idea that we should only focus on one part and throw away the part that is actually among the most popular in the bill just makes no sense. We have to convince Senator Manchin that it is critical to get these reforms through to preserve the basic ideas of a representative democracy. And if we can convince him of that, then we've gotten through the door. There's no reason to leave two thirds of the bill on the other side.

Let me ask you this, which is, again, it's drilling into the voting rights part of this. I'm not going to ask you to prove that there is voter suppression going on. We all know that there's voter suppression going on. There's a big campaign. There are at least 48 states that are actively enacting laws that are more or less voter suppression. So first of all, how big an obstacle are we up against with this? Because are those state laws, in your estimation, likely to stand the test? I know Mark Elias is out there running around trying to fight all of them, but he's one man, one organization. How do you, given the sheer amount of restrictive laws that are being enacted daily in what seems to be the vast majority of this country, how do you fight that movement by pushing HR1? How do you undo all that stuff that's being enacted every day in all these states?

We can talk about the fact that federal law just overlays state law. So I don't want to get too. We can get into the legal details of it, but the real issue is that the federal government gets to set the baseline standard. Really. I always like to remind people states are absolutely free to do more, right? If states want to do more, they're welcome to. They still have power, but the federal government has the power to just say we would like to set minimum standards for people to be able to vote. And I also think, as you said, right. I think power, there is power in making people feel overwhelmed and feeling cynical about how badly things are going. So 48 states, 389 bills, seems like a lot of stuff to fight. But this one bill, the vast majority of the pieces that are being fought all across the states will be dealt with by this one bill. And I also think the caveat that's very important to remember is states are getting really creative with the crazy stuff that they're trying to do to suppress the vote. So we saw in Georgia, they want to ban people from being able to get water in line even though they know that some people are in line for 10 hours, right. So they're really creative about what they are trying to do, but their goal is to make sure people don't show up to vote. And what's awesome about HR1 is even if its provisions don't one to one meet what's happening in the states, what it does is answer the question about Whether eligible Americans should just be able to have access to the vote. And that's what states are focusing on right now, is trying to find creative ways to stop people from voting. Well, once folks can actually vote, maybe our politicians will be forced to deal with the issues that Americans really need them to deal with.

And so another way of saying it is if there were passage of HR1, most of those issues that are arising out of the 48 states that rankle me as I watch Rachel Maddow all of a sudden are negated, or at least they're undercut.

Exactly. Well, most of them disappear because the federal law will, will supersede them.

Absolutely most of them. But you know, for example, the absurd restriction that Florida has passed Georgia to ban your ability to give people water while they're waiting in line.

HR1 doesn't deal with that, you know,

so it's not like everything is solved, But I think 95% of the most important things are addressed and solved. And we should take this as a first step, the essential first step. And after we take this first step, there are other things to address as well. Nobody would have thought before 2020 that

we would have a fight about whether votes would actually be counted or whether people would, election officials would be called upon to just throw away votes because it didn't fit to the result people expected. Well, we saw that in 2020. And so it's certainly the case that in addition to HR1, there are other things we're going to have to address as well. But we need to take this first step and quickly so that the states can get their, their, their shop in order for the 2022 election.

Right.

I just want to tack on there though that like one thing that's very important to Larry's point. HR1 doesn't say, yes, people may have water. But what HR1 does say is people can have two weeks of early voting, people can vote by mail. All the pressure of that one day and that one line dissipates. And again, I think it disincentivizes states from creatively coming up with horrible ways to actually do the work of governance.

So some of what I hear on the, on the right is another method that we might enact to have freer, fairer, more inclusive voting. And none other than the man with the permanent sort of dog. What do I hear? Look on his face. Tucker Carlson, Kevin or Adam, if you would play video number eight so we can get a look at his suggestion requires you to show photo identification in order to vote. California just wants you to vote Democrat. If HR1 passes, all 50 states will be California. Personally, I live in California. I have no problem with that. But what he is pushing is voter id, the basic notion that every eligible voter has a voter id, a standard issue of some kind. We present them at the polls and we have free and fair elections. What is the problem with the notion of voter id? Can't everyone get an ID card? What's in the way? Why is this a good, middling or bad idea?

Let's start with that one. I think something that's really important is that one of the big myths, frankly, lies, being told about the bill is that the bill bans voter id. And it does not do that. It actually just provides an alternative so that when you show up, if you do not have access to an id, you can make a sworn written statement, an affidavit of your identity so that you're able to vote. So it's just, I think it's telling to me again that the best that the opposition can come up with to counter the bill are lies. So it does not ban voter id. It creates a workaround for folks who don't have access to an id. And this is again where Brennan center data really bears out, that there are certain communities who have a harder time getting id. And when you actually get under the data, you start to see that there might be some really nefarious purposes behind these voter ID laws. So we know that people of color have a harder time getting ID in the United States. And then there are really specific examples, like North Dakota passed its voter ID law requiring that IDs only be valid if they have an address. And a government official in North Dakota stood up and said, this will disenfranchise Native American voters because we don't assign addresses to people who live on reservations, so they couldn't even have an address on their ID to meet the requirement. And knowing that, the state legislature went ahead and pursued this voter ID requirement and quickly, just another example, we think about this a lot in terms of race. This also has other sorts of impacts. 42% of all people who might be affected by this law who are trans could possibly just not have ID that actually reflects their identity. So it's 378,000 transgender Americans could be disenfranchised because somebody would be standing at the poll saying, does your name match what I think it should? Does your picture match what I think you should look like? And those people would be disenfranchised. And upwards of 80% of American women change their name upon marriage or divorce. A lot of us don't have up to date IDs and these are sort of logistical and administrative problems that sort of reflect why voter ID as a blanket requirement isn't actually making elections more secure. But the bill does not ban voter id. It just creates a workaround.

Yeah. And the solution, to just be clear, when you sign an affidavit like this swearing that you are who you say you are, if you are lying, you are subject to criminal penalties.

So the idea, the idea that people are going to generate all sorts of

illegal votes by having people voluntarily assuming criminal liability because they're lying about who they are is just crazy talk. It's not blocking id, it's just making sure that there's a backup if somebody doesn't have a working idiot.

I have been hearing talk that I don't quite understand about how HR1 potentially helps younger people to vote. Now my understanding is incentivizing young people to vote is the problem, not their ability to do it. But specifically and Lawrence, I guess I can start with. Or Elizabeth, I can start with you. What does HR1 do to actually help young people vote?

So one of its really important components is actually pre registering 16 and 17 year olds to vote. So one of the things that is actually the problem that is most reported for young people about why they don't vote is because they're not registered to vote. And all of us know every state has different deadlines. Some states allow you to register on the same day, some require weeks in advance. And young people just often are not up to speed with what's going on. And so the bill would include same day registration as well. So folks who are eligible could register on the same day that pre registering 16 and 17 year olds when they go to the DMV to get their permit or when they are registering at their public university just puts them on the roll so they're automatically on when they're 18 and they don't have to think about it again. So that would actually vastly improve the number of people, the young people that could participate. And like I said, it also there are really fun Easter eggs in it too. Like there are grants for recruiting young people to become poll workers. So they're engaged civically in the process. And I think even though there are these specific things that will benefit young people, same day registration, pre registration for young people. My favorite thing about what will help young people vote in this bill is that it diversifies who runs. And exactly as you said, Jason, I think A lot of young people don't vote because we're not running people that they want to vote for. And bringing more people to the table is exactly what HR1 would do.

Interesting. Lawrence, let me give you this one. One of the big tools, obviously that the right is using to diminish voter participation is voter purging. Does HR1 specifically address this practice of purging voters from the rolls?

Yeah, it's very strongly regulates to eliminate this practice of purging. And the reason purging is so invidious is that the standards that are used to match names are extremely lax.

The basic idea that motivated purging was

you've got a list of voters and then you've got a list of voters in neighboring state. And what you do is you compare the lists and if you see the same person on both lists, you say, wow, this is a person who is really keen on voting. So he wants to go to many states to vote. So then you remove that person. Well, the problem is the standard for comparing the names is extremely last.

And so you can have J. Alexander

and Jason Alexander, and those two people are the same people according to these computer programs. So Jason Alexander and Jay Alexander would be thrown off of the voting rolls. Now, it's not accidental.

I mean, what they know is that

certain communities have names that are more likely than other communities to create exactly this problem. The Latino community, of course, obviously with names that often match in some IDs differently from how they're set up in other IDs, are very vulnerable. And African American communities too are extremely vulnerable to being kicked off. And it's not, again, not an accident. I mean, you know, I think one thing to think about when you hear what HR1 is trying to do is why is anybody resisting? Because what HR1 is trying to do is it's just very efficiently just trying to think, how do we make sure everybody who is entitled to vote can actually vote?

How do we make that easy?

How do we make it efficient? I mean, it's a crazy idea, but how does the government do something efficiently

to enable people to do what they're

entitled by law to do? And the resistance to it is from people who've decided that it actually wouldn't help them if everybody who's entitled votes. I mean, I think one of the things that scared certain partisans after 2020 was to recognize that when we had an election which was the largest turnout in 100 years,

more people voted in a way that the Republican Party was not happy about than they expected. And so the resistance to systems to make it efficient and easy for people to vote come from people who don't want entitled Americans to vote. Now I understand why they want that for their partisan justifications. I just can't understand how they sleep with themselves knowing they're interfering with with the freedom of somebody to vote, the most important right in a democracy, just because they have a partisan objective they're trying to achieve.

Yes, indeed. How do they sleep with themselves? We'll move on from the voting rights portion of it. Let's move into gerrymandering, which is, to a layperson like me, again, mind boggling. So just to start off this part of the conversation for me and the other brilliant people like me, what exactly is gerrymandering? How did it come to be? Why is it there? And how does this bill address it? Larry, let's start with you.

Larry.

Well, I mean, the idea of gerrymandering is politicians pick the voters as opposed to voters picking the politicians by drawing districts that allow the politicians to be very confident about who is going to win. So let me just show you a picture here. So here are some districts drawn by the gerrymanders. Christopher Ingram calls these crimes against geography. And what these demonstrate is that these people sit with these incredibly complicated computer programs and they work through all the way down to what magazines you subscribe to or what car you have or what clubs you a member of to figure out how they are certain you're going to vote. And then they put together districts that add up to the districts they want to be able to exercise control in their state. And what you can do when you play these games is that you can create congressional districts that are wildly unrepresentative of the state as a whole. Like you have a state like Pennsylvania, which is a very swing state. It's very close, but Democrats routinely win Pennsylvania. But because they gerrymander Pennsylvania, the Republicans in Pennsylvania have a very significant majority of districts because just of the way they draw those lines. So these are tools used to make it harder for the people's vote to be represented in a representative way. And it has an important consequence. I think people don't think about this much. The most important consequences to produce safe districts, meaning a Republican safe district is a district where you know the Republican is going to win. A Democratic safe district is a district

where you know the Democrats going to win.

Now that doesn't mean that the Republican and the Republican safe district is not worried about losing. He or she is just not worried about losing to a Democrat. Instead, he or she is focused on the person who's most likely to defeat them, which is an even more conservative Republican who would challenge them in a primary. So that means the Republican safe seat congresspeople are focused on more conservative Republicans that might challenge them. And the same thing, the Democratic safe seats, they're focused on more liberal Democrats who might challenge them. Because in primaries, it turns out it's typically the extremes who show up. Okay, but what this means is you've got a Congress that's always looking over its shoulder at the more extreme ends of their party rather than just looking straight ahead at what the people in their district actually want. And that's a completely artificial dynamic created by this system of gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court said, I'm sorry, we can't do anything about. But Chief Justice Roberts in his opinion, the Rucho case where he said we can't do anything about this, said if Congress wants to fix this, Congress could pass a bill that exercises their election clause power and just ban partisan gerrymandering. And that's exactly what HR1 does. It just takes Justice Roberts idea and puts it into the bill so that there would not be partisan gerrymandering anymore in those states.

There is a counter argument to everything you just said I articulated. But if you go to video number two, Senator Capito has a little counter argument for it.

I don't fear gerrymandering. I looked back at the statistics. When my dad was in Congress in the 1960s, there were 258 Democrats, 176 Republicans. He was always forever in the minority. Forever. For the whole 12 years he was there. I would say deep minority in that time. And what happened, candidates change, philosophies change, parties change, states change, and eventually the representation in the US Congress would change. Isn't that what we're sort of built on is the flexibility to go and meet the challenges of the day and to make those changes change the face of our states politically.

So in the body of what she's talking about is an argument that the gerrymandering creates communities that have similar concerns and priorities and that their representative more reliably reflects those values. What is the argument, maybe, Elizabeth, for you, what is the argument against that other than, you know, what Larry was talking about is what she's presenting a viable argument in any way.

I do think that it's sort of cherry picking the fact that maybe sometimes, particularly for that party, the reason that voter outcomes change is because voter suppression is really activated. And so when we're Looking at whether everyone is able to fairly participate and the answer is no, then I don't think that that is a good argument for saying, well, whatever the new reflections are of the people voting are actually representative of what's happening. So I think maybe the easiest way to say that is that the current version of HR1 allows people to still have really deep public transparency and to engage. There are. There's talk about independent redistricting commissions that would bring people together to just fairly draw these maps. And in fact, one of the concepts that's in the current version of HR1 in the center of S1 in the Senate is protecting exactly as you said, Jason, those communities of interest. So people who have language in common, who maybe have a religious identity or who share interest in access to waterways because of their farming needs or whatever, those people are not split up by HR1 and in fact, are actually helped by HR1, but they're not helped by gerrymandering, which is actually just not taking power away from them to draw their own district. So I think she's sort of conflating two things, and again, I think a lot of the people who oppose this bill would really benefit by reading the bill.

Yeah.

And the other part to this that's really, I think, important to remember is that she's talking about the Dark Ages. And the technology of gerrymandering has radically changed. And what that means is like after. I mean, the Obama administration saw this after the gerrymandering in 2010, after redistricting in 2010, because the Republican Party invested an extraordinary amount of money in technologies to enable gerrymandering. And these technologies are very sophisticated computer technologies that, again, look at every single bit of data they have about you, including all sorts of things you don't know that they have about you, like how often you drive or where you drive to or what your car is or what your favorite color. All these things that these marketers have gathered by watching you or surveilling you, Facebook or wherever. I mean, assuming there are people here

who use Facebook still.

But the idea is these data all give them a way to cut things up in a way that's radically different from what happened before. So gerrymandering was always bad. It was originally something out of my state, Massachusetts Governor Gary was his name, but they bastardized his name because he bastardized politics because he drew these districts to facilitate this. But it's nothing compared to what we have right now. There's a great book titled Rat Fucking Rat Fucked, which is the story of how you play games like this by Dave Daly that tells the story of what happened in 2010 and 2010. Technology is itself the dark age as compared to where we are right now. So it is urgent to get to a place where neither party can play this game. I mean, Democrats play this game too, where they have control of the legislature. This is not something Republicans do alone. And what this bill would do is say, let's take the partisan out, keep the communities in, keep the traditional historical lines together, but just take the parties out so that what people are doing is drawing districts that give candidates a fair shot based on their ideas, not the fact that they happen to have

a D or an R behind their name.

One little specific peculiarity in HR1 deals with people who are incarcerated, people who are in jail so that their vote would count in their home communities, not in the place where they're being incarcerated. Why is that important?

Elizabeth so the way that prison gerrymandering works is that, you know, how we do the census, we kind of check where people are, and that's how we decide about how resources are distributed. And one of the really big problems with prison gerrymandering, as we're all aware, is that there are deep sort of systemic racial problems with mass incarceration. And so what we're seeing is a hyper over representation of people of color who are incarcerated. And when those people are incarcerated, for the most part, they end up being incarcerated in kind of largely rural areas that are predominantly white. And so what you're actually seeing is resources from a community that, like, I would otherwise I'm a person of color. Suppose I'm incarcerated. Had I not been incarcerated, I would be counting in my own community. Resources would be coming to my community instead. When I'm incarcerated, those resources are diverted to the place that I am incarcerated. And that incarcerated place then gets outsized resources, which frankly incentivizes them to hold on to prisons and to keep incarcerating more people. And so not only is my community losing out on me, what's really scary is that the Brennan Center's research shows that there are spillover effects for people who are incarcerated, right? So you might come back, you might end up being disenfranchised, because I think 29 states still maintain that even after you come back into your community, you, you lose your right to vote in some capacity, which again, would be solved by HR1. Tell your friends. But this idea that when you come back in, your civic engagement is dampened has these spillover effects in the rest of your Community as well. So what would be fixed in HR1 is that prison gerrymandering would end. So if you're in your community, you're going to count where it is that you belong. Which I think also has this really wonderful effect of meaning that more resources are put into your community. And one of the things that we see is people often end up incarcerated because they lack resources in the first place. Right. So stopping something like prison gerrymandering lets resources flow appropriately to places that need them most. And I think is a really important way to break that pipeline between communities that don't get a lot of support and carceral control. So we want to keep people out of prison, keep communities healthy. And HR1 actually would help do that.

Fantastic. Only because I know we're pushed for time today and there's so many parts of this bill I want to get. So I'm going to move on to Larry, one of your lifelong bugaboos, and that is the financing of campaigns in our electoral process. So how do politicians fund their campaigns? Why does it matter where this money comes from? And what does HR1 do to change what you are looking at as a negative or bad feature of how this works currently?

So this is really important to understand what the problem with money in politics really is. People speak as if the problem is that you've got people buying ads or there's too much speech on one side or another side. In my view, the real problem is the way money gets raised. And the reason that's a problem is that you have members of Congress and candidates for Congress spend anywhere between 30 and 70% of their time dialing for dollars. Joe Manchin loves that phrase. He says it over and over again in criticizing the existence existing system. Dialing for dollars, calling people. A little confusing if you don't know what an old phone was. But that was the dial that you used to use to call people like push button today or Skype today. But the point is calling people to raise money to fund your campaign or to help fund your party. Now the point is they're not randomly calling people. They're not just dialing numbers randomly. They're calling a very specific list of people. I think it's about 150,000 who are relevant funders of congressional campaigns. They give enough to matter. And as they're calling them, they've got a little assistant sitting. They got an assistant, she could be big or little or he could be, I don't know. But the point is sitting next to them is a person who's saying, okay, Jason Alexander is really into real estate, and he's buying a lot of real estate, and he's really concerned about depreciation for buildings that he buys in real estate. So say something that he really cares about about real estate. So you get Jason on the phone and you say, jason, I'm with you, and concerned that we don't properly value the investment in real estate. We need better depreciation for real estate. And the point is that they, through this process, become incredibly sensitive to what this tiny, tiny fraction of the 1% wants. They're dependent on this tiny fraction of the 1%. They know they're dependent. And almost as a sixth sense, they become extremely good at knowing what they should do. Leslie Byrne, the Democrat from Virginia, describes that when she went to Congress, she was told by a colleague, always lean to the green. And then to clarify, she went on, he was not an environmentalist. And the point is, you just know which side will earn you money. And you just know if you need to raise money, that's the side you should be leaning to. So the point is, we've built a system where the members are dependent on a tiny fraction of the most interested, most elite in America, where James Madison told us we were going to have a system where the members would be dependent on the people alone. And just to be clear, he went on to say, by the people, I mean not the rich more than the poor, but we have a system where they are dependent not on the people alone. They're dependent on these funders to fund their campaigns. And these funders are not the rich no more than the poor, they are the rich. And that is the corruption at the core of the way we fund campaigns. This bill, it's not my dream. I have other dreams about exactly how we can be fixing it perfectly. There's a little bit of this in this bill, but this bill is an enormous step away from the dependence on the rich funders, because what it would do is it would give members a chance to fund their campaigns with small contributions, which means that they would be raised, you know, if they raise $100, that gets matched six to one, so that's worth $700 to them. And they can then decide not to spend all their time bending over backwards to the people who are going to give $2,000 or $2,500, they can instead raise money in smaller ways, raise money from more people, be more dependent on more people, which means, you know, be dependent on the people who are going to be electing them, rather than on these very special interest funders is a critical change, and we've seen its effect in places like New York, where New York has this system, and that allows an extraordinary diversity of people to run for office because they don't need to have what we used to call a Rolodex of telephone numbers of rich people who they can call to give them money to fund their campaigns. They can raise small contributions and have those matched. And that means more women, more people of color can enter into the election process, as opposed to the existing system, where the only people who do well in that system are people like me, like white men, lawyers, who have a long list of clients who I can call and say here, I need $2,700 to help me run. This is, in my view, the most important thing to change if we're going to have a Congress. They can care about what people want as opposed to what these special interests care about.

Elizabeth let me play devil's advocate for

a second,

knowing that just about anyone, if they meet basic criteria, can run for office if message and policy and vision are actually valuable. And I run, and I have done. I don't have Larry's Rolodex and I don't have tremendous resources, but I can go on the same social media we're on right now. I can put my message out. Why isn't the current system, in your estimation, fair to everybody? It seems like I have access to the I can get my message out, can't I?

So you're right, Jason. It is certainly more fair than it's ever been. And that is why the 117th Congress is the most diverse Congress that we've ever, ever had. That's the current Congress. And that most diverse Congress that we've ever had is 77% white and 73% male. That is where our system is leaving us. And I don't think it's because those people are the most representative or the most qualified in this country. And so I think, I like to remind folks, Larry teed this up beautifully. Our current Congress is, like I said, 77% white, 70% male. Barely one in four women in the United States House of Representatives got their own bathroom on the House floor floor for the first time in 2011. Prior to that, they had to walk away and use the public restrooms. And so what I use that to say is that this structure was not designed for most people. We actually Nick Carnes, who's this wonderful professor down at Duke, did a study and found that in the last Congress, fewer than 5% of congresspeople reported ever holding a blue collar job. When you start to look at those things, what you realize, you start to make some connections. In the history of Congress, only 10 people have ever given birth. Well, that number starts to make sense about why we've never really seriously taken on maternity leave or paid family leave. Right. And same thing if you have sub 5% of people who've ever worked a blue collar job and actually the majority of Congress are millionaires, it makes sense that we can't get things like a minimum wage. And again, exactly as Larry is saying, if it's really only rich people who can run, it is going to shape what the priorities are. And I think what is amazing about HR1 is that it just neuters what has become that status quo system. And again, the way that it's run, what Larry just mentioned, the small dollar public financing system, which is amazing. And again, I think the detractors of the bill like to lie about where that money comes from to actually fund those campaigns. They say it's taxpayer dollars. That is just not true. Actually the fund, believe it or not, called the Freedom from Influence Fund, is funded by corporate lawbreakers. So when we find corporations and they do horrible things, that money goes back to the people. So the people can say, hey, you're a candidate who's not super wealthy, but I support you, I'd like to give you a dollar. And then the Freedom from Influence Fund kicks in at a one to six match and suddenly the table of people who are able to run completely changes. And I want to lift up just one more statistic that I find really stunning. So there's a piece of the bill that I was really privileged to get to work on called the Help America Run Act. And what that responds to is the fact that get ready, hold onto your socks. If you're running for Congress as a candidate and you want to rent a tuxedo using your campaign funds, that is completely fine. But if you want to use your campaign funds because you're going to the same event to pay a babysitter, you have to ask for special permission from the fec. And that's an example of a super facially neutral law, right? Like everybody's got to pay for a babysitter, but what does it actually mean? It means only people who are rich enough to pay for a babysitter out of their own pocket while they're running full time for Congress are given access to being able to run. And that means working parents and especially we know that the burdens fall on women are totally left out of the conversation. And the person who championed this bill, Katie Porter, who I adore, from California, believe it or not, is the first ever parent of single parent of young kids to serve in Congress. Think about how common that experience is all across America. And it's the Katie Porter of the world who need to be at the table because she holds people to the fire about things that everyday Americans are experiencing. And if we know that, like I was saying, you're talking about young people, I think all of leadership in the House may be in their 80s. And I think the vast majority of American people are not millionaires like Congress. Congress is just not reflecting our people and for that reason, it's not reflecting our priorities. So a lot of this political infighting that we're seeing that's the focus of so much Congressional time could be resolved by just getting regular people at the table who are saying, hey, we need health care, we need the planet to stop burning. That would be great. And we need to be taking care of our kids. So everyday people's issues will only be lifted up if everyday people get to serve. And that's what HR1 helps us us to do.

So let me just add one thing to it. This is an area campaign finance reform. Part of HR1 is an area where I'm hearing even Democratic Senate and Congressional members are having some issues. And yet everybody that I know that serves in Congress, and I know a handful of people complain to me all the time that they spend 55% of every working day having to raise money constantly. So why are they pushing back so hard against this? Or is it really just part and parcel of this sort of elitism that Elizabeth was talking about?

Well, you know, everybody's conservative in a small C sense. They came to Congress with the system we have. They're afraid to try something new. Now, what's really important about the new system is it's not mandatory. It's not like everybody has to raise money in small ways. You want to continue to raise money in the existing way, you're free. It just gives people the chance to raise money in a different way.

And what I think is striking about

the point you've just made about how people resisted is it's not just Democrats who resist, Republicans too. And it's not just Democrats who think the existing system is corrupt, Republicans too. There was a really great leaked audio tape, Jay Mehr in the New Yorker revealed, where this consultant who was talking to the Koch Network about how can they message against HR1, his most important message for the Koch network was don't defend rich people buying elections. Everybody on the right and the left hates the system where rich people get to buy elections. So you got to find other things to complain about because you're not going to win anything on that. And that's because everybody knows he who pays the piper calls the tune.

And the people paying the piper right now are not average Americans. They are the tiniest fraction of the 1% and they call the tune. Which is why Congress does all these things that seem kind of weird when you look at what ordinary Americans want but make perfect sense when you ask how do they raise more money?

I'm going to go on to another section I'm going to bypass for now because I know TIME is running the FEC and all the questions about that jump to one of the sort of big ticket questions. Let me say I don't remember this video specifically, but I'm told that video one will lead to this. So Adam or Kevin, do you want to look at video number one? My understanding is that the Constitution's pretty clear. Time, manner, place of elections. That would be up to state legislatures. But maybe I'm mistaken or perhaps I misinterpreted our Constitution and the very clear language in it. Well, first of all, it's always great to see Ted Cruz. It's a great joke. I'll just share it with you. There are two kinds of people in this world, people who hate Ted Cruz and Ted Cruz does. Hannity, who I know never has a point, never. So I hate to even say does Hannity have a point? But the Constitution seems to give states, not the federal government, the power to set rules for elections. So if that's true, isn't HR1 by its very nature unconstitutional? Elizabeth, you wrote it.

Well, that's also Senator Lee says that it was written in hell. And just for the record, I would like to point out that most of it was written in the Longworth House Office Building. If we're myth busting while we're here. But I think what Mr. Hannity has pointed out is actually really important. It's emblematic of one of the problems. It is true that the Constitution does say that that power is with the states. And if you read the next line, you would also see that the Constitution in the elections clause, Article 1, Clause 4, Section 1, goes ahead and says that Congress also has that power. And I think it's really important to say states have power. Congress also has that power and all the people, the hundreds of People alongside me, alongside so many of us, thousands of advocates across the country have worked on this bill, were very careful to make sure that it was constitutional. So it's one of the rare instances where the Constitution expands, expressly grants Congress this power, and we've used that power. And again, a lot of these bills are in place and have been in place all over the country for a long time. So the constitutionality is not in question. And it really bothers me that they don't just go ahead and acknowledge the truth is that the Congress does have that power to legislate. So that's one part. It also is really important to point out to folks that we live in a system where having a federal highway in your state does not ban local roads from existing. So this idea that the federal government is overreaching really sort of ignores the fact that every day in our lives there are some things controlled by the federal government and some things controlled by the state government. So states are still free to run their elections as they want to, but the federal government is responding to something that's really specific. And the best analogy that I can raise is what happened with America when we asked for integration. So you've seen all these voter suppression laws that we're talking about that are moving across the state, and we have frankly, smoking guns in some states that make it really clear that state lawmakers were targeting people of color in those states. And when America integrated, we all know, but a lot of states didn't want to go along with that. And it was the responsibility of the federal government to step in and say, we are setting a baseline standard. You can't discriminate based on skin color. That's just going to be what it is. You guys need to come along with that. And that, I think, is why HR1 is so important, is that even though it's not expressly about race or expressly about gender or any of those things, it's basically saying, hey, states, stop playing whack a mole with people's voting rights, set this as a baseline standard, let people have access to the vote, and then you guys figure it out from there. So it is totally disingenuous to suggest that Congress doesn't have this power. It does not. People who worked on this were very careful to make sure that it's constitutional. And frankly, all of us should just be engaged in the fight to make sure that people have access to the vote. And if you want to fight about, have a fair fight in the marketplace of ideas over your ideas, but don't rig an election or suppress a vote to make sure that you stay in power.

You're here.

Disgusting.

So let's play off of that, Lawrence. The biggest bogus bullshit response from the other side, from the conservative side, is that because of the changes that we had during our Covid election, there's been mass fraud. This election is a sham. Donald Trump is still president, and they're concerned that a lot of the provisions in HR1 are going to make our elections even less secure. What is the argument that HR1 actually builds more confidence into our democracy and into our elections? What's the biggest argument in that data?

Well, I mean, there's a title, one of the titles in the bill, Title 3 is all directed towards adding confidence systems of election security to make sure that people have no basis for doubting the integrity of the results. One of my favorite parts of this is actually hire hackers to test the system. Like, if you can break the system, we're going to pay you for it to make sure that these systems cannot be penetrated and cannot be hacked now. But the reality is, what's terrifying to me is that this claim of fraud has no connection to the facts. There's just no basis at all for these beliefs.

And yet they continue to be repeated. And in the way the media has evolved so that people listen to one channel and other people listen to another channel, there are many people who believe it. You know, I feel very sorry for those people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th honestly believing that that election had been stolen. Now, they honestly believed that. And many of them, if you listen to the lawyers defending of them, many of them are on the spectrum so that they were vulnerable to being led to this belief. But the point is they believed it because the media, Fox News, 827 times, I think the number is between the election day and January 6, repeated the facts again and again to lead them to believe that the election was stolen. This is not about the integrity of the voting booth. It's not about the integrity of the voting systems. It's not about whether computers can be hacked. It's about whether you can trust people to tell the truth. And I think what's so frustrating is facing an argument which is not an argument for. For people with different values who would just have a different view of the matter, but it's an argument where people are just flat out lying about the facts. And, you know, when they get to have their own audience and lie without anybody given a chance to stand up to them, it's extremely dangerous for a democracy. And I think we don't. This, you know, HR1 is not going to fix that problem. But that's another problem we desperately need

to find a way to address.

Very much so. Republicans are making the claim over and over and over again that if HR1 were passed, both of these bills were to pass, that it would make it virtually impossible for them to ever win an election again. Do you understand why they say that? And do they have a point, either of you?

I think, is this sort of kind of in line with that idea that this is really just a partisan bill, it's a Democratic wish, that list and it's going to alien Republicans. So I think the one thing that Republican leaders do not want you to know is that the majority of Republican voters support what is in this bill. And so when they talk about this idea, it's sort of like a, and really it's sort of a weird argument. You'd want them to get at the bill because they found something substantively wrong with it. Not like, hey, if you made the rules fair, I won't win anymore. That's a problem, right? If you won't win anymore because your ideas aren't good, you should probably work on your ideas instead of trying to rig the, the rules of the game. So I think that's the kind of the one takeaway. Larry talked about that wonderful piece that Jane Mayer did. The latest polling that we have supports exactly what she leaked for us. Right. So is the majority of Americans, 81% of Democrats support what's in the bill, 63% of independents, 54% of Republican voters support what is in this bill. And it's exactly what Larry said, common sense. You don't want billionaires running your elections. People should be able to vote freely. You should be able to vote by mail without a problem. It's not rocket science what's happening in this bill. And I think exactly as we were talking about, the people who stand to lose are Republicans who have been changing the rules of the game to keep themselves in power at the expense of the American people. And so I think this sort of wringing of hands has been a really unfortunate sort of again, drawing back of the curtain about what their interests are. And I think that's also where we come back to the fact that the best responses that they have about this bill and the reason we're having this conversation to myth bust is because they are lying about what's in the bill. And it's just bothersome. Right? So Ted Cruz constantly is out here with Stuff that are just falsehoods about the bill. And it's either that he hasn't read the bill or he is not a very good reader. And either of those are problematic. And those should not be things that the American people should be subjected to by our own leadership. So we deserve better. And I think HR1 would just make the system fair. But I also think that's exactly what you're saying. Table stakes don't discriminate against people's voting rights based on the color of their skin. Best forward looking version of this bill is not just that. It's actually building an America that represents everybody. And if Republicans are complaining about an inclusive democracy, I think they really need to look at their party and figure out how they can get more people in.

Yeah, I mean this is the way

democracy is supposed to work. You try to win the majority and if you succeed, then good for you. Your ideas were good ones. If you fail, you got to work on your ideas. You got to come back with something better so that the competition, and it's pretty meager competition, we've only got two parties. Other countries have more than two parties that are competing, but we've just basically got two right now. That competition requires you to evolve and to meet the evolving public so that the public likes you instead of rigging the rules to make it harder for your side, for the other side to participate. And that's exactly what this is. I mean, I completely agree with Elizabeth

and many other people who look at

what's going on in the vote suppression here and say that this is motivated by race. But if you don't believe that, here's something you must believe. It's motivated by politics.

The effort to suppress the votes that's happening in these 300 some bills across the country is motivated by the belief of Republicans that this is the best way to make it easy for them to win or easier to win elections by making it harder for Democrats to participate. Now we fought a civil war around the idea of racial inclusion and equality and ending slavery. And the 14th amendment and 15th amendment said race has got to be removed. I think we've got to add something else to this idea of equality. You should not face a harder challenge to vote simply because of your political party. It should be just as easy for you to vote as a Democrat as it is for you to vote as a Republican. And if it turns out Democrats don't have as many cars or they work in places that it's harder for them to vote during normal times, you got to Build the system. So it's easy. It's as easy for them to vote as it is for Republicans to vote. And what we have right now are efforts to make it harder for one party to participate. That is an outrageous denial of the equality that ought to be within any democracy, which is the system should not be rigged against one party. Everybody should have an equal shot. And the party that persuades more people to their ideas is the party that ought to win.

You referenced both race and not too long ago, Ted Cruz. So I got to ask you a specific Ted Cruz question again, another great line about Ted Cruz. I will not tell you who the source was, but it was a fellow Senate member who said, do you know why people take an immediate dislike to Ted Cruz? It just saves so much time. But Ted Cruz, go ahead and show video three. We can actually see him doing this. And this legislation, to use a phrase that has been popularized on the media recently, is Jim Crow 2.0. Jim Crow 2.0. You can see the banners already. What is he talking about? Does he have any kind of a point, anybody?

You know, it's, again, what we're talking about. It's a total lie. Look, what was Jim Crow? Jim Crow was about excluding African Americans from equal participation in our society. And not just voting. I mean, in every dimension of our society. And when they didn't go along peacefully, it was about lynching them to make sure that they did what they were supposed to do according to the conceptions of Jim Crow. This is the opposite of Jim Crow. This bill is saying, we want to make sure everybody has an equal freedom to participate in the voting in our society. Now, you know, Ted Cruz likes to pretend to be the educated person by saying, you know, the Democrats were the party behind Jim Crow. And that's true. The Democratic Party of 1870 is not a party I'd want to have anything to do with. And the Democratic Party throughout the south through most of the 20th century, not anything I want of anything to do with. I love the ideals of the Republican Party. I just wish the Republican Party of today reflected those ideals. The ideals of inclusion and equality, the ideals that Thaddeus Stevens or Charles Sumner were pushing, they were Republican ideals. And those Republican ideals would fight any system that supports suppress the ability of people to vote based on their race or their partisan identity. So I absolutely think that, you know, this is just Ted Cruz being Ted Cruz. It's funny, but sad, and if anybody's believing him, it's a little bit terrifying.

Okay, so you're telling me Ted Cruz has it wrong and I'm not going to be able to sleep with that tonight. So I'm just going to move on. I got two final questions before I ask you to add anything you'd like. Two sort of sum ups. If we're perfectly honest, we have a broken Congress and there is no indication that this bill is going to do anything but die in the Senate. So why are we even having this discussion? What is the point of pretending that this bill can pass? And I'll roll in the second question at the same time. So if this bill is getting this much pushback and looks this dismal because of the state of our representation, what the hell are we, everybody listening and participating in this supposed to do in any viable way to get it over the finish line?

The Chattarati are like repeating this idea over and over again. And this is why they're saying we gotta skinny it down so that we can get something that's passed. This is all crazy Talk. We have 50 votes in the Senate right now. 50 votes. We need 51 now.

You know, I'm not much of a

mathematician, I'm a lawyer, but that seems pretty close to me. 50 votes. And if we can get Joe Manchin to recognize that his belief in bipartisanship is a good belief, like God bless him, we should have bipartisanship. But bipartisanship is not the order of the day for the Republican Party. And nothing will happen if you insist on bipartisanship. If Joe Manchin can be brought to recognize that, and if he can be

brought to recognize that the stopping of this bill to make it so the majority can rule by a system that says that a super majority must pass the bill just makes no sense. Right. That's basically what the filibuster is. The filibuster is a rule that says a super majority must agree to allow a vote on the bill. But this is a bill to preserve the power of the majority. If Joe Manchin can be brought to recognize how this violates the basic ideas of democracy. Joe Manchin has been a supporter of the core ideas of this bill from the very first days in Congress. Indeed before Congress, when he was governor in West Virginia, he supported public funding of judicial elections. He's been a persistent critic of the corruption of dialing for dollars. So in my view, we've just got to work on bringing, engaging with this Senator in a respectful and forceful way to engage on the idea should these, this super majority requirement block America from having a system where the majority can win and we've got some time here. I think he can do the right thing and he will do the right thing and we ought to be pushing as hard as we can to get

him to do that.

Elizabeth, is it all about Manchin or is Cinema not a player in this too? Is she not a naysayer on this as well?

She is a co sponsor of the bill. But I think the challenge that Larry is talking about is the filibuster. Right. So we need some folks to go ahead and be adamant about the breaking of the filibuster. And leader Schumer, it has needs to take into place or needs to take some steps to make sure that he can bring along those two. But Manchin is the only Democrat who's not a co sponsor. Cinema is a co sponsor but we need to get them over the filibuster hump. But Jason have asked us. Oh, go ahead please.

I think I'm going to say exactly what you were about to say. What is there practical advice for what people like me who are engaged in this conversation and interested what can we do to be advocates and to be helpful?

So two things though before we get to those calls to action. I definitely have some concrete things that I want you to do. But I want to get back to your quick question about should we just give up because the chattering class says to give up. I think that it's really important. I guess the chattering class needs to get paid and so God bless them, they should say these things. But exactly as Larry said, 50 people are behind this bill. When I started in Congress they told me that it takes about eight years on average for a bill to get passed. And this thing story that I tell I hope is one that you'll hold onto. Like you said, I worked on the bill in the last Congress in the 116th and we put our blood, sweat and tears into that bill. And I remember the day that it passed and I cried on the House floor and John Lewis spoke and it was beautiful, right? And I was so excited. And I get home the next day and I open up the New York Times and I think the story was on page four and the story was Democrats have done some technocratic thing. Nobody cares. Who cares? Forget about it. And you could tip me over with a feather if you told me that two years from now I would be sitting with one of America's most loved international icons of TV in the 90s about HR1. So we went from interest in a handful of years, page four of the Times to everybody, you know, talking about how to win with this bill. Right. And exactly as Larry said, we've already passed the House. We've gone through one chamber of Congress. The president and the vice president have actually made affirmative statements of support for this bill. President Biden's waiting to sign the bill. We just need to convince one person to move his opinion to be able to get it to that desk. And so if you're ready for me, I can tell you what my concrete ways are to get us there. So the first thing, like we said, the filibuster doesn't need to be that confusing. Literally, the Senate is, as it sits, can change the rules with 50 people deciding to just change the rules. So it's more complicated. But the basic. The idea is use your voice to call Chuck Schumer, no matter what state you're in, and tell him that you need him to do whatever he needs to do to get over the filibuster. Right. So that people can just vote. It's a 51 vote margin. As Larry said, we've got 50 of the votes, including the vice President. We just need one more. So that's one. The second thing is to flood the zone. I just came off of a media call. 19% of news coverage in the United States right Now is about COVID 19. Less than 1% of the news coverage in the United States is about this bill. Every American needs to know about this, because every night on the news, you're hearing about how your voting rights are being taken away. Every time someone says your voting rights are being taken away, I need you to pivot to say HR1 would solve that whole problem. You don't need to fight that fight by every state. You don't need to fight every corrupt politician. Just pass HR1 so we can do all this good work. So flood the zone with that information. And then the third and final thing is the purpose of this call was to remind us that this isn't just a voter suppression bill stapled to a campaign finance reform bill. This bill collectively envisions a functional America for everybody. So tell the story that you've heard here today. Tell about why we need to keep it together. Because we need a reflective democracy. And really, at this point, to you saying about Mr. Manchin, he stands in the way because he needs to be sort of given what he needs for him to come along and get over the line. And President Biden has just tapped Kamala Harris, my wonderful old boss, to be the person who makes that happen. I say keep it together and call Kamala Call Kamala and tell her she is the champion, that we need to get this over the line so that as she always says, she is the first, but her job is to make sure that she's not the last. And HR1 would help us diversify who actually gets to lead. So like Kamala, so we can do it. Joe Manchin is persuadable. The White House is the power lever that we is the final thing that we need to get us over the line. And they need to know that you support them. So give them a call.

And Larry, do you have anything to add to that specifically?

Well, we actually, if you go to, if you just send us a email at infoqualcitizens us with the subject I want to help, we will respond by giving you. We won't be adding you to a list, but we'll respond by giving you everything you could do. Like the practical steps that you could take to make it so that your voice is heard in Congress. And that means we'll connect you to the other groups that are out there doing the work. N Citizens United has been a fantastic force in trying to get this done with the Brennan center and Common Cause and represent us. And so we would connect you with them and help you help them to get this done. You've got to realize that right now in Congress, the calls against this bill in the Senate are overwhelmingly greater than the calls in favor of this bill.

Is that because Americans believe that?

No, it's because the dark money that exists in our system right now is buying those calls. And those calls therefore begin to lead Congress to believe. Look, America doesn't care about this. The only way we can fight this is if we fight on the other side in favor of this bill.

Now, I don't know, Jason, maybe, you

know, some dark money, but we, but we don't have money in this game that could make it possible for us to go out and buy votes or voices on our side. What we need is real people to do that for us. And so again, if you go to this, if you send this email to infoqualcitizens us, we will give you the information you need to make it possible for this bill to get passed.

Fantastic. Larry, before I ask you to sort of sum up for us, I just want to take a second to personally, from my heart, thank the two of you, Elizabeth and Lawrence. I mean, Elizabeth, your involvement with an advocacy of this bill is so inspiring. Larry, I've known you for a little bit longer and your work to sort of right the ship of our democracy for the better part of your life is also equally inspiring. I sleep better at night knowing there are people like the two of you out there doing this work. And you certainly have my pledge to be as much a part of it and do everything I can. I hope everyone watching will do the same. And I thank both of you for sharing your time and your expertise with us today. Larry, is there anything that you would like to sum up with before we say goodbye to everybody?

Well, I've got to sum up with thanks. I mean, I first got to say, you know, the coolest moment in my life as a law professor was one afternoon when I was sitting in my office and there was a knock on my door. And I was really annoyed because I don't like it when people knock on my door because I want to be

alone and open and the door opens

and there's Jason Alexander and I had to, you know, take a double take because it's not often that Jason Alexander walks through my door. But you walk through my door and you said, what can I do to help get us a democracy? And that was incredibly moving to me

because what it showed is that this

fight is is spreading across all of the country. This was years ago. This was like seven years ago. I think it was happen. And you've been an incredibly important voice helping us to get people to understand this. And so I'm incredibly grateful to you and to Elizabeth who wrote the bill, wrote the damn bill, or at least parts of it.

But at the Brennan Center.

The Brennan center is the greatest resource right now for cataloging what this bill would do. They have a wonderful title by title account of everything that's in this bill and really interestingly, effort to summarize exactly what's going on in the states and how this bill would fix the things that's going on in the states. So Elizabeth, I'm extremely grateful to you as well and to my team. Adam Eichen, who's the director of Equal Citizens and Kevin Rissmuller and Manur Imran, who's just brand new, just joined literally this week as an intern for us. I'm so grateful for your help in this and the co sponsors that we had for this event, including the Brennan center, obviously n Citizens United, who's been the most forceful voice out there raising an extraordinary amount of grassroots support to spread this idea. A new group, the Declaration for American Democracy, which has been extremely important in pushing this end represent us who has been pushing the anti corruption message for as long as Jason's been in this Fight as well and Open Democracy, which has been pushing this. Based on a really inspirational story of Granny D, who at the age of 88, walked across the country with a sign in her chest that said, for campaign finance reform, arriving at the age of 90 in Washington and convincing Washington back then to pass one of the most important campaign finance reform, the BCRA Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. So I'm grateful to all of you for what you've done for this. But what we need is people who are listening to this to step up and do something now. As Jason said at the beginning, I've been fighting this for 15 years. My friend Fred Wertheimer has been fighting this issue for 50 years.

I'd like to move on to something.

I think it's time for us to get this done and we need to get it done this year. We need to get it done before the end of the summer so that we can make sure that the 2022 election is actually an election that reflects what America wants and not what a rigged system produces. Thank you so much for listening and coming and participating. Thanks to everybody who made this possible.

And with that, thanks to all of you. Take care. Be well.

That's the episode. Thanks for tuning in. Since this event first broadcast on June 4, Senator Manchin has come out to say that he can't support HR1. He can't support changing the filibuster because, as Senator Manchin puts it, he thinks voting rights legislation must be nonpartisan or bipartisan. That, of course, has triggered an extraordinary response from the activist community and many on Capitol Hill. The response starts by observing we're already seeing changes in voting rights law happening in an extraordinary partisan manner. That's what's happening in the states, as we described in this show. Right now, the states all across this country are attempting to make it harder for some to vote than for others. Now, many look at that and say it's for racial reasons. And I think it probably is. But whether it is for racial reasons or not, it's certainly for partisan reasons. So we have Republican legislatures locking down their system to make it harder for Democrats to to vote. We have partisan election law change right now. And the only question Senator Manchin should be asking is whether Congress should sit back and allow that partisan change to happen or to step up and to balance it, to make sure that the rules are not rigged against one party, to make sure that the majority in this nation can have their views registered and counted. It's the same with partisan gerrymandering. HR1 as we described in this episode would end partisan gerrymandering for Congress. Partisan gerrymandering, of course, will happen in the state legislatures. It happens in Republican legislatures. It happens in Democratic legislatures. So right now there will be partisan changes to the way we elect people to Congress. And the question now is just whether we will balance those changes by removing the partisanship to assure that gerrymandering is not partisan, that districts can be drawn without focusing obsessively on partisan concerns. Senator Manchin's account of why he's doing what he's doing is so hard to understand. At least understand on the terms that he's offering. There are cynical accounts we might raise. Some say Senator Manchin is running for governor after his term in the Senate ends. And in running for governor, Senator Manchin's eager to make sure that the dark money, they say, continues to flow to him. I'm not willing to embrace this account of his motivations right now. I think we still have a lot of work to raise awareness and to bring him to the place that he understands that stepping forward now is not to act in a partisan way. Even if not a single Republican joins the Democrats, stepping forward now balances the partisan changes that are happening in the states right now. And that in the face of those changes, the Senate should not embody Chamberlain, they should embody Churchill. The threat is plain and obvious. We can't have good faith, or faith in the good faith of those who are taking away the freedom of every American to vote equally. Thanks for listening. Please share this podcast at equalcitizens Us anotherway. And on that page you can find a forum to give us feedback, ideas, other people you think we should be talking to or other issues you think we should should be addressing. This fight is not over. It's just begun. And we can't even count the number of times that Obamacare was down and out. We should not take this one time when it's suggested that HR1 is down and out as a reason to give up. I'm not giving up. This is Larry Lessig. Thanks for listening.