26/04/2022
Voting rights are front and center in many states throughout the US. Michael Waldman -- president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law -- joins me for a wide ranging conversation. Fascinating and timely stuff.
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https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xZDM0MDBhNC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw/episode/Njk3ZGUxZWQtMDE2ZS00NjQ0LWJhOGYtNzExZTQzMDE2Y2Uz?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwigr9ON8LH3AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQDg
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-132-voting-rights-with-michael-waldman/id1515136246?i=1000554817653
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HViNBXZFTdw
“Up until recently, voting has gotten easier. But there is a wave of new laws in states across the country aiming to make it harder to vote and also new laws to change who counts the votes.”
Michael Waldman, writer and expert on voting rights, joins the podcast. What is the state of voting rights as the country careens towards the 2022 midterm elections? What legislatures have been hard at work to make the act of voting more difficult? And ominously, why, in some places, is who counts the votes being changed? The conversation also looks at early American voting systems and the deep philosophical differences between John Adams and Ben Franklin and the wings they represented.
Michael Waldman is president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. A nonpartisan law and policy institute that focuses on improving systems of democracy and justice, the Brennan Center is a leading national voice on voting rights, money in politics, criminal justice reform, and constitutional law. Waldman, a constitutional lawyer and writer who is an expert on the presidency and American democracy, has led the Center since 2005. Waldman was director of speechwriting for President Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1999, serving as assistant to the president. He was responsible for writing or editing nearly two thousand speeches, including four State of the Union and two inaugural addresses. He was special assistant to the president for policy coordination from 1993 to 1995.
He is the author of The Fight to Vote (Simon & Schuster, 2016), a history of the struggle to win voting rights for all citizens.
Waldman is also the author of The Second Amendment: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 2014). Publishers Weekly called it “the best narrative of its subject.” In the New York Times, Joe Nocera called it “rigorous, scholarly, but accessible.” The Los Angeles Times wrote, “[Waldman’s] calm tone and habit of taking the long view offers a refreshing tonic in this most loaded of debates.” In a Cardozo Law Review symposium devoted to the book, a historian wrote, “The Second Amendment is, without doubt, among the best efforts at melding constitutional history and constitutional law on any topic — at least since the modern revival of originalism two generations ago.”
