Voting is Not a Constitutional Right with Jessica Huseman

Battleground with Amanda Litman and Faiz Shakir

The Recount

Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2021

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If Americans voted the way the Founders intended, most of us wouldn’t get to vote. Amanda talks to Jessica Huseman, the editorial director of Votebeat, to learn about our country’s tortured, and unending, fight for voting rights. Jessica is a former high school history teacher who has spent the last five years reporting on voting administration – the ins and outs of what goes into putting on an election and counting the votes. Votebeat is a nonprofit newsroom that covers voting and also funds and trains journalists to report out that beat for local newsrooms. Jessica gives a crash course on the history of voting in America and then breaks down the battle over voting rights in her home state of Texas. It turns out that Texas’ voting laws are already so restrictive that the bill currently being pushed by Republicans is more likely to disenfranchise voters through incompetent bill writing than through actual design. Jessica also explains why a lot of Texas Democratic voters aren’t impressed by their legislators' decision to flee the state. Finally, Amanda and Jessica talk about local journalism and why it’s absolutely essential for democracy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Amanda Litman and this is Battleground, a podcast from the Recount and High Heart
0:06.9	Radio.
0:08.6	Our guest this week is Jessica Huzman.
0:17.4	She is the editorial director of Vopey, a pop-up newsroom focused on combating the shortage
0:21.9	of local reporters covering voting and election administration.
0:26.1	Like in I talk about misconceptions about voting in the United States, including the idea,
0:31.5	falsely, that voting is a constitutional right.
0:34.7	The founders wanted to deny a lot of us the right to vote.
0:37.7	What's truly American is the fight for the right to vote.
0:41.0	And that's a fight that unfortunately is far from over.
0:45.0	Jessica grew up in Texas and she reports from Dallas, so we go deep into the GOP's efforts
0:49.5	to restrict Texas voting even further, and into Democratic lawmakers attempts to stop them,
0:54.7	or make the best out of a shit sandwich.
0:57.6	And we get into the decline of local journalism and how Vopey is trying to fix it.
1:02.3	But before we get to my conversation with Jessica, I do want to talk a little bit about what's
1:05.8	happening in DC right now.
1:07.6	In honor of my currently on-frontal leave co-host, Fash Akir, I would be remiss if I didn't
1:12.2	mention the massive infrastructure bulk, a historic $1.2 trillion bipartisan package that covers
1:19.0	funding for things like public transit and roads and water, clean energy, broadband, and
1:23.7	electric good.
1:24.7	Nancy Pelosi has said she's not going to take up this legislation until it also comes
1:29.6	with the massive Democratic reconciliation bill that includes things like childcare funding,
	...

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