Background Briefing: June 23, 2020
How “Moscow Mitch’s” Voting Suppression is Playing Out in Kentucky Today
We begin with today’s primaries in New York and Kentucky where polling places have been drastically reduced particularly in Jefferson County which encompasses Louisville where there is only one polling place for an area in which half of the state’s black population lives. Ari Berman, a senior reporter at Mother Jones covering voting rights who is the author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, joins us to discuss his article at Mother Jones, “Kentucky Votes Today: Here Are All the Ways Mitch McConnell Has Made That Harder”. We will get an update on American democracy’s apparent new normal of long lines, faulty voting machines and ill-trained workers at polling places which we have seen in predominantly Red States like Georgia where voting is quick and easy in affluent white suburbs but unconscionably difficult and frustrating in African American precincts. With Mitch McConnell otherwise known as “Moscow Mitch” refusing to fund efforts to improve and secure voting while burying bills designed to make voting easier and it easier for people to vote such as making election day a public holiday, we assess what can be done to restore our deliberately sabotaged right to vote.
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