How New Voting Barriers Threaten Elections

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James Wilson: My name's James. I was born abroad and that's part of the problem: was being born abroad.

Simone Leeper: This is James Wilson. He's a voter in Arizona who encountered a specific sort of problem last year, one that more and more American voters are experiencing.

James Wilson: My dad was serving during the Vietnam War over in Japan, and my mom went with him because he was in Japan, not in Vietnam. He was an Intel analyst, and so I was born at Fort Tachikawa Air Force Base Tokyo and have a state department issued birth certificate, which is the crux of my problem here. I wasn't born in the states and can't run over to the county recorder's office. My information's all stored in Washington D. C. on the other side of the continent.

Simone Leeper: As a young man, James moved from Japan, his birthplace to Arizona. He registered to vote when he turned 18 in the '80s.

James Wilson: They weren't using computers then everything was done on paper, so if they didn't have a mark or they didn't go make a photocopy of it, it wasn't in record for the DMV out here.

Simone Leeper: He served in the military like his dad, and for much of the 40 years since he focused more on registering others to vote as an organizer, then he did worrying about his own ability to vote, but then Arizona changed its laws to require proof of citizenship to vote. The state's voters weren't ready for what came next. Hundreds of thousands of long registered voters were suddenly questioned and their right to vote. Threatened among them was James. He just didn't know it at first.

James Wilson: After the state changed the laws, they should have reached out to everybody and let us know, "Hey, you need to come show us your ID, your birth certificate," and they didn't start pushing that until right before the election and since I hadn't been advised that I needed to get anything fixed, I didn't think anything of it, just like everybody else didn't think anything of it.

Simone Leeper: James found out the hard way that his vote would not count. He cast a ballot.

James Wilson: I get my ballot mailed out to me, filled it out, my girl and I go by over here in Maricopa, turn them in to the Dropbox place and they go out and check it and later that day I get a call saying, Hey, we're not going to be able to count your ballot unless you show your birth certificate. I had lived in a place out in Apache Junction where the landlord came through and threw out a whole bunch of my boxes and it had all my military records, it had my birth certificates in it had all my stuff in it, so I didn't have any of that paperwork anymore. I start losing my mind. How am I going to turn this around and make this change happen for me so that my voice can be heard when I've been pushing so hard to get everybody else's voice heard?

Simone Leeper: I'm Simone Leeper and this is Democracy Decoded a podcast where we examine our government and discuss innovative ideas that could lead to a stronger, more transparent, accountable, and inclusive democracy. I work for Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to solving the wide range of challenges facing American democracy.

Over the course of this season of Democracy Decoded, we've been focusing on acute threats to our system of government. We've examined the safeguards at the core of our democracy that are being challenged or ignored, threatening our very form of governance, and in today's episode, the last of this season, we're looking at the future of elections through this lens. As colleagues of mine at Campaign Legal Center are fond of saying, "There's always another election." We as Americans have skipped some important events over the years. We have boycotted the Olympics. We've canceled March Madness, we've grounded all our flights, but as a country, we have never once missed an election. What we want to discuss today are the larger trends as well as the sharper actions that could disrupt elections in the future. We'll hear what happened to James's vote in Arizona and we'll take a look at the broader picture, which is just as concerning.

Rick Hasen: Ironically, the biggest threat to free and fair elections right now is the federal government, and that is something I never expected to say.

Simone Leeper: This is Rick Hasen, an author and law professor at UCLA. He directs UCLA Law's Safeguarding Democracy project, an academic center focused on researching and protecting elections.

Rick Hasen: If you look back over the last 60 years, it's been the federal government that has facilitated the free and fair elections through things like the passage of the Voting Rights Act through federal registrars being sent down to southern states to register black voters who were not being registered by the state to the passage of other legislation that protects voters to the creation of the United States Election Assistance Commission.

After the 2000 disputed election, the federal government has always been helpful. Now given the change in administration and given not only President Trump's views about elections, but also the kind of election deniers that he's brought into his administration, we now have to think now that the federal government as a partner with state and local election officials and running elections, but as a potential impediment.

Simone Leeper: Rick adds a caveat to his analysis. Yes, it's a new twist that the federal government is making it harder for people to vote, but this is hardly the first time. Americans have faced such hurdles.

Rick Hasen: Back in the 1960s and earlier states in the South made it very hard, if not impossible for black voters to vote. Voting overall was much harder than it is today. There was very little early voting registration rules were onerous. There were all kinds of requirements that were put in place like literacy tests and poll taxes and all kinds of things. So it's not as though the current period today is comparable to that in terms of the scale of government driven voter suppression. The problem now is just a little bit harder to grasp, which is that one of the things that the federal government could do is undermine people's confidence in elections, making them think that elections are not reflecting the will of the people, even when they are.

Simone Leeper: Back to Arizona. Arizona was the first state to implement a bifurcated system that requires voters to provide documentary proof such as a birth certificate or passport in order to vote for state and local elections. But because the measure actually defies federal law, it doesn't apply to federal elections and there's no reason it should be used for any elections. We already have laws in place to ensure only citizens are voting, which come with strict penalties such as fines, jail time, or even deportation.

Rick Hasen: One person's vote is unlikely to swing an election, so why would someone even risk that?

Simone Leeper: What does a law such as Arizona's do if it doesn't make our elections more secure? If history is an indicator, it prevents Americans from voting.

Rick Hasen: Well, we know when Kansas tried to do this about a decade ago, about 30,000 people had their voter registrations put on hold because they couldn't produce their papers. It just presents another hurdle. There are some people who are actually disenfranchised by these laws. They cannot produce the paper. There is no birth certificate, and they'd have to go to court and try and establish their citizenship some other way. It's just really hard. I don't think that's the main intent of these laws. The main intent of these laws is just to put up more hurdles and make it harder for people who are eligible to vote to be able to register.

James Wilson: There was about 2000 folks, 2, 500 folks in Pinal County alone. Maricopa County has about four and a half million people in it, so they had quite a few more up there. This affected a quarter of a million people in the state, so it was a pretty big issue.

Simone Leeper: We're back to James Wilson. He was among the more than 200,000 voters in Arizona whose registration was thrown into chaos by the state's new burdensome registration requirements.

James Wilson: When I was working at ASU, there was a gentleman who was born a year to the day behind me who was also born at Japan because his father was also serving during the Vietnam War. I thought it was funny that we had the same birthday, but it was also interesting because he would also have had this problem here in Arizona. And so if you are born in Germany, Panama, the Philippines, any of these places that are not US, then your birth certificate issued by the State Department is what you would've needed here. And if you don't have that information on hand, it can take quite some time to rectify the situation.

Rick Hasen: There are many people who are US citizens. Maybe they grew up in one state and now live in another and they'd have to get an official record from that state.

Simone Leeper: Rick Hasen once again.

Rick Hasen: Maybe they got married, maybe they got divorced, maybe they changed their name or they didn't actually change their name, and so they've got to go through a lot of hoops to figure out how they can establish their citizenship.

James Wilson: Secretary of State's office wants 50 bucks to get a copy.

Simone Leeper: James Wilson, once again.

James Wilson: You got to get it notarized, your request, saying that you're who you are, and that costs money too. So it's not an easy process. And then it takes, they say up to three months. Mine took about four to get it back. In the meantime, I'm like, "Wait, the state's Supreme Court said that we are still allowed to vote in the upcoming election, so what's the problem?" So I'm working with the lady over here at the recorder's office. She's trying to help me out. She's like, "Okay, how about your DD-214? Because sometimes those will have a box of citizenship on it."

Simone Leeper: A DD-214 is a report of separation, a form that confirms a Veteran's Service discharge papers. Maybe these would work while James waited for his birth certificate.
James Wilson: Looked at that, sent them over a copy of that. Was not happy it had my full social security number, so that's out there in the wind. Other documents, anything else? They went back and tried checking the old documentation for the DMV. Of course, they didn't have it on file because they didn't photocopy it, so they didn't have a record of it either. And then that was Thursday. By Friday, and this is the Friday before the election. We're down to the wire here. I'm trying to run a Canvas office still because doing the get out the vote at this point, and so I'm still trying to get people out working and I'm still trying to get my vote to count. I spent many phone calls on with her. I talked to her manager and her manager said, "Well, the county recorder is not going to accept this without it."

Simone Leeper: Hours on the phone with local and state offices, haggling with the State Department, all of this effort for a single American citizen to cast his ballot. It's a bureaucratic nightmare scenario that exacerbates election experts like Rick Hasen.

Rick Hasen: Every time you put more hurdles in front of voters, you're making it harder for those people to register to vote. And for some people they're insurmountable hurdles. And for those people, I think the disenfranchisement is unconstitutional, but for the others, some people say, "Well make voting harder and then people have to work at it." And I think that's the wrong way to think about it. Voting is not a test. It's not an endurance test, it's not a paperwork test. Voting is about allocating power among political equals. You have to ask, "Well, what's the cost of putting up these additional hurdles?" And I think when it comes to documentary proof of citizenship laws, these are much more likely to disenfranchise eligible voters.

James Wilson: I spent all weekend filling out the forms thinking if I could get it rushed overnight, pay extra for this, something like that-

Simone Leeper: James Wilson wants more.

James Wilson: ... that's not going to happen with the State Department-racking my brain how to make change happen. Finally, Monday rolls around. I've about given up hope and I get a call from the lady I've been working with down here in Maricopa and she says that Adrian Fontes had come down and talked to the county recorder, told her to do her job by law and that my vote would be counted and that she was counting it right then. So if the Secretary of State had not stepped in, my vote would not have been counted. And I got to tell you, I broke down in tears. I was moved.

Danielle Lang: It's so important that Americans all have access to the ballot because that is the foundation of our democracy. We have founded our government on the idea that we are a government by and for the people. That government only works if the people can have their voices heard. And the way that we do that is at the ballot box.

Simone Leeper: This is Danielle Lang, a colleague of mine at Campaign Legal Center. Danielle leads our voting rights team that works to safeguard the freedom to vote, a freedom that today is under attack by some elected officials at the federal and state levels.

Danielle Lang: The status quo for voting rights in America is precarious. We've lost some important protections we now have an administration that is not enforcing the Voting Rights Act. In fact, it's stripped down the voting rights section of the Department of Justice to it's bare-bones, and it's using the remainder of that Division to actually sow distrust in our elections and potentially threaten Americans right to vote. At the same time, we are seeing ongoing challenges in the courts to the Voting Rights Act and trying to weaken the Voting Rights Act, which is the bedrock of our multiracial democracy. It is the legislation that stripped away Jim Crow and gave us a democracy where all Americans' voices could really be heard regardless of race.

And finally, we are seeing proposals both at the federal and state level across the board to make it harder to vote rather than more accessible. Campaign Legal Center is always working towards improvements in our democratic system towards an election administration that works more smoothly, that is secure and accessible. Instead, we are seeing legislators come forward with new restrictions, new proposals, ones that could threaten millions of Americans' right to vote.

Simone Leeper: As Rick Hasen noted, elections are about allocating power among political equals. They shouldn't be about whose supporters are the best at paperwork or who have the most resources to jump through hurdles, but we know that lawmakers who want to shrink the electorate have a powerful tool. The more requirements they impose on voting, the fewer voters will cast a ballot.

Danielle Lang: The barriers to access to voting often start at voter registration. In fact, we know that one of the number one reasons why Americans get turned away at the polls is because they did not register properly and they're not showing up on the voter registration rolls. Some states make it really easy. You can do it online, you can do it automatically when you interface with an agency like the DMV, for example. Or you can do it the same day, you can show up on election day and get registered. Other states, not so much. There are states like Texas that have a voter registration deadline in advance of the election that do not have online registration, do not have automatic voter registration.

We know that election officials properly are constantly cleaning the rolls, trying to find folks who have passed away, who have moved and take those folks off the rolls, so we have an up-to-date voter registration system. But too often that system can be abused. Overzealous attempts to clean the rolls really end up just purging potentially hundreds of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls. So even if you were already registered, you could get yourself caught up in one of these purges where the state alleges that you moved based on pretty flimsy evidence,

Simone Leeper: Each of these bureaucratic steps offers a chance for public officials to shape the electorate possibly in their favor. Famously, the razor-thin 2000 election pivoted on the vote in my home state of Florida where the Secretary of State's office purged a disproportionate number of black and brown voters, allegedly with the purpose of removing deceased, incarcerated and ineligible voters from the rolls. It so happened that Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State at the time was also co-chair of the George W. Bush campaign in Florida. Bush eventually won the state by 537 votes and claimed the presidency.

Danielle Lang: And then of course there's the question of voting.

Simone Leeper: Once again, Danielle Lang of Campaign Legal Center.

Danielle Lang: Some states make it easy. Again, you can vote by mail, you can vote in person, you can vote early, while other states will say, "No, you can only show up on this day at these times at this polling location." The fewer opportunities we give to people to vote the more likely that folks are going to run into obstacles. I've talked to Americans of all stripes that have found themselves unexpectedly not on the rolls, unexpectedly unable to get to the polls because of a medical emergency, say, a lack of good emergency procedures in their state.

While barriers to voting can affect every American, those barriers often fall predictably on historically disenfranchised communities. That includes, for example, black and brown communities that were the targets and victims of Jim Crow, but are still facing disproportionate barriers to the ballot box today. Polling locations in black and brown communities tend to be underfunded and understaffed in a way that means that they face longer polling location lines.

Simone Leeper: Wait times at polls have generally gotten shorter over the past 20 years, both for early voting and on election day. On average, an American voter spends less than 10 minutes in line to vote, but areas that have longer waits, sometimes 30 minutes or more are usually in voting precincts with lower income voters. And studies show that media reports of long lines serve to further depress voter turnout.

Danielle Lang: Another group that is commonly disenfranchised by these types of restrictions are students. Young people don't have as kind of stable lives as perhaps some of us as we get older. So they're more likely to move around, they're less likely to have that documentation that's being asked of them. Perhaps it's with their parents. Perhaps they don't have a driver's license. Perhaps they rely on a student ID and that student ID is not being accepted for voting. So students are another population that we see facing disproportionate barriers to voting Native American voters, and it's really heartbreaking to see our country's original citizens still facing barriers to the ballot box. They face twin barriers. One is that polling locations are often very far away. If they live on a reservation, you might have to travel over an hour to get to your polling location, and they also tend to have less reliable mail service.

So even mail voting can be a real challenge for the Native American community. Another group of people who are affected by documentary proof of citizenship requirements are anybody who's changed their name. And of course the biggest group of Americans that have changed their name are married women. So if a married woman who's changed her name wants to register to vote with a documentary proof of citizenship requirement, she's going to need to come forward with a birth certificate. But of course, that birth certificate won't match her voter registration name and that can create real hurdles. We've seen that in New Hampshire, for example, and we really don't know how legislators are planning to fix this problem for married women.

Simone Leeper: To Rick Hasen's point earlier in this episode, the historical role of the federal government has been to address these sorts of pain points in elections. States ultimately run elections, but if states mismanage elections, Congress, federal courts, and the executive branch, in particular, the Department of Justice, can step into protect people's rights and freedoms. But what we're seeing today is a clear departure from that historical norm. Instead, we see President Trump pushing for more barriers to the ballot.

Rick Hasen: So back in August of 2025, president Trump issued an executive order that purports to a number of things related to mail-in ballots and documentary proof of citizenship, which Trump wanted incorporated into the federal form that's used to register voters.

Simone Leeper: The executive order Rick Hasen is talking about is the same one we discussed on our previous episode, the one campaign Legal Center took legal action against.

Rick Hasen: Some of what he did in that executive order has been put on hold by federal courts. The primary argument against what Trump's trying to do is that the Constitution doesn't give him the power over elections. Elections are very decentralized in this country and the power to run elections is generally what the states and the states give that generally to their counties. Congress under the Constitution in Article One, section four has the ability to override state laws when it comes to how congressional elections are run.

Congress has done that when it passes, for example, to Help America Vote Act in 2002 that says that every state when it's running up federal election has to give a voter a provisional ballot to potentially be counted so the voter can cast something and they can figure out later if the voter is eligible if there's some question about it. There's no power to the President other than to faithfully execute the laws that are passed by Congress. But Trump has promised a second executive order related to elections. He is again attacking mail-in balloting, which is used in many states, including many Republican states like Utah. Executive orders are not a law, they're just instructions to the executive branch as to how to carry out the law. So I imagine if he tries to do more things, there'll be more lawsuits.

Simone Leeper: And Trump isn't pushing for these additional registration barriers in a vacuum. In 27 states, lawmakers have introduced legislation that would require voters to prove their citizenship, and lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana, Wyoming, and New Hampshire have this year joined Arizona and Louisiana in passing such laws.

Danielle Lang: Documentary Proof of citizenship requirements are nothing new to Campaign Legal Center, to myself and to my colleagues who've been working on this issue in Arizona for quite some time.

Simone Leeper: Danielle Lang.

Danielle Lang: Arizona has been attempting to impose this additional documentation requirement for voter registration on its voters for years and has had really detrimental effects. Arizona has ended up with this bizarre dual- track system where people who provide documentary proof of citizenship can vote in all elections, and people who aren't able to provide that documentary proof find themselves in limbo and they can only vote in federal elections because of the protections of the National Voter Registration Act. And we've been fighting really hard to solidify those protections of the National Voter Registration Act and make sure that those voters stay on the rolls. And because of our work, we've kept tens of thousands of Arizonans on the rolls and able to vote, but they're constantly in a precarious position.

We are currently in court challenging Louisiana's documentary proof of Citizenship requirement that's brand new that was passed in 2024. They're still trying to figure out how to implement it. It's kind of like building a plane while they fly it, except perhaps just like that metaphor, we shouldn't be tinkering with the freedom to vote when you don't even know how yet you're going to implement a rule. And we've gone to court to stop it because of the protections of the National Voter Registration Act, just like we did in Arizona. There are a few states that are not subject to the protections of the National Voter Registration Act. They got exemptions back when that law was passed because they had actually pretty friendly voter registration rules that allowed for same-day registration, and now those states are taking advantage of that exemption to actually make it harder to vote for their citizens. And so New Hampshire and Wyoming are states that are technically exempt from this federal law because they had friendly pro-voter laws at the time, and now they're trying to impose documentary proof of citizenship requirements on voters. Both of those requirements are in the courts as well.

Simone Leeper: Registration barriers aren't the only front that voters rights advocates are still fighting on. Regular listeners of this podcast know that the Voting Rights Act is under threat. In particular, the Supreme Court is hearing a case out of Louisiana that could have big implications for the future of the Voting Rights Act across the country and the ability of black voters in Louisiana to have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice in two of the state's congressional districts.

Rick Hasen: In the current case before the Supreme Court, Louisiana v. Callais. In that case, because of earlier voting rights litigation, Louisiana had to draw a second district where black voters would have a chance to elect him of their choice after Louisiana did so, there was a new lawsuit that was filed. It's a claim under the Constitution saying that this was a racial gerrymander. To prove a racial gerrymander, you have to show that race was the most important factor in drawing the district as it was drawn and that it was not justified by any compelling justification. When the Supreme Court first heard the Callais case in March, the case seemed to turn on the first part of that racial gerrymandering test. Did race predominate in the drawing of the district lines? And Louisiana defendants said, "No, it was actually partisanship that predominated when the lines were drawn."

A second district was created, but it was done in a way that would protect Mike Johnson and the speaker of the House and his seat in Louisiana. And so it was not clear when the argument was held that it was going to be a big case. The court in a number of cases has had to decide whether race or partisanship predominates. That's kind of a nonsensical question to me. Since race and party overlap so much in a place like Louisiana, white voters tend to be Republican. Black voters tend to be democratic, but that's the test as the court has put it out. The court over the summer did not decide the case. It set the case for a re-argument. It was re-argued on October 15th, and it went to the second part of that racial gerrymandering test. So assuming that race was the predominant reason for the drawing of these lines, could that be justified by the compelling interest in complying with section two of the Voting Rights Act?

Simone Leeper: Section two of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits states from discriminating against voters on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. But the Supreme Court under John Roberts has been chipping away at Section Two's protections for years.

Rick Hasen: At its oral argument. It was very clear that some of the more conservative justices on the court believe either that section two now in requiring race-conscious districting itself violates the Constitution, or that in order to avoid a constitutional problem rather than rely on the test as the Supreme Court has done since the 1980s in the Gingles case, there's going to have to be a new test that's going to be much harder for minority plaintiffs to win. Either way. It would mean much less representation in those places where there could be Section two liability today. And then we're not just talking about for Congress, this will also applied to state and local elections. The Callais case addresses what the scope of Section two of Voting Rights Act is and whether or not the standard's going to be weakened or the Voting Rights Act. Section two even struck down. There's a separate challenge that has been working its way to the Supreme Court over who gets to sue over a violation of section two of the Voting Rights Act.

Simone Leeper: There is a possible bright spot in the Fight to Protect. Section two experts are also tracking one of Campaign Legal Center's cases, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians at all the how, which the Supreme Court currently is considering taking up. On behalf of our clients, the Spirit Lake Nation, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, and a number of individual voters were challenging a dangerous ruling that threatens to erode the protections of the VRA. The case involves a 2021 legislative map that illegally dilutes Native Americans voting power in North Dakota, and it has the potential to make it much, much harder for regular Americans as well as nonprofit groups and civic organizations to sue under Section two without what is known as a private right of action to enforce Section two of the VRA states could pass unfair maps or voting laws that are racially discriminatory and voters would not have any ability to challenge them in court. Through an emergency filing with the Supreme Court campaign Legal Center and our co-counsel were able to pause a shockingly undemocratic decision by the Eighth Circuit that not only could silence native voters in North Dakota, but also could strip millions of voters across all seven states under its jurisdiction of the right to challenge unfair maps and racially discriminatory voting practices.

We are asking the justices to settle this matter permanently to ensure that all voters across the country can continue to have the power to enforce the Voting Rights Act as they have for decades. No one knows exactly what the Supreme Court will do, but in Rick Hasen's read so far, the court has hinted it may protect that right.

Rick Hasen: As the Voting Rights Act section two has been understood since the 1980s when Congress amended it in the 1982 renewal of the Voting Rights Act, it was seen that both the Department of Justice and private plaintiffs, for example, voting rights organizations representing minority voters, would have the ability to bring suit. Now, this requires a little bit of unpacking here. Federal statutes sometimes explicitly say, "Well, private people can sue," but many times federal statutes don't say that, and the court has interpreted the relevant statute to say that it does allow for private parties to sue. When the court does so, what we say is that there's a private right of action to sue kind of a technical term, but the idea is private parties can sue to enforce. Since the 1980s, well over 90% of the section two cases that have been litigated in this country have been brought by private plaintiffs.

Congress was well aware of that in 2006 when it renewed the Voting Rights Act yet again, didn't make any changes to the Voting Rights Act that indicate there was some problem with these private plaintiffs suing. But now the Eighth Circuit in a series of cases has shut off all the avenues to try to give private plaintiffs the Eighth Circuit cases, Native American voters, the ability to bring suit to argue that districting plan violates Section two of the Act and the Supreme Court in the Turtle Mountain case earlier in the summer put the Eighth Circuit's opinion on hold while the case worked its way up through the courts to the Supreme Court. That's significant because it means that people living in the Eighth Circuit this area in the middle of the country, in the Midwest, people in these states had the Supreme Court not stepped in. There would be no ability of private plaintiffs to sue for a section two violation anywhere in those states. By putting it on hold, the Supreme Court was sending at least somewhat of a signal that they think that the Eighth Circuit got this wrong.

Simone Leeper: Also, on the bright side of 2025, the Save Act, a piece of legislation that would impose strict proof of citizenship requirements nationally seems to have fizzled in Congress. The Republican-led house passed it in April, but the Republican-led Senate seems content to let the bill languish.

Rick Hasen: This legislation passed the house on a mostly party-line vote with Republicans overwhelmingly supporting it, and Democrats overwhelmingly opposed to it, but it's been stuck in the Senate. I don't know that it'll ever get a vote in the Senate. There are some Republicans who do not like federal mandates over how voting is to be conducted. Take Mitch McConnell, senator from Kentucky former Senate Majority Leader, he's on the record as saying that this is a matter for each state.

Simone Leeper: But just as some leaders work to try to constrict the voting rolls, others are trying to protect the freedom to vote both at the national level and state by state Campaign Legal Center has long pushed for Congress to restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act by passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Danielle Lang: The most important thing we could do and that Congress could do tomorrow to ensure free and fair elections in this country is to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would bolster the protections of the Voting Rights Act. Short of congressional action, there's a lot that folks can do at different levels though to protect elections in 2026 and 2028. So many states are moving in the right direction, passing their own state level, voting rights acts, passing legislation for common sense reforms that improve both security and accessibility, whether that be same day registration, automatic registration, all sorts of election administration updates that just make voting easier, accessible and more secure.

Simone Leeper: Rick Hasen believes the more enduring move would be to amend the Constitution. That's clearly the harder path, but it's an approach he believes addresses the reality of American democracy.

Rick Hasen: We actually need a constitutional amendment that would protect the right to vote in a way that would be an affirmative right, and not just something that bans certain forms of discrimination in voting. I recently wrote a book called A Real Right to Vote, and I argue that in the Supreme Court's 235-year history, there were only about eight years of that history where the court has really led on voting rights. Most of the time the court has either been hostile to voting rights or it has been, if not a leader, it's just gone along. And what we've seen has been a steady erosion in voting rights coinciding with the Roberts Court, and it has been accelerating since the 2013 case of Shelby County, which struck down the preclearance provisions, through cases out of Texas, including Abbott v. Perez, which makes it much harder for plaintiffs to win intentional discrimination cases involving voting to the 2021 Brnovich case, which was also a section two case, although not involving redistricting to now the Louisiana v. Callais case.

Simone Leeper: Americans have been living through a period of slow erosion of voting rights for some time. Now, for inspiration on a different approach, we may have to look back more than a century.

Rick Hasen: Back in 1874, the Supreme Court said that the Constitution didn't protect women's right to vote case called Minor v. Happersett. In the four decades after that decision, women and men organized, and by the time we got to 1920 and the passage of the 19th Amendment, which bars discrimination voting on the basis of sex, 30 states had passed laws in their state constitutions that bar discrimination against women in voting. And so what we really need is a new voting rights movement. One of the reasons to enshrine such an act in the Constitution is that it provides better protection, harder for the Supreme Court to get around then if it's just in the statute. So we'll see. In the short term, I just want to get through the 2026 and 2028 elections and have them be free and fairly run. But I think in the longer term, if we can get out of this very difficult moment, we need to be in a position where people who care about voting rights are on the offense, trying to actually expand voting rights rather than trying to hold on to the little bit that the Supreme Court is allowing us to clutch right now.

Our democracy is not going to protect itself. I think that's how we have to think about these things. For most voters in the United States today, voting is easy, it's convenient, and it's not a problem. But that's not true everywhere, and it's getting harder and it shouldn't be that how easy or hard it is to vote depends on which state you're living in. Other countries have newer constitutions that more formally protect an affirmative right to vote, and it's time for us to join those advanced democracies and move towards this.

And one way to do that is to start a popular movement state by state, amend your state constitutions, create the momentum for voting rights expansion. I'm a professor. I'm not a community organizer, but I do think that there's a lot of work to be done here if voting is in fact so important because it's preservative of our other rights. Then if whatever you care about as your issues that you want the legislature to tackle, you need to be able to vote and to have people who agree with you be able to vote as well so that you can change policy. So a fair voting system is what's important in order to have a free and fair democracy, not just free and fair elections.

Simone Leeper: If you've made it this far. I suspect you're also a strong believer in protecting the right to vote, but it's easy even for us to lose sight of how fundamental it is. The Constitution protects many fundamental rights more explicitly than it protects the right to vote, but that doesn't mean it isn't essential. Much of the country's history has been the story of expanding those rights to more Americans to guarantee we all have a voice in our democracy.

With that, we've reached the end of season five of Democracy Decoded. Thanks so much to all of you, our listeners, for joining us for this journey. We began planning this season almost eight months ago when President Trump just took office again, and this unprecedented year was still taking shape. Throughout the summer and fall as events unfolded, those of us who work on this show made sure we were giving you the context you needed to understand this moment, to keep you informed and to offer solutions for how we can begin to repair some of these cracks in our democracy. There's no doubt we're living in challenging times, but we hope we've been able to offer you some hope and the knowledge that those of us on the front lines are doing everything in our power to work towards a future in which the American political process is accessible to all Americans, resulting in representative, responsive, and accountable government.

This season of Democracy Decoded was produced by JAR Podcast Solutions for Campaign Legal Center. We are a nonpartisan legal organization dedicated to solving the wide range of challenges facing American democracy. We fight for every American's freedom to vote and participate meaningfully in the Democratic process, particularly Americans who have faced political barriers because of race, ethnicity, or economic status.

During this pivotal moment for our country, it is critical that Campaign Legal Center has the support it needs to continue to fight on behalf of the American people. Your tax-deductible donation can directly fund our efforts to do just that. If you would like to support our work, just go to Campaignlegal.org and click on the Donate button.

Special thanks to our guests, James Wilson, Rick Hasen, and Danielle Lang. I'm your host, Simone Leeper. Thanks so much for listening. 
Leading the production for Campaign Legal Center are Casey Atkins, multimedia manager and Madeline Greenberg Communications Associate. This podcast was produced by Sam Eifling, edited and mixed by Patrick Emile and Luke Batiot.

Democracy Decoded is a member of the Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to engaging in civil discourse, inspiring civic engagement, and exploring the future of our democracy. You can learn more at Democracygroup.org.