President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. Deliver Remarks at Voting Rights Tele-Townhall
For Immediate Release:
June 21, 2021
Contact:
Fabiola Rodriguez
rodriguez@redistrictingaction.org
President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. Deliver Remarks at Voting Rights Tele-Townhall
Washington, D.C. — President Barack Obama and Eric H. Holder, Jr., the 82nd Attorney General of the United States, held a grassroots tele-town hall today, ahead of the U.S. Senate's action on voting rights legislation. They spoke to over 20,000 grassroots supporters about the importance of getting involved in the redistricting process to strengthen our democracy and support Senate action on voting rights legislation.
“The For the People Act contains, as Kelly said, the largest set of good government reforms in decades [...] These reforms and this bill are enormously popular, enormously popular reforms and protections that are related to voting, including establishing a mandatory 15-day early voting period, as well as outlawing partisan gerrymandering, curbing dark money and the influence of special interest groups. [...] The Senate is going to start voting on this bill, on the For the People Act, probably as early as tomorrow. And despite what you may have read, we believe there is a path forward to get this bill passed, but in order for that to happen, everyone needs to make sure that their voices are heard.” - Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr.
“The bill that’s going to be debated, including Senator Manchin’s changes, would [...] mandate at least 15 days of early voting before elections. It would ban partisan gerrymandering so state legislatures controlled by one party can’t redraw the electoral map in a way that gives them an advantage. [...] all these provisions are supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people. None of them should be particularly controversial. And if, in fact, Republican senators are serious about wanting to shore up the legitimacy of elections and the process, then they should present their proposals [...] engage with Democrats and Senator Manchin – that’s what he’s asked for – and have a robust process to hammer out an agreement, because it turns out that, in fact, we can agree on a set of rules where everybody would say, all right, you know what, that’s fair. [...] We can’t wait until the next election because if we have the same kinds of shenanigans that brought about January 6th, if we have that for a couple more election cycles, we’re going to have real problems in terms of our democracy, long term.” - President Barack Obama
Transcript of remarks, as delivered:
KELLY WARD BURTON: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Kelly Burton, and I’m the president of the National Redistricting Action Fund and our grassroots campaign, All On The Line.
I’m so pleased to be here today in support of the For the People Act with Attorney General Eric Holder, President Barack Obama and all of you. We are at a critical moment in our efforts to pass For the People Act, which contains the largest set of good government reforms in decades. Among its many provisions, it protects voting rights, bans partisan gerrymandering, gets dark money out of politics, and, most importantly, return power back to where it belongs, with the people. It’s incredibly popular and it’s the right bill at the right time.
To talk to us more about this, it is my distinct honor to now turn this over to my boss, Eric Holder, the 82nd attorney general of the United States. AG Holder, over to you.
ERIC HOLDER: All right. Well, thank you, Kelly. And I want to thank everybody for being here with us today. In particular, I’d like to thank my friend, President Barack Obama, for joining us today. When the President and I left office just a few years ago, we were talking about the things we wanted to prioritize in our post-government lives. And one of the things that we really wanted to focus on was the whole problem of gerrymandering and making sure that the redistricting process is going to happen, and beginning now, will be, in fact, a fair one.
We had both seen the negative impacts of partisan gridlock that happens at the federal level when members of Congress are elected from gerrymandered districts, because when elected officials aren’t responsive to their constituents, we can’t make progress on the issues that matter to the people of this country. Whether you care about gun safety measures, reproductive rights, healthcare, the environment, criminal justice reform, all of these things are impacted by the redistricting process. And with the redistricting process now underway, we knew that that had to change.
Redistricting, however, is really only one of the reasons why we are gathered here today, because the big picture is this: We’re in the midst of, I think, the greatest assault on voting rights since the Jim Crow era. The nonpartisan Brennan Center has been tracking this onslaught of anti-voter bills around the country. And by their last count, state legislatures have introduced nearly 400 voter suppression bills in 48 states. And almost two dozen of them now, two dozen of them now have actually been signed into law.
And let me reiterate, there’s no rationale. There is no justification for the consideration or the passage of these bills. Lawmakers believe that it is their right to try to handpick who has power in this country. They think that it’s their right to pick who should be able to vote in this country. Too many lawmakers have that have that belief.
And that’s where this intersects with redistricting. The same politicians who are pushing these anti-voter bills today are going to try to use the redistricting process to gerrymander themselves into power later this year. They’re comfortable bending or even breaking the rules of our democracy if it means that they can hold on to power. And that’s what this is all about. They want to hold on to power and that’s what we are up against.
Now, the good news is that there are some things we and others are doing to prevent this from happening, but one of the most important things is we make sure that the Senate passes the For the People Act. The For the People Act contains, as Kelly said, the largest set of good government reforms in decades. It would institute enormously popular reforms, and that’s something that really has people get a focus on. These reforms and this bill is enormously popular, enormously popular reforms and protections that are related to voting, including establishing a mandatory 15-day early voting period, as well as outlawing partisan gerrymandering, curbing dark money and the influence of special interest groups.
Now, it’s a good bill. It’s a necessary bill. We’re doing everything we can to encourage senators to support it, and we’re asking you all to join us in this effort.
Look, we have no time to waste. The Senate is going to start voting on this bill, on the For the People Act, probably as early as tomorrow. And despite what you may have read, we believe there is a path forward to get this bill passed, but in order for that to happen, everyone needs to make sure that their voices are heard.
As Kelly said, you can that by texting FTPA to 88228 to opt in For the People Act’s grassroots advocacy campaign. That’s FTPA and it’s the For the People Act, FTPA to 88228. Once you are opted in, you’re going to receive a link to call your senators and you’ll have the ability to tell them that they have to support this bill, that they’ve got to vote for this bill.
The threat to our democracy is urgent. The threat to our democracy is real. People say that our system held last fall. Well, it did, but just barely and real damage was done to our system of government. We have to repair that damage and we have to make sure that it never happens again. Our country needs the For the People Act, and we all need to make sure that we do everything we can to make sure that this bill gets across the line.
I want to thank you all again for joining us. And it is now my privilege to introduce the 44th President of the United States and my good friend, Barack Obama.
PRES BARACK OBAMA: Thanks, Eric. Hey, everybody. Thank you to Kelly and thanks to Eric for their extraordinary leadership of NDRC, and to the thousands of volunteers and activists who have been out there fighting the good fight to try to make democracy more vibrant, and to encourage more participation, and to push back against some of the institutional barriers that discourage not only people from voting, but impede those votes from translating into action. I could not be prouder of the work that you guys have done at a community level, day in, day out. It has made a difference.
And since I left office, I’ve tried to make it a policy not to weigh in on the day-to-day scrum in Washington, but what’s happening this week is more than just a particular bill coming up or not coming up to a vote.
As Eric just described, this week, the U.S. Senate plans to take action on a bill that’s designed to protect the right to vote and to strengthen our democracy. And the bill itself, which is called the For the People Act, is a product of compromise, an effort by maybe the most conservative Democrat in the Senate or maybe the most conservative Democrat in Congress, Joe Manchin of West Virginia to come up with some common sense reforms that the majority of Americans agree with, that Democrats and Republicans can agree with.
As Eric’s described some of the details of the legislation, I won’t get too granular in terms of what’s all the provisions that are in the bill, but I do want folks who may not be paying close attention to what’s happening as many of you are, not just Democrats, but Republicans and independents, not just political activists, but ordinary citizens to understand the stakes involved and why this debate is so vitally important to the future of our country.
Look, I think it’s fair to say that Americans are deeply divided right now. We argue about everything; we argue about taxes, we argue about climate change, we argue about race and police, about immigration and LGBTQ rights. And some of these disagreements are real and are inevitable for a nation as big and diverse as ours. Some of these arguments are manufactured by politicians and media that think it’s the easiest way to command attention or to get power, to generate profits or clicks, that the fastest way to profit is to stoke outrage, and controversy, and resentment and fear.
But whatever else we may argue about, the one thing we should agree on, the bedrock idea that we as Americans, all of us, have been taught to take pride in is the fact that we’re a democracy, a government of, by and for the people. That’s at the heart of our Constitution. That’s the source of our exceptionalism. That’s the core of our patriotism and our claim of leadership around the world, that despite our differences, we settle our disagreements at the ballot box. And every citizen gets a voice in choosing their representatives and petitioning their government. That’s the American idea.
Now, throughout most of our history, that democracy was imperfect in practice. Initially, women couldn’t vote. White men without property couldn’t vote. State legislatures, not voters, selected U.S. senators. Enslaved African-Americans weren’t recognized as citizens, much less allowed to vote, although they were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of allocating representation, which thereby gave white Southerners more influence in Washington than their numbers alone would warrant.
But because of the actions of abolitionists and suffragists, because of the Civil War and the Civil War amendments, because of Civil Rights activists and union leaders and student movements, all that changed. Slowly, gradually but steadily, voting was recognized as a universal right. Whatever our party, whatever our political preferences, we embrace the idea that every citizen has a voice and every citizen has a vote.
As Eric alluded to, though, for several years now, there have been those who’ve made it their business to try to systematically undermine this consensus. Folks in power didn’t necessarily like the idea that all these new voters might join the rolls, and cast their ballots, and change the status quo, that all these new participants might shake things up and might insist that government be more responsive to all its citizens and not just some. Incumbent politicians – and we have to be honest here, both parties were sometimes guilty of this – started politically gerrymandering, legislative districts.
And many of you on this call obviously are familiar with it because you’ve been working on it, but for folks who haven’t been following the nitty gritty of gerrymandering, basically what gerrymandering is, is it allows folks who are already in power to manipulate the boundaries of legislative districts, whether congressional districts or state legislative districts, so that the incumbents can choose their voters rather than the voters choosing their elected officials.
As a result, political gerrymandering reduces the power of ordinary people while allowing insiders with money and influence to consolidate their power. And because the voices of ordinary people get drowned out, gerrymandering pushes political parties to extremes and makes compromise more difficult, and less gets done.
But attempts to limit the power of ordinary citizens to bring about change through voting did not just stop there. A conservative Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, making it harder for voters to challenge discrimination in elections. A rule imposed by senators, not the Constitution, called the filibuster, allowed a determined minority of senators to block legislation that was supported by the vast majority of Americans so that, suddenly, there was a 60-vote requirement in the Senate to get a bill passed that is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, and it just became a tool for obstruction.
A number of state legislatures across the country then passed measures to make voting harder for racial minorities, harder for students, harder for workers who may have trouble getting off work because they’re punching a clock or they rely on public transportation. And in defense of all of these laws, these legislators would allege that they were trying to prevent voter fraud.
And they would say sometimes, just outright, sometimes they would insinuate that some voters, especially those in large, urban, minority communities, are somehow illegitimate, despite repeated studies showing that serious voter fraud is virtually non-existent. This has been looked at by all kinds of folks, by not just liberal social scientists, but by conservative social scientists. And the facts are that the problem that these legislators continually claim they’re trying to solve doesn’t exist, for the most part.
As a result, the United States is perhaps the only advanced democracy in the world that deliberately makes it harder rather than easier for ordinary people to vote.
Now, the good news is that despite all these efforts, the desire of the American people to be heard led to record turnout in the most recent presidential election. And in those states where it was possible, record numbers of both Democrats and Republicans took advantage of the convenience of early voting and mail-in voting.
But instead of celebrating these higher levels of civic engagement, Republican politicians who didn’t like the outcome of the presidential election, and didn’t maybe like the outcome of the Georgia election, and felt threatened by the surge in citizen participation, have now decided to double down. They don’t want to just make it harder for certain people to vote, they now want to change the rules for how ballots are counted and who gets to count them.
And along with efforts to limit or roll back early voting and vote by mail, we’ve seen state legislatures over the past few months propose or pass laws that would get partisan legislatures the power to overrule election officials in certifying elections; or they have been trying to set up one set of rules for distributing polling places in urban, predominantly black neighborhoods and a different set of rules for largely white rural communities.
We’ve seen boards of elections that traditionally have had equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans replaced with bodies, commissions where, overwhelmingly, majority Republican lawmakers can make the decisions so that it’d be like in a ball game where one team gets to choose all the referees. You’ve got new laws that’s making it more difficult for students to vote in the states where they reside, laws that call for citizens who’ve registered to vote and have every right to vote suddenly purged from voting rolls without notice.
Now, individually, each one of these new laws making it harder to vote may not seem like a big deal. Maybe this feels like the usual arguments between the political parties and an insider game, and why should ordinary people be worrying about it? A lot of people voted in the last election. Hopefully, people will vote in the next election. And with everything else going on in the world, especially with the country still recovering from a historic pandemic, and with families and business owners still picking up the pieces from its aftermath, let’s face it, the issue of voting rights may not set off alarms for most of us.
But the violence that occurred in the U.S. capital on January 6th just a few months ago should remind us that we can’t take our democracy for granted. Around the world, we’ve seen once vibrant democracy is going to reverse, locking in power for a small group of powerful autocrats and business interests, and locking out of the political process dissidents and protesters, and opposition parties and the voices of ordinary people. It is happening in other places around the world and these impulses have crept into the United States.
We are not immune from some of these. Efforts to weaken our democracy, and our own history should remind us that democracy isn’t a given. If we truly want a government of, by and for the people, and I believe that the overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans and independents want that, then we’re going to have to be vigilant in fighting back against attempts by the few to silence the many. And that’s why what’s happening in the Senate this week is so important.
The bill that’s going to be debated, including Senator Manchin’s changes, would address, as Eric mentioned, many of the concerns and issues that I’ve just discussed. It would mandate at least 15 days of early voting before elections. It would ban partisan gerrymandering so state legislatures controlled by one party can’t redraw the electoral map in a way that gives them an advantage. It would restore some of the protections in the Voting Rights Act to prevent states from making it harder for some people to vote. And it would also require powerful special interest groups to disclose their election-related spending.
And also, as Eric indicated, all these provisions are supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people. None of them should be particularly controversial. I’ll be honest, the bill doesn’t have everything I’d like to see in a voting rights bill. It doesn’t address every problem, and I want to also be clear, Republicans in Congress, in the Senate have every right to offer their own proposals for making sure that our voting system is fair and secure and inclusive, and for making sure that on a bipartisan basis, we can give all Americans confidence that the election process is run the way it’s supposed to run.
Unfortunately, right now, at least, Republicans in the Senate are lining up to try to use the filibuster to stop the For the People Act from even being debated. Think about this: In the aftermath of an insurrection with our democracy on the line, and many of these same Republican senators going along with the notion that somehow, there were irregularities and problems with legitimacy in our most recent election, they’re suddenly afraid to even talk about these issues and figure out solutions on the floor of the Senate. They don’t even want to talk about voting, and that’s not acceptable.
That’s where all of you come in. For years now, activists like you have been putting in the work to try and end partisan gerrymandering and strengthen our democracy, and you’ve organized supporters, and you’ve made calls, and you’ve knocked on doors, and you’ve engaged people all across the country. And you’ve had some wins out there and you’ve had some losses, you’ve had some victories and disappointments.
We’re still going to need all the incredible activists that are on the line to be involved, but we also need ordinary citizens to join in and insist that the Senate take action this week. It may not end up being exactly the bill that is currently or initially being proposed, but we as a people should all say, Senate, Congress, do something.
And that’s the only way we’re going to overcome the gridlock and the cynicism that’s so prevalent right now, and the mistrust, and to make sure that the economy is working for everybody and not just the few, and to give our kids the opportunity to grow up in a true democracy, not just one with the occasional election, but a representative, vibrant democracy where every voice is heard, and every vote matters and every vote is counted.
That’s why this is so important. That’s why I’m so grateful to Eric and Kelly and to everybody who’s on the call right now for helping to lead this fight.
With that, I’m going to turn it back over to Kelly, and I think we’ve got time for a couple of questions.
KELLY WARD BURTON: Terrific. Thank you, President Obama, for those inspiring words. Now let’s move on to the Q&A portion of our event. We have sourced a few questions from activists all over the country and selected two for you two to respond to. And our first question comes from Hasani (ph) in Dallas, Texas, and it is for AG Holder. AG Holder, how would the For the People Act affect redistricting? And what are the next steps in the redistricting process this year?
ERIC HOLDER: Well, I mean, as we all know, when politicians gerrymander maps to create safe districts where the outcomes of the elections are determined by the lines, by the line drawer and not by the voters, not by the people, we wind up with more polarized elected officials who cater to the whims of the special interest groups. And they have extreme viewpoints instead of representing their constituents. In fact, they take positions oftentimes that are inconsistent with the desires of their constituents, because when gerrymandered districts, they don’t face any electoral consequence. That’s a problem.
The For the People Act would address this by outlawing partisan gerrymandering and creating new standards about how we can draw fair districts, not districts that are going to favor one party or the other, not districts that’s going to favor Democrats, districts that will simply be fair. And that would enable us to bring litigation. If we have this ban on partisan gerrymandering, this will allow us to bring litigation if maps are drawn to overwhelmingly benefit one party.
Redistricting only happens once every 10 years. This is our once-in-a-decade opportunity to ensure that there’s going to be a level playing field. That’s all we want, just a level playing field that doesn’t stack the deck for one party. Let’s make this a fair contest.
Gerrymandering is antithetical to our democratic ideals. It prevents us from making progress on nearly every issue that the that the people care about – gun safety, climate change, reproductive rights, voting rights, criminal justice reform. The For the People Act, as well as the companion bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which Congress is going to consider later this fall, would make really meaningful progress to prevent this gerrymandering and bring us closer to the democracy that uplifts the voices of all Americans, Republicans, Democrats, independents.
In less than two months, on August the 16th, the Census Bureau is going to officially begin releasing the redistricting data and states will use that data to then draw their maps across the country. Through All On The Line, our grassroots campaign, our grassroots campaign staff is already working on the ground in key states to equip grassroots supporters, partners and elected officials with the information that they’re going to need and the tools they’re going to need to effectively engage in a process, a process at the end of the day that we’re fighting for to ensure will simply be fair. That’s what our effort is all about. All we want to have is fairness.
KELLY WARD BURTON: Terrific. Thank you, AG Holder. Our second question comes from Lindsey in Columbus, Ohio, and it is for you, President Obama. President Obama, can say a little bit more about how we should and can remain hopeful when there have been so many barriers in the fight for voting rights?
PRES BARACK OBAMA: Well, look, I think that it’s always useful for us to just look at history, both for inspiration and keeping the faith, but also for a reminder that we have to be vigilant. The fact is that universal suffrage, the idea that everybody, regardless of gender, race, status, wealth, that everybody should have a voice, everybody should participate, at least in the selection of their representatives in government, that’s a pretty new thing.
And here in the United States, the founding documents were revolutionary for the time, but they were very restrictive. And there were a lot of battles that had to be fought for us to expand steadily the number of people who were brought to the democracy table. And I mentioned some of those earlier, and it wasn’t just that women couldn’t vote or white men with property couldn’t vote or African-Americans who were enslaved couldn’t vote.
I mean, remember that, for example, there was a major debate in the ‘60s around the fact that we were sending young men to fight in Vietnam and they couldn’t vote. They couldn’t choose their representatives who were deciding to send 18 year olds over to potentially die in service to their country. And they had no voice in government, and that was changed, right?
What should make us hopeful is that at each of these junctures, when ordinary people banded together and made their voices heard, eventually, the system responded, eventually, legislators responded and things changed, and that then brought new voices to the table and brought people who looked different into legislatures.
And right now, for example, in Congress, we have record numbers of people who traditionally weren’t in those corridors of power. There’s a difference between the portraits that are on the walls and the people that are in the seats. And that’s a good thing because it is more reflective of this tapestry of humanity that is America.
We should take confidence in the fact that the fights we’re now fighting are not as tough as the fights to get rid of the poll tax or the fight to register voters in the South back in the early ‘60s where people could lose their lives in order to encourage African-Americans to vote. It’s not as challenging as the years of work, decades of work that was required to convince what now seems obvious to us, that women, half the population, should have a voice in our democracy.
But what that also tells us, though, is in the same way that history can move forward, it can also move backward, and we have to pay attention. And one of the concerns that I have had throughout my political career and throughout my presidency was that we have a tendency to get fired up and riled up in what are deemed emergency situations.
Most recently, a lot of people got riled up by my successor in the presidency and felt that a lot was at stake, and we had to get out there to the polls. In fairness, there were a bunch of Republicans who, when I was president and Eric Holder was attorney general, felt like, man, these guys are terrible. (Laughter.) We’ve got to get out there and vote. And oftentimes, we respond to the immediate candidate or political figure who we dislike.
And then, when that is done, when that kind of goes away, then everybody kind of forgets about it. And it’s the reason why we have such lower rates of voting typically during midterm elections, which are critically important, and state legislative races and local races. Generally, we have much lower participation.
And when we start getting into discussions around the rules of our democracy, things like filibusters or gerrymandering or voting rules, people’s eyes tend to glaze over because their attitude is, well, what does this have to do with my job or what does this have to do with housing and rent, or what does this have to do with issues that seem more pressing?
And I guess part of what I think Eric and I are both trying to communicate here is that these rules have everything to do with those issues, because what happens, the way politics in America and most countries work, the way it’s supposed to work in democracies, is that if people are complacent and not paying attention and uninterested, then the special interests, and the folks with power and the folks who know how to work the corridors of the legislative process, they thrive. And they’ll win, so they can block efforts to expand healthcare or they can block efforts to build affordable housing, or they can change the tax code to make sure that we still have these huge, vast chasms of inequality. And yet, people who are making billions of dollars are paying no taxes whatsoever or big corporations aren’t held accountable for the things that they do.
I confronted this as president. Eric confronted this as attorney general. And there were times where we’d send the alarm out. “Hey, guys, you’ve got to vote during midterms. Hey, you’ve got to pay attention to how this filibuster is blocking stuff from taking place.” And it may seem like some nerdy political science boring stuff, but it ends up having a huge impact on whether we can get things done. It’s the reason why minimum wage laws weren’t changed for years, and why basic gun safety provisions aren’t changed, even in the aftermath of something like Newtown, because the rules that have been set up were kind of fixed to prevent those things from happening.
But the good news is we can change it, and right now, this week is probably the best chance we’re going to have to engage in this conversation.
And the last thing I’ll say about this, because I said this in my initial remarks – I want to emphasize this – I have deep disagreements with Republicans on a whole bunch of stuff. I think that what we’ve seen from the current administration shows what happens when people actually are on the case and doing great work around vaccinations, and reopening the economy, and taking science seriously. Yes, I have a partisan interest in the sense that I’m a Democrat and I believe in what our party stands for, but I am being entirely sincere in saying that I also want to make sure that we have a system in which both Democrats and Republicans feel confident about the way our election process works.
And if, in fact, Republican senators are serious about wanting to shore up the legitimacy of elections and the process, then they should present their proposals, the things they think are going to make this work better, engage with Democrats and Senator Manchin – that’s what he’s asked for – and have a robust process to hammer out an agreement, because it turns out that, in fact, we can agree on a set of rules where everybody would say, all right, you know what, that’s fair. We really can; the polls show it. It’s just that the insiders in this process, they’re not being really sincere in trying to come up with those solutions.
And this is the time for that to happen. We can’t wait until the next election because if we have the same kinds of shenanigans that brought about January 6th, if we have that for a couple more election cycles, we’re going to have real problems in terms of our democracy, long term. All right?
KELLY WARD BURTON: All right. Thank you so much, President Obama, for those remarks and to you and AG Holder for joining us today. It is so helpful to hear you both put this all in the context of history, remind us what it is all about and inspire us to get involved right now. Thank you.
And thank you to everyone who joined the call. We hope you all learned a lot about the For the People Act and are ready to take action this week. If you would like to stay in touch with us and get involved, again, we ask you to text FTPA to 88228, and that will opt you in to our All On The Line campaign text message program where you will receive information about getting involved.
Thank you all so much for your time. It’s great to be with you today. Have a great rest of your day. Take care, everyone. Bye-Bye.
PRES BARACK OBAMA: All right. Great to see you guys. Bye-bye.
ERIC HOLDER: Take care.
KELLY WARD BURTON: You too. Bye!
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