This week, Farai speaks with reporter and WAPT-TV news anchor Troy Johnson on Jackson, Mississippi’s recurring water crisis, and why catastrophes like this so often happen in communities of color. Then, we share again Farai’s conversation from April with Carmen Yulín Cruz, former mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, about how she guided her people through the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. And on our weekly segment, Sippin’ the Political Tea, Farai is joined by Kim Wehle, law professor and advisor at Protect Democracy and Tammy Patrick, Senior Advisor to the Elections program at Democracy Fund to discuss election security ahead of the 2022 midterms.
Farai Chideya:
Hi, folks. We are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you have time, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcast. It helps other listeners find us, and we read them for your feedback. We'd also love you to join in financially supporting the show, if you are able. You can find out more at ourbodypolitic.com/donate. We are here for you, with you, and because of you. Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
This is Our Body Politic. I am Farai Chideya. Jackson, Mississippi is recovering from a water crisis of epic proportions. Just over one month ago, historic rainfall flooded the Pearl River causing several pumps to fail at a water treatment plant. That resulted in more than a 100,000 residents not being able to use the water in their city.
Farai Chideya:
This event highlights the increasing instability of the water supply in many cities across the US, and many of the areas experiencing water difficulties are communities made up predominantly of Black and Brown residents. Some people say this is a racial justice issue, and communities of Color have long gotten less from the State than White communities.
Farai Chideya:
The City of Jackson had already been under a month long State-imposed boil-water notice, one of 300 within the past two years. The EPA launched an investigation into the Jackson water situation, and after a series of improvements had been made to the affected plant, the City lifted its boil-water notice. Still, the Department of Justice has threatened to file legal action against the City under the Safe Drinking Water Act as Jackson's water system had been deemed inadequate and in need of a temporary third-party management.
Farai Chideya:
Troy Johnson is an anchor and reporter at WAPTtv in Jackson. He covered the crisis since the beginning and continues to report on the state of Jackson's water supply. Troy spoke with us on Our Body Politic on Monday, September 13th, three days before the City lifted its boil-water notice. Here's our conversation. Welcome, Troy.
Troy Johnson:
Farai, it's such a pleasure to be here with you. Thanks for the invite.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. And thanks for your work. And also found out you used to work in my hometown of Baltimore, which is-
Troy Johnson:
That's right.
Farai Chideya:
... great to hear. So, you live in Jackson, you work in Jackson, just give us a rundown of the current situation.
Troy Johnson:
Well, it's one that you pretty much encapsulated, there's no end in sight to fix for the water issues that the City is undertaking. There are a myriad of reasons for it, there are myriad of finger-pointing options that you could have. It's just a really interesting situation that there's no real great answer to.
Troy Johnson:
There is work being done to the OB Curtis Water Treatment Plant. As of now, one of the main pumps has been replaced, so it's increased the water flow, so people are now getting water into their homes, but that's just making sure that the system is working properly. A lot of people know that there's been an extended boil-water notice.
Troy Johnson:
Well, prior to when this boil-water notice went into effect, which was the end of July, I believe, there was about a two-week period prior to that where there was no boil-water notice, and just before that there was a 30-day boil-water notice. So, there have been extended boil-water notices.
Troy Johnson:
I don't recall a full city-wide boil-water notice last year, but at some point there may have been a boil-water notice in some part of the city for the better part of 239 days. So, this is a constant. Even the Mayor, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, has described this as a city water system that is in crisis mode constantly. So, it's a long-term problem.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. Let's hear a bit of Mayor Lumumba from a joint news conference with the governor and the administrator of the EPA.
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba:
One of the things that was most important to me was the component of us continuing to lean in together, making certain that we have some frequency of discussion to make certain that everything is flowing as it should and that we can see the ultimate improvements to OB Curtis, and more importantly, just the water distribution system of Jackson being sustainable, being reliable, and important to me, being equitable across the city.
Farai Chideya:
Are things flowing as they should between Mayor Lumumba and Governor Tate Reeves?
Troy Johnson:
That is the $100,000 question. When this water situation began, there was a sense that both of these men have set aside whatever differences that they may have. The governor, Tate Reeves, is a Republican, Mayor Lumumba is a Democrat in a red state. There obviously is some friction there. I think from a state and a city and a federal situation, everyone wants to get this fixed, but the governor has also been critical since this water system began about a week or so ago.
Troy Johnson:
He was being critical about the City and whether or not they had a plan for the future of this water system. And the governor believes that this is a water system that should generate enough revenue to help sustain repairs and upkeep. But there's been an ongoing problem with water billing in this city for a very long time.
Troy Johnson:
Some people haven't paid bills, some people, one month get $130 bill and then the next month it's a $2,000 bill. So, there is some inconsistency in the billing that is an underlying problem with why there's no money, in many instances, to get these things fixed.
Troy Johnson:
I think they're willing to, in general, lay their differences aside, but I found it interesting for the governor criticizing this problem when people can't drink the water that's coming out of their sink. This may not be the time to make that political statement, but again, that's where we are right now.
Farai Chideya:
So, as a reporter and as a resident of the city, how does Jackson fit into the big picture of Mississippi politics?
Troy Johnson:
That's a very good question. It's the epicenter, in a way. It's the state capital. And what appears, from someone who's not a native Jacksonian or Mississippian, for that regard, it appears to me that there's something between the State and the City. I believe that there have been issues in some way over the last 15, 20 years. You've had African-American mayors, again, in a state that's transitioned into a red state.
Troy Johnson:
But prior to that, I think even when there may have been White mayors leading this city, when it comes to the legislature, you have rural lawmakers versus urban lawmakers. And I think maybe some have taken issue with the fact, why are we sending all this "money" to Jackson for this or for that when what's happening in my county, in my rural area. So, there are a couple of dynamics here.
Farai Chideya:
It reminds me a bit of Flint, Michigan with its water crisis, but also urban and rural. And in one of my previous jobs, I spent a lot of time looking at the relationship of rural Michigan politicians to urban Michigan politicians, including in Detroit. So, both cities, meaning Flint and Jackson, that have had these massive water crises, have a large Black population, a lower tax base than some other areas in the state. How does that factor into how you're covering this at this point, as a journalist, to weave in these threads?
Troy Johnson:
I think they're critical to telling this story in full. This is a city that's 82% Black, and in the 1980s, mid-'80s, it was a city that was 50% White. So, clearly White flight led to a lower tax base. Why did those White people leave Jackson, Mississippi? You can trace a line back to when schools began to be integrated. Many White families said that they were not going to have their kids go to school with Black kids.
Troy Johnson:
And from a bit of the information that I've read about and looked through, those families took their kids out of Jackson public schools and put them into private academies. And some of those academies still exist today, and they're now integrated. But at the time, they were for a specific reason.
Farai Chideya:
As happened throughout much of the US, Virginia and many other states.
Troy Johnson:
Exactly, exactly. So, those were the cornerstones for now some of those bedroom communities, those metro communities, that are now thriving. If you have the tax-based money that left the city, this is a city that, again, when I moved here four years ago, there wasn't a movie theater here because they're in one of the towns like Ridgeland or Madison, which are right outside of the city of Jackson City limits. The Costco is not in Jackson, it's in another town.
Troy Johnson:
So, I think we you can physically see the elements that make a city stronger, the live-work-play elements that we all want, and you see them in communities just outside of the actual city, a city that happens to be the state capital, it's, what's going on here?
Farai Chideya:
Do you have a sense of moral disappointment or fatigue as a citizen, not as a journalist, but just to look, as a Black resident of the capital of your state that is in this desperate situation with water, what is the arc of moral justice, do you think, in this situation?
Troy Johnson:
I am, for better or for worse, and optimist. In the world of social media that we have now, when people are looking at a city and they're critical of what they see happening, you see a city that can't fix its water issues on its own. There are people that love to get anonymously on social media and harshly criticize the mayor, harshly criticize from maybe a racial purview about them not being able to get things done. Just like any other city, there could be issues with crime. After this pandemic, we saw a spike in crime all over the United States.
Troy Johnson:
But it's because they are trying to paint a narrative about what's happening here. Me as an optimist, I feel, if you fix this water system, this could be the beginning of some very strong positives for Jackson. If you know you have a sound infrastructure, businesses will want to come here, they will see opportunity. But it's hard to plug in a massive corporate operation when you don't have sustainable water, for example. That's just one of the utilities that you expect to be operational when you arrive somewhere.
Troy Johnson:
So, it feels like, as dire as things are now, if things can be worked out, if there are federal dollars, if there is a will to work across the different levels of government, it can be fixed. At least it appears that way to me. I don't know how long it'll take to make that happen, but I believe the possibility is there.
Farai Chideya:
That was Troy Johnson, news anchor at WAPTtv, talking about the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi. Coming up next, I continue my conversation with Jackson, Mississippi reporter and news anchor Troy Johnson about the impact the city's water crisis had on communities of Color. Plus, later we take a look at election security with Kim Wehle, a law professor, author, and advisor at Protect Democracy, and Tammy Patrick, a senior advisor to the elections program at Democracy Fund. That's on Our Body Politic.
Farai Chideya:
Welcome back to Our Body Politic. If you're just joining us, we're talking to Jackson, Mississippi reporter, Troy Johnson, about the latest water crisis facing the city after multiple pumps broke last month at a water treatment plan. He's a news anchor at WAPTtv. The pump's failure caused at least 150,000 residents to be without water for weeks and led to increased scrutiny from the EPA. They've had an ongoing investigation into Jackson's water system.
Farai Chideya:
Here's the rest of our conversation. How are you reporting on the relationship of the EPA to this whole water crisis? Jackson has had water issues for decades.
Troy Johnson:
The water problems here may have even caused some financial penalty to the City. This has been something that the EPA has been very angry about how things have been running here. In this situation where you're at dire circumstances, there hasn't been a lot of conversation about how many fines have been tabulated against the City of Jackson, or, is that a big concern from the EPA's standpoint?
Troy Johnson:
The Administrator, Michael Regan, was here, primarily to make sure that the City and the State were on the same page in terms of how to move forward. So, there is much more federal coordination in making sure that things run smoothly, and those egos and that anger, or whatever is going on or not going on, perhaps, doesn't get in the way of making progress on getting fixes together.
Troy Johnson:
So, the EPA has not really been, "Yeah, we're gonna fix this, but you guys have had multiple fines along the way." There's no conversation like that. But it is a part of the story that's going to have to be told on a more broad standpoint, looking at the broad scale of things here locally. Is that something that we do on a daily basis? But it will be part of stories that are coming up in the future.
Farai Chideya:
We talked a bit about Flint, but there're many cities across the country like my hometown and your former city of residents and work, Baltimore, Benton Harbor in Michigan, Honolulu, the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, large populations of people of Color and water issues. As a reporter especially, how do you connect the dots and where should we be putting our attention on not just local and regional problems but the national picture?
Troy Johnson:
I think that there are examples of something that you alluded to in the beginning of this, environmental racism. How do communities of Color end up in these situations, whole cities dealing with catastrophic infrastructure problems when 20 miles away there are not any. I think it's too convenient for people to say, "Well, the City, maybe they didn't maintain the water system the way that we think that they should have," and, "Well, maybe the State didn't offer the funds that they should have."
Troy Johnson:
There is more to it, and there's a longer arc to it as well, if you look back to the '70s when President Carter was in Office. Cities like Jackson, cities like Baltimore, all over the country, there was an effort to move forward large infrastructure projects in many cities. I think the City of Jackson was looking at the possibility of maybe $90 million at that time, in the '70s, that's a lot of money, to work on some water issues in the city.
Troy Johnson:
But by the time the Reagan Administration had come into Office in the mid 1980s, those funds were taken out of the plan. Reagan, of course, cut back on social programming and funding for those kinds of projects. So, if you go from thinking you're going to have $90 million at that time and then a decade later that money is nowhere to be found but you're setting up a plan to implement and fix things that needed to be fixed, that's devastating in some way.
Troy Johnson:
Even with the Biden Administration's Build Back Better and all that money for infrastructure, how long is it going to take to implement that in a city like Baltimore or Jackson or Flint? It's going to take some time. So, people are still going to be struggling with the problems that they have right now.
Troy Johnson:
And something that I have to interject here about, the overall health of a city, we haven't even really talked about the financial impact to restaurants and businesses that rely on water. There are places that are considering moving out of the city because it costs a lot of money to, on a daily basis, provide enough water and ice to serve you and me a glass of ice tea at lunch. There are a lot of economic underpinnings in this story that are going to have to be told as well.
Farai Chideya:
So, Charles Wilson III is a Jackson resident with a young son who he fears has lead poisoning now. He says legal recourse is the only way to help.
Charles Wilson III:
Well, we know they're not going tell the truth. We know that they're not going to admit. So, the only thing I can think of is legal action.
Farai Chideya:
So, do you think that this is going to end up in the courts, and what do your neighbors think, how do your neighbors feel?
Troy Johnson:
It's logical for folks to demand and answer to why. Again, the conversation is centered around the water plant and getting it operational, getting it to operate at 100%. We have not talked about the pipes that are more than 70 years old in this city that need to be repaired. And the fact that the mayor believes that this is a one to 2 billion project to fix what's going on underneath the city, there've been viral videos of people opening up their tap and the water looks like chocolate milk.
Troy Johnson:
I saw a video recently on Twitter from, actually, a newsprint reporter. Based on the tweets, it doesn't live far from where I live. My water looks okay, but it could be, maybe there's a bad pipe near that person's home. Just don't know what... It's two different things. Does the water plant work properly and all the waters infiltrated and it is pristine and delicious? Sure. But when it goes into the pipes, what happens there?
Troy Johnson:
So, there is big concern. And I think that, not only for citizens to take legal action, but maybe the City might have to take legal action to make sure that they get the funds to fix what needs to be fixed, which has languished for such a long time.
Farai Chideya:
Well, Troy, I'm just really grateful for your time and perspective and your reporting. Thanks so much.
Troy Johnson:
It's been an absolute pleasure, thank you.
Farai Chideya:
You're listening to Our Body Politic. I'm Farai Chideya. That was Troy Johnson, reporter and news anchor at WAPTtv in Jackson, Mississippi. This week, many of us are watching the impact of Hurricane Ian on Florida and Cuba. Just days before Ian made landfall, another hurricane, Fiona, knocked out the power in Puerto Rico and left extensive damage to infrastructure.
Farai Chideya:
This happened near the five-year anniversary of the devastation brought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. As of this Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of residents were still without power. So, we're revisiting my conversation with former mayor of San Juan Puerto Rico, Carmen Yulin Cruz. In a recent interview with Boston's GBH News, Cruz said that the power grid had not been rebuilt to withstand the current outages.
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
Five years have been lost of making sure that especially the micro grid in Puerto Rico is robustly reconstructed.
Farai Chideya:
Among her many accomplishments, Cruz spearheaded the disaster relief response in San Juan following hurricane's, Irma and Maria. Cruz remains a fierce advocate for her former constituents as people seek to rebuild from Hurricane Fiona today. Here's my conversation with former Mayor Cruz on her political leadership and how she guided her constituents through the aftermaths of Hurricane Irma and Maria. Mayor Cruz, thank you for joining us.
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
Well, thank you very much for having me.
Farai Chideya:
From what I can tell, you're setting a compass for women from around the world who are already leaders in many ways, to understand their own power and to learn how to use it. Is that how you think of what you're working on right now?
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
So, one of the things that I learned before the hurricane just catapulted me into this madness of being on the world stage was that you had to speak up, that speaking up was important, and that there was no such thing as voiceless. People had a voice, they just don't have a platform.
Farai Chideya:
You, in 2012, won the San Juan mayoral election, defeating a 12-year incumbent who called you "[foreign language 00:22:33]. That woman." So, how did it feel to stand up for your leadership to some people you were [foreign language 00:22:45]?
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
Well, interestingly enough, I was the one on the ballot, but it wasn't me that was on the ballot. I represented and I was an echo of thousands of voices that were tired of having their rights trampled on, of having a person that had no use for the LGBT community. You're not going to believe this, but I went from being from the far right of the political party that I belong to, the Popular Democratic Party, which is similar to the Democratic Party in the US, to being in the far left of the party, in the very progressive and very liberal side of the party.
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
And it was because I allowed all those voices to enter into my mind and my soul and my brain, and had the stark reality that people were living on the streets hit me. I spent four years in the streets of San Juan and the rest of Puerto Rico. So, when it was time to run, my party did not want me. And they told me, "You're too liberal. You're too liberal." And I said, "But you know what? It is a coalition of voices that will defeat an incumbent that doesn't care about anyone's voice but himself." So, my slogan was, "I am the voice of a new San Juan," meaning, I am the echo of all those voices.
Farai Chideya:
I came in a professional capacity when I was working in philanthropy to San Juan, Humacao, Yabucoa, to look at the impact of Hurricane Maria. How did Maria change what your mission was as mayor?
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
Well, I don't think I know, and the listeners are not going to see this, but I have a sign, which I'm showing to you, that says "3,000". I have this on my desk so that I remember that there were 3,000, at least, silenced voices, those that were called upon to do their job decided that our lives were not worth saving.
Farai Chideya:
And you're talking about the lack of cooperation by US agencies, et cetera, to help the people of San Juan and of Puerto Rico?
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
Yes. And directed, of course, by then President Trump. First of all, the San Juan and the Puerto Rico that I knew and loved are there no more. We changed overnight. The world starts counting from Maria, which is September 20th, but September 6th, 14 days before it's-
Farai Chideya:
It's 2017 when this happened.
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
Yes, 2017. So, September 6th, it's Irma. That was like the Mohamed Ali of hurricanes. Right hand, left hand. We had not even gotten rid of everything from Irma when here comes Maria and just wipes our electrical system completely off. And you don't have electricity in many places in Puerto Rico, you don't have water. So, you have two essential things wiped out completely.
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
As it happens in any crisis, all of the inequalities and all of the differences between the ones that have and have not start surfacing and are there in 3D for everyone to see. It is mentioned that Puerto Rico lost about 30 million trees. And I once said, "We will not be able to hide our discrimination and our inequality behind palm trees and pina coladas," meaning, even nature decided, "No, no, no. I'm not gonna cover this poor neighborhood underneath the bridge with beautiful flowers. You're going to see it raw as it was."
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
So, my immediate goal was to save lives, no matter at what cost, no matter the political implication. It was to tell the truth of what was going on, it was to speak up and not become complicit to a narrative that told the world that this is a good news story.
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
I'm amazed at the job we've done in Puerto Rico while I was seeing people dying, pulling people from rubble, seeing people take their last breath. It changed me as a human completely, and as a mayor, it made me laser focus on one thing, saving lives.
Farai Chideya:
And you were out there in your waiters, in all sorts of water up to your waist, you were out there with people.
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
I moved to the largest shelter in Puerto Rico, which was in San Juan, and I lived there for three and a half months, because I figured I'm no better than anyone else. And if I'm there, I will make sure that people's needs are taken care of.
Farai Chideya:
Right.
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
When there's no communication, there are decisions that are life and death that have to be made right on the spot. And not everyone wants to make those decisions, because, and you have to forgive me if my voice starts cracking up a bit, when you are in a situation like that, every decision that you make takes resources away from other people. So, you know that if you decide to do something, you will not get somewhere else perhaps early enough. And I can guarantee you, it is not the smiles of the people that we've saved that stay with you, it is the silence of those that you do not get to. And every day I asked God to let them know that it was that we couldn't get to them, not that we did not want to get to them.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah.
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
That is a burden that I don't wish on people to carry.
Farai Chideya:
When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, there was a lot of very disturbing value signaling, like, "Oh, they need to take care of themselves," essentially. How did you deal with what could be called the abandonment of the whole island?
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
Well, Puerto Rico has a complicated relationship with the United States. There are Puerto Ricans that feel like second class citizens, which we undoubtedly are. And nowhere was it seen more when the neglect killed the Puerto Rican people. You can kill people with a gun or you can kill them with neglect. I even pleaded and begged the president at the time, and of course, the response was, "You're an island surrounded by water, lots and lots of water, ocean water, and that's why it takes so long for aid to get there."
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
No, that's not why it took so long. It took so long because we're people of Color, we are a colony, and for that particular Commander in Chief, our lives were expendable. And it took me about five months for a reporter to ask me, "Why do you think this happened," it took me about five months to say, "Because of racism." Because I just did not want to believe that people would go so far as to let others die because of who they were.
Farai Chideya:
Well, we will certainly continue to track how people like you who are so instrumental to the future of Puerto Rico are helping to give us an understanding of the road ahead. And I thank you for talking to us.
Carmen Yulin Cruz:
I am humbled, really. Thank you for being a platform for so many voices.
Farai Chideya:
That was the former mayor of San Juan Puerto Rico, Carmen Yulin Cruz, on what it took to guide her people through the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Coming up next, our weekly round-table Sipping the Political Tea talks ballot security with Kim Wehle, a law professor and advisor at Protect Democracy, and Tammy Patrick, a senior advisor to the elections program at Democracy Fund. You're listening to Our Body Politic.
Farai Chideya:
This week on Sipping the Political Tea we're going to take a look at election security. Midterm Elections Day November 8th will be here before we know it, but in addition to trying to persuade us who to vote for, some people are wrangling over whether the vote is secure.
Farai Chideya:
Here to talk about that with us this week is Kim Wehle, visiting professor of law at American University, author of several books, including What You Need To Know About Voting and Why, and an advisor at Protect Democracy. We also have Tammy Patrick, a senior advisor to the elections program at Democracy Fund. So, welcome back, Kim.
Kim Wehle:
Thanks for having me, Farai.
Farai Chideya:
And Tammy, welcome to the show.
Tammy Patrick:
Oh, it's wonderful to be here.
Farai Chideya:
So, this week we're going to dig into election security. A recent Washington Post poll of likely voters shows a deep divide between Republicans and Democrats. Many Republican candidates would not say whether they will accept election results after the ballots are counted. Tammy, the 2016 Presidential Election comes to mind.
Farai Chideya:
Despite winning the popular vote, Hillary Clinton did not win the electoral college and Donald Trump became president, and that's pretty much what our government is designed to do. So, what do you think will happen if candidates refuse to concede and except results that are not in their favor, whether at the presidential level or any other?
Tammy Patrick:
So, you've mentioned the 2016 election, and I think that the 2016 election was particularly interesting and a real shift in the narrative for another reason, and that is because the candidate who won cast aspersions on the legitimacy of the election. So, that really changed the sights on how our candidates accept either the defeat or the victory, and it is happening up and down the ticket.
Tammy Patrick:
What we know from the last few years is that in the public square, in the minds and hearts of voters, it is incredibly important that those who lose do so gracefully, graciously, and move onward to fight another day, but that's not what we're seeing.
Farai Chideya:
I want to talk about another Republican representative, Liz Cheney, of Wyoming. She lost her primary to a Trump-backed challenger. It was expected. And here's what she had to say at the Texas Tribune Festival.
Liz Cheney:
I think that Donald Trump, he's the only president in American history who refused to guarantee a peaceful transition of power. Now, the fact that my party has refused, in the months since then, to stand up to him, I think does tell you how sick the party is.
Farai Chideya:
Now, there are a number of political books coming out this fall talking about wrangling over the impeachment of Donald Trump and how it divided both Democrats and Republicans in terms of their own strategies. And I think, to a different election cycle, Tammy, the 2000 campaign, it came down to hundreds of votes in Florida, Al Gore gracefully conceded. And in that climate, this may not happen. Florida lacked a standardized procedure for recounting in a close election. Do we know what's changed in Florida and nationally when it comes to recounts?
Tammy Patrick:
So, the 2000 election really changed the way that election administration occurs in this country. The Help America Vote Act was passed a couple of years after the fact and solidified a lot of institutional procedures and processes around how our elections are conducted, how our voting systems are tested, standards for our voting equipment, the right to a provisional ballot, a number of things that were codified at that time.
Tammy Patrick:
So, in the last 20 years almost at this point, there has been a shift in how elections are administered. Every state has some mechanism in place. If someone believes that the election was in fact incorrect, if there's evidence of criminal activity or actual fraud that affected the outcome of the election, they have that recourse in court. And that's what we have seen is that when there are challenges and questions, it's brought before the courts and then there's a determination that is made.
Tammy Patrick:
But unfortunately, since the last presidential election, it doesn't seem to matter what the court decisions come down to, it doesn't seem to matter what conspiracies are debunked, it doesn't seem to matter, to some of our fellow citizens, what the truth of the matter is because there's a continual drum beat to keep them, I often say, engaged, enraged, and donating. There's a lot of money to be had and to be made in this moment and there are many people capitalizing on it.
Tammy Patrick:
But we have seen, on both sides of the aisle, questions raised around the legitimacy of our elections, and 2020, as Chris Krebs often has been quoted as saying, was the most secure election we've ever seen, but I also would move to say that it was the most transparent, the most observed, the most litigated, the most audited. The question will be whether or not the voters accept the outcomes and whether or not our leaders, whether they win or lose on the ballot, accept the outcome as well.
Farai Chideya:
And Kim, you've written a number of explanatory books about the law. One of them is What You Need to Know About Voting and Why, and how do you make sense of the mechanisms and safeguards that can reassure voters that election outcomes are accurate when some people, including some politicians, seem to be bent on saying, "No, no, it's just not fair," no matter what the outcome is.
Kim Wehle:
Listen, there are so many distortions, as Tammy indicated, in this entire process. The way law works is around incentives and disincentives. It's a crime to vote illegally in elections across the country, and people have been prosecuted and go to jail for that in addition to all of the auditing mechanisms that are in place to ensure safe and fair elections, in addition to the fact that it takes thousands and thousands of volunteers to make elections work.
Kim Wehle:
These are not people that are politicians seeking to gain power or to get one party in power over another. These are our friends, our neighbors, our teachers, our religious leaders, these are regular people. They are not engaging in fraud. But it does tap into a much bigger problem, Farai.
Farai Chideya:
I can't help but think about Shay Moss who testified before the House Select Committee, Black elections worker whose life was threatened, and her grandmother's as well, by people who thought that the election was stolen.
Kim Wehle:
This is a problem across the country. Now, if you're want to do a patriotic thing, the sacred task of making elections work, are you going to be accused of fraud, are you going to be harassed? For those two women, this came from the President of the United States. There's a direct line between what's going on here and the broader structure of our democracy.
Kim Wehle:
The Constitution is not self-executing. It's only a piece of paper. It only works if we believe in its legitimacy and if it can be enforced through the courts. But what we're talking about here, this idea of pretending that elections are fraudulent, what this potentially foretells is, politicians in power then get to dictate who is the legitimate winner by virtue of propaganda. If it's not going to be based on accurate facts because attack that legitimacy, then people in power get to decide. That's no longer a democracy, and that's really the problem that we're talking about here.
Farai Chideya:
You are listening to Sipping the Political Tea on our Body Politic. I am Farai Chideya. This week we're doing a special round-table on election security with Kimberly Wehle, visiting professor of law at American University, and she's also with the organization, Protect Democracy, and Tammy Patrick of Democracy Fund. Tammy, you have had some deep experience around governance in Arizona. Can you tell us a bit about your previous work in Arizona, which has become a hotbed of some of these contentions about voter fraud as well?
Tammy Patrick:
Yeah. So, about 20 years ago I was concerned about the state of democracy in the United States. I didn't understand it as well as I felt I should. So, I left my corporate job and went to work for the County, hiring 8,000 poll workers to serve their community in conducting the election. And I served in Maricopa County as the federal compliance officer. And what I quickly learned 20 years ago is that our elections are full of checks and balances, of nonpartisan and bipartisan observers, to ensure that when that final declaration of the official results are done, that it is in fact reflective of the will of the people.
Tammy Patrick:
When it comes down to the core values of making sure eligible citizens have the right to access to the ballot and that those ballots are correctly and accurately counted and the correct winner is announced and put into office, that is the basic tenet that all election officials, whether they're a poll worker, a Secretary of State, or a county supervisor, auditor, recorder, registrar, auditor, whatever title they go by, they all take an oath of office, they all swear to defend the Constitution and the laws of both their state and this nation and to protect the voters.
Tammy Patrick:
Now, what we've seen is that those are the very same individuals, whether they're poll workers or state or local election officials, who are under attack in this moment, because far too many of our fellow citizens have believed the narrative that the 2020 election was stolen, that it was not legitimate, and we know that that is not true. But unfortunately, that continues to play out.
Tammy Patrick:
My former colleagues receive death threats, their children are followed on the way to school, they're being harassed and hared. Every election office in this country pretty much is now being inundated with FOIA requests to retain election materials from 2020, which are normally destroyed after two years. They are inundated.
Farai Chideya:
Kim, what are we relying on to stabilize or better the situation we're in, which is widespread distrust among the significant minority of the population that really seems to have no faith in the process? How does this pivot? What are you looking to to turn the ship?
Kim Wehle:
That's a really hard question, Farai, because the Supreme Court has said recently in the Dobbs decision overruling Roe vs Wade that if something's not expressed in the Constitution, it's in jeopardy. People have talked about gay marriage and contraception, but there's a whole litany of constitutional rights that we enjoy that aren't expressed. They're implied in the Constitution. And the court for decades has said, "Listen, the right to vote is the fulcrum, it's the centerpiece of democracy."
Kim Wehle:
The framers couldn't really agree on language, and they essentially said in the elections clause, two things, one, the power to regulate elections goes to states, however, the Federal Government, through Congress, can regulate federal elections. And there's an important case on the court's docket this year called Moore vs Harper, where they've picked up one of these fringe theories that failed in the 60-plus cases that the Trump team brought to try to challenge the 2020 presidential election results.
Kim Wehle:
And essentially it's reading the text of the Constitution as giving state legislatures exclusive authority to decide election outcomes through that regulatory authority saying, "Listen, state constitution, state judges, any other source of law, it doesn't count. It's gerrymandered state legislature." So, unfortunately, I'm becoming less and less sanguine that there's a clear outcome unless more of our rights that we take for granted as Americans, the ability to make decisions about our healthcare, reproductive healthcare is number one, more of those start to go and people feel the pinch of how important it is to actually protect our democratic right to decide for ourselves.
Kim Wehle:
And this midterm is absolutely vital to whether democracy itself will survive. But if the House of Representatives goes to Republican control, and there's so many election deniers in that caucus, January 6th Committee will end, that process will end, and there are is going to be a tax on the legitimacy of our current president, Joe Biden, probably through impeachment hearing.
Kim Wehle:
So, a lot of strikes against American democracy in this moment and voting, but we've survived worse. And I have to think the American spirit and their desire for true liberty will ring true in the end, but it takes these conversations and people who are listening, who believe in democracy, to start being conscious about this and actually putting this at the top of the list of things that are priorities in their lives to try to sway public opinion back towards the freedoms that are protected through the right to vote.
Farai Chideya:
Tammy, there are a huge number of election officials who are just quitting their jobs and just saying, "I'm not gonna risk my life for a job that isn't even a full-time job where I get paid almost nothing, and I was doing this out of my faith in the system, but the system's not gonna protect me." You also have a different type of violence, which is the digital violence of cyber crime, Russian interference in our elections, other state actors, and, of course, US cyber actors and disinformation. How do we deal with those threats as well?
Tammy Patrick:
So, since the 2016 election, elections were declared critical infrastructure, and there was a real focus on securing the cyber security of our election systems. So, we know that there are foreign adversaries and foreign actors around the globe who at this moment are amplifying and leveraging this domestic strife and using it to further divide the American electorate amongst ourselves. So, quite frankly, they're sitting back with glee as we battle it out internally around some of these issues.
Tammy Patrick:
People are throwing up their hands and disgust because they feel like they are disempowered in this moment. But I would plead with everyone who's listening, that in this moment we have to recognize the power that voters continue to hold in this country, the power of voters to turn out in a global pandemic in 2020 against insurmountable odds, really, are why we were able to survive as a democracy and we need them to turn out in this moment as well.
Tammy Patrick:
We need to make sure that people are voting for candidates that support free and fair elections, that support funding our election infrastructure as well, because you're absolutely right, our elections are underfunded, they're under-resourced, and they're overworked and overwrought. And just realize that you need to ensure that the candidates that you're voting for represent your values and want your vote to count, because at the end of the day, we have candidates running who don't, in fact, believe in free and fair elections.
Farai Chideya:
Well, we're going to have to wrap it up there. Thank you so much, Tammy.
Tammy Patrick:
Thank you for having me.
Farai Chideya:
And thank you, Kim.
Kim Wehle:
Always a pleasure, Farai. Thanks for having me.
Farai Chideya:
That was Kim Wehle of Protect Democracy. She's also a visiting professor of law at American University, and Tammy Patrick, senior advisor to the elections program at Democracy Fund. We're partnering with URL Media to report on your questions ahead of the 2022 Midterm Elections, which take place on November 8th.
Farai Chideya:
Midterms tend to get less turnout than presidential years, but the politicians running for Congress, Senate, Governor and Local Office, have a massive influence over our lives. So, we are gathering questions from you so that we can answer them with reporters from the URL Media family. What do you want to know about how politics are impacting your life and or community right now?
Farai Chideya:
You can respond to us on Instagram or Twitter at Our Body Politic to find our submission form and leave your question there. You can also call us at (929) 353-7006. That's (929) 353-7006.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week -- and everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Farai Chideya:
Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms. I'm host and executive producer, Farai Chideya. Nina Spensley is also executive producer. Bianca Martin is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister and Traci Caldwell are our booking producers. Anoa Changa, Emily J. Daly and Steve Lack are our producers. Natyna Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers. Kelsey Kudak is our fact checker.
Farai Chideya:
Production and editing services are by Clean Cuts at Three Seas. Today's episode was produced with the help of Lauren Schild and engineered by Carter Martin and Archie Moore.
Farai Chideya:
This program is produced with support from the Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, The Harnisch Foundation, Compton Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the BMe Community, Katie McGrath & JJ Abrams Family Foundation, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.