Colorlines/The Nation (Voting Rights Watch 2012) interviewed me about my new book. Here’s the beginning of Brentin Mock’s interview:
I spoke with Richard Hasen, a University of California, Irvine, election law scholar, while 10 Pennsylvania residents were arguing in court that the state’s new voter ID law will disenfranchise them and hundreds of thousands more. In that talk, Hasen said, “Pennsylvania looks like it really doesn’t have its act together, and if that law goes into place it could actually have a significant effect on turnout.” But neither of us really though that would happen, mostly because the hearing seemed to make Hasen’s point so clearly. Less than a week later, a Pennsylvania judge proved us wrong when he refused to block the law.
On Hasen’s election law blog, which is widely read by journalists and academics alike, he wrote he was “surprised by the ruling.” To understand his bewilderment, you may want to pick up his recently released book “The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown,” which details hyper-partisan battles around election reform over the past 12 years that have culminated in courtroom showdowns such as those in Pennsylvania and Texas.
In “The Voting Wars,” Hasen argues that parties involved in election reform issues fall into one of two camps: one focused on eliminating voter fraud, no matter how little of it exists, and the other focused on expanding voter access—the former occupied by conservatives and the latter by progressives. In our talk, we unpacked what that means along racial lines, specifically around purging, ACORN and the Voting Rights Act.
Before “The Voting Wars” you developed a reputation for pissing off both the left and right for issuing critiques on both sides of ballot reform issues. Are they equally at fault?
