Republicans Are Setting Off a Doom Loop for Democracy
About this episode
Voting-rights reporter Ari Berman describes a Republican doom loop for democracy: after 2020, dozens of states enacted laws restricting ballot access, powered by false claims of fraud, allowing a party that loses popular votes to entrench power by shaping the electorate. He warns of gerrymandering and, most alarmingly, state-legislature moves that could let officials subvert future election results. Drawing on his book Give Us the Ballot, he places this in the longer history of voting-rights struggles and assesses the odds for federal fixes — the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act — arguing democracy's fate hinges on whether national protections arrive before state-level restrictions harden into permanent minority rule.