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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Hope you had a good weekend. Today we begin two weeks of convention coverage on the Brian Lehrer Show and on our daily politics podcast. If you can't listen to the live show, sign up for Brian Lehrer, a daily politics podcast. By the way, tell your people around the country who may not listen to our New York radio station that we have this podcast. That's the national politics podcast, and we'll be gearing up to another level.

During these convention weeks, we will play excerpts from the major speeches and try to have interesting and informative conversations about what matters every day of the conventions and beyond. Sign up for Brian Lehrer, a daily politics podcast, wherever you get your podcasts and tell your people around the country about it, too. As the Democratic Convention kicks off today, it coincides with the 100th anniversary tomorrow of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Did you know that? That's the one that gave women the right to vote, at least on paper. In reality, it mostly gave white women the right to vote. We'll be talking about some of that history this week and the struggle for true universal suffrage through the civil rights era and through today. In fact, my first guest is among those leading the effort to maximize turnout among women of color to help get the Joe Biden, Kamala Harris ticket elected.

As a matter of political analysis, it's a big reason Hillary Clinton lost the electoral vote in 2016 even though she won the popular vote. For example, an article on the NBC news website says data from the census shows that in 2012, 66% of eligible Black voters turned out to vote. An exit poll show that they supported the Obama, Biden ticket by 87 points.

In 2016, only 59% of Black voters turned out down seven points, and exit polls show the all-white Clinton, Kane ticket carried those voters by just 81 points.

It goes on African American voters account for roughly 12% of eligible voters nationally, and they account for a substantial share of the vote in six of the seven states that Trump carried by five points or less, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. An accompanying chart shows Black turnout in Florida declined from about 60% in 2012 to about 50% in 2016.

In Wisconsin, if I'm reading this bar graph correctly, it went from nearly 80% in 2012 down into the 40s for Black turnout in 2016. Things were very different in the midterm elections in 2018 when democrats took back the house, which will this presidential election more resemble. With me now is Aimee Allison, founder of She the People dedicated to elevating the voices and power of women of color. Aimee, thanks so much for joining us again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Aimee Allison: Thanks for having me.

Brian: Before we even get to the Democratic Convention or She the People, this voter mobilization effort, can I ask if you want to share any thoughts or feelings on this hundredth anniversary week of the 19th amendments ratification for what it did accomplish and what it didn't. For how the history of that sets up your work for today, anything like that?

Aimee: Yes. I mean, I think the hundred year anniversary, the big myth was that it won universal voting rights, universal suffrage for women. That is not true. Women of color, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, and other heroes are what we call our godmothers of the current movement worked tirelessly to make the American democracy live up to its greatest promise. Yet, women of color were sidelined, asked to go to backup of the March.

Ultimately, when suffrage was won middle-class white women dressed in white and paraded down the street while Black women, Mexican-American women, Native women, Chinese women, Korean women, did not have a protected right to vote men, did not come for decades until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in the Immigration and Nationality Act. Though in a word, 100 years was really acknowledgment that suffrage has always been a struggle for women, racism has always interrupted it.

It was a step toward expanding the franchise, but it certainly didn't secure our full rights as citizens, as women of color. Being that those rights right now are being threatened in 2020, those of us in reflection need to think about how women of color have always been there for generations and yet without a racial justice analysis, we truly cannot have the kind of democracy that we need.

It set the stage for my current organizing with She the People, because women of color story is distinct from white women. The history of our struggle for voting rights has always deeply tied with the struggle for racial justice. I think when we move into 2020 in our organizing has to be informed both by gender justice, racial justice, and a sense of the fact that we are still on a journey. One step toward suffrage for some didn't guarantee universal rights for all.

Brian: Yes, certainly the protest of the last few months help to center that even more than it might have been centered. You were obviously doing this work even before the police killing of George Floyd. On Wednesday show, we'll be having historian Martha S. Jones with her book Vanguard, which I imagine you know. Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. I'm curious as you go into this turnout effort, how much you think it's a level playing field yet, even today, and how that might influence the way your group, She he People goes about its work?

Aimee: Women of color are the most likely to turn out to vote, particularly Black women. It's something in our culture where I remember my dad taking me by the hand and taking me to the polling place and said, "Look, Aimee, our people died for this right, so you'll vote every time." It becomes a significant cultural expression of patriotism in order to cast our vote, but it is also true that Black women, Asian American women and Latinas are the most targeted for voter suppression in our communities.

End up having so many difficulties. This isn't just a Trump era problem. This is something that's happened for decades. Couple that with women of color being the core and most enthusiastic base for Democrats who typically haven't looked at the group of women of color as a key voting block. Instead, a turnout universe to go a couple of weeks leading up to the election. Either, there's a lot of historical reasons why there's been so many barriers.

When we look at the election that's in just about 80 days, the same applies. Both voter suppression and the fact that women of color are the most likely to be impacted by the COVID and sickness and our communities as well as unemployment. All those things are stacked up against us and all those things we need to organize around. Essentially, we need historic voter turnout. We can't rely just on vote by mail.

We can't rely just on going to the polls where Republican secretary of states and governors have a limited the number of polling places in key swing States like Texas and Georgia and Florida. We have to have all of these strategies in order to make sure that we look at voting, not as November 3rd, but as a four-week process for women of color to be able to safely plan to vote and then have their votes counted.

Brian: How much do you see the attacks on the post office as disparate impact obstacles to enfranchisement, or is that more a universal threat?

Aimee: It's both specific and universal. We think about the role of being able to, in some States, all of the registered voters getting a vote by mail ballot and then having the option of either mailing them in or dropping them off at a location. That's given a lot more flexibility for early vote turnout efforts. In some states like Ohio and Florida, they have souls to the polls, which was typically a way for churches to organize the pews and folks to have their ballot, fill those out and then turn them in on Moss.

Now, we're seeing that's very difficult to organize. There's no in-person church services in most places. If people have that paper ballot, they have the option. For communities that are typically subject to just this voter suppression, as well as the likelihood of not even being on the voter rolls in the first place, which we saw a lot in Georgia where people were removed, not having a paper ballot limits options.

It does specifically impact communities of color and women of color, but it impacts everyone. If we have a slow post office that isn't able to deliver ballots, what we're starting to realize is that the night of November 3rd, when most of the networks are going to be calling the results of the election, that's not going to be possible. There are going to be millions and millions of very critical votes to be counted in the weeks after that.

The fight will be if those ballots that are received after are going to be counted. We're going to have very thin slim margins in some battleground states. Half a percentage point in Florida, 70,000 votes between red state of Arizona and blue. These are going to be States where the electoral college vote is going to be critical. There's where having a post office that's not functioning and slows down the ballots is going to have the biggest impact.

Brian: Later in the show, listeners, we're going to have one of those former network anchors who in normal times would be, they're calling the winner on TV on election night itself, Dan Rather, later, of CBS news. He's going to join us in the second hour of the program today and we'll get his reflections, including I'll ask Dan Rather whether the network should be a little reserved on election night on what they will tell the public that they're covering.

If we can't expect a final result necessarily on that night because of the large number of male in ballots. Listeners, my guest right now is Aimee Allison, founder of the group She the People which as you've been hearing is trying to maximize voter turnout among women of color, in particular. We can invite your calls for Aimee Allison on the phones. For this, we invite women of color to call in and give Aimee your take on why turnout was down in 2016 compared to 2012.

If you have a take on that and what you think can change that this year, that's the statistical demographic heart of what we're talking about. 646-435-7280. We're inviting you to engage with Aimee Allison here, Black women, Latinas, indigenous women, Asian American women on the question of turnout and the obstacles to turn out for 2020 or 2016 compared to 2012. If you want to look back, did you vote in 2012, but you didn't vote 2016 or anyone you know. (646) 435-7280. (646) 435-7280, if anyone wants to engage.

Aimee, let me ask you about some 2016 voting differences among Black Americans and Latinx Americans and among men and women among each, and some of the opportunities and challenges your group and the Democratic party are apparently facing. For example, according to a Pew analysis of the 2016 vote, basically, no Black women voted for Donald Trump. Their number is 98% for Clinton. The chart includes an asterisk in the Trump column indicating less than 1%. Black men, however, according to Pew gave Trump 14% of their vote. I'm curious if that's a statistic you accept. If so, if it's something you're targeting for change this year in certain ways.

Aimee: First of all, Black voters overall are overwhelmingly opposed to Donald Trump. The 98%, that sits about right, that's statistically close to 100% as you can get. When Black women say follow Black women. We saw through Donald Trump from the beginning, so did the majority of women of color. You're not going to get 100% of every single voter, but the vast majority.

I think, though, to your point about turnout, if the Democratic party in 2016 spent next to nothing two months before the election on Black voter engagement in states like Michigan, and assumed that Black voters would turn out at the same rates as 2012, when Black women voter turnout was higher than any other race and gender to reelect Barack Obama, then that assumption was part of the reason that the turnout wasn't as high.

We can also look at an all-white ticket 2016 having Kamala Harris. I can't overstate how important it is having Kamala Harris on the ticket because as we have seen that it increases voter turnout. The percentage is high even for African American men who, as you said, a percentage of them voted for Trump. The percentage for Democrats is high, but the actual number of votes wasn't as high as in 2012. That's where the issue is.

People could point to Kanye West siphoning off Black male voters. I don't think that's much of a threat. I also, it's not 2016, it's 2020. While we've experienced three and a half years of the damage and just all the terrible things that have happened to our country, with the unchecked pandemic and the unemployment crisis and the diminishing and attacking vulnerable communities. They're putting babies in jail. All the terrible things that has solidified and motivated Black voters, both men, and women, as well as, if you look at Latinas they're anti--

When we measure Latinas, for example, they are very very opposed to Trump and highly motivated to vote against him. I think we're going to see a different dynamic. The challenge is now with even more pointed threats to our ability to actually exercise our vote and get our vote counted. It becomes then even more important both on the Democratic side and on the civil rights side, that women of color are able to vote and have their vote counted.

Brian: When we look at some of the differences, I mentioned the gender difference among Black voters. Now, I'm going to throw out some numbers and I'm sure you're familiar with on the difference between Black voters and Latinx voters. According to numbers from Pew, there was no gender difference among Latinx voters in 2016 as there was among Black voters.

The number is to many people who don't know it shockingly high, 28% of Latinos and 28% of Latinas voted for Donald Trump. Of course, Trump is already running on explicit anti Latino racism in 2016 as his political centerpiece as we know. I'm curious if that's something you think can be subject to change this year and how you might try to get it to change this year.

Aimee: It's interesting because back when George Bush was president, there was a concerted effort by Republicans to reach the Latinx vote. There were funded initiatives. In 2016, there were Latinx-led voter engagement efforts funded by the Koch brothers. It seemed like Republicans were going to make serious inroads with community that-- Look, there are 32 million eligible Latinx voters this year. They're hugely influential, particularly in swing states like Texas or Arizona, Florida. It's not a monolith.

I don't think there's enough understanding of the diversity of Latinx vote. What happened in the interim in the last three and a half years is the messaging coming from Trump. The racist messaging has created a party wherein which there is very little room for diversity and certainly for the Latinx community. That's had a net impact of solidifying the anti-Trump sentiment and solidifying a stronger democratic tendency amongst Latinx voters. Latinos were always more likely to vote for Democrats, but that's even more marked now.

Brian: There was this from The Guardian over the weekend on the challenge there. However, it says a survey published last month by Voto Latino and poster Latino Decisions found that only 60% of Latino voters in six battleground states say they definitely plan to vote. Fewer than half say they are, "Extremely motivated and enthusiastic about doing so." It says though the poll was conducted before many of Trump's recent comments on immigration and the coronavirus.

It found enthusiasm for Biden waning, particularly among young Latinos. His support among Latino voters slipped to 60% from 67% in February. By comparison, 73% of Latino voters supported Hillary Clinton at this point in 2016, so more than 10-point more support for Clinton as compared to Biden at the same point in the election year. If you accept that that's measuring something real as reported in The Guardian, what do you make of those numbers, and what's the challenge there?

Aimee: This is not a function of apathy. I think this is a function of effectively engaging the largest voting block of people of color in the country and making the case. For too long, the Latinx community was looked at as unengaged. People used to use the term sleeping giant, which is absolutely not true. That was demonstrated at the power and the engagement of the Latinx community during the primary.

If you think about how engaged and powerful the vote was in the Nevada caucus, in the primary in Texas, Bernie Sanders was the example of the candidate who explicitly focused on the community and had record engagement. The short answer is it's possible, but you can't make any assumptions about any communities. We have to do our work to actually make the case and engage.

I think that we're running out of time with 80 days, but that has to be a top priority to both make sure that people are registered, make sure that the voters' rights are protected as they go to the ballot, and honestly make the case. The argument is not red or blue, it's really non-voter to voter. You have to give a reason, you have to talk about the issues, you have to talk about the economy and health care. Those are the issues that have been shown to engage not only the Latinx community, Latinas, but also Black and Asian American voters as well.

Brian: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we have a few minutes left with Aimee Allison, founder of the group She the People, dedicated primarily to turning out women of color to vote, and we invite primarily women of color to talk to her on the phone. We have time for a few phone calls as we've already run a little long just with our conversation portion.

(646) 435-7280, (646) 435-7280. Tracy in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Aimee Allison. Hi, Tracy. Tracy, are you there? Tracy, can you hear me? Let's try to come back to Tracy and go first to Butterfly in Atlantic City. Hi, you're on WNYC.

Butterfly: Hi, Brian. How are you? I'm so glad to get an opportunity to finally talk to you. It's been a long summer with you.

Brian: I'm glad you're on, I'm glad you've been listening. Hi.

Butterfly: Hi. Quickly, I feel that one of the reasons why Black women didn't vote during the 2016 election has to do with the fact that Black women feel disenfranchised and used up to project on to the community this impression that the Democratic party really cares, specifically Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton. I voted for Bill Clinton. I was 18 years old, first time I ever got an opportunity to vote. I was just enamored by his saxophone playing on the Arsenio Hall Show.

By the time I was 20 years old, I had three kids and I could not believe how my community had been disseminated by the incarceration of Black men and how Black women were left holding the ball. Now, here we are with Donald Trump and Joe Biden. I'm just not convinced that Joe Biden is the best candidate at all. I feel numb. I know that I have to make a choice, and I will because I really respect my ancestors' efforts to get us the right to vote, but I feel numb and sad that we pivoted to Joe Biden when all was said and done. Kamala Harris is like, "Okay, Black people, look, Kamala Harris."

I really think that 2020 is going to be an interesting election, and I hope that Joe Biden does really, really address what has happened to the Black community, what continues to happen to the Black community and not put it in Kamala Harris's lap to be the kumbaya queen of the Black community.

Brian: Aimee, a lot there.

Aimee: It's a lot there. We heard a lot really reflecting this sentiment. We conducted listening sessions with women of color in battleground states like Michigan and Arizona and Georgia. We heard a similar thing, which is that we don't want to be taken for granted. We want to talk about the issues and we want to support leadership that both looks like us and carries our issues, specifically around racial justice and economic justice. What I'm hearing is what I've heard from women across the country. The question is, now, how do we unify?

It's interesting because I think Kamala Harris does have a unique role to play in unifying a democratic coalition in the midst of the racist language that we've heard from the White House and other places that seek to divide. If we can come together, it's Black women that center a broader coalition of voters. I both understand the critique and the necessity of-- Even hearing in the color, "Look, Black women are going to do what we always do," which is to vote for the Democrats. I think the Democratic Party has to meet us and our issues more powerfully.

Brian: Butterfly, thank you so much for your call. Please, don't make it the last time. It comes back to the gender issue. Again, to some degree, I wonder if you think so. Jamelle Bouie wrote in his New York Times column last week, "Harris's record in the Senate has been exemplary including on the issue of social justice. If she was just being judged by this chapter of her life and not the previous, this would all be a non-issue, but of course, we know that will not be the case.

Trump believes, said it, that it is among Black men that he can shift the math a few percentage points with his focus on the economy, his own steps on criminal justice reform, and his demonizing Latin American immigrants as threats to Black prosperity. Even the odd foray by Kanye West plays into this." All of that from Jamelle Bouie's last week. Any reaction to that from a political strategist point of view?

Aimee: Yes, I agree with that analysis. Democrats can win the electoral college with an uptick and increase of 3 to 5% of women of color's vote. It is true, we're dealing with the margins. While Trump is counting on pitting one race against the other, while he's doing what you mentioned, he's also running ads in Spanish, trying to get Spanish speakers to feel bad about Kamala Harris on the ticket. I'm saying he's stoking divide because he knows that is the way that he hopes to win. It is recognizing that playbook that he's been using and unifying despite that all.

Brian: Let's try Tracy in Brooklyn again. I think we've got her now. Tracy, you're on WNYC. Hi, there.

Tracy: Hi, I'm from Brooklyn. I have three main things. One is that whatever we vote that it can be counted and not be declared and not an election that doesn't count by Trump. Congress, the Senate and the House have to make some kind of thing that the election counts, that Trump cannot say this election doesn't count because of A, B, C, D. Number two, states that are blue and can do early voting, absentee voting, and deliver their votes where they have to deliver their absentee voting to avoid the post office which is still continued to destroy.

If we can guarantee that our absentee votes will be counted if we deliver them somewhere and not say, "Oh, this is a cheat by Trump." Go to the states that are swing states and help those people. Make sure, A, they're registered to vote on time. There can be information that's given to all of us and C, help the people who get absentee votes or need to go to the polls, take them there, help them or make sure there's early voting because the board of elections, even in New York, they don't have that we can use COVID as an excuse for wanting to do absentee voting on their website right now.

I have to call Cuomo and see why that's not there yet, but the boards of elections, they're just slow time like what happened to the post office. All that can happen. We need to know that our votes can count. A, that Congress will protect this election, and B, help states that are swing states, especially the people who want to vote, can vote and help them do whatever's necessary to help them vote.

Brian: Tracy, thank you so much. Aimee, do you want to amplify that at all? I was going to ask you too. Most of our listeners at this moment are probably in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California, and those were all almost predetermined blue states. What is your group doing as a get out the vote effort focused on swing states to enable people in the determined states or the most likely predetermined states to help in other places? Is that a thing?

Aimee: Yes, it's a thing. I think just a word for those of us who live in states that people assume are blue. I live in the Bay area in Oakland, California. I will just say that there's the presidential and there's a lot of other stuff on the ballot. There's an historic number of women of color running, not only for Senate, but for Congress and down-ballot and a lot of them the political fights that we saw sharpening around the protests in the street in the wake of George Floyd's murder calling for to move resources, for example, from police departments to social services and other kinds of political battles will be fought in the city councils and the state legislature.

Those of us who live in blue states must also make sure that our communities have vote and their votes are counted. I do agree with the analysis that if you live in a blue state, it's really important to vote as early as you can. For most of us in the states that you mentioned, that's October 3rd and that week, that way you can help initiatives, turn out initiatives, do calling. I know that She the People's goal is to turn out a million women of color across seven battleground states.

We'll be organizing texting and calling into those states. There are a lot of organizations who join that effort. For me, that's the most important thing is to vote, have your own communities vote in your own state. You can join, you can go to shethepeople.org or you can follow us on Twitter. The thing about it is that this is a huge effort. We're going to need all hands on deck in order to fight voter suppression and all of the other problems to make sure that we have our folks out there voting in record numbers.

Brian: We're already over time. We have New Jersey Congressman, Bill Pascrellstanding by to come on next and do a deep dive on the post office issues and Speaker Pelosi calling Congress back for a special session on that this week and some other things, but I want to ask one other question about one other issue that emerged and hasn't gotten a lot of coverage since it came out, I think on Thursday.

I wonder from your She the People perspective, your take on this. I thought that the Trump justice department took a very political step as soon as the Biden, Harris ticket was announced to try to divide Senator Harris's heritages against each other if you will, and therefore, potential voting blocks against each other. They announced a suit against Yale university claiming racial discrimination against Asian Americans and white Americans by using race as a factor for inclusion in admissions. I'm curious how you see that move and its impact on Indian Americans, part of Kamala Harris's heritage and other Asian Americans who might otherwise vote for Democrats politically.

Aimee: Trump has unleashed another wave of birtherism, which is another way to say anti-immigrant racist attacks to try to delegitimize her leadership, which is completely ridiculous. It's something that Trump has used. He's using it--

Brian: I tried not to mention that one, by the way, to not give that oxygen, but go ahead.

Aimee: The reason I say that is that we push against the anti-immigrant racist rhetoric, but he's using that to motivate his own base. To understand what that is in terms of affirmative action, it's interesting to note that in California, there's on the ballot a statewide proposition to repeal the ban on affirmative action reinstated. It's an effort, a multiracial effort being led in part by Chinese affirmative action. There is a right-wing force in the Asian American community.

It's not the majority of people, but there is something that Trump is trying to exploit. The Yale example is the latest. The thing is to understand that, the common ground in the multiracial coalition believes in fairness and equality and opportunity, and that includes Asian Americans.

While Trump is doing everything he can to separate people and pit people against each other, because that's what he does, and that's where his power resides. What's going to be important is that we unify, determine what our common ground is. We don't have to agree at 100% of everything, but not fall for the tricks that Trump has been playing in order for us to move forward. It's going to be critical for us to reject that kind of political miss and lies and manipulations in order to come together at the ballot in November.

Brian: It's amazing that 400 years of official racial discrimination, official exclusion of Black people in particular. A little affirmative action still stokes such a backlash, but we leave that there as the last thought in this conversation with Aimee Allison, founder of She the People. Thank you so much for coming on with us as our--

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