Who Gets to Vote?

The episode confronts a growing national crisis: the weaponization of voter integrity claims to justify sweeping changes to election systems that disproportionately disenfranchise eligible voters. Sophia Lynn Lakin, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, dismantles the myth of widespread non-citizen voting with data showing no substantial evidence—instead highlighting that the real problem is low citizen turnout. She exposes how the federal government’s push for unredacted voter rolls and new documentation requirements for registration are not about fraud, but about creating barriers, particularly for immigrants, women with name changes, and low-income voters. These policies, she argues, function as modern poll taxes. The episode also reveals how states are using flawed data matching to purge voter rolls, risking the disenfranchisement of thousands through name-based errors. On ballot counting, Lakin defends mail-in voting and challenges states that reject ballots over minor, non-material errors—like incorrect dates on envelopes—under the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s Materiality Provision. Finally, she warns that the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act could dismantle decades of progress in ensuring minority communities have fair representation, replacing race-conscious redistricting with a so-called 'colorblind' framework that ignores political reality and deepens racial inequity in governance.