MONDAY
E-mail a friendTheodore Shaw
airdate January 15, 2008
Born in the year of the Brown v. Board ruling, attorney Theodore Shaw has helped lead the national discussion on affirmative action in higher education. His posts have included working in the Department of Justice, academia and, currently, head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), the nation's first civil rights law firm. Shaw has been with the LDF since '82, except for a 3-year period when he taught at the University of Michigan law school. He's also an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School.
Theodore Shaw
Tavis: Ted Shaw is director, counsel, and president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, whose work follows in the footsteps of legal giants like Thurgood Marshall, Jack Greenberg, and Elaine Jones. His recent focus has been on the strict voter ID laws on the books in my home state of Indiana. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments from opponents of these laws, which are often used to discourage people from voting. Ted Shaw joins us tonight from New York. Ted, nice to have you back on the program.
Theodore Shaw: Good to be with you, Tavis.
Tavis: Let me just start with a real elementary question. For those who've not been following this case, it is, of course, the strictest voter ID law in the country, as I said in my home state of Indiana, and so strict that the Supreme Court heard a case about it. Tell me what the law is and what all the furor is about.
Shaw: Well, the law requires anyone who votes in Indiana to show a government-issued ID - a driver's license, a passport, or some form of government-issued ID. Now for most Americans, that doesn't seem to be a big deal. Most people have driver's licenses. But there are millions of Americans who do not, and there are millions of Americans don't have any form of governmental ID.
The law was adopted strictly on partisan lines. That is to say, a straight partisan vote. And one of the most troubling things about the law is that it really is a solution in search of a problem. And what I mean by that is that Indiana cannot point to one instance of in-person voter fraud, meaning that somebody shows up at the polls, pretends to be somebody else, and votes in that person's name.
Indiana can't show that that has happened and in fact it's extremely rare anywhere in the country. It's clear that this was adopted with the expectations that there would be some people who would be fenced out of the political process, and they tend to be the most marginalized people; tend to be elderly people.
But many of them poor, Black, Brown people, and that's the concern that we have in this case, that this is a form of what a judge in Georgia in a similar factual circumstance instead of imposing a poll tax. Because as much as people may think that this is not a big deal for, a lot of people who are very poor and marginalized, it is.
Tavis: You said it's a partisan issue. I don't mean to be naïve in asking this question, but I want you to unpack it a little bit more. When you say it's a partisan issue and it was voted right along party lines, explain what you mean by that.
Shaw: Well the Republicans took over the house a couple of years ago in Indiana - the representative body that passes legislation. And when they did that they enacted this law, and all the Democrats voted against it. The Republicans voted for it. Now the organization that I lead is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization, so our concern in this isn't whether Democrats or whether Republicans win.
Our concern is that this is a law that will prevent millions of Americans who are citizens from voting. And what I mean by this is that Republicans saw a partisan advantage here and then they pursued it. So that's deeply troubling to us because of the fact that millions of Americans, if these laws are replicated around the country, and certainly many voters in Indiana, will not be able to vote.
Tavis: I was just back home in Indiana a few weeks ago and Mitch Daniels, the governor, and other Republicans who are proponents of this measure would argue that this is really about security. It's about protecting the system. You've heard the arguments - it's really about making sure that every person who stands in a voting booth is in fact an American citizen, and what's wrong with asking someone who comes to vote to show his on her ID to prove that he or she is an American citizen? What's wrong with that?
Shaw: What's wrong with it is that there is no indication that people have been showing up at the polls - not one example in Indiana - and pretending to be somebody who they are not. And what's wrong with it is that many poor and elderly people do not have a form of government ID, and in fact if faced with the hassle that it takes to get that government ID, whether it's traveling somewhere, whether it's paying the money to get that form of government ID, while it may seem unbelievable to many Americans, they can't afford it or they can't afford the time in order to accomplish that.
I'll give you one example. We have an 87-year-old African American woman in Indiana who was born in Alabama. Now she went and tried to get her birth certificate from Alabama, and she wrote to Alabama officials, and they had no record of it. They could not find it. She's voted in election after election after election.
There's no question of who she is or whether she's an American citizen. And because of this, she will not be able to vote. Indiana's reaction is, well, we can make special accommodations; they can vote absentee ballot, perhaps, do an affidavit. That's a difficult, complicated process and her vote still may not count. She wants to do what she's done throughout her adult life, which is to go to the polling place where people know her, by the way, and vote.
Tavis: How common are those examples, number one, and on the other hand, or on the flip side, is there any evidence that suggests that even though Republicans wanted to get behind this legislation and indeed did so and enacted it into law, any evidence that suggests that the Republicans get any kind of advantage from a law like this at the polls?
Shaw: Well it's clear, and there are studies that have been done, that the effect of these laws are felt disproportionately by racial minority group members, African Americans, who tend to be Democratic voters; by Latinos, who tend to be Democratic voters in many instances. So there's no question about how they perceive the impact.
Just common sense tells you that if Republicans didn't think there was an advantage, they wouldn't have done it. So they know what the impact of this is going to be, and some of the elections are so tight, as we saw in Florida in 2000, that any marginal advantage is being pursued now by the parties in trying to jockey for position in these elections.
That shouldn't be done at the cost of people's rights to vote. If you're homeless in this country, you still have a right to vote if you're an American citizen. It shouldn't depend on privilege and wealth. Just like Katrina. You think about Katrina, people thought that everybody would be able to get out, and they were surprised when they found out that some people couldn't get out.
Well, this is going to be a Katrina in the political process. Those who are left behind are the poorest, most marginalized. A lot of Americans have no idea what the effect of this is going to be. They think it's no big deal.
In terms of security, since 2000, yes, we all have to show ID in all kinds of places, but not at the cost of losing a Constitutional right to vote, which is at issue here. And we shouldn't be trading civil rights, the basic and most sacred civil rights, for security. That's a choice we don't need to make.
Tavis: With all due respect to the outstanding work that you have done and continue to do at the Legal Defense Fund, the NAACP defense fund and those who are on the staff with you, if your read is the same as mine of the hearing that took place in the Supreme Court on this matter, everyone seems to agree that the sound of that conversation, what you take from what the justices had to say, the questions they asked, is that there is, for lack of a better word, a reticence on their part to overturn this Indiana law, all your work notwithstanding. Did you read it that way?
Shaw: Well, Tavis, you're being kind. The argument that took place last week was an argument which made clear - it was clear to us that it was very unlikely that this law is going to be overturned. The court seemed poised to support it, although there is some question about whether they'll take a technical approach which may leave open some opportunity to challenge it as it is applied to individual voters as opposed to official challenge.
So no question, it's going to be an uphill fight, unlikely win, and we may be faced with how to ameliorate the effects of these laws which will certainly box some people out of the political process.
Tavis: Let me ask you a personal question, then, and for that matter a professional question. Given the work that you are so dedicated to doing, that we are very much appreciative of, when you have a Supreme Court that is stacked the way this one is, and again, to your phrase earlier, that maybe my read was a bit generous, a bit charitable, you were more frank than I was - it ain't going to be overturned, basically, is what you said.
How does that impact the work you do? How do you get up every day and continue to do the work? What's the point of coming on a TV show like this when it's clear to you that the court isn't going to overturn it? How do you stay dedicated to the proposition of raising these kinds of issues when you're met with this kind of opposition in this Supreme Court?
Shaw: Well, Tavis, we monitor judicial nominations. We opposed the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts to the Supreme Court and Justice Alito. Once they're confirmed, if we lose those battles, then we have to deal with the court as it stands. We filed another brief last week that you may want to take a look at if you're not aware of it already - you probably are - that has to do with the District of Columbia's gun control ordinance.
And we're concerned about gun violence as it affects African Americans. I get up every day because there's still work to be done, and as I tell the staff and I say publicly what I've come to deeply believe is that if you fight, you may win or lose, but if you don't fight, you can't win. So there's still a lot of important issues and a lot of fighting to be done, and we just do the best we can with what we have. And then we have to leave it up to the court and to providence.
Tavis: Well, we thank you for your work. Ted Shaw, the head of the NAACP defense fund, based there in New York. Big shoes.
Shaw: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Thurgood Marshall and Elaine Jones, others, and Ted's doing a good job there. Ted, nice to have you on, as always. We'll talk to you again soon.
Shaw: Okay, thank you, Tavis, and thank you for all you do.
Tavis: Thank you, I appreciate it.
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