♪♪ >> Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today, is it getting harder to vote as a black person in America?

In the 2012 presidential election, black voter turnout surged to 67%.

But by 2020, it dropped to 63.

Much of that decline was probably due to an enthusiasm gap because Barack Obama was no longer on the ticket.

But some experts fear that new restrictive voting laws, primarily from Republican state legislatures, will only drive that number further down.

Are these new laws really about making it harder to vote, as many progressive activists argue or are they about making it safer to vote as many Republicans claim?

I'm joined today by syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page.

He actually once won a Pulitzer covering voter fraud.

Then, with President Biden promising to elect the first black woman to the Supreme Court, we take a quick look at the history of black women on the bench.

Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

>> Call me Slim Jong-un.

>> But first a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> Question time for you.

How many suds are in a bar of soap?

How many seeds are in a cucumber?

How many jelly beans fit into a glass jar?

You don't know.

That's the point.

Until 1965, black people across the Jim Crow South encountered unanswerable questions, including the ones I just mentioned from registrars at polling places where they tried to vote.

Now, the tendency was for white voters to somehow answer those questions right and for black voters to get them wrong.

Then there was the so-called literacy tests.

Take question 48 from this 1965 Alabama test, which asked "how many votes must a person receive in order to become president if the election is decided by the U.S. House of Representatives?"

Remember, there was no Google back in 1965.

Or take question 27 from this 1964 Louisiana test.

"Write right from left to right as you see it spelled here."

That seems confusing.

And there was little time for befuddlement because the test, which could include upwards of 70 questions, usually had a 10-minute time limit.

A single wrong answer meant a failing grade.

After mounting pressure from civil rights leaders, Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which banned literacy tests like these and other forms of overt voter suppression.

But in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the act that required federal oversight for states with a history of racial discrimination.

Such discrimination, Chief Justice John Roberts argued, was a thing of the past.

Voting rights activists and progressive leaders warned that without Justice Department oversight, dozens of states would roll out increasingly restrictive voting laws targeted at minority groups.

Former President Barack Obama made just this point in his eulogy to the late civil rights hero John Lewis back in 2020.

>> We may no longer have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to cast a ballot.

But even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darndest to discourage people from voting.

>> And while I haven't always agreed with President Obama, there is no denying that some states are trying to make it harder to vote, particularly relative to 2020, when states went through an unusual historic expansion in voting access due to the pandemic.

In 2021 alone, 19 states, mostly Republican-led, enacted 34 laws to restrict voting by bolstering voter ID laws, eliminating polling places, rolling back mail-in voting, and even banning the distribution of water bottles to voters waiting in line.

But things aren't always so black and white, or really blue and red.

For instance, a typically conservative state like Georgia has actually been ahead of deep blue New York in some laws that provide access, such as expansive early voting and no-excuse absentee ballots.

There are, in short, many reasons why black and minority voters turn out in smaller numbers, and they don't all have to do with restrictive voting laws.

But despite record overall turnout in the 2020 election, the racial gap in the U.S. has persisted, with 71% of white voters casting ballots compared to 63% of black voters.

Progressive leaders worry that new voting laws will only widen that gap.

Republicans would say that they're not trying to make voting harder.

They're trying to make it safer by preventing voter fraud.

The problem with that argument and with President Trump's big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, is that there's simply no evidence of widespread election fraud in American elections.

The upcoming 2022 midterms will be the first major test of these new voting laws.

Congressional Democrats are desperate to pass a new federal voting rights bill before Election Day, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, that would reverse that 2013 Supreme Court decision I just mentioned.

But it won't make it out of the Senate.

When did protecting voting become so political?

And how much will these new voting laws affect black turnout in the 2022 midterms?

I'm joined by syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page.

Clarence Page, thanks so much for joining us today.

>> Well, thank you for having me.

>> So I want to start, of course, with the Voting Rights Act.

And I mean, I've seen that it's been functionally blocked by all of the Republicans and indirectly, I guess, by both senators Sinema and Manchin.

You support it.

You've said it's very important that we get this done for American democracy and for enfranchisement.

Walk us through what it is and why it's so important.

>> Well, the Voting Rights Act is important.

Well, for one thing, for me personally, I was coming out of high school when that Voting Rights Act was passed a year after the Civil Rights Act, and it changed the lives of black folks and the rest of Americans.

And the Voting Rights Act was necessary because the Jim Crow regime had virtually taken away the right to vote for black folks across the South.

And it was a very important decision the Supreme Court made a few years ago by taking away the right to preclearance from that act.

That's an important word.

What it means is that the folks in the affected states, mainly the old Confederate states, were not able to make changes in their voting laws and regulations without preclearance by the courts.

By lifting that, Justice Roberts' court -- that any future complaints would have to wait until after an election, not before an election.

Justice Roberts said that he thought after almost a century, there was enough reform, enough changes that come about in race relations that we didn't need it anymore.

>> Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the five-member majority, said the law originally distinguished between states that had used barriers to minority voting and had low voter turnout and those that had not.

But he wrote... >> And that's really a big bone of contention that has motivated a lot of folks to push for restoring that preclearance provision in the law.

And that's what the John Lewis Voting Rights Act was -- He was instrumental in getting that passed -- you know, Selma and those protests in the South were all about voting rights, so that's a big reason why his name is on the bill.

>> Now, is your argument that actually we are slipping backwards in terms of the ability of black Americans in the country to exercise their right to vote?

>> Unfortunately, that appears to be the case.

We certainly see a lot of the old tricks that were put together during the Reconstruction period that can affect election outcomes.

Now, that is another bone of contention.

A number of people say, well, research shows that even when these various measures are taken that appear to be racially loaded, for example, not just the voter I.D., but also the polling places -- where they're located -- the ability to vote by mail, all of these conveniences, if you will, tend to have an impact on the ability of a lot of people to vote.

And I think the preponderance of evidence shows that the Republicans tend to benefit from making it harder to vote.

That's a general statement.

But in general, though, the thrust of what Republicans are after would make it harder for people to vote.

Democrats want to make it easier.

Now, some folks on the other side say that making it that easy opens you up to possibility of fraud, and voter fraud, as we've seen, has been greatly exaggerated as far as the actual occurrences of it.

We have had a big debate going on as to whether or not every measure should be taken to avoid fraud, and now that debasement further muddied by the insistence by President Trump's campaign that there was rampant fraud.

And now I think we're getting right at the heart of what democracy is all about when we're at loggerheads over who should be allowed to vote and who shouldn't.

>> Well, when you're fighting more about how the election is held and who gets to vote than who you're voting for, that is obviously a pretty flashing red sign, warning sign that your democracy has some problems.

>> I would say you're right and it strikes right at the heart of what we are supposed to be about as Americans.

Already we can see as well is this going beyond the John Lewis Act?

But when you've got various lawsuits around the country and various actions at the state level going back really to the '90s, there was a concerted effort by Republicans -- And this is not a bad thing to go out at the grassroots, organize people, run candidates for county races and school boards.

That's a fine thing on paper.

What it means, though, is you can get a strategic advantage insofar as the way electoral votes are counted, maps and the redistricting that will decide the electoral vote.

About two thirds of the legislatures around the country are controlled by Republicans, either the House or the Senate side or both.

And in those states where there was a really close election this last time where we've seen real concerted efforts being made to -- for no better word I can use than "rig" -- but we certainly have allegations of elections being rigged so that they will tilt in favor of the Republicans.

>> So if the John Lewis Act were to pass and again, I know it does not look like it will at this point, how meaningful a change, how meaningful a guardrail would that present in terms of ensuring that American elections going forward would not be subject to effective claims of, you know, of rigging or dual certification, all this kind of problems that we have?

>> We're going to have disputes of that sort regardless of what is done.

It fits a master plan without sounding too conspiratorial, but I guess there's no other way to describe it.

It fits in with a master plan of making it easier for national Republicans to have an impact on future presidential races.

And we saw this last time.

It was very close, and electoral votes that turned up in Georgia turned out to be decisive and that was good.

Georgia's current situation is the result of past reforms that enable more black voters to get to the polls.

But at the same time, they're already making some changes.

They're debating in Georgia about further changes to the law that will enable the legislature to decide the electoral votes if there is a dispute in the count.

The sort of thing that President Trump's people were trying to push in this past election will actually be easier to accomplish.

>> So then all that matters is which party is in charge of the legislature really?

>> Well, yeah, somebody -- maybe it was Stalin said that it's not who who casts the vote, but who counts them.

You ever heard that before?

>> Oh, sure.

Of course.

You don't want elections to go the route of impeachment, right?

Impeachment has become completely broken.

It's purely a political tool because it doesn't matter what the charges are.

It only matters whether it's Democrat or Republican that's being -- that the charges are being levied against and whether they control or not the House and the Senate.

And what you're saying is that in state legislatures, we increasingly see some trends towards that type of behavior for elections.

>> I can go back to 1876, to the end of Reconstruction, when there was a disputed national election where the vote did come to Washington, was heading toward the House of Representatives, which is what the Constitution says they get to decide in such cases, and each state gets one vote, regardless of the proportion of votes that were cast for each party.

And that didn't get that far because they had the grand compromise, which essentially ended Reconstruction, the Hayes-Tilden compromise.

The North agreed to pull Union troops out of the South.

And believe me, as an African-American with Alabama roots, that was the end of my family's ability to vote essentially until I was in high school.

>> No, a broken election basically led to Jim Crow.

Basically prevented blacks in the South from experiencing liberty for generations.

>> That's exactly right.

And since we're not speaking in a public school in Virginia and a number of other states that are banning critical race theory, we can talk freely about this is a bold example of how history and the slavery period and the laws that came out of that period, including the Electoral College, this is the legacy of those days, and that's part of the big argument now.

Are we going to get rid of these last vestiges of discrimination from the Jim Crow era?

>> Clarence, I mean, with due difference, I mean, I don't think we're talking about critical race theory here.

I just think we're talking about American history.

>> Well, thank you.

Critical race theory was a bogus issue, in my view, and a lot of other people, but it was very influential in getting the Republican governor elected there.

And one of his first promises now is to get critical race theory out of the schools, which isn't even in the schools.

But anything that looks like critical race theory, which means black history, or, as they put it, anything that makes white children feel bad, which is not accurate either.

But that is -- That danger is what motivated a lot of voters and particularly motivated a lot of voters to want to get rid of critical race theory.

>> I will do everything I possibly can to fight to the bitter end until you prove to me that you are not teaching my children that they are racist just because they're white.

>> I mean, is that what it feels like to you?

Does it feel like they want to just take black history in the United States out of the schools in Virginia?

>> Yeah, and I'm not anti-Republican, I should point out.

In fact, my newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, helped to sponsor a young Illinois candidate for president named Abraham Lincoln.

And we've been very proud of that tradition and I'm familiar with that history back then, and I find it very ironic that I'm reliving part of that history now.

It hasn't ended.

>> Yeah.

I mean, look, I was traumatized by "Moby Dick" in high school, but it doesn't stop me from going to Nantucket.

I feel like there are too many knickers in a twist around issues that don't really exist.

We need our kids to just learn basic issues of our country's history.

How can they be citizens, effective citizens and effective voters if they don't know where our country came from?

It just doesn't make any sense to me.

>> Well, that's exactly right.

You know, we talk about being a democracy or a democratic republic, whichever you prefer.

But what does that really mean?

To too many of our young people, history is just something that they have to get a grade in so they can move on.

I confess I was like that too a lot as a kid, but over time I learned to appreciate history more and more, and I especially appreciate it right now when I think about how can we preserve the good things about this democratic republic that came out and are a model to the world as far as democratic rule is concerned?

And we're fighting these old battles again.

>> I want to ask you a couple of quick questions.

President Biden now can appoint a Supreme Court justice, and he has said it will be a black woman.

Now, of course, that makes history.

But of course, that's also very specific and means that nobody else is being considered for that position.

What do you think about that?

>> Well, it's not the first time.

Ronald Reagan said back when he was running for president in 1980 and was losing too much of the women's vote.

He came out and said that one of his first choices for Supreme Court would be a woman.

And it turned out that came true -- Sandra Day O'Conner.

And Joe Biden says right up front he wants to appoint a black woman, and he's been bashed by the usual sources -- Fox News, et cetera.

I argued back that Biden isn't saying that just being black is enough or just being a woman is enough.

They got to be qualified first.

Three names that have come forth at the top of Biden's short list are all qualified.

>> At this point, it seems quite likely that whoever President Biden nominates will get confirmed, maybe even with a few Republican votes.

>> But it's too bad that they can be stigmatized now by the thought that they got their job because of their race.

>> No, it's clearly just red meat in terms of identity politics.

And so that was why I raised it to you.

And one more I wanted to ask you about just before we close, which is, of course, one of the reasons we saw such high turnout among black Americans in recent elections is because Barack Obama was running and then was president, and we haven't seen a lot of Obama recently.

The American democracy has seen better days.

There's enormous polarization.

There's sort of a lack of civic leadership.

And I'm wondering if you think that Obama has been too absent, that actually the black community really needs him to be more of a leader, to be more proactive?

>> I've got a nuanced view here, Ian.

I covered Obama from the time he first began to run for the state senate and then right through his presidential campaign and his presidency.

I too wish he was more involved, but at the same time, you know, we really need some fresh blood.

We need some new blood.

Look at the age of our president now, Nancy Pelosi and various other leaders, Republican and Democrat.

There is a younger generation that's itching to come forth and be more involved, some great talent.

I want to see them get out there, get more actively involved in helping to generate the next generation, like the Republicans decided to do back in the '90s.

Now it's paying off for them.

>> Clarence Page, thanks so much for joining me today.

>> Thank you, Ian.

Appreciate it.

♪♪ >> With Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announcing his retirement, President Biden has vowed to make good on a longstanding promise about who he is going to nominate to fill that seat.

>> And that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.

It's long overdue, in my view.

>> There are already a handful of names swirling around the Beltway and plenty of speculation about whether they can get through the Senate confirmation process.

I personally am not that concerned about it.

But let's take a moment to look back rather than ahead at the short history of Black women on the bench in America.

Jane Bolin was the first black woman to graduate Yale Law School in 1931 and the first black woman judge in the United States, becoming a New York state judge at the age of 31 in 1939.

For 20 years, she was the only black female judge in the country, that is until Juanita Kidd Stout, an Oklahoma music teacher turned Philadelphia lawyer, became the first black woman to serve as a judge in Pennsylvania, initially at the municipal court level then the state Supreme Court.

When lawyers pleaded for leniency for their young clients, Judge Stout would show little compassion, once snapping, "We didn't have indoor plumbing until I was 13."

But the woman best known for laying the groundwork for those who would follow was Judge Constance Baker Motley.

She was the first black woman federal judge appointed in 1966.

Motley had previously written the original complaint in Brown vs. Board of Education.

She was widely known as a desegregation architect who would inspire many lawyers and judges that came after her, no doubt including some of the black women on President Biden's short list for the next Supreme Court justice.

♪♪ And now for something completely different, where one dictator has been putting in the work for himself, not the country.

It's "Puppet Regime."

>> Look, Kim, things are heating up with the Americans.

Xi Jinping and I just want to make sure you know what you're doing.

>> Well, do you notice anything different about me?

>> Yes, you've been testing more missiles lately.

>> No, no, no.

Look.

Look at these.

>> At what?

>> What do you mean at what?

You can't take your eyes off it.

Don't you see?

>> Kim, stop it.

You're acting crazier.

>> Crazy like a missile.

Svelte, trim, tight, aerodynamic.

>> Both: What?

>> My body, guys!

Do you see how thin I've become?

>> Yes, very nice.

Look, Mr. Kim -- >> That's Mr.

Slim to you.

Call me Slim Jong-un.

Eat your heart out, skinny Mike Pompeo.

>> Mr. Kim, we need to understand your nuclear plans so we can present a united front against the -- >> My front is looking very united and chiseled lately.

I am Kim Jong-un-resistible.

>> That's enough.

Pull yourself together, Kim.

>> Okay, okay.

What was the question?

>> What exactly are your strategic plans?

>> Ah, my plans?

Well, I want to launch something tremendous, something that will shock the West and make them lose their guts, literally.

I am going to launch a massive, world-changing nuclear fitness program!

♪ And one and two ♪ ♪ And one and two ♪ [ Grunts ] ♪ Lift with your legs not with your back ♪ >> "Puppet Regime"!

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you like what you see, you know where to go.

Check us out at gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...