Excerpts
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the Supreme Court decision not to hear cases on gay marriage bans, criticism for the government’s handling of and response to the Ebola epidemic, plus a tribute to former White House press secretary and gun control activist James Brady.
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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Just quickly, one other issue the court rule on, or made itself — declared itself on this week, Mark, was voter identification. They basically said that they blocked — they blocked a tighter voter I.D. law in the state of Wisconsin.
So are we — do you have a sense that this makes a difference, that other states will be reluctant to pass these laws because of what the court does?
MARK SHIELDS: I’m not sure. This is such an aberration from American history, if you think of it. Only white male property owners over the age of 21 could vote when this country began. It eventually expanded to all males and even nonwhites and then eventually to women.
And, you know, then in 1965, Judy, the Voting Rights Act came and said that the federal government has a responsibility to make sure that everybody can vote. And 96 percent of Republican senators voted for the Voting Rights Act, only 73 percent of Democrats.
I mean, it was a great Lincoln issue. And what happened in 2010, when the Republicans swept all these statehouses and state legislatures, they did two things in shorthand. They made it easier to buy a gun and tougher to vote. And this week, the Government Accountability Office, nonpartisan research, found that, in a study of voter I.D. laws, that it actually lowered the turnout in Tennessee and Kansas, two states studied, among minority voters and younger voters.
And I hate to say it, but that was the objective of those people who pushed it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What effect do you see on the…
(CROSSTALK)
DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I confess I was persuaded by that study.
I had assumed, looking especially at the national election results, that it had this backfiring effect, that the voter I.D. laws had so mobilized especially African-American voters that they had swamped, that it was actually harmful. And I think a lot of people believed that after the 2012 — or 2012, 2008 election.
But the GAO support — study suggests that it actually did suppress votes. The other thing the GAO study said, which I think is the key to a lot of this — and I oppose these laws — is that the assertion that there’s a lot of fraud out there is just not true. There’s scattered fraud. But the idea that there is systemic fraud that you need the picture I.D.s to combat is just not out there.
Nobody has ever been able to find it. And so it does lead to the worst assertions of why the people — these laws are being passed.
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