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Steve Bannon just admitted it: Trump's ICE airport deployments are a test run — and the target is YOUR vote.
From Fulton County to Minneapolis, Marc Elias breaks down Trump's test runs ahead of the 2026 midterms, and explains what we can do to prepare.
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https://newsletters.democracydocket.com/anchor-youtube-thursday
00:00 Steve Bannon Reveals Secret Plan
01:13 Who is Steve Bannon?
02:03 The ICE "Test Case": From Airports to Polling Places
02:51 Logistical Suppression: Creating Manufactured Long Lines
04:13 Case Study: Disparate Wait Times and Georgia's Voting Barriers
07:40 The Threat of ICE Agents Checking Voter IDs
10:23 The Mission of Democracy Docket in Defending Rights
12:31 Neighborhood Disruptions and the Non-Citizen Voting Myth
16:04 Learning from the Past: Ballot Seizures and Office Raids
19:59 Expanding Tactics: Recent Ballot Seizures in California
22:17 Trump’s "Optionality": Multiple Paths for Subversion
29:56 Looking Ahead: Responding to Suppression and Calls to Action
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Donald Trump has started deploying ICE at our nation's airports.
But the question is why?
Congressional Democrats and Republicans will, they've offered a deal to put TSA back to
it.
But Donald Trump said no.
Will Steve Bannon's told us why?
It's because Donald Trump wants the ICE agents trained now so that they're ready to suppress
the vote come next November.
That's right, it's a dry run for what we have in store.
But it's not the only way that Republicans are planning to suppress and subvert the
elections this fall.
They've got a whole menu of things and they're trying them out one by one.
In this episode, we're going to cover what the Republicans are up to with ICE and seizing
ballots and a lot more.
Look, it's going to be a journey.
So grab yourself a drink, pay attention, and enjoy the ride.
But before we get into it, make sure you're subscribed to this channel to stay informed
about what you can do to defend democracy.
On Monday morning, when I was preparing for the Supreme Court to hear oral arguments
in the big voting case out of Mississippi, you know, the one where the Republican National
Committee is trying to throw in the trash hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots cast
around this country because the U.S. Postal Service took their sweet time to get them delivered
to local election offices.
Well, Steve Bannon was up to something else.
He was on his usual broadcast, spewing his usual nonsense.
But you know, the thing about Steve is that in between the nonsense and in between the
rhetoric and in between the lies, he gives away what Donald Trump is really up to because
anyone who doesn't think that Donald Trump's got a plan they're wrong and anyone who thinks
that there's anyone alive who is closer to Donald Trump's thinking about the plan for
this November than Steve Bannon, well, you don't understand what's going on in backup.
Steve Bannon is royalty in backup.
He's their intellectual leader and more importantly, he is their political brain.
So when he had a theory about why all of a sudden we're seeing ICE agents at the polls,
it required all of us to pay attention.
So I'm going to play for you exactly what he said.
We can use what's happening with these ICE helping out, helping out at the airports.
We can use this as a test run, as a test case to get, to really perfect ICE's involvement
in the 2026 midterm elections, sir.
Yeah, I think we should have ICE agents at the polling places because if you're an
illegal alien, you can't vote.
All right.
The guy that Steve Bannon was talking to, that's Mike Davis.
Yeah.
He's a former Supreme Court clerk for Neil Gorsuch.
He is a truest of true believers in Donald Trump and the Maga movement.
That's him and Steve Bannon going back and forth about how ICE is at the airports now
as a test run.
That's the words that Steve Bannon used, a test run for this fall.
Now I think that there are a couple of components that I want to go over.
The first is it's a logistical test run, right?
Like maybe ICE figures out more about crowd control, right?
There are lines and airports.
There are lines at polls.
Long lines and airports, they lead to people missing their flights, but long lines at
the polls, that leads to people walking away without voting.
One of the easiest way to disenfranchise voters is just to put a really long line in front.
I mean, I know everybody watching this video or listening to this podcast, you're saying
a long line wouldn't deter you, but in the quiet of your own head, without admitting this
to anybody else, ask and answer the following question.
How long would you really wait in line to vote?
Now you don't wait in line 30 minutes.
Would you wait in line an hour?
How about two hours?
How about three hours?
At some point you'd say, look, I need to go on with my life.
I need to go back to my kids.
I need to go to work.
Long lines are one of the truest forms, oldest forms of voter suppression.
Because you don't have to say you turned anyone away, after all, they walked out of line.
And so long lines are an enemy of free and fair elections.
And they are manufactured.
They can be quite effective in targeting particular communities that the people in power don't
want to vote.
I sued Georgia way back in 2021 and focused on the length of lines in the six metro counties
surrounding Atlanta during the Democratic primary for president.
It turns out that if you were in one of those six counties during that period and you
were in a precinct that was 90% or more registered black voters, you waited in line number
of 51 minutes.
If you were in the same six counties, same resources available, because you're in the same
counties, but you were in precincts that were 90% or more white voters, you waited an
average of six minutes, six minutes versus 51 minutes.
That's what voter suppression is.
You want to know why Georgia then passed a ban on giving people waiting in line food
and water because the people waiting in line for food and water were black.
If you're in a precinct with six minute lines, you don't have a line.
You don't have time to drink water or eat any food.
So when Steve Bannon says that this is a test run of having ice at the polls, ice is
not going to be at the polls to move the lines along.
Now if ice learns something about long lines at the airports, it's going to be how to
create them, how to slow them up, how to make it less pleasant and less pleasant and
less pleasant still to wait in them.
The punishment of democracy of waiting in lines is voter suppression and ice is learning
those techniques of punishment.
Now if that sounds overly harsh, isn't this what we've already seen ice do is learn
how to make the expression of people's constitutional rights as unpleasant as possible?
I mean, I'm not even talking about the killing of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
I just mean a lot of their other tactics in Minneapolis.
We're simply burdening the right of freedom of speech.
We're simply burdening the right of freedom of association so that people didn't want
to bear that burden.
They just shut up and they just dispersed.
Now thankfully, we saw a lot of courageous people in Minneapolis that bore that burden
and continued to exercise that right.
But when Steve Bannon…
talks about a test run, let me tell you what I hear, what I fear, what I think is going
to happen, which is that ice is getting very comfortable with the ideas of being around
these lines and how they can be manipulated in a way that their bosses want them manipulated.
And who are their bosses?
Well, the boss of ice is the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
That used to be Cristino.
It's no longer Cristino.
It's now Mark Wayne Mullins, the former Senator from Oklahoma, regardless of which intermediary,
functionary, trunk, sycophant, cabinet secretary.
The real boss is Donald Trump.
The real boss is Donald Trump and Stephen Miller.
And we know that when it comes to this fall, they will have preferences for which polling
lines move fast and which ones move really slow.
And so ice being in this position of line control or line formation or line regulation
is exactly what Steve Bannon says.
It's a test run.
It may not be the test run, Steve Bannon claims it will be.
But trust me, it's a test run.
But it's a test run in another way.
And this is the one that Steve Bannon says.
What did he say that they would be doing?
The ice agents at the airports to help out, and remember they said they're not going
to work the x-rays is too complicated, and they're not trained for it.
But they're trained to wait for it, check IDs.
I'm not sure why ice agents should be checking IDs at the airports.
But they're sure as hell no reason for them to be checking IDs at the polls.
I mean, let's assume you're in a state with a requirement to show ID to them.
Guy, why would ice agents be checking the IDs?
Is he suggesting they are not just patrolling the polls?
And she has previously said, right?
He previously said, and Republicans have suggested, you know, what's the big deal if ice
is at the polls?
What's the big deal if they're outside or looking for non-citizens?
But now he's got ice agents sitting behind the counter.
They're the ones comparing your ID to you.
Now I've got a driver's license.
And when I show it to the local election official in Virginia, they can check it.
And they can say, okay, Mr. Elias, here's the ballot, or, you know, there's a voting
booth or whatever it is.
You think an ice agent is going to be convinced that my Virginia state driver's license is genuine?
Or is he going to say that doesn't look like you?
I don't see the resemblance.
How do we know this ID is real?
Right?
I mean, we assume that the person is checking the ID is on the up and up.
And if we present ID, they will look at the picture and they will say that that's the
voter in front of them.
Now they're big on state issued IDs, passports.
What if I presented my passport?
And an ice agent has a list of people and, you know, Donald Trump doesn't like me.
He's called me out by name.
He clearly knows who I am.
The White House hates me.
They've issued executive presidential memorandum naming me my name.
What if he just has a list and says, when this guy comes in, really scrutinize that photo
and see if that's him?
Well, what if the ice agent says, I don't think it's you?
Get out of here.
Do you think that's possible?
I think it's possible.
Not just for a 57-year-old lawyer who Donald Trump doesn't like.
What if it's possible an entire precincts that all of a sudden the ice agents have a hard
time in checking these IDs and coming to the conclusion that they're real and genuine,
that the photos are accurate, that they're not forged, that there's not some discrepancy.
Because it's very interesting that Steve Bannon would suggest that they're not going to
be there for a whole other bunch of bullshick reasons.
Looking for non-citizen, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but checking IDs.
That's an interesting one.
It should be a warning sign to all of you about what's to come.
Look, I have been warning about this for months.
I've been warning about this for years.
I started Democracy Docket in 2020 because I needed to warn people about what was about
to happen in the 2020 election.
And the legacy media was dismissing me.
When, frankly, too many well-meaning people thought I was just being alarmist, as I told
them that the Republican parties were planning a massive voter suppression effort and to challenge
the outcome of an election that they would never accept if Joe Biden won.
And unfortunately, I was correct.
Then I had the pleasure and the honor of representing Joe Biden and the Democrats in a lot of the
post-election litigation, the overwhelming majority of those cases were cases that I
and my team litigated and we beat him like a drum.
But Democracy Docket's work didn't end them.
Democracy Docket is a news outlet that gives you the news information analysis you need
to make informed decisions about what is happening to Democracy in court.
We do not pull punches, we do not bow down, we do not care if Donald Trump smears or
attacks us.
Our only mission is to keep you informed.
So do me a favor right now and subscribe to Democracy Docket by either clicking on the
link in front of you or in the description below.
And I don't think that's the only test run that Steve Batten and Donald Trump have
in mind.
Because there's also logistics of deploying ICE agents in environments that they have never
seen before.
And our report is obviously one example, election officials, facilities are another.
And the issue of how you get ICE agents dispersed into all of these places, very important.
And one of the things that I worry a lot about for the next fall, for the midterm election
elections, is not just how ICE agents might be at the polls, but how they might operate
in neighborhoods surrounding polls.
And I'm not talking about non-citizens here.
The whole thing that, well, what do you care if ICE agents are out and around the polls
or out in the neighborhoods, if you're a non-citizen, you don't think nothing to worry
about.
I'm not worried about non-citizen voting.
And I don't think that ICE agents' presence are going to do anything because it rarely
if ever happens.
I mean, the state of Utah, the state of Utah, this is not a state run by Democrats, the
state of Utah.
This is Mike Lee's home state, Mike Lee for those of you who don't know, has been leading
the lives around the state back.
They did a study.
They went looking for non-citizen voting.
They found one non-citizen registered, and it turns out he didn't vote, okay?
That's what we're talking about.
When I say it doesn't happen, like just ask Utah, it doesn't happen.
One registered, zero voters.
Just to be clear, not worried about non-citizen voting because that doesn't happen.
But what am I worried about is citizens.
You and me, our friends or family, our neighbors.
People born in the United States, they don't have a care in the world about being deemed
non-citizens.
Maybe even they were naturalized.
They don't have a care in the world.
They have papers that show their US citizens.
No, what I'm worried about is the disruption and the mass inconvenience that it will cause.
Let's be honest, we have a voter turnout problem in this country, under the best of circumstances.
When the weather is great and the skies are sunny, and everybody loves both candidates
on the ballot, we still don't have more than 50% of the people or so vote in an election.
Once you start to interject other variables, like for example, rain.
Rain has a big impact on whether people turn out to vote or not.
So too, will ICE agents blocking off streets, ICE agents closing parking lots, ICE agents
being rude at intersections, ripping people out of their cars for inspection, breaking
the windows on their cars.
We all saw what happened in Minneapolis, and this was happening to US citizens.
What did you see going on, traffic?
You saw people being snarled up and not able to get where they needed to go.
And so I worry that if that is targeted around areas with high concentrations of Democrats,
again, all US citizens, you could target precincts, for example, with large native black populations.
These are folks who have been in this country for generations due to slavery, but there's
no question of US citizens.
But what if you are just operating very loudly in law enforcement ways and closing streets
and blocking parking and disabling traffic lights and having people in intersections holding
up traffic with manual signals, right?
I come back to the question I asked about earlier.
How long would you wait in line to vote?
How long would you wait in traffic to get to wait in line to vote?
How far would you be willing to park and then walk after waiting in traffic to then go
wait in line to vote?
I mean, I guess people are misapprehending the nature of the risk of ice being involved.
Ice is not there to do its mission.
We know that.
They're not at the airport to do their mission.
We definitely know that.
C.Bannon is talking about training them up to be behind the desks, and that's not good.
But what if they're not behind the desks?
What if they're not within 100 feet of polling place?
They're just operating in ways that are disrupting elections.
I think that we have been too quick to declare victory, to mock the failures of Republicans
in the past.
I mean, look, I do my fair share of mocking Republicans when they lose cases in court.
I understand it.
And there's something to be said for celebrating our victories when we have them and having
solidarity in the failures of the Trump administration.
But we also need to recognize that in failure, you can learn.
You can learn the lessons from your defeats.
The ice agents at the airports, it's easy to mock the photos we see or the images you
see them walking around, seeming to not know what the hell they're doing or where they're
going.
And it's easy to say, oh, this is just an incompetent administration.
But we'd be making mistake if we didn't say that they are also learning.
For example, when we talk about the raids on election offices, the same is also true
there.
You know, yes, the Fulton County raid seemed to be a bit of a logistical fiasco.
Apparently, they showed up with the Spina with the wrong office or the wrong names or
wrong place, whatever it is.
And they had to go back.
But they went back and they corrected the information.
And in that, they learned something.
They learned something about where ballots are kept or who you have to spina to get them.
And you know, we can all say that the affidavit that was submitted by the FBI agent was a
bunch of lying bullshit and like, now they're getting, you know, now they're having to justify
this in court.
Yeah, but it worked.
I mean, they got the documents and they've also learned about what the attacks are that
will come next time that they have to put together an affidavit from an FBI agent to get
ballot boxes.
They also learned some other things.
I mean, for example, apparently the US attorney's office in Georgia was not so keen on being
involved in this.
So what they do, they learn that they could use a US attorney in Missouri who was more than
happy to help.
That's important knowledge.
That too was a test run like it can both be the case that Donald Trump went into the
Fulton County offices or had it or the Department of Justice went into the Fulton County offices
because they were trying to vindicate the central tenant of the MAGA movement, which is lies
about the 2020 election.
It is, it is entirely true, that's true.
That was the case.
Just like it's entirely true that ICE agents could be at the airport because Donald Trump
wants to show strength and putting ICE agents at the airports he thinks does that.
Like that is all possibly true.
It is also true.
It can also be the case that they did these raids in Fulton County because they'd learn
something.
They would perfect information.
They would gain expertise for the next time they have to seize ballots because after all,
there is no base of knowledge among federal prosecutors or FBI agents about how you
seize ballots.
It's not something done in the United States.
So why not have a test run as Steve Bannon would say and the same with the ICE agents.
Like sure, maybe it helps Donald Trump project strength, but it is also a test run for all
of the other things that I just laid out.
And it's not just Fulton County.
They then went and subpoenaed the ballot images from the State Senate in Arizona, the
ballot images from Maricopa County.
And again, it was very easy for all of us to make fun of that because after all, the
elections over and this has to do with a cyber ninja investigation report, which itself
was kind of a circus, a clown show, discredited.
And on top of its cyber ninjas, didn't even find the Donald Trump one.
Right.
So it's easy for us to all make fun of that and say, why did they bother with this subpoena
for this clown show report that doesn't even show Donald Trump want?
Well, maybe they were just running a test run.
Maybe what Steve Bannon said, we should be listening to that all of this is just testing
the system, testing the controls, figuring out the logistics for when they need to do
this in 2026.
How many of you are aware that it's not just Fulton County or Maricopa County, Arizona?
Did you know that a sheriff in California seized 650,000 ballots, 650,000 ballots?
What sheriff?
In California, related to the referendum in which the state adopted a new redistricting.
I remember that remember it passed by a wide barge, I think like 8 million votes, you
know, double digits, percentages, not close at all.
Yeah, well, it turns out that a sheriff, a Republican, he sees 650,000 ballots and he's
conducting his own recount or at least he wants to.
Now, if you're a democracy doc and subscriber, you know that.
If you pay attention to the news that democracy doc, it tries to give you every single day through
a myriad of ways, newsletters, videos like this, social media posts, like if you are following
what democracy doc it is telling you, you would know about this.
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Now, it did eventually appear in the New York Times and elsewhere.
So kudos to them, AP reported on it and that's great.
But look, the legacy media is not covering day in and day out, the challenges that democracy
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Look, I think Manin was on to this.
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So much of this is just a test run.
People ask me all the time what is Donald Trump's plan and I started to say what Donald Trump
wants is optionality.
Now, I don't think he has like one path to steal the election.
He doesn't have one path of voter suppression.
He doesn't have one path of election suppression.
He's got multiple paths and multiple tools and he is testing them all out.
He's testing right now to see if he can get Congress to pass the voter suppression on.
The save back.
It's going to fail.
Again, if you were a democracy dog and subscriber, you would know more about the save back than
any of your friends and family and frankly, then most experts in this field.
He's testing the courts.
I mean, I think democracy dog is the latest tracker is like there's 160 or 165 or who knows
168 cases pending in courts today over free and fair elections, yeah, like in the 160s.
And that's before you get to the 50 or so redistricting cases that are also pending.
Yeah, we're in the middle of a decade, like literally nothing should be going on with
the district right now.
And there are 50 plus cases going on around.
And a lot of this is just a test run.
You know, he's saying maybe wins this case, loses that case, wins a case on redistricting
here, loses a case on reducing there, wins a voter suppression case here, loses a voter
suppression case there.
You know, I mentioned that the week began for me with a hearing in the US Supreme Court
in a case brought by the Republican National Committee in 2024 against the state of Mississippi.
And this case has been going on now for two years, right?
I mean, this was filed back before the before the presidential election.
For two years, Republicans have been spending millions of dollars, I assume, to try to
strike down a law in Mississippi that allows ballots postmarked by election day to count
even if they were received up to five days after about half the states have some law similar
to this, some longer period, some shorter period, some include all voters, some include categories
of voters.
But this would be a big deal if they succeed.
But this case is not happening in the back, you know, I mean, the Postal Service, they're
cutting back on how fast they deliver mail.
I mean, that's something you know about, you know about it because democracy, I can
told you about it.
The Postal Service is now routing your mail like Hither and Yon, like you could, you
could be in state A, not that far from your election office and your mail could go to
another state to state B before it even gets postmarked to come back to your own state.
How crazy is that?
The mail's getting slower and slower being that's by accident.
You think that has nothing to do with the fact that Donald Trump has been railing about
vote by mail now for what a decade?
None of this stuff operates in a vacuum.
None of this stuff is an accident.
All of these things are test runs, as Steve Bannon would say.
They are all just seeing which thing plays out that gives Trump the advantage that he
thinks he needs.
This Supreme Court case is just a test run to see if he can get the courts to cut back
on mail and vote him.
The Save Act is another test run to see if he can get Congress to cut back on mail and
voting.
Remember when they were banning ballot drop boxes?
I used to have this thing, if you go back and look at some of the old videos, you'll
see, I'd be like the Republican Party has declared war on secure metal containers.
I mean, what the fuck's up with that?
Like literally, why is there a Republican Party so obsessed with doing away with secure
metal containers that are opened by election officials to access mail-in ballots?
Why don't they want that?
Why do they want everything instead to go through the U.S. Postal Service?
Well, guess what?
If you listen to the Supreme Court argument, they were crappin' all over the U.S. Postal
Service.
They were like, why should you trust the U.S. Postal Service?
They're not state officials.
They don't work for the state election offices.
I was sitting there thinking no shit they didn't want, though, the secure metal containers
called drop boxes, when those were being put in place by the election officials.
It's just they're testing one, they're testing the other.
Trump said that maybe he'd put the National Guard at the airport.
I mean, that's kind of a retro test run from a few weeks ago, a few months ago, right?
Before we had ICE in the nation's streets causing mayhem in chaos, remember he had the National
Guard in the National Guard in LA, he had them in Chicago, he was going to deploy them.
Whenever he's going to deploy them all over the country, they're in DC still.
Nice people.
I waive to them when I see them.
I thank them for their service.
But what are they doing other than giving Donald Trump a test run that he can later use
for his own purposes?
And if you don't think he is gathering information from each of these things, what works, what
doesn't work?
I mean, I think one of the things he's realized works is that the National Guard, they're
too disciplined.
He'd rather have ICE.
They're much more willing to do his bidding than the National Guard work, but it doesn't
mean that he's not going to test out different options.
Just like in Georgia, in Fulton County, it was a raid by the FBI in Maricopa County.
It was a subpoena issued by a grandeur.
And in California, it's a Republican sheriff, who, by the way, seems to be running for
governor of the state.
And he's just like winging it, you know, I guess using whatever state court or local judge
that he got to sign off on whatever paperwork he got to sign off on.
Maybe he's acting coordination with other Republicans, maybe he's not, I got no idea.
But he wants to do a recap.
All these three things, each have a different theory.
They're all procedurally different.
But yet they all wind up in possession of ballots or in the case of Arizona images.
If you think there's just one unified theory, and that Donald Trump has settled on it
you're wrong.
If you think there's just one unified approach, and that Steve Bannon knows what it is,
you're wrong.
The closest that we have gotten to the truth is what Bannon said when he said, this is
a test run that maybe they'll be used for this and maybe they'll be used for that.
But look, what matters is they are creating options for suppressing your vote and subverting
the election results because the fundamental truth has not changed.
Donald Trump is profoundly unpopular.
These are set up for a drumming come this November.
I mean, if we have truly free and fair elections, this is going to be an epicly bad election
for Republicans.
This will be one that the history books will write about how Republicans went from being
in the majority of the House and sent it into losing control of the House and probably
losing control of the Senate against all odds, all historical press.
Because these folks don't know how to run a government and they show nothing but contempt
for the American population every single time they pass a bill.
Inflation is soaring.
The economy is in trouble.
Democracy is under attack.
They're not doing anything to fix healthcare.
Jobs are not being created.
And yet they're spending all of their time sucking up to this guy.
So you got to ask yourself, what's their plan?
Their plan is what Steve Bannon's told you their plan is.
They're going to test and see what's working.
They're going to test and see what they can get out of one tactic or another.
Now look, Bannon's going to tell you, no, I don't listen to Elias, this is all about
election integrity.
It's all about preventing elections or being stolen.
Oh, come on.
You all know, are too smart for that.
You know that's a bunch of bullshit.
That's the words he says.
But we all know what's really going on here.
This is a test for something very different.
This is a test for whether or not Donald Trump can succeed where he failed in 2020, whether
he can overthrow the will of the American public through the legal process, through the
not legal process, and ultimately, if necessary, from his standpoint through violence.
And we need to be ready for it.
We need to be running our own test runs.
We need to be using this time justice productively as they are.
We need to be figuring out, how are we going to respond?
If and when Donald Trump does these things, how are we going to respond if there are
subpoenas?
How are we going to respond if there are such words?
How are we going to respond if ice shows up to check your ID and says you are not who
you say you are?
Republicans make a big deal about burst certificates.
Oh, what's a big deal?
You show your burst gift to prove that you're a U.S. citizen.
You don't provide it there burst certificate to prove they were born in the United States,
Barack Obama.
That's who.
You know why you did it?
Because Donald Trump told lies that says he wasn't born in the United States.
What did Donald Trump do after Barack Obama produced his burst certificate from the state
of why?
Donald Trump didn't apologize.
Donald Trump didn't even acknowledge that it was real.
He said it was a forgery.
He said it was not really the burst certificate.
I'm telling you guys, the dry runs they were doing on their part on their side.
Are about voter suppression and lying.
And if you think you're going to combat it by just showing up with the right paperwork
or the right documentation or standing in the right line and that it will all be okay,
you don't understand how they operate.
This is not about a fair process.
It's not even about an unfair process.
It is about a set of rules that you can never win at no matter what you do.
You could vote in person on election day and have and be 90 years old and produce every
piece of paper that you've ever had your entire life.
And if they don't want you to vote, they'll find it excuse to say you don't vote.
Now I can promise you lawyers like me, I'll be fighting for your right and court and
I'll fight and I'll fight hard.
And that's why Donald Trump hates me, he hates that I fight hard.
So I don't want anyone to be defeatist.
Like we have beaten them before and we will beat them again.
But we also cannot just assume that there is good faith on both sides of this.
Look, I don't work with Republicans on issues involving voting rights.
I don't seek to compromise with them because you would not ask a firefighter to work
with an arsonist or to compromise with someone who is burning the town down.
And if we don't get our heads on straight and realize that that's what this is about,
then I'm really going to start to worry because I'll tell you the legacy media,
that's the way, you know, they just think this is like the arsonist and the firefighter
sitting down and figuring out, you know, which parts of the town can burn and which parts should stay
standing and they'll just say both sides want.
But that's not what I do and that's not what democracy does.
And it's not what I need you to do.
I need you to be unabashedly, unapologetically pro-democracy.
I need you to spread this word.
You can start by sharing this video with your friends and family.
You can share it on social media.
But what I really need you to do is to subscribe to Democracy Docket for free
by clicking on the link in front of you or in the description below.
And also to like this video, leave a comment and to share it with your friends.
President Barack Obama.
Virginia, we are counting on you.
Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election
and wield unchecked power for two more years.
But you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st.
Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide
not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st.
Paid for by Virginians for fair elections.
Defending Democracy with Marc Elias
