Ari Berman

speaker

360 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 8 Jul

Ari Berman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Fresh Air · A look at new barriers at the ballot box · 8 Jul 2026 podcast

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It would change voting in a lot of fundamental ways and it would make it much harder to register to vote and much harder to cast a ballot.

And it's much more than a voter ID bill.

It is really a show your papers bill because at its heart.

the bill requires a passport or a birth certificate to register to vote.

So before you even are able to vote, you have to register.

And this would make it a lot harder to register.

We know that 9% of Americans, 21 million people, don't have ready access to their citizenship documents.

But I believe that understates the number of people that could be affected because people carry around a driver's license with them on a regular basis.

People tend not to carry a passport regularly.

Well, half of all Americans don't have passports.

So already there, you're talking about half the country can't comply.

Ask the average person, do you know where your birth certificate is?

And a lot of people are going to struggle to find it.

There are people that, for example, were born at home in the Jim Crow South that never got a birth certificate in the first place.

And the burdens of the law go beyond that because, for example, there are 69 million Americans

married women that have changed their name, that now have a legal name that doesn't match the name on their birth certificate, who could find it harder to register to vote under this bill.

The bill requires you to present your documentation in person at an elections office, meaning that you can no longer register to vote online.

Or at DMVs, you would have to physically go to an election office.

If you live in a rural state, you could have to drive up to five hours just to be able to register to vote.

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