Jamelle Bouie

And the times when it does happen, most often than not, it's a mistake.

It's someone who thought that they could register to vote and they registered to vote.

So it's most often just kind of like simple administrative mistakes.

not malicious activity, and certainly not as the president portrays, as Speaker Mike Johnson portrays, an organized effort to defraud Americans of their votes by hundreds of thousands of millions of people going to illicitly and illegally vote.

So for Trump to say back, and he has said this, this is a means to reduce the electorate so that Republicans have an easier time to win.

I'm not sure that's how it actually worked out in practice, but that's the intent.

And I do think it's just vitally important to say that there is simply no world in which it is justifiable to deprive, potentially deprive tens of millions of Americans of the right to vote in order to prevent a non-existent problem.

It's like going to someone in Rhode Island and saying, you know, do you want to spend a million dollars on volcano insurance?

Aren't you worried about volcanoes?

Do you want molten rock to destroy your home?

A sensible person would pay for the volcano insurance.

Jamel is pro-lava.

I'm, I'm sort of tied.

I have a very maximalist view of voting and voter participation.

I think it should be as easy as possible.

Like if we're not going to, if we're not going to have universal voting of which I think I have been persuaded of would be desirable where you just kind of, you kind of have to go out and vote.

You don't have to necessarily cast a ballot for a candidate, but like you as a civic ritual, we all go out and vote, but short of universal voting,

I think it should be as easy as possible.

You want to mail in a ballot?

Go for it.