Democracy in Danger

So many of the wedge issues covered in our series on “some fine states” were on full display in Virginia’s nail-biter of a governor’s race: education, abortion and the election system itself, to name a few. Missing from both campaigns, say Will and Siva, was much substance. Join our intrepid hosts as they wrap up this miniseries with a conversation on what Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Old Dominion means for democracy in America. And more — a brief national history and the tale of two Buffalos.

This week our “Florida” show features the inspiring story of Desmond Meade’s struggle to right the ship of his life — and his fight to sail the Sunshine State into a future where ex-felons get another shot at political engagement. A MacArthur genius and the director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, Meade is working to get citizens who have served out their sentences their civil rights back. He just got his last month. Listen to a full version of his interview with our producer, Robert Armengol.

Political analyst Susan MacManus calls Florida the most complex and difficult swing state to win. And many assumptions about how voters vote, whether based on age or ethnicity, go to die in the Sunshine State. Florida is getting younger and more diverse, and it’s pushing the needle on democracy — in both directions. Hear how activist Desmond Meade helped enfranchise more than a million new voters, even as his state’s Republican-controlled legislature has limited how and when Floridians cast their ballots.

Something weird is going on in Mesa County, Colo. Images, passwords and copies of raw data from election equipment mysteriously turned up online over the summer. Then Mesa’s elections clerk vanished, only to resurface weeks later, claiming she had uncovered fraud — in a county that Trump won handily. This week, investigative reporter Emma Brown of the Washington Post breaks down this bizarre case from Colorado. It fits a national playbook designed to undermine the 2020 election and faith in voting systems.

Last year, Virginians approved a redistricting commission that was supposed to bring an end to gerrymandering. But this month the commission broke down while trying to decide on statehouse districts, and the process appears headed to the Virginia Supreme Court. Meanwhile, citizens in the Old Dominion are heading to the polls next month to elect their first governor of the post-Trump era. We talk state politics with former Del. David Toscano and Brian Cannon, who championed the redistricting reform effort.

Besides all but banning abortions, GOP leaders in Texas are limiting what students may learn about slavery, sidelining transgender athletes, allowing citizens to carry guns unlicensed, and making voting more difficult. This week a teacher in Dallas explains why those education reforms hurt classrooms and democracy. Plus, we hear from two historians about all those other divisive measures... Join Siva and guest-host Allison Wright of VQR as they speak Texan in this first of a series on state-level politics.

American democracy is supposed to come with a warranty: equal opportunity, social mobility, the promise of success with hard work. But the fabled Dream is fraying. In fact, journalist Eduardo Porter says, it was never sold as advertised. This week we’re replaying an episode that speaks to the current impasse in Congress over social spending. To mend a tattered republic, Porter tells Siva and Will, we need “a new idea of America,” made from policies that address wealth inequality across the social spectrum.

In 1905, Austrian baroness Bertha von Suttner won the Nobel Peace Prize, which she had helped convince Alfred Nobel to establish. Largely forgotten among antiwar activists, she was an outspoken critic of efforts to make combat merely less brutal. Today, Yale legal scholar Samuel Moyn finds inspiration in Suttner’s story for his own provocative stance against the logic of “humanizing” war with technological innovations like drone strikes. He says we’re only making conflicts more frequent and longer-lasting.

Listen to Siva’s full conversation with Haiti expert Laurent Dubois, co-director of the UVA Democracy Initiative. Dubois narrates the early history of slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, the founding of Haiti and the country’s history up through a brutal intervention of the U.S. Marines in the early 20th century. This past, he says, helps put into context the current crises in Haiti, where conflicting models of political and economic autonomy have been in tension for 230 years.

In 1791, the people of Saint-Domingue threw off the yoke of slavery and revolted against their French masters, eventually founding a new nation with the radical promise of universal freedom: Haiti. Then came the hard reality of a world-system that would plague the country with debt, discord and military interventions, including a 19-year occupation by the United States. Three scholars — Marlene Daut, Laurent Dubois and Robert Fatton — help us consider Haiti’s burdened past and its echoes in the present.