Jon Wiener: From The Nation magazine, this is Start Making Sense. I’m Jon Wiener. Later in the show: the ACLU has been preparing for election day threats to voting and vote counting
for years. Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s voting rights project, will explain. But first: Kamala’s closing argument: Bhaskar Sunkara has some evidence about what works —
in a minute.
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What can Kamala do to strengthen her closing argument for the working-class? For example, in Pennsylvania? If she wins there, she probably wins the election. Pennsylvania has a working-class majority. Voters without four-year degrees account for 62% of the electorate there. 50% of eligible voters are blue collar whites. So what do we know about working-class political views in Pennsylvania? For that, we turn to Bhaskar Sunkara. He’s president of The Nation Magazine, founding editor of Jacobin, author of the book The Socialist Manifesto, regular contributor to The Guardian. Also writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, lots of other places. Bhaskar, welcome back.
Bhaskar Sunkara: Thanks for having me, Jon.
JW: Biden carried Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes, just a fraction above 50%. The polling averages for Pennsylvania this week, for what they’re worth, have the candidates basically tied. Trump himself has been so crazy and dangerous. It makes it very easy for Harris to take the safe route and draw a contrast between a competent establishment leader and a dangerous potential tyrant. But new research suggests she could do better than that. Tell us about this new study from the Center for Working Class Politics and Jacobin. What I like about it is that you were not asking ‘what issues concern you the most: the economy, immigration,’ et cetera.
BS: Yeah, I think this study is unique in that it’s a study that – by the way, I was not an author of this study. I am on the board of the Center for Working-Class Politics. And obviously I’m the founding editor of Jacobin, which helped publish this study. But together with YouGov, the Center for Working-Class Politics designed a survey that tested key messaging approaches among 1000 voters in Pennsylvania. So the main goal was to test which of Harris’s actual messaging styles performed best in this state. Then the goal was to also test whether Harris’s messages could be improved.
JW: What was the number one finding?
BS: The number one finding was that messaging around Trump as a threat to democracy is the weakest way to attack Trump. And unfortunately, it’s also the way in which Harris has approached her final couple of weeks of the campaign. The strongest message we tested was around populist economics, and that got the support of 58% of the respondents. While the threat-to-democracy message received just 49% support. In August, there were signs that she was adopting a populist message of some type. This is a message that we tried to replicate in the survey, and we call this soft populist messaging. And that messaging had the support of 54% of respondents as opposed to 36% that opposed it.
JW: What did this study suggest should be the strong populist economic message that Harris should be presenting to working-class voters in Pennsylvania?
BS: Well, Jon, let me quote from the message text that performed the strongest, and it’ll give you a real sense of what we’re talking about. All right, it reads, “Let’s call it like it is. Working class Americans are struggling while billionaires just get richer. We’re paying too much for gas, groceries, and even the medicine we need. It’s time we stand up to big corporations and the politicians in Washington who serve them. I’ll fight to cap prescription drug costs, crack down on price gouging, make sure corporations pay their fair share and end tax cuts for billionaire crooks. It’s time to put working families first.”
JW: What was the difference between the soft populism that Harris has articulated in her campaign and what you call strong populism?
BS: Strong populist economic messaging basically just goes beyond the rhetoric that talks about the working-class deserving more. And it places more of an emphasis on the takers and on redefining the takers. Unlike Trump’s populism, where the takers are immigrants and minorities, this redefines it as billionaires and people benefiting from the corrupt system. So basically, it’s similar to the current populist messaging, but a little bit more intentionally polarizing.
JW: And you also distinguish between Harris’s message around economics, which you call a moderate economic message focusing on ‘the opportunity economy,’ and what you call a strong economic message.
BS: Yeah, a strong economic message puts greater emphasis on redistribution. It put a greater emphasis on manufacturing policies, creates a greater emphasis on reshoring American jobs, on a jobs guarantee, on expanding Medicare access and so on. So it basically takes a lot of the existing policies that we’ve seen under the Biden administration and it melds it with some demands that we haven’t seen that come out of, maybe you could say the Bernie-crat wing of the party.
JW: We haven’t said anything about abortion rights. Isn’t that a huge issue this year?
BS: Yes. So the abortion messaging performs fairly well. In our poll support for Harris relative to Trump the average there was 8.1% plus for Harris with strong populist messaging, whereas it was only plus 3.1 for the strong messaging defending abortion. In general, I think the findings are that Democratic Party candidates would be better off foregrounding strong economic populist and messaging. And that’s not to say we shouldn’t care about abortion, we shouldn’t care about a million other important issues. But the question is, what should be the core of your appeal and message? Should your message be a populist message that then incorporates policies supportive of reproductive rights, or it should be a message primarily on a cross-class appeal to all women around defending abortion that’s pretty agnostic or at least vacillating on a lot of these key economic questions? And I think the answer is clearly the former, especially if you’re concerned about winnng over demographics that the Democratic Party has been losing for years, which are working-class white men.
JW: What did you think about Michelle Obama’s speech over the weekend in Kalamazoo, which was this passionate call to protect women’s reproductive healthcare? And she urged women to talk to the men in their lives about appreciating how important this was.
BS: Yeah, I think Democrats did great in the midterms with a message that very heavily focused on abortion rights. I think Michelle Obama as a famous surrogate is going to do speeches that speak to her experience as a woman, that speak to demographics that are most swayed by her. So it makes perfect sense. I’m not advocating against that. I think in general, the campaign should orient itself around bread and butter issues. I don’t necessarily think it makes sense for Michelle Obama to be the one railing against the millionaire and billionaire class. Again, it’s not an either-or, but I think where it does become something of a zero-sum game is the fact that the Democratic Party has continually based its appeal primarily on seeking the support of professional class voters and seeking the support of discrete identity-based demographics. Instead of trying to rebuild a broad-based national majority rooted in working-class votes. Abortion rights would be far more secure with a Democratic Party that has a supermajority than with a Democratic Party that’s out of power. And the message is pretty clear that a strong populist rhetoric is the most effective way to build these majorities.
JW: The finding of this study, that the working-class is most won over by strong populist economic messaging, is not unique to Democrats. Republicans, of course, could learn something from this. And in fact, many Trump strategists have been urging him to make his message a populist economic one. And to blame Kamala and the Democrats in Washington specifically for the high cost of food and housing. Is that what we are seeing now from Trump in his closing?
BS: In 2016, the Trump message was heavily an economic message. He really went out of his way to speak to the grievances of working-class people in a very direct bread-and-butter way. And yes, there was tons of racism and xenophobia, but it only worked because he led with this economic message.
Now it seems like Trump is getting more and more invested in this culture war. Now, I think that there’s certain thorny and difficult issues in which the American people might not be where certain liberal activists are, for example, on the issue of trans women in sporting competitions, on debates around youth and gender medicine, and so on. But when it comes to the actions of adults and people who say they want to be themselves and live in peace and dignity, I think this is a framing that when the issue comes up, the Democrats do far better on.
JW: The closing message that I’ve seen from Trump in ads on TV, especially during the World Series, is not about the high cost of food and housing, it’s about trans people. They run a clip from Kamala in what turns out to be her 2019 presidential campaign saying she would guarantee that transgender people who are in prison have access to gender-affirming care. And some of these Trump ads conclude ‘crazy liberal Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.’ And the Republican strategists have explained they understand trans rights is not a number one issue in America today, but they are specifically targeting young men with this ad. And they’ve spent tens of millions of dollars attacking trans rights in the last week, especially on sports events.
BS: Definitely Trump is trying to make this a cultural war issue. I think that liberal organizations did Harris or any other Democratic candidate no favors, pushing those questions to the forefront in 2019 and 2020. But I think the Harris message on a lot of these cultural issues in this presidential cycle is very much in line with where the American people are, which is progressive but not radical on a whole host of issues. Even abortion rights, the median 50-yard line for abortion rights in this country is probably around 14 weeks. And very little restrictions at 14 weeks, and then progressively more restrictions, then no late term abortions. That’s where the American people stand. It’s not quite what left-wing activists demanding, your abortion on demand, but certainly it’s closer to that norm of generally available access to abortion than what Republican activists want, which is no abortion, no exception. And that’s an issue where the Republicans come across as extremists.
JW: I do not think Trump’s appeal is based on his messaging. I think it’s based on what he represents, and that’s something that is not articulated in his messaging, which has a lot to do with preserving the power of white men. And for a lot of voters, Christian white men.
BS: Yeah, I think that for some people, of course that’s what Trump represents. Trump represents a return to order and stability. But I think order and stability has been undermined in many different ways that people conflate together. So there’s a lot of Black men, for instance, that are going to vote for Trump. Now, the easy answer to why they’re voting for Trump is they’re sucked into his sexist appeals and whatever else. But another way to think about it is the New Deal order promised progress and stability at the same time for millions of Black families. De-industrialization hurt Black men disproportionately the most out of any group. So I think some of these nostalgic appeals, some of these calls to bring back jobs, some of these calls around tariffs, misguided as they are in Trump’s economic proposals – I think they have some sort of bread and butter appeal for those men.
I think the call to order is also a call to community and purpose. And I think the Democrats haven’t been speaking to the yearning for purpose that so many young men feel. We have tens of thousands of men who commit suicide every year in this country. I think you do have a real crisis of meaning and belonging, where people ask, what does it mean to be a man, and does this world actually need men or need me?
And I think Democrats need to give a compelling answer, and they need to give an answer in which working-class people of all sexes, but working-class men too are protagonists in the future: They’re helping to build America. They’re going to have a purpose. We’re going to need you working to support your family. We’re going to help you find good employment so that you’re working to support your family. We’re going to need you in your community and your union halls and your churches, whatever your civic engagement is. And I think Trump, to the extent that’s true, I don’t think it’s just a reactionary yearning. Obviously, there is a reactionary yearning in there, but I think some of it is a yearning for purpose and belonging. And that’s what the Democrats need to offer in the future.
JW: Great.
You said a lot of Black men are going to vote for Trump. I don’t think it’s a lot. I think it’s a few. It’s a lot of white men who are going to vote for Trump.
BS: Yes, of course it’s a lot more, I would say. The trends are moving in the direction where Black men are trending in the direction of not being a monolithic voting bloc for that Democratic Party. Now, among young Black men there’s polls where she’s polling around 60%. Among very young Black men, aged 18 to 22 she’s polling only around 50%. So I think there’s a problem with the Democratic Party. And with men, particularly young men, and this applies to Black men too. And if you just have the narrative that it’s just a problem with white men, then I think you’re missing the trends overall because the last Democrat to win white men in a majority was who? Clinton. I don’t think even Obama did, despite the fact that Obama won states like Indiana his first time around.
JW: Finally, a lot of people are asking the big question: how come it’s so close? 47 or 48% of voters want Trump to win. How do you answer that question?
BS: Biden’s an incumbent presidency, I think there’s some sort of fatigue with the incumbency. I think people have experienced inflation for the first time in a generation. It’s happened under his watch. And while these things have happened, Biden’s been unable or unwilling or some combination of the two to communicate with the American people. He hasn’t been on TV. He hasn’t been explaining ‘here’s why inflation is going up, but here’s the job numbers and here’s our plan for recovery.’ He hasn’t been able to say, ‘look what we’ve been doing with manufacturing jobs.’ He hadn’t been able to say, ‘the Teamsters didn’t endorse me, but I bailed out their funds. Imagine if that happened to Trump, that would be his starting point: ‘I bailed them out. I bail out the American worker. I don’t care what a union bureaucracy has to say.’ That sort of messaging would be there with any leader who’s an effective communicator. It would be there to some degree with Obama, with Clinton or with Trump. Biden is very unique in how little he’s been able to communicate to the American people.
JW: A lot of our friends would say, the reason it’s so close is that she’s a Black woman. Don’t you think there’s some truth to that?
BS: Honestly, I think that’s a net benefit for her – to be honest. Not among white men as a whole, but I think it’s going to help with turnout and other stuff. There are some people in this country, many more people who would not vote for a woman then wouldn’t vote for a Black person. I do believe that. But I think a lot of these people are already in the Trump tent.
Beyond that, we’ve had 12 years of Democratic Party rule. People feel like the economic recovery, the long recovery from 2008 through the pandemic through now, isn’t really benefiting them as much as they think it should. Obviously you could argue about whether they’re mistaken or not with some macro level figures. But clearly people aren’t feeling like the economy is as good as those headline figures are. And I think a lot of it has to do with the prices of some key commodities like housing.
Again, I think Harris’s policies are a lot better situated to actually resolve the supply problem, let’s say with housing or a lot of these other issues. But Democrats really need to sell themselves on that, and they’re very lucky the Republican Party has pushed too hard on abortion and some of these other issues. They’re very lucky in a certain way that Trump has committed so many gaffes and he hasn’t positioned himself as a healer — or as ‘I made some mistakes the first time around, but I’m going to do this.’ And ‘women — don’t worry, I disagree with my party. I’m willing to work with Democrats to find a middle ground on abortion.’ Or ‘getting shot made me realize that I want to unite this country.’ That was going to be the message of his RNC speech. That terrified me. Trump getting shot and seeing Jesus and having a change of heart and becoming a good husband and a good man all of a sudden — we would’ve been in trouble. This would’ve been a 60- 40 sort of election,
JW: And he did that for the first 20 minutes of his speech.
BS: Yeah, then it went on for another two and a half hours.
JW: So what do you think is going to happen next week?
BS: I think Harris is actually going to win. I think she might win in an interesting way. I think there’s a chance she’s going to squeak by in the swing states, thanks to her money advantage and the ground game advantage. And she might even be in a dead heat with the popular vote. I think eventually she’s going to win the popular vote once all the California votes come in. But the fact that I’ll even give the slight edge to Harris really tells you something about the kind of campaign that Trump has run. Getting shot should help you. It really should. Somehow people have already forgotten the guy got shot in the ear and pumped his fist. It’s already gone.
JW: Bhaskar Sunkara — he’s president of The Nation Magazine. Bhaskar, thanks for talking with us today.
BS: Great. Thanks a lot, Jon. Take care.
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Jon Wiener: Republicans are a minority of voters. That’s why, for many years, they have turned to vote suppression to try to win elections, including various strategies on election day. And of course we have some MAGA groups threatening to create disruption and chaos at polling places in deep blue areas.
The ACLU has been hard at work defending the right to vote, and having the votes counted, for a long time, and especially this year, and is prepared to deal with a wide variety of threats and problems in the voting and the vote counting. For that, we turn to Sophia Lin Lakin. She’s director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project. She directs and supervises the ACLU’s voting rights litigation strategy nationwide. For example, since 2021, the ACLU has participated in 29 redistricting cases. The record includes 14 wins, including nine that impact next week’s election. Sophia Lin has testified on election law issues before Congress many times. She’s a frequent commentator on MSNBC and in print. Sophia Lakin, welcome to the program.
Sophia Lakin: Thank you. So glad to be here.
JW: When did you start planning for election day in 2024?
SL: The day after January 6th, I think, we started to lay the groundwork for what is our nationwide strategy today.
JW: The ACLU ‘Action plan for safeguarding the election’ lays out 28 scenarios for different problems, starting with problems with voter registration and voting itself, and ending with problems on Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2025. We’re especially interested right now in election day, election night, and the couple of days of vote counting after that.
Early voting, in person and by mail, has been going on for a while now. As of one week before election day, something like 50 million people have already voted. How has early voting gone so far, from your perspective?
SL: Well, I’m glad to say that it seems like, just based on the number of people who have turned out and cast their ballots, that it has been going well. It’s a testament, I would say, to the work that so many people have done, including elections officials themselves, all of our partner organizations, all the people, and the voters themselves.
JW: Most people’s biggest fear about election day is voter intimidation or violence. Do you consider that the number one threat?
SL: I think it’s a very serious threat and I understand why. Nobody wants to encounter intimidation or violence at any point in their lives, but it’s really a concern at the voting booth, when you are trying to express your preferences for how you want this country to be run. That’s the kind of issue that you want to be able to address, in the moment, right away. And while I’m a litigator by trade, I like to bring lawsuits and go into court, with that kind of intimidation or violence, you want to be able to respond right away. It’s something that’s not as suited for a court response in that moment. So preparing for that, ensuring that voters feel safe, and that they’re not afraid to go to the polls, I think that’s one of my biggest concerns.
JW: The next problem is violence or threats directed not at voters, but after the polls close; threats to the vote counting, to the vote tabulation centers. We remember the attack on the vote tabulation center in Miami in 2000. It was called the Brooks Brothers Riot because the middle-aged Republican men who attacked that center had the goal of stopping the recounting of votes in a Democratic county. They were well-dressed, so we call it the Brooks Brothers Riot. They did succeed in shutting down the recount before it was finished. What is the ACLU plan for protecting the counting of votes? This is your scenario 13 — ‘Count Stopped Due to Intimidation or Violence.’
SL: There’s been so much proactive work that’s been done in terms of engaging with elections officials, with state elections officials, with law enforcement as well, to discuss what their plans are for ensuring that vote counting centers are secure, that people are able to get their job done, that we are monitoring for threats in advance, to try to defuse them before they happen.
JW: A related threat is direct threats to the ballots; stolen ballots, seized ballots, tampered ballots, destroyed ballots. There’s one report from Vancouver, Washington — this is in the southwestern corner of the state — of one drop box that was set on fire, destroying a couple of hundred ballots. This is mostly a matter for the local police, but I’m sure you have thought about it.
SL: Unfortunately, we have thought about it, and it’s another area where people have been really preparing to ensure that these things don’t happen ikn the first instance. Of course we’re starting to see, unfortunately, people engaged in activity of this nature. I think it’s hard to go into too much detail about the responses. It’ll depend a little bit on each state and their laws, and on the specific issue. There may be backups in certain places, opportunities to do a limited chase of impacted voters, which I believe that the Washington elections officials are engaged in trying to get folks to do: cast a new ballot if their ballot has been destroyed.
But I think it’s a call to voters as well. If you’re a mail voter, there are ways that you can track your ballot, make sure that it’s made its way through the process, ways to ensure that if there is an issue, that there’s an opportunity for you to be able to fix that or cast a provisional ballot and make sure that that ballot counts.
So be careful. Be watchful. But again, know that people have been preparing for this, and thinking about it, and looking to make sure that everybody’s vote is counted.
JW: The vote counting ends with what we call certification; the official statement of the final results. Some MAGA officials have said they will refuse to certify the results if they favor Harris, in an effort to confuse or delay declaring her the winner of the election. The Brookings Foundation has named 11 counties in four swing states where county officials who support Trump have threatened to refuse to certify elections in their counties. This is Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. I know you’ve litigated this already with very successful results in Georgia. Where do we stand on this issue today?
SL: There have been a number of really good, positive rulings. We have a state court ruling that is in place right now, making clear that under Georgia State law, certification is a mandatory duty. It’s not a discretionary one. That’s great. And that is correct.
We also have two court orders, actually at the state court level, at the trial court level, stating that a number of the state election board rules that would have given local election officials some discretion, unfortunately, to delay or disrupt the election, including a rule required hand counting of the ballots on election night. We have those two state court rulings saying that these rules violate state law and that the state election board did not have the authority to pass those rules.
There had been an attempt to get those rules reinstated for this election, even though they’ve been blocked permanently by state trial court, and the Georgia Supreme Court rejected that effort, which is great news. It means these rules will not be in place for this election and that they will not disrupt, gum up, or delay the certification process.
JW: Mostly here we’ve talked about threats of violence and refusal by officials to follow the law. There’s also, of course, plans by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, to file dozens of lawsuits in places where Kamala Harris has been declared the winner. They’ve already filed dozens of lawsuits. They filed dozens of lawsuits in 2020, all of which failed, but they’re promising to try to do better this time. What are the plans for countering those lawsuits from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee?
SL: Not necessarily from the campaign, but the number of anti-voter, anti-voting, anti-election process lawsuits is over 130, maybe even more at this point. There are new ones being filed all the time, and the vast majority, just as they were in 2020, are frivolous, based on baseless claims, unsupported allegations, speculation, and have been time and time again. And even through this year’s process, and certainly in the 2020 process, they’ve been thrown out quite quickly by the various courts that they’ve been put in front of. And in large part, I think they are aimed at pushing a counter narrative that there is something wrong, to create an opportunity to potentially take advantage of uncertainty in the process, and potentially create enough chaos or enough disruption to possibly change the outcome.
So we at the ACLU have a particular lens when it comes to this litigation. We care deeply about the point of view of the voter. At the end of the day, I think there’s a balance. There’s a fine balance between giving oxygen to claims that are baseless, to claims that are frivolous, and ensuring that there’s a quick resolution, so that we can get through this election process.
JW: Maybe we should just make it clear here, that while I’ve been talking about electing Kamala Harris as our next president, this is not the goal of the ACLU Voting Rights Project.
SL: That’s absolutely correct. Again, we are here to make sure that every eligible voter has the ability to cast a ballot, have that ballot counted, and have that ballot respected, no matter who is ultimately the choice of that voter. Again, that’s the lens that we bring to our decisions about whether to engage in litigation, and who we try to, whose voices we try to uplift.
JW: And let’s be clear that the responsibility for protecting the right to vote lies ultimately with the Justice Department. And they too, have been planning for this, probably as long as you have – for four years. In 2021, Attorney General Garland created an ‘elections threat task force’ that includes the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Postal Inspection Service, since threats have come through the mail, and cyber security agencies. And of course most of the responsibility for running elections is at the county level and it’s governed by state laws. So this is a matter for governors, state police, county sheriffs, and I am encouraged by the fact that five of six swing states have Democratic governors; Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, and North Carolina. And the last one, Georgia, has a Repulibcan governor, Brian Kemp, who has stood up for the independent actions of the Georgia vote count in defiance of Trump four years ago. So it’s not just the ACLU that has to do this job. There are government agencies that you work with and appeal to in these cases.
SL: Absolutely, and I think that that’s a critical point. Much of the work is laying the groundwork, making sure that we are able to plug in – I would say to leverage what the elections officials, what state AGs, what governors, what county elections officials, what the DOJ may already be doing; that we are, I can say, amplifying all the efforts across the board. And not just the ACLU, but all partner organizations that we work with.
JW: Let’s talk about that. The ACLU isn’t the only group working on this. You have wonderful partners in different places. What are the most important partners that you work with?
SL: There’s so many, which is absolutely amazing. On the litigation side, we work quite a bit with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, on both litigation –and on the Election Protection hotline for the voters. It’s out there, right, 1-866-OUR-VOTE. If you have problems on election day, you have a question, this is a number to call, and we are staffing this along with many of our partner organizations.
But on the litigation side, we partner with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law quite a bit. The Legal Defense Fund, Latino Justice, AALDEF, MALDEF, Campaign Legal Center, Protect Democracy. I could go on and on. There’s quite a few. The Brennan Center, who have provided a ton of resources, both for elections officials about the different laws and rules and things like that out there, but also for voters themselves, if they want to know a little bit more.
And we have a ton of partners who are working also on the voter mobilization side: the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, the NAACP. There’s so many, and I hope that no one is offended that I have not named their names. But it is quite remarkable, I would say, the number of civic organizations that are engaged in the enterprise and ensuring that people are able to vote, that the process runs smoothly, that everyone feels secure, and that we have this covered.
JW: Any concern about threats from the left? If you read the right-wing press, it’s all about Antifa mobilizing to disrupt the election. What’s your view?
SL: We’re concerned about violence or intimidation no matter where it comes from. It’s unacceptable, no matter where it’s coming from.
JW: One good sign about this year’s voting: nearly 80% of voters trust that the 2024 presidential election results will be accurate, and this includes a majority of Republicans, a majority of independents, as well as of Democrats. This is despite Trump’s efforts to create doubt about the accuracy of the results. 80% of Americans expect the results to be accurate. This is a significant improvement over just two years ago, when about 70% of the voters said they had confidence in the result of the midterm election. So it seems like you, your partners, and the Justice Department, have done a good job in not only assuring the safety of the vote, but of persuading the public that the vote count is going to be accurate.
SL: That is great news. I love to hear it. Let’s get to a hundred percent! Although I know that may be hard. I mean that’d be hard. But I think it is absolutely a testament to all the work that’s been done. I think a recognition that faith in these elections, faith in the outcomes of the election, is such a big piece of being a democracy. And there’s more to do, and we’ll continue to do that, but this is one of my biggest concerns — that people lose faith and they don’t continue to participate and engage in the long term. And so that makes me feel good.
JW: Sophia Lin Lakin is director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. Sophia, thank you for all your work and thanks for talking with us today.
SL: Thank you.