Jason Kander Says Only One Party “Wants to Let Black People Vote”

Listen to him talk about his fight to protect voting rights.

Ed Ritger/The Commonwealth Club

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Jason Kander keeps busy. He’s a combat veteran, a former Missouri secretary of state, the founder of voting rights advocacy group Let America Vote, a podcast host, and a candidate for Kansas City mayor. Now he’s written a memoir, Outside the Wire, which traces his path from a soldier in Afghanistan to a rising star in the Democratic Party.

Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery interviewed Kander last week at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, where they talked about Kander’s book, his unforgettable 2016 campaign ad, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s “villainous superpower,” and the GOP’s strategy of disenfranchising likely Democratic voters. “One party wants to keep the federal government out of our elections, and the other party wants to let black people vote,” Kander said.

Watch the entire event here: 

Or listen to the conversation below on this week’s Mother Jones Podcast, where you’ll also hear Mother Jones Washington, DC, bureau chief David Corn’s analysis of this week’s explosive legal developments and an interview with author Brian Abrams about his new book, Obama: An Oral History.

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A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

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Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do.

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