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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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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