The Battles We Pick
What can we learn about making social and political change from talking to professional change-makers? This work takes a combination of persistence, shrewdness, and luck. On the Battles We Pick podcast, skilled advocates and organizers talk about how they deal with the various challenges they confront.
Theme music by generous permission of recording artist Stephen.
The Battles We Pick
Voting rights attorney Yael Bromberg on turning the tide on voter suppression
Election law attorney Yael Bromberg is principal of her own firm and litigation practice. With a specialty in student voting rights, she serves as outside counsel to the Andrew Goodman Foundation—which works on college campuses around the country to promote student voting and is legacy of one of the activists murdered in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964. Yael teaches election law at Rutgers University Law School and works with the Harvard Kennedy School’s William Trotter Collaborative on a multi-campus voting rights course drawing students from three historically black colleges and universities.
The episode features a great discussion of the Republicans' voter fraud myth and how their voting suppression efforts resemble the multi-headed Hydra monster from Greek mythology. Yael said we have to confront that monster with the full range of tools—a mixture of legal and political tactics—and she gave examples from her work. I especially liked Yael’s idea of redefining public confidence in elections as a matter of maximum participation and the most inclusive electorate possible.
Yael also talked about her scholarship to highlight student voters as a protected class under the Constitution’s 26th Amendment, which recently led to the introduction of the Youth Voting Rights Act by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Nikema Williams.
