Appearing on Saturday's The Katie Phang Show to promote his new book, frequent MSNBC guest Elie Mystal of The Nation proclaimed that the people who voted for Donald Trump are "77 million white supremacists" as he called for the ending of voter registration requirements.
MSNBC's The Katie Phang Show
April 5, 2025
12:33 p.m. Eastern
KATIE PHANG: And, you know, something that you said that also resonated with me, Elie, is you said the left has to take a page from the right's playbook and to bring in the hammer. I would actually amend that a little bit and say we have to bring in the sledge hammer based upon what you just said that the Republicans do.. What does that look like, though? Because there's a big game and a big talk with messaging, and yet the actual implementation of something always seems to be lacking.
ELIE MYSTAL, THE NATION MAGAZINE: Democrats always say they want to protect voting rights, right? And that's great. I also want to protect voting rights.
PHANG: Why not?
MYSTAL: Your previous guest, Marc Elias, has dedicated his life to protecting voting rights, but I want to do more than that. I want to expand voting rights. I want to make voting. I want to make voting actually easier for people. So one of the -- the first chapter in my book is about repealing voter registration laws -- not voter eligibility requirements. I'm not crazy, right? We should have eligibility requirements, you know. If you have, let's say, an age limit, right -- you got to be 18 to vote -- I'm generally cool with that. I don't want my nine-year-old voting -- that would be a bad idea. I've talked to him, right? However, once you are eligible -- once you have met the eligibility requirements, there is no need to have a secondary hurdle to pre-register before you go vote. If you're eligible, you should be able to walk into a polling booth and vote. It's that simple.
And it's so simple that this isn't my idea. This is the idea of most democracies around the world. Everybody else besides use either has automatic registration, mandatory registration, or same-day registration. We're the only ones that have this archaic, asinine system where you have to register -- pre-register 10 days, two weeks, a month in advance of the actual election, right? So I'm kind of, with that suggestion, I'm focused not on the 77 million white supremacists that voted for Donald Trump. I'm not -- I can't help them, right? That is between them and their God. I'm worried about the 90 million people who sat on their couch -- the 90 million eligible voters who sat on their couch and didn't take a stand on fascism or no. Right? And I'm thinking that one of the ways to motivate them is to make it just a little bit easier, and getting rid of pre-registration requirements makes it just a little bit easier for people who, again, are already eligible to vote -- have already met the eligibility requirements. We're not talking about noncitizens voting -- we're not talking about undocumented people voting. We're talking about eligible American citizens. Why should they -- why should you have to pre-register in order to exercise your franchise inside this alleged demoacracy?