Reply #296: Rachel talked about ALEC legislation designed to make it harder to vote, on her March 10 show. Link [View All]

MADDOW: Did you ever have that not so democratic feeling? I don‘t mean capital-D Democratic like yay, donkeys, yay blue? I mean small-D democratic.

I mean this is a democracy. I mean I have a right to vote, no one gets in the way of that right to vote. All our votes get counted and then the result of all that rights having and vote not blocking and fair counting is that I get a government—we all do, we participate in a group decision about who our elected officials are and then those officials get to do that thing we call governing in all its messy hysterical, fraught glory.

When you look at a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, funded in part by the billionaire Koch brothers, providing model legislation to Republicans in dozens of states about how to change laws in those states to make it harder to vote, harder to register to vote, that can provoke a not so democratic feeling about the direction of conservative public policy in America in 2011.

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