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Tavis: Ted Shaw is the director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, only the fifth person to hold the position since Thurgood Marshall founded the Legal Defense Fund back in 1940. Last week here in Los Angeles, he gave a major address titled 'Race, Justice, and Voting Rights: Making Every Vote Count.' And we are pleased to have him on our set tonight. Ted, nice to see you.

Theodore Shaw: Good to see you, Tavis.

Tavis: And congratulations on your relatively new appointment to the position that Thurgood Marshall once had. How does that feel?

Shaw: Well, it doesn't feel so new anymore.

Tavis: Yeah? Ha ha ha. But it's been 50 years since Thurgood Marshall led that wonderful team of lawyers who argued Brown v. Board, and here we are on the 50th anniversary of that seminal case, and you have the same chair that Thurgood Marshall had. You got to--that's gotta make you either feel good or feel pressured, one of the two.

Shaw: Well, you know--

Tavis: There's always pressure.

Shaw: There's always pressure, but you do the work, and, uh, you don't really spend a lot of time dwelling on the fact that you're in the position that Thurgood Marshall was in, because I'm not Thurgood Marshall. I mean, he was my hero, but, uh, I--I have to do this job my way now, and, uh-- I just want to do the best I can leading the Legal Defense Fund and continuing the fight that he and others started so long ago.

Tavis: Well, you're doing a great job. I'm glad to have you on the show.

Shaw: Well, thank you.

Tavis: Um, former President Jimmy Carter, who is an expert on this-- If there is an expert in this country, Jimmy Carter, I think, would qualify, um, as one who has the right and the stature and experience to talk about voting irregularities. Around the world, President Carter has been sought out to monitor elections. Jimmy Carter said the other day, as you well know, that he has concerns--I'm paraphrasing his remarks--but he has concerns about what happened in Florida 4 years ago, and is still concerned about it now because it might happen again. I'm speaking now of voting irregularities. He's concerned that not enough was done between then and now to make sure that doesn't happen again in Florida. When Jimmy Carter says that, it gets my attention.

Shaw: Well, it gets my attention, too, but, of course, we are just as concerned about what happened in Florida, and we want to make sure that all votes are counted. You know, the Legal Defense Fund, of course, is a 501-C3 organization. We're non-partisan. But having said that, we know that people who are overzealous or who have bad intentions will do sometimes anything that they can do to win, and we also know that it's a deep and long tradition of suppressing black votes. We know that even recently in Florida there were black--elderly black people targeted in the name of an investigation of voting fraud, and law enforcement officials went and interviewed them about their registration, what they had done, and--you know, that's very intimidating for some people.

We also know that there was a list drawn up for purge purposes, which was primarily-- disproportionally and primarily African American. Uh, so this is done under the auspices of trying to, uh, weed out those who have criminal convictions, felony records, et cetera-- and the same thing happened in 2000, and we don't want to see that happen again. This time they got caught with their hand in the jar, and the state backed off, and they say they're not gonna use that list. But this is gonna be, in spite of what the polls say, a hotly contested election, and we believe that we need to be present in ways that assure African American and other voters, all voters, that their votes will count.

Tavis: Because this is going to be a hotly contested election by all accounts, certainly by the polls, it would appear it's going to be a tight race. I don't know if it's going to be as tight as it was in 2000, uh, but there are some who are arguing that the posturing that Legal Defense Fund is doing--and other organizations that are talking about voting irregularities-- is just that: posturing, preparing, planning for any eventual contest. Any eventual legal disputes that come out of this election, you guys are already getting set to go to court. You're already getting set to draw up lawsuits if in fact this race is close enough like it was 4 years ago, where Kerry, over a legal issue, could end up defeating George W. Bush. You guys posturing here?

Shaw: Well, 2 things about anyone who would hold that view or about their arguments anyway. First, after the 2000 election, we filed litigation--we did file litigation, and we needed to file litigation, and it was aimed at systemic change in Florida and their electoral processes, and we have been monitoring what they have been doing, and we'll continue to monitor it, and if necessary, we will go back to court, either to reopen the old case or to file new cases.

But that's not what our starting point is. We want the sacred right to vote protected, and in our country, that is a constitutional right. Constitutional rights get enforced in the courts.

Secondly, the last time around, when there were lawyers parachuting into Florida as if it was D-Day, in the immediate aftermath of the election day itself, before the dispute was resolved, we didn't come in right away. We did not file suit to affect the outcome of the election. We filed suit to make sure that voting irregularities are not repeated again. That's our priority. The election, no question, it's of massive importance. I could talk more about that, but that's not really our focal point. Our focal point is the right to vote and making sure that African Americans and others aren't stripped of that right.

Tavis: Let me take you back to something you said a moment ago because I am fascinated by this notion, and you can shed some light on this as the guy who runs the Legal Defense Fund. You referred to the right to vote a moment ago as a constitutional right. There are some who believe that our right to vote--and I'm not just talking about black folk.

I'm talking about the American citizen's right to vote--is not a constitutionally guaranteed right because if it were, Bush wouldn't be in the White House. And your argument goes like this. You're the legal scholar here, not me, but if our right to vote were a constitutionally protected right, the Supreme Court, behind Scalia and Thomas, would not have kicked that case, Bush v. Gore, 4 years ago, back to the Florida--the state of Florida--for them to decide the outcome of that race.

If it were a constitutionally protected right, the Supreme Court would have handled that in a different way. So there were a number of folk at the Democratic convention, as I recall, a few weeks ago when we did this show live, who were pushing for a new platform in the Democratic party's planks about this issue, saying that Kerry and the Democratic party need to go on record to amend the u.s. Constitution to guarantee our right to vote and get that protection under the constitution.

That's a long set-up here, but I wanted to explain the issue for those who are watching. Shed some light on that issue for me, and tell me whether or not when you say 'our constitutional right to vote,' whether you really mean that. Give me a lecture on this. You used to teach at the University of Michigan, so you know this stuff.

Shaw: Well, Tavis, I, you know, I'm not gonna lecture you.

Tavis: No, I want to know. I mean, enlighten me. I'm just curious about it.

Shaw: You know, the 15th amendment to the Constitution was adopted in aftermath of the Civil War. It is one of the 3 post-Civil War amendments that were specifically aimed at bringing African Americans into the fullness of their rights. The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment, which is the equal-protection clause and due process, and the 15th Amendment, voting rights. So it is a constitutionally protected right. There's no question in my mind about that. Now, I've had discussions with some of the people who are proposing a constitutional amendment, and they are concerned about what happened in 2000, and they can't understand how a constitutionally protected right could have been abrogated. And the fact is--

Tavis: It was turned into a states' right. They let the people in Florida make that decision in that state.

Shaw: Well, actually, quite the contrary. I think that what happened was that the Florida Supreme Court would have resolved this one way, and the United States Supreme Court stepped in. And it was very ironic because ordinarily you hear conservatives saying that states' rights ought to be deferred to, as opposed to the federal government, unless there's a specific, enumerated constitutional delegation responsible to the federal government. In this case the federal government stepped in, or the Supreme Court stepped in and overrode the state in interpreting its voting or election laws. So that was very ironic.

But here's the bottom line. Constitutional rights don't mean anything if you don't have anybody to enforce them and if you don't have a court that's going to interpret them. The Supreme Court is the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution, and this Supreme Court decided the way they did. A lot of people thought that that decision was ill-founded conceptually, was illegitimate, but where else do you go? That signifies, in my view, the importance of voting because, again, people can vote for whomever they believe in as the candidate who protects their interests.

I'm not saying where to go. But what we do know is that this next president, whoever it's going to be, will get 3, maybe 4 appointments to the United States Supreme Court. No one in our lifetime has had so many appointments to the Supreme Court. This election is important for a number of reasons, but that reason is at the top of the list.

Tavis: There are some who argue that that issue has not gotten enough traction, that John Kerry has failed miserably on raising that issue. If you really want to appeal to, certainly, voters of color, tell them that the next guy gets 4 appointments to the Supreme Court. You'd talk about that more than you'd talk about Iraq if you were trying to get their attention. But Kerry has not made that one of the hallmarks of this campaign, for reaching out to people of color.

Shaw: I think one of the things that we have to recognize is that the choices in electoral politics and presidential elections--the choices are not between the perfect and the imperfect. Nothing in life that I've seen so far is perfect. Not on this earth, anyway. And so I think it's important for people to realize that when they go to the polls, they may not like everything about one candidate, but there are significant differences between candidates. And then they have to determine what candidate is going to represent their interests best.

And if you don't like these candidates, then the important thing is, I think, to get involved in the electoral process. When people say that they're not going to vote because it doesn't count--particularly African Americans--that's like a dagger to the heart. Because I think about Fannie Lou Hamer. I think about Martin Luther King. I think about the Civil Rights movement--all those who gave their lives for the Voting Rights Act and other Civil Rights legislation. And I think about all the battles to protect this most fundamental right. I think about the people in South Africa who stood in line 10 years ago--

Tavis: For miles.

Shaw: That's right. To vote. And, you know, we take this right for granted. So, it's so important to get out and vote.

Tavis: Let me close with this, about 45 seconds. Tell me what you say to people who will find themselves, God forbid, on November 2nd, being disenfranchised, being intimidated out of their right to vote. What are you guys telling folk to do?

Shaw: First of all, they have a right to vote. We have an election protection hot line that we, the Legal Defense Fund, and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, and we've set up... It's 1-866-OUR-VOTE. O-U-R-V-O-T-E. And people can call--and they can call on Election Day and report any irregularities, intimidation. And we have thousands and thousands--tens of thousands of people who will be available to give advice. And we'll be standing by, if need be, to either go to court or to call the Justice Department in and get them to do what they are supposed to do. So, no one should be intimidated.

Tavis: T.H. Shaw, our generation's Thurgood Marshall with the Legal Defense Fund. Theodore M. Shaw, to be exact. Ted, nice to see you.

Shaw: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: All the best to you.

Shaw: All right.

Tavis: Up next on this program, director David O. Russell. Stay with us.