One of the most aggressive attacks on voting rights have targeted young people. Young people are the least likely to have the type of IDs that are required. Young people have faced restrictions on where the IDs that they do have can be used. The most popular example, of course, is in Texas where you can vote with your gun license that you may spend $25-100 on, but you cannot vote with your student ID, which you spend thousands of dollars on.

If the choice is vote or not vote, not voting will guarantee that nothing changes. Voting at least gives you one more bite of the apple. And the more people we can get into the system, the more powerful your one vote becomes.

A republic means you don't have a monarch, and a democracy means people get to have a voice ... I'm talking about how the people get to participate directly in certain questions and through representatives ... It's the people getting to decide the vision for policy, the vision for government, and the rules through which we will operate.

I believe that there is no guarantee of equality of success, but there should be a guarantee of equality of opportunity.

I truly believe that we have work to do. I think that poverty is wrong. I think that we have failed to meet our obligations to those who are in need and vulnerable and disadvantaged and marginalized. I think we waste human capital through incarceration and through denial of basic services. And I know that the only way things change is if people do the work to create that change—and I'm one of those people.

I do not believe in conversion of ideology. That is a fundamental issue for me. I do believe in convincing people that choosing differently can get you better outcomes. And, so, my responsibility, our responsibility, is not the conversion of the ideological bent of those who share the nationalism and supremacy notions that drove that insurrection. Our responsibility is to say to those who are looking for a place to be—even if they hold to their normal conservatism—that voting in our party will get you the outcomes that you need ... My mission is to focus on an outcomes-driven, value-based, set of policies and to do everything in my power to make that so.

It is not a choice that should be foisted upon any American to decide between keeping your job and casting a vote.

Democracy can only work when it works for everyone. When you break any part of democracy, you break it for everyone—no matter who your target is.

This notion of the filibuster... is a romanticized idea that this is what gives the Senate nobility. No. It gives the Senate deniability.

I believe in democracy because I think it is the best system available for governments. I believe in voting not because of its mythical or mystic power as an act but because voting is how we get to the things we need.