Larry David Arrested for Giving Water in Election Line
From Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 12, Episode 1)
Categories:
Run time: 1:12
Clip Description: Larry David shows up at a polling line and gives a bottle of water to his friend. He is arrested for violating a law against giving water or food to people in line. This clip is a good one to introduce a topic on civil liberties or voting laws.
American Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: This clip is a humorous description to discuss concepts of voter suppression techniques and laws surrounding voting in general.
Possible Uses in Classroom: This clip can be used to discuss voting laws and voter suppression strategies.
Discussion Questions
- Georgia’s 2021 election law makes it a misdemeanor to hand food or water to voters within 150 feet of a polling place. The state’s stated purpose is keeping campaigning away from the line. What would have to be true for that to be a sensible rule about electioneering — and what would have to be true for it to be a rule about who gets to finish waiting?
- Long lines are not spread evenly across a state. If a law’s text is neutral but its burden lands almost entirely on voters who wait hours, is that a voting-rights problem? Brnovich v. DNC (2021) narrowed how far Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act reaches such claims; read the rule it announced and apply it here.
- The scene is a joke, and it works. Does playing a policy for laughs make it easier to examine, or easier to wave away? Would your answer change if the arrest happened to someone other than Larry David?
Assignment
Pick one election-administration rule in your own state — voter ID, drop boxes, mail-ballot deadlines, line warming — and trace it back to the bill that created it. Then write a brief that makes the strongest honest case on both sides: the integrity argument its sponsors made, and the access argument its opponents made. You will be graded on whichever half you find less congenial.
For AP Students
AP U.S. Government and Politics
Unit 5: Political Participation
Topics: 5.1 Voting Rights and Models of Voting Behavior; 5.2 Voter Turnout
Also reaches: Unit 3: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights
Skill: Concept Application (1.D)
Anchors: Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Sixth Amendments; Voting Rights Act of 1965
Larry hands a bottle of water to a friend standing in line and is arrested for it. The rule behind the joke is real. Section 33 of Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021 makes it a misdemeanor to hand food or water to voters within 150 feet of a polling place, as part of a broader ban on giving anything of value to voters, though it does permit unattended self-service water dispensers. That gives students an actual statute to describe, defend and attack, and the self-service exception is worth putting in front of them, because it is the strongest fact the rule’s defenders have.
Discussion questions
- States run their own elections, within limits Congress and the courts can set. Name the level of government that wrote this rule, and name one way the federal government could override it.
- The rule applies to every voter equally, but long lines are not spread equally across a state. Explain the difference between a law that treats people the same on paper and a law that falls harder on some voters in practice.
- Turnout in the United States runs below most wealthy democracies. Would repealing rules like this one raise it much? Give a reason, then name one factor you think matters more.
Short activity
The two-column brief (10 minutes). Students fold a page down the middle. On the left, the strongest one-sentence case that this rule protects the integrity of the election. On the right, the strongest one-sentence case that it restricts access to the ballot. Then they circle the side they found harder to write and add a second sentence to that side only. The exercise is short on purpose: the point is that a student can state the argument they disagree with, which is what the argument essay rewards and what most students skip.
Clip hosted on Critical Commons.