Election Experts on 2024 | Full Episode 8.2.24 | Firing Line with Margaret Hoover | PBS

Intro - Restoring trust in America's voting systems. This week on Firing Line. - We want a landslide this November. We want something too big to rig, too big to rig. - We'll make sure every American has the ability to cast their ballot and have it counted. - [Margaret] With the vote count in November likely to face intense scrutiny and amid an unprecedented wave of litigation and disinformation, how are states preparing for a free, fair, and secure election? Ahead of Firing Line's Special Counting the Vote documentary premiering August 27th on PBS, I talked to three leading election experts. - [Crowd] Stop the count! Stop the count! - Michigan's Democratic Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson oversaw a contentious 2020 presidential election and is now preparing for 2024 in the key battleground state. - We are doing more to protect those election workers never before. - [Margaret] Longtime Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg worked for George W. Bush's campaign during the 2000 Florida recount. Later he testified against Trump's claims of fraud. - There was no credible evidence of fraud produced by the Trump campaign or his supporters. - [Margaret] David Becker is the founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. - We can't say for sure that there are zero non-citizens voting, but it's pretty darn close to zero and this is a knowable thing. - [Margaret] With November's election just three months away, what do these experts say now? - [Announcer] Firing Line with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, and by the following. Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. How certain are you that we will have an accurate fair and secure election - Secretary Jocelyn Benson, David Becker, Benjamin Ginsberg, welcome to Firing Line. - Thanks for having us. - Thank you. - How certain are you that we will have an accurate, fair, and secure election on November 5th? Madam Secretary to you first. - I'm 100% certain that we will have an accurate, fair, and secure election, not just in Michigan but all across the country. What work we've gotta do is making sure citizens can have that same rightly placed faith that we all do. - [Margaret] David Becker? - I'm also 100% sure that the public servants all over this country who run elections, Republicans, Democrats, from Maine to California, are going to run a really well-run election in November of 2024. What I'm worried about is that the losing candidate might spread lies about the election regardless. - Benjamin Ginsberg. - I'm 100% certain it will be fair, accurate, and secure and it's incumbent on our fellow citizens to do their role to go out and observe those elections, work as poll workers, sign up to help out their candidates and parties and look at the way elections are actually run. How is this election cycle different than previous election cycles - The New York Times recently reported that Republican lawyers are engaged in a, quote, "wide-ranging and methodical effort to lay the groundwork to contest election results if Trump loses." The Republican National Committee has more than 90 active cases at the moment. There are always some pre-election cases from the Republican side and from the democratic side but David, to you, how is what we are seeing now different than in previous election cycles? - You're quite right, we always see some litigation before an election on both sides and that's completely fine. I think what we're seeing now is somewhat different though, where some of these cases are brought not to actually change policy, they're unlikely to, they reflect cases that have already lost in previous attempts. They are attacking processes that have been in place for decades in some cases and where the laws are very clear. And I think when you get litigation like that, it appears to me designed more to set the stage for denying the outcome of an election after that election was over rather than changing policy before an election. And that's very dangerous because it could undermine obviously voters' confidence in those results that we know are accurate. - Ben, do you agree with that? - In part. I think we've gotten to a place in this country where each party uses charges about the election, fraud by the Republicans, suppression by the Democrats, and those messages which do not enhance faith in the elections are used for get out the vote purposes. But it is ultimately all about trying to create an electoral advantage at the expense of really faith in the election system. - Secretary Benson, you've been the subject of some of these lawsuits. Are any of these filings posing legitimate questions that are necessary for real clarification? - Some of them are, yes, but the vast majority are really PR campaigns masquerading as lawsuits. A shift I saw in as a longtime election lawyer myself was a shift away from legitimate lawsuits and towards lawsuits that really didn't have a lot of truth or facts, or even legal arguments behind them, but more using them as a strategy to sow seeds of doubt among the electorate about the election itself and its accuracy. We saw this in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election where dozens upon dozens of lawsuits were filed almost entirely in battleground states, almost entirely dismissed or failing. And now we're seeing this in the pre-election phase in 2024. In Michigan we've seen an instance where one lawsuit was dismissed and immediately another group refiled the same arguments even after a judge just dismissed them as not having any basis in the law or fact. Voter rolls - Let me turn to the lawsuits about the voter rolls. One focus of Trump and the GOP affiliated or aligned groups is challenging voter registrations in battleground states. David, are there valid concerns about the voter rolls being outdated or inaccurate? - So voter rolls are a snapshot in a moment in time and it is a challenge across government to keep those databases up to date. But that being said, our lists are better than they've ever been and I should say, with all due respect to Secretary Benson, Michigan has been a leader on this. They were one of the very first to lead the way on sharing information with motor vehicles. They were one of the very first to create an effective statewide voter registration database. And so, states like Michigan led by a Democrat, states like Georgia led by a Republican, actually have some of the very best voter lists among all the states and that level of all the states' quality of voter lists is as high as it's ever been right now. - When you listen to people who doubt the reliability of elections, one of the most frequent complaints is that illegal people are voting. The silver lining in these suits is that they can show that the lists are accurate. And so this great sort of worry about illegal voting can be addressed in these suits. Now, incumbent in that is people bringing the suits accepting the judgment of the courts in that. Noncitizen voting - There is a narrative about non-citizens voting that is prevalent on the right with the GOP at the moment. And that actions need to be taken to prevent non-citizens from voting. David, are non-citizens voting in American elections? - We can't say for sure that there are zero non-citizens voting in American elections, but it's pretty darn close to zero and this is a knowable thing. And there's three big reasons for that. First, voting by non-citizens is against the law. Second, there is already a requirement under federal law that every single voter who registers to vote in the United States provides ID when they register to vote. Every single voter does that. And then lastly, it's because the consequences for voting by a non-citizen are just incredibly disproportionate to the potential benefit. People who are here as non-citizens are here for reasons that are not about casting one ballot in an election in which 160 million ballots are cast. And if they do cast a ballot, they are painting a big bullseye on themselves and they will get caught and they will be deported. So there's not much benefit there. Georgia, for instance, did a complete audit of their voter list just a couple of years ago and they found about 1,500 people out of about 7 million registered voters in the state of Georgia where they could not confirm that they were citizens. And of those 1,500 people, not a single one of them had voted, literally zero in the state of Georgia. And so states already have the tools to do this and that's why we can be very secure that there is no widespread non-citizen voting in the United States. Proof of citizenship - There are some cases of non-citizens registering to vote and casting ballots in various states, including Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. And so, Republicans in the House of Representatives with the support of five Democrats in the House of Representatives have passed a bill that would require individuals to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Ben, is this a solution in search of a problem? - Well, there are instances where it happens and so, the argument is that the cases that have been found are the tip of the iceberg. I think that is wrong and inaccurate but showing that you are a US citizen when you register to vote seems to me to be a legitimate measure to take that really is required in a number of states now. - Yeah, I think that just like any allegations of fraud or instances in which ineligible people are trying to cast their ballots, that is illegal and we do catch it and we hold people accountable. There are perhaps occasional times in various states in which one or two people might break the law, knowingly or unknowingly, and that's what the law is for, for us to then seek accountability which states have done in those individual cases. But what that also underscores is that if there was evidence of widespread fraud or widespread instances of non-citizens voting, we would know that and we haven't seen that. And so, we have to ensure we are not overreacting to what is a minor issue in our elections where the vast majority, if not the significant voting that is being cast is all being cast by eligible citizens who are US citizens. - And it's worth noting that this was a count in numerous of the lawsuits filed by Donald Trump and his supporters post the 2020 election. And through all those court cases, there was not documented instances of illegal voting and certainly not enough to change the outcome of the election. Vote importation - For months, Elon Musk has been posting on X about election integrity issues broadly. He has promoted the conspiracy theory that Democrats are allowing undocumented immigrants into the country and registering them to vote. David, is there any reason to believe that what Musk calls voter importation is actually happening? - There's absolutely no evidence of it. We've already talked about the fact that non-citizens are not allowed to vote. They're gonna find it very difficult if they try to vote and they're certainly not happening on any kind of scale. And it is troubling to see the owner of a major social media platform who I think we can all agree is not an election expert by any means spreading rumors, falsehoods, retweeting other disinformation accounts with as much amplification as he gets, he often gets 50 million plus views in a single day. Whereas those who might actually have the information, election officials like Secretary Benson or others throughout the country might get a few thousand within that same period of time if they're fortunate. And I think about this in the perspective, I imagine that if I went on X slash Twitter and started tweeting out disinformation about electric vehicles or Tesla cars in particular and I was getting a lot of views, that would probably trouble Mr. Musk and I think appropriately so. And right now what he's doing is he's spreading disinformation in a way that is very hard to combat and he's shown himself somewhat resistant to being educated on this issue. Or meanwhile the disinformation is flying around the world many, many times by the time he can even respond. - Yeah, we can respond if he were to listen with information about what we're doing to actually debunk a lot of those theories. But instead he and others are choosing to use their spheres of influence to amplify unsourced or easily debunkable information not just about elections, but about other things. Best practices - Ben, let's say that every single state implemented the reforms that are widely considered to be best practices for election administration. Offering online voter registration, multiple ways to vote early in person, absentee without excuse, in person on election day, pre-processing of absentee ballots, paper trail of 100% of the ballots that are cast, pre-certification audits. Would there no longer be contested elections? - I think there will always be contested elections because there will always be close elections. And when the number of ballots separating candidates is closed, those candidates have every right to go and ask for a recount to contest things that they think are wrong. Actually, that process also helps increase faith in the system. So I think that there will always be questions over elections. We have 10,000 jurisdictions. It is a system that really runs on a lot of volunteer help. It is not a machine built for precision, it is a machine built for sort of local control over elections. And so, I think that there will always be disputes over elections as long as they're closed. But the process of going through those recounts and contests has really confirmed the accuracy of the count. - I just wanna add, we should also recognize Close to Nirvana how close we already are to that nirvana that you described. I mean- - The best practices, gold standard in every state? - I mean, we're at a point where 97% of all voters have access to early in person voting. 39 states have no excuse mail voting. We have, online voter registration is pervasive over 40 states. Paper ballots, 95% of all people vote on paper ballots, including all of the voters in all of the battleground states. We are as close to that, that ideal as we could possibly get. And I should also say, a big part of that is the improvement and professionalization of election administration that's occurred over the last two decades in particular, and which Ben played a very large role in as co-chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration with his co-chair Bob Bauer who is Obama's White House Council, which made many of these recommendations and really catalyzed so much of this positive transformation in red states and blue states across the country without regard to politics. We have done a really nice job, which is not to say there isn't room for improvement, there always is. But our elections today are as secure, transparent, accessible, and verifiable as they've ever been in American history, and it's not close. Our Elections Today - You know, if you look at it over the course of the last few decades of this sort of ongoing trend, despite all the noise, despite all the rancor, despite all the misinformation of our elections, bit by bit getting more and more secure, more and more accurate, more and more accessible, and us as election officials becoming more and more transparent, in some ways is a reaction to a lot of the challenges we've endured. And so my hope, and I would say what we're actually seeing when you peel back all of the layers, is an election system that continues to get stronger and perhaps when there are legitimate questions, even better for it because we respond to the questions and then we improve our processes. So, best-case scenario is that we emerge out of this moment, this challenging moment for elections in American history with a stronger and more robust and healthier system of elections than ever before. And I hope that all of our leaders can reenter a phase of civility and respect in this moment because that is what will actually help us as a citizenry, as a nation emerge past this divisive moment to a better, more prosperous future. Stand True - As a Democratic-elected in a contested battleground state, if President Trump is to win your state, will everything you just said stand true? - Oh, certainly. I mean, I will always stand by and respect the will of the voters. And I expect every elected official and candidate in this country to do the same. - I can tell you election officials around the country are preparing for the very significant possibility that a candidate for president or maybe at a statewide level is going to attack the outcome of the election and spread lies about the conduct of that election. We all hope it doesn't happen. We all hope that we listen to our better angels as Vice President Gore did in 2000. He was not happy with that Supreme Court decision by any means, but he thought first about the country. And we've seen the same from others. Senator McCain, Senator Romney. This is something we need to normalize again. It was unfathomable. - Richard Nixon in 1960. - Exactly, 1960. Both Richard Nixon and Vice President Gore presided over a joint session of Congress that confirmed that their opponent won the election. Election Reform - You're right, Ben, that American elections have been contested in the past. One of the most contested of the 20th century was the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. 12 years later, Richard Nixon was president and his counselor, Robert Finch, came on the program Firing Line with William F. Buckley, Jr. to discuss top to bottom voting reform and ways that America should reform the way we elect our presidents. Take a look at this clip. - I would argue that unless we have under a federal law a single system that goes from registration all the way through till a man is sworn in. that that process has some kind of integrity, then indeed that office can be compromised and has been in the past. The primaries are only a part of this. The electoral college and its defects are another part. How ballots are put together, the very process of voting. All of these, I think, have to be addressed because if we don't settle it, in my opinion, in the time in '76, then I think both Republicans and Democrats or any other party that may be on the scene will be sorely tested. And I think we could see a constitutional crisis within the next several decades. Are We Better Off Than 1972 - We still have primaries. The Electoral College has not been reformed. We are still battling over how to create ballots and count the votes. Can you look back with confidence at 1972 and say we are in a better, more transparent, improved place, Ben Ginsberg, even though we have still had two elections since 2000, where the electoral vote has not coincided with a popular vote? - I think the answer is undoubtedly yes. I mean, we are in a better place today with our elections for all the reasons we've been talking about. And built into the system that we have, which is the Electoral College, is the possibility of a candidate winning the Electoral College, but not the popular vote. It is akin in a football game to one team getting more yards but not more points. We count by the number of points and that's the basic system. - Those are the rules. And we all know the rules going into this game. All the parties do. And it is inextricably tied to whether or not we like the outcome. There we heard a Republican lawyer from 1972 raising questions about the Electoral College, 'cause at that time he apparently perceived it might not have benefited him and Republicans. In 2024, it may be Democrats raising more questions about the Electoral College. In 2000, we had George W. Bush win the presidency while losing by a very relatively small margin the popular vote. - Popular vote. - But in 2004, John Kerry, if 60,000 votes had flipped in Ohio, could have been in the same position. And this goes back to how much so much of this doubt about elections is being fueled by disappointment in outcomes, and how that's being leveraged by losers of elections recently to create delegitimization of our entire system. It's really dangerous. 'Cause if you go back to your original question, are we better off than 1972 in terms of elections? That's like asking, do you like your iPhone better than abacus? I mean, we are light years ahead of where we were in 1972 through legislation like the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the help America Vote Act, through policies and technology, through professionalization of the election administrators all over the country. Our elections right now, people in 1972 wouldn't recognize them 'cause we can verify them transparently, conclusively, in ways that could never have been done in previous decades. Threats to Election Officials - One thing that has gone up in the last several election cycles are the incidents of threats. You, Secretary Benson, have experienced more than your fair share of threats. How does this affect elected officials personally? - Oh, it's very unnerving to be threatened for simply just doing your job, especially when you take such pride, as many of our professional election workers do, in simply just making sure the process works for everyone. But in addition to that, there's a direct line between the misinformation, the dissatisfaction with election results, and then that manifesting itself not just in lies about our processes, but in lies that lead to threats against the election officials whose job it is to make sure the processes actually are secure and accessible to all. So it's been very harrowing for, not just statewide election officials, but our local clerks and our poll workers who have, again, been been deeply committed to the same principles of integrity and security and accessibility that we would, we all wanna be committed to, and yet have have been on the receiving ends of so many threats to the point where we have to look over our shoulder or watch our backs when we are simply just going grocery shopping. And these are people who are our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, our allies. They are regular people who are just doing the job that makes democracy work, and we are doing more to protect those election workers than ever before. But as the era of political violence increases in intensity, I'm deeply concerned that election officials will be potentially on the receiving end of that violence if the heat of this moment doesn't branch it downward. Final Question - Okay, final question for all of you. I wanna go down the line. What is the number one thing that you all want voters to know ahead of November 5th? David? - Voting is easy, despite what you might hear from anyone. It's not hard. Well over 90% of all voters wait less than 30 minutes. You're gonna have options to vote earlier by mail. Your ballot's gonna be counted accurately and it matters. It matters even if your candidate loses. It matters all the time. Voting is easy and the process that plays out after election day is a process that we've known and planned for. This is the way it's supposed to work and sometimes margins are very close. And that means sometimes we're gonna have to wait to find out who won and that's not a function of the public servants who are running elections. It's a function of the fact that we're a very closely divided nation and we should just expect that and let the process play out and trust that process, and take advantage of the transparency that election officials like Secretary Benson all the way down to poll workers offer. And if possible, volunteer to be a poll worker and see it for yourself. - Ben Ginsberg, what's the number one thing voters need to know ahead of November 5th? - Your vote will be counted accurately. Your friends and neighbors are the ones who run elections. They care about your community. Results are tabulated on a community level, not nationally and so you should have faith that your friends and neighbors are taking things into account and making the elections fair. - Madam Secretary. - You know, the future of our country and American democracy is gonna be decided by the choices citizens make this year. The beauty of election day, the beauty of democracy is that every citizen has equal power in this country to determine our collective future. So I hope everyone exercises that power judiciously and from an informed standpoint and proudly in a process that is as easy, secure, accurate, and trustworthy more than ever before. - David Becker, Secretary Benson, Ben Ginsberg, thank you for joining me on Firing Line. - Thanks for having us. - Thank you. - Thank you. (bright music) - [Announcer] Firing line with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri. Vanessa and Henry Cornell. The Fairweather Foundation, and by the following. Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. (bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music fades) - [Crowd] Stop the count! - I still feel that fear that we felt as we were trying to do our job. - There's so many conspiracies now about everything. The trust factor in our political system is at an all time low. - Come on in. - This is our tabulation room. This is really where all the magic happens. - The failure to produce results on election night is the Petri dish of the germ of election denial. - Counting votes is not a Democratic value or Republican value. It's an American value. (tense dramatic music) (gentle music) (lighthearted music) - [Announcer] You are watching PBS. (lighthearted music fades)