Be it suspicion of voter fraud, fear of hackers or the general belief that something is amiss, legislators across the country have passed election laws designed to make our elections more secure. Those very same laws are widely criticized for making voting less accessible, especially to certain voting groups. So how insecure are our elections? What do election security laws really do? What is the best way to feel better about the state of elections in this country?
Our guests are Jessica Huseman, Editorial Director of Votebeat and Justin Levitt, constitutional law professor and newly appointed White House Senior Policy Advisor for Democracy and Voting Rights.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:10.82] A couple of years ago, most people were a little iffy on what Jessica Hughes men did for a living.
Jessica Huseman: [00:01:16.43] You know what, I would go to parties and be like, I cover voting. People would be like, what does that even mean? Like campaigns? And I'm like, No.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:23.72] Jessica, by the way, is the editorial director of Vote Beat. It's a nonprofit newsroom that covers voting and elections across the country. Anyway, fast forward to Jessica at a party today
Jessica Huseman: [00:01:34.67] And now I go, and they're like, Let's talk about Dominion Voting Systems, and I'm like, This is incredibly different than it was even a year ago, so it's fascinating.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:49.98] So what happened? Why are all these party people suddenly very interested in voting machine companies?
Archival: [00:01:55.47] Georgia unveiling new voting machines statewide Right in the midst of a pandemic.
Archival: [00:01:59.16] This nation has been victimized by rampant election fraud in the past...
Archival: [00:02:03.93] The Johnson County sheriff says that he is using county resources to investigate claims of election fraud.
Archival: [00:02:09.61] Will everyone's vote count. Are the ballots secure? Those are two big questions. As Americans head to the polls today. President Trump is raising fears of voter fraud overnight. As Mary said, despite no evidence of widespread violations, critics say he's trying to suppress the vote.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:34.54] These days, we are all paying a lot more attention to election security, and that is exactly what this episode is about. This Civics 101, I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:44.02] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:45.07] And today we're answering a listener question, something that I dearly love to do. This one comes from Ben Muell. What does Ben want to know, Nick?
Nick Capodice: [00:02:51.97] All right. Ben sent an email saying that voter fraud and election security have dominated the headlines in the last two elections. This is true, Ben. And he says quote, as a result, they are being used to justify changing laws which have real world consequences. I feel this would be an excellent addition to your podcasts, since there's a whole bunch of misinformation out there right now and reliable sourced content. Discussions on these topics are paramount.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:16.84] Couldn't agree more. Ben Jessica thinks so, too.
Jessica Huseman: [00:03:19.30] Really good coverage of voting systems is only going to increase over the next couple of years, especially now that there's such a public awareness of these issues and people are asking questions about them in a way that they just didn't even two years ago.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:33.22] Can I hazard a guess as to what changed two years ago?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:36.04] Yeah, go for it.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:36.79] Well, for starters, many people, including the president at the time, falsely claimed that the election was fraudulently won. If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. And Americans at that point were already primed for fraud after Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.
Archival: [00:04:03.94] 13 Russian nationals and three entities have been indicted for meddling in the 2016 presidential election
Nick Capodice: [00:04:10.81] And swirling in the midst of all of this. Are all these false claims of rigged voting machines and ballots being tampered with and dead people voting.
Archival: [00:04:19.90] You've likely seen the claim online dead people in both Pennsylvania and Michigan voting in the presidential election. But did that really happen? Good question. According to election officials, there is no proof of that.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:31.24] And so now you've got states across the country passing laws to ostensibly make their elections quote more secure. Or as some people see it, to make voting harder.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:42.70] Great. Ok, so right off the bat, I am going to give you my big takeaway about election security. This is after talking to some real experts, OK? Like every level of election security in the United States, the bark is worse than the bite, but the bark hurts.
Jessica Huseman: [00:05:00.29] You know, there was just this huge amount of misinformation around the certification of Electoral College votes and audits and all of the security procedures that happen after elections to make sure that the results are recorded as intended. That confounds people and like they just don't understand the mechanics of how elections are audited or what the security procedures are around them. And so because they don't know about any of that, it is very easy to convince someone that voter fraud is a problem because they have a very limited understanding of it. They have voted probably without a problem. And like can imagine a situation in which somebody goes in lies about their identity and votes somebody else's ballot, right? If they don't understand how difficult that actually is to do procedurally, it's very easy to convince somebody that it's easy to do.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:51.13] Let's tackle voter fraud first. The supposedly widespread and organized menace that is believed to steal elections across the country.
Justin Levitt: [00:06:00.01] Voter fraud does occasionally happen.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:05.08] This is Justin Levitt, constitutional law professor and newly appointed White House senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights
Justin Levitt: [00:06:12.76] In plenty of elections in one off handful of occasions. That is, there is every once in a very long while an act of misconduct by an individual voter and that's validated and in municipal elections every once in a very long while. Occasionally, you get a more concerted effort to try and steal an election, usually in a small town or a county in different parts of the country. It happens in different ways, but those are pretty rare. The important thing to know in distinguishing real actual incidents of voter fraud from wild hand-waving in all caps exclamation point claims is that real voter fraud is based on breaking the law in some way. Often in a way that's not designed to steal an election, somebody will fill out their spouses ballot not because they want to steal an election, just because they want to control what their spouse does. Or somebody will fill out a ballot in the name of a deceased relative, not because they want to control what that person does, but because they want to effectuate their last wishes.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:20.32] All right. So to restate Justin's point, this idea of widespread, nefarious voter fraud, it's just not a thing.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:26.83] Not a thing. Actual incidents are incredibly rare and most are not done. To attempt to steal or rig anything more often than not, the actual thing that's going on is misunderstanding
Justin Levitt: [00:07:40.10] The way to distinguish these real incidents from hot takes. That turn out to be fiction is to find real facts that show real wrongdoing against real law. And unfortunately, all too often what we hear are claims of voter fraud that are based in. I don't like people who don't think like I do voting or that seems fishy to me, but I don't really understand how the rules of the elections work. And it's real easy to jump really quickly in a conspiratorial mindset from this seems strange, but I don't understand. To that must be fraud, so people have to be pretty careful if they want to actually do their homework. And distinguishing the real occasional incidents doesn't happen very often from the wild claims in looking through. Ok, what's the actual allegation? Who actually did what? And most important is that thing illegal?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:36.92] Speaking of homework, I did some or rather I copied a friend's. The Brennan Center for Justice released a report on voter fraud that found that the actual rate of someone pretending to be someone else and casting a ballot is between 0.0003- and 0.0025-percent. Still, when allegations happen, researchers and journalists put a lot of work into attempting to verify the alleged widespread voter fraud and tend to come up with no more than a handful of cases out of billions of votes cast. In fact, a Columbia professor found that most claims of voter fraud can be traced back to quote the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:22.61] So voter fraud does happen, but it's usually like a one off kind of thing. And most importantly, you're saying it doesn't affect the outcome of an election.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:31.97] There just isn't enough of it. There are not nearly enough cases of fraud or mistakenly cast ballots to make a dent in election results. So is it important that we protect our elections against illegal fraud? Of course. Are we suffering from widespread fraud? No. So that takes care of the dead people voting and the purposeful fraud and the stealing of the elections. But that other little problem you mentioned Russian meddling. Here's Jessica again.
Jessica Huseman: [00:10:05.40] Russia intervened in the 2016 election and and, you know, did not necessarily get access to the election technology that we're talking about here, right? They fiddled around with the Illinois election registration system, but ultimately didn't do any damage. There were a couple of breached portals here or there, but no evidence and we would see it that they changed votes or materially impacted the registration systems that they got access to. And one of the reasons that they failed is because of that diffuse network of of security.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:40.78] We'll talk more about this in a minute. But what Jessica means here is that you've got 50 different states with many, many counties and many, many layers of election security. There is no one United States election security wall. Voila! Diffuse security.
Jessica Huseman: [00:11:00.16] But right, they didn't need to succeed in actually harming the system in order for the system to be harmed by perception. And so, you know, the misinformation, the manipulation of social media around specific facts very much related to election integrity issues and claims around voter fraud and claims around manipulation of the machines, right? Their motivation is not necessarily to actually infiltrate the machines, but just to cause chaos.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:30.55] What's interesting to me and is that it sounds like Justin and Jessica, they're kind of talking about the same thing here. Justin is saying that there is very little actual voter fraud. And Jessica is saying Russia failed to actually tamper with votes, but election interference did happen in a way. Those claims of fraud and tampered with voting machines mean that people don't believe their elections are secure,
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:54.67] And when people don't believe their elections are secure, lawmakers step in.
Archival: [00:11:59.20] We're now in a major election year with the 2022 midterms this fall. But before voters head to the polls, state legislatures may be changing how you vote...
Archival: [00:12:06.52] Today
Archival: [00:12:08.32] in Texas, Election integrity is now law in the state of Texas.
Archival: [00:12:13.94] Governor Greg Abbott signing some of the most sweeping voting restrictions in the country.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:18.32] We must have trust and confidence in our elections. Republicans say verifying identity will make voting more secure when voting in person in the state of Georgia. You must have a photo ID.
Justin Levitt: [00:12:30.14] You want to make sure that everyone has the ability in the right to exercise the franchise.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:34.70] But we also want to make sure that everyone has confidence in
Justin Levitt: [00:12:38.15] The process and they respect the
Nick Capodice: [00:12:40.16] Results and that's what these laws are designed to
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:42.41] Do. Here's Justin again.
Justin Levitt: [00:12:44.33] Sometimes some of the policies are actually designed to address the types of fraud that are alleged. Sometimes they're just not OK.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:51.98] So in the past year alone, at least 27 states have filed bills that include restrictive voting measures. Now, on the other side of that coin are the state legislatures that have filed bills to expand access to the polls that's happened in at least thirty two states. But if we are talking about election security, we tend to be talking about restrictions, restrictions that are typically predicated on incorrect claims of in-person and mail and voter fraud and election interference.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:20.72] And just to be clear, those provisions do make voting more difficult. Do they not?
Justin Levitt: [00:13:24.89] Well generally find that where you can have increased security without that trade off of access or other things, we like that there's pretty uniform agreement in having that security. Nobody, I think, is against making voter registration databases more secure against hacking. I think you'll find widespread bipartisan agreement that that's a good thing because there's no real downside
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:48.47] To doing that. There are, however, plenty of new rules in the name of security that do have some major downsides.
Justin Levitt: [00:13:56.57] The fights only come up when there's a downside to increasing security, and that is the notion that you might be leaving other eligible Americans out of the process and the vast majority of time we have fights over election policy. It's not about whether to have a policy or not, but what type of policy to have. Just like the fight about taxes, the question isn't are we going to have taxes? It's what get taxed at what rate, not yes or no. So the fight over things like, for example, presenting ID at the polls, every state has some means to make sure that you are who you say you are when you go to vote. Every single one. The question isn't should we have a way to prove that you are who you say you are? The question is what kind of things should we permit in order to make sure that the election system is reasonably secure, while also making sure that we are not unreasonably locking out eligible voters? And it's in that context that you can find all caps hand-waving about voter fraud does some real damage in skewing the perceived costs and benefits
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:01.76] That damage looks like, for example, voters being negatively and often disproportionately affected. For example, black eligible voters are statistically less likely than white eligible voters to have a government-issued photo ID. So if they live in a state where that is a requirement in order to vote, there is a direct barrier to voting.
Justin Levitt: [00:15:27.12] So what's the right way to think about this in any enterprise and voting is only one of them? I think policy comes down to costs and benefits. You can always get more secure, but at a certain point you begin to trade off a lot of other things you value. I'm talking to you now from a room with a window and you're talking to me in rooms with windows and somebody could take a shot at you through that window. But you haven't bricked in your wall yet because that extra measure of security isn't worth the trade off. You like the window being there and you value what it presents, and so an extremely low risk that something might happen through that window isn't worth bricking it in. That's the sort of trade off that legislators make all the time in all kinds of arenas. It also works for election policy, or at least that's the way the notion should be.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:15.74] All right. So Hanna, when I think of bricking unnecessary walls, the first thing that comes to mind because it was all over the news is the recent election security law in Georgia. But opponents say it will discourage turnout by elderly, poor and minority voters who tend not to have government IDs. The law also bans the use of ballot drop boxes outdoors or after business hours cuts down on early voting and runoff elections allows the state legislature to take over local election boards and makes it a crime to provide food or water to people standing in line at the polls, like banning people from handing out food and water to people in line. Is that a necessary wall?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:54.51] Well, the lawmakers who wrote it would say yes. This stops people from interfering with voters while they're waiting in line. Basically, it's a provision to prevent electioneering. Food and water has to be at least one hundred and fifty feet from the polling place and 25 feet from the line kind of like campaign signs. But it's not just this right. People say that will make voting harder, and the law also has a bunch of other provisions that seem to many like they will get between the voter and the polls. And Jessica Hussman has been having a lot of conversations about this lately.
Jessica Huseman: [00:17:26.13] Like I have been in more arguments about the Georgia law, like the voting law that passed in Georgia this last legislative session than I ever have, because the first version of that bill was horrific. But what actually passed had like this horrible disenfranchizing thing. It was just sort of like a law and like won't really impact the vast majority of people who go cast a ballot in Georgia. And so I just think like, yes, like, was that a stupid law to pass? Yes, it was. But the law also requires that polling locations that have really long lines split from each other and tracks wait times like, I mean, nobody is going to be falling over from thirst in line in November in Atlanta. It's just not going to happen. It's not suppression and like the straight up sense of the word.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:18.33] So I think this is a really interesting point. Are the provisions in this bill explicit voter suppression? No. Are they going to result in fewer people voting? Possibly. This bill also includes a new voter ID provision. It prevents election officials from mailing absentee ballots to all voters. It closes mobile polling places to Jessica's point. Is it the end all be all of disenfranchisement law? No, but a combination of those trade offs that Justin mentioned and the perception of this law as an end all be all kind of thing can and likely will get in the way of people voting. And remember what is behind all this widespread misconceptions about how insecure our elections are? If enough people believe in something regardless of whether or not it's true, lawmakers will seize on that opportunity to politicize it.
Jessica Huseman: [00:19:16.98] I think that one reason that elections are so easy to politicize is because they're so complicated, right? And and they don't necessarily have to be right, but it is a system that people only rarely interact with, right? Like if you're talking about your average voter who votes like, we're talking about a person who spends 30 minutes doing this thing once every four years and like, if we're lucky, once every two right, but mostly once every four years. And so if you are a voter who only engages with that system for half an hour, right? We're talking about like less like on average, eight minutes a year, right? Like, this is not a thing that people think deeply about all the time. It's not like, you know, having a discussion over public schooling because you send your kids to school every day and you're deeply engaged with that and you know about it because it affects your life on a daily basis. Voting is not that thing, right? Like, voting only affects your life on the day that you do it. And so it's reasonable to me that most people don't know a lot about how the system works. But the media, I think, and the counties need to do a better job educating voters, not just about how. Cast their ballot, but what happens after it's cast?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:29.61] That's right, folks, you have inadvertently stumbled into yet another episode that will tell you that the best way to make this country work for you is to work for information. But we are making it easy by giving you as much of that information as we can in this very episode. We're here to banish all kinds of insecurity after the break.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:47.31] But first, your weekly reminder that Civics 101 depends on listener support to operate, contribute in whatever amount fits your budget at our website civics101podcast.org.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:13.46] Welcome back to Civics 101, we're talking election security
Nick Capodice: [00:21:16.94] And Hanna, we've been talking about the reasons that people think American elections are insecure, like false claims of widespread voter fraud. And we've also been talking about the fact that those reasons aren't really cause for concern because, for example, there's very little actual voter fraud, but a lot of states are passing laws to address those reasons anyway. And laws that make elections more secure also tend to make elections harder to access, especially for certain groups of people. But both Jessica Hussman and Justin Levitt have said, well, if people only knew the truth, they'd feel better. So what exactly is the truth?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:57.53] I mean, let's start with the big picture truth. American elections are truly difficult to mess with. Here's Jessica again.
Jessica Huseman: [00:22:06.29] This is sort of happened accidentally just by virtue of how diffuse it is under the Constitution, how diffuse it's always been. But because most states see the authority to counties for election administration, we're talking about every county in the United States having basically a different voting system. There are 10000 offices across the country that facilitate and secure elections, and they all use a different system. So whereas in some places you can get into the system and affect the whole thing, right? Like the most you can probably do is like screw with one tiny little county, right? And even then, there are enough redundancies in place that those would probably be caught. And so this sort of diffuse and disconnected election system actually helps ensure at least from a, you know, policy and cybersecurity angle, a little bit more security.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:02.57] All right. So this sort of gets up what Jessica was saying about Russia. They couldn't really hack the whole system, in part because the whole system is actually thousands of little independent systems.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:13.13] Even so, after that attempt, and by the way, Russia's very successful social media misinformation campaign, we can't forget that the Obama administration designated elections as critical infrastructure,
Nick Capodice: [00:23:24.14] Critical infrastructure like water and roads and
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:27.95] Agriculture. Yeah, and now the cybersecurity of elections. So, OK, prior to 2017,
Jessica Huseman: [00:23:35.30] There was no way for Colorado to call Nebraska and be like, Yo, we got this hacker. They say they're coming for Nebraska Max, right? Like, they might have an informal conversation, but there was no sort of way to share threat information or for the federal government to step in on behalf of a group of states all being impacted by the same thing. Secretaries of state who run election infrastructure in every state didn't even have security clearance to like access. A lot of these reports that the federal government was giving, and so there was just this real problem in terms of communication and over the last couple of years, that's really sort of leveled out. Dhs and the Department of Justice have a much more close functional working relationship with states than they used to, and that's all because of this critical infrastructure designation.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:24.05] I do want to be very clear about one thing there is not much the federal government can do when it comes to elections. They're not the ones in charge the states are. So if you're watching all of these states pass various election law and love it or hate it, you shouldn't necessarily look to the federal government to step in. Look to electing new state level legislators and governors and secretaries of state if they happen to be elected officials in your state. But what the federal government has been able to do in recent years is support states.
Jessica Huseman: [00:24:57.86] The federal government has been more aware of what it can do to support states, and then state governments have also been made aware by these security experts from DHS and, you know, state entities coming in and looking at the systems for the first time, really in a holistic way and making recommendations for security. So some of these laws are grounded in really great information security protocols. Some of these laws are not, and some of these laws are founded and real, legitimate concerns about technology, security and and well-funded infrastructure. And some of them are, you know, trying to prevent in-person voter fraud, which is not a thing. And so, you know, I mean, it's a bit of a mixed bag out there. But I think that the thing that gives me hope and allows me to sleep at night is that I think that right now elections in America are more secure than they've ever been. The system has on balance, gotten better, not worse.
Nick Capodice: [00:26:02.90] All right. I hear you that the federal government doesn't have all that much power here, but I do have a question about the 2020 election when all eyes were on the federal government because. There was this idea that the vice president, Mike Pence, could simply refuse to accept electoral votes that did not elect Donald Trump, and that's about as federal as it gets.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:23.91] Yep. Ok, I'm going to try to do this quickly. Folks, welcome to the Electoral Count Act.
Jessica Huseman: [00:26:33.86] Electoral Count Act was written in eighteen eighty seven. It is quite old and it is quite vague. It has loopholes you could drive trucks through.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:43.11] The Electoral Count Act was introduced after the super contested Hayes Tilden election of 1876 to basically create a guide for what to do when there are electoral vote disputes and a divided Congress.
Jessica Huseman: [00:26:55.50] You will remember if you were watching January 6th of last year seeing Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz and one person in the House of Representatives object to a vote, right? That was enough to carry the objection.
Nick Capodice: [00:27:10.95] Mr. Vice President I. Paul Gosar from Arizona. First, the gentleman from Arizona, right? I rise both for myself and 60 of my colleagues to object to the counting of the electoral ballots from Arizona.
Jessica Huseman: [00:27:23.82] We can raise those stakes right. There was a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding around Vice President Pence's authority to just sort of wholesale reject some of these ballots, right? And Trump, to this day continues to insist that Mike Pence had that authority, and that misunderstanding was a large part of what fomented the violence on Jan. six, right? I mean, it's not an accident that these people were running through the halls of Congress looking for Mike Pence yelling, Hang Mike Pence
Nick Capodice: [00:27:53.97] And bring out Pence, while rioters outside had set up a makeshift gallows on the field near the Capitol.
Justin Levitt: [00:28:00.06] So not only were the rioters literally calling for Mike Pence's murder.
Nick Capodice: [00:28:03.63] They had set up the structure to carry it out.
Jessica Huseman: [00:28:06.06] It's because of all of this misinformation around the powers that he had under the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:14.22] To be clear here, the Electoral Count Act does not say the vice president has the power to throw out or ignore electoral votes. That power does not exist. But like Jessica says, the act is also notoriously vague. So Congress is trying to fix it.
Jessica Huseman: [00:28:30.84] The movement to fix it is essentially to make the language far less vague than it is right now. Specify all of these broad terms make it abundantly clear that the vice president only has a ceremonial role in counting votes and actually does not have the power to toss them out. And this seems to be pretty bipartisanly accepted now, and I think that we're sort of coalescing around some interpretation of the Electoral Count Act. But if you think about the ACA and sort of how vague the language is, that gives you a good basis to understand how little power the federal government actually has over elections.
Nick Capodice: [00:29:15.18] So what would a rewrite of this law look like?
Jessica Huseman: [00:29:17.64] We're going to go back and essentially make it even less powerful, right? Like we're going to raise the threshold for the number of people who can object to Electoral College votes. We're going to make it obvious that the vice president's role is ceremonial so that it cannot be misinterpreted. So if anything, this reform is reducing the potential involvement of the federal government and the vote counting process, not increasing it. And so you can kind of see how that might have some bipartisan pull.
Nick Capodice: [00:29:47.91] One last thing, Hanna, I hear you on the federal level. I hear you loud and clear. So just to shore things up. Let's look at the state level. How much power does a secretary of state have when it comes to those same votes? And I know the role varies from state to state, but generally the secretary of state is the chief election official as well. So even if a vice president can mess with those votes, can a secretary of
Jessica Huseman: [00:30:16.20] State, there is no truth to that fear. No secretary of state has the authority to unilaterally toss out a bunch of ballots, right? And this is by design, right? Like we have first of all, secretaries of state are not nearly as helpful in the term in terms of actually administering the election as people think that they are right. The elections are carried out by counties, and the state is not the one processing the results and counting the votes and establishing where know problems may have taken place. That's the county right, and the county reports its results to the Secretary of State's Office. And unless there is a very defined list of problems that are generally laid out very clearly in state code, the Secretary of State has no authority to contest those results at all. Then state legislatures really don't either.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:09.84] Just to clarify, what Jessica is talking about here recounts audits, contested elections. We know all of these things happen. There are automatic recounts triggered if the count meets certain criteria set out in state law, like a very close margin. And then there are requested recounts when an interested party also defined by state law, but usually this is a candidate or a. Order requests it on occasion, a court can order a recount, but this typically only happens if that candidate or voter asks the court. And when it comes to audits, most states have laws requiring that they be done automatically to double check that an election went smoothly, that equipment function properly and processes were followed. I will say politicians can and have called for audits and publicly contested vote counts and asserted that a vote should not have been certified by the state. Now, whether this is politicking or genuine concern or a little bit of both. The Secretary of State has to do their due diligence to ensure that the count and the election was indeed fair with as little human error as possible, and to the 2020 claims that a Legislature could simply ignore the votes and send electors who could vote how they wanted them to vote. It would be in violation of law and Supreme Court rulings, and the Supreme Court would ultimately have to decide if those legislators could overrule the will of the people.
Jessica Huseman: [00:32:42.90] There is a reason the certification process kind of exists outside of the politics of the thing, and so there's really no way for the state as a whole to reject ballots. And that's because of the sort of security through diffusion situation, right? The counties are way more powerful in terms of the impact of your individual vote than the state and certainly the federal government. It's like how most of my job goes, like somebody will be like Russia hacked to this machine. And the answer is no, they did it. But like, I still have to sit there and spend 30 minutes being like, Let's talk about the way computers work.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:24.66] Hey, Nick, let's talk about the way the computers work.
Nick Capodice: [00:33:26.82] It was a brilliant transition, Hannah.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:28.44] But seriously, the computers are a problem, just not necessarily for the reasons that people say they are.
Jessica Huseman: [00:33:33.27] There are some real concerns about the quality of America's election infrastructure, right? You can't use a 20 year old computer. We have all tried right to like, use a computer that is awful and out of date, like voting machines are nothing but very simple. Computers and hardware like that has a shelf life. And so even if these machines are as secure as they can be, they're still going to break down. And so a lot of these issues that people conflate with security problems, you know, you always hear during every election, like somebody like took a video and their polling location and they're hitting the button for Donald Trump. But the selection for Hillary Clinton is lighting up, right? Like, this is not hacking. We have all gone to an old ATM and the screen has been mis calibrated and you hit the three and the one highlights, like the voting machines, are older than the first iPhone. And so I think that the lack of appropriate funding for this is is really a problem like both from a security perspective, but also just an accessibility perspective, like if we're forcing voters to use old, pointless technology and the companies that produce this technology are no longer making replacement parts, we're no longer pushing through security updates for these machines, right? Like injecting more cash into that system and allowing counties and states to actually invest in new technology is crucial and is not happening right now.
Nick Capodice: [00:35:11.13] So it sounds like there are big differences between the conspiracies and the messaging and the politicking and the actual truth of election security. And this is a good start for anyone who's iffy about it and wants to know what the actual deal is. But what's the bigger solution, Hannah? Because states are continuing to pass laws that address fictional problems like widespread voter fraud, and people continue to believe those fictional problems and continue to mistrust the system that you're telling me is fairly trustworthy.
Jessica Huseman: [00:35:43.74] The best tool in our toolkit against these people is to teach them actually how the system works, right? And so one helpful thing that I've seen counties do is essentially make like explainer videos of how logic and accuracy testing works for the machines or how audits work or how you know what the physical security is like and how machine, you know, really doing voter education and thinking about voter education more broadly than just here's what you need to do to cast your ballot, right? Getting them involved and understanding the system as a whole is really important for trust and for, you know, people just need the ability to call B.S. on. This information that they hear, and they can't do that unless they've got good information, and so I think that's really what we need to be moving towards is embracing a bit more fulsome education around the voting experience.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:36:47.88] The truth is that there are people out there who would like to share the truth with you. And maybe the unfortunate thing right now is that for the most part, you only really access those resources if you go looking for them. Like, isn't it interesting how in your face that Georgia voting law was and how not in your face? You're helpful local election officials are. We do need to know about restrictive voting measures. Don't get me wrong, but I don't believe those measures are going anywhere until we also know how elections are going right. In other words, everything election officials do to ensure a safe, fair and accessible election.
Jessica Huseman: [00:37:29.82] Go to your county clerk's office and ask questions. I think that this is the most sort of exciting thing that I encourage people to do and and county clerks, offices or county registrars, offices or county election administration offices, whatever your county calls them, are very open, right? They are and exist to be the conduit between county government and the public. And so they are very used to dealing with the public. They are very used to answering the public's questions. They generally have publicly accessible stuff for you to like, touch, right? Most county office election offices that I have been to have a voting machine that is set up that you can go and like, play with and they will give you a tour of the warehouse if you ask for one, and they will show you how logic and accuracy testing works. A lot of these things that they do, the audits, the accuracy testing, the security testing are open to the public. And if you're concerned, you can go and watch.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:38:33.45] And the last place to look for the truth about election security. Go behind the scenes at the polls.
Jessica Huseman: [00:38:39.18] If you're concerned about the security of elections on Election Day, then the best thing for you to do is go be a poll worker. My mother also had a significant number of misunderstandings about the election security system and was constantly arguing with me about the, you know, propensity for this problem or that problem or whatever. And then finally, last year, she calls me out of blue and she's like, I've signed up to be a poll worker. And I was like, Great, because after you do this, all of the things that you thought were wrong with the system you're no longer going to think are wrong with the system. And so she went to poll worker training, and at the end of the day, I was like, So are you concerned about fraud? And she was like, I really just don't even understand how anyone could cast a fraudulent ballot. And I was like, Really? Thanks, OK, thanks, mom. Ignore me for five years and like, be a poll worker once and you're you're all of your concerns or satisfied. But, but I mean, like, that's really what it takes, because when you go to poll worker training, you're not only getting sort of like, this is how you help people vote, right? Like, it's this is how the system works.
Jessica Huseman: [00:39:46.38] This is what you have to do with the machines. This is how you test the machines is how you set the machines up. Somebody is going to come at the beginning of the day to make sure that the machines are set up correctly. Somebody will come at the end of the day to make sure you tear torn them down correctly if somebody needs a provisional ballot. Here is what you give them, right? Like all of those fail safes that my mother had never been forced to interact with before she was having to interact with as a poll worker. Because if you're a poll worker, you have to engage with all of the potential problems and the solutions for them. And I think once you empower yourself to understand that there are first and second and third line solutions to every foreseeable problem in elections, then you have a lot more confidence about sort of their mechanics.
Nick Capodice: [00:40:31.59] I think, Hanna, that I was prepared to either be vindicated or disabused of my notions about bad actors in the world of election security. And it's more like, well, the physical state of elections is good. But if the public believes misinformation about the elections, we're still going to see laws that cater to that misinformation, and yes, those laws make voting anywhere from annoying to truly difficult, and those who want those laws passed for political reasons have a reason to amplify misinformation. So at the core of it? Elections are perhaps running better than they ever have, with some old technology exceptions. But it is cloaked in a fog of untruths, which can then lead to laws that make some people feel worse about access and others feel certain about something like, say, voter fraud.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:41:28.65] And then on top of that, are we really reading the language of those laws, or are we reading the headline and thinking, well, lawmakers have large scale disenfranchized as many of us as they can? And which of those is more dangerous? The law that is passed, or the public perception that elections have fallen into the hands of ne'er do well, power hungry politicians and the whole thing is just hopeless. Which is more likely to prevent people from going to the polls. I'm honestly asking that I do think that it's worth asking. So ultimately, I say if you're concerned about elections, just ask, ask how they work. Ask where your ballot goes. Ask who is in charge. And for the love of Mike, ask for help to make sure your vote is counted. This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jackie Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music In this episode by Kizza Young Carts and Meloche, we pack a lot into an episode, especially like this one, but there is always something that ends up on the cutting room floor. Usually something that Nick and I find really interesting. So we put it in our newsletter extra credit, and I warmly recommend that you subscribe to it. You can do that at our website Civics101podcast.org, where you'll find all of our episodes, all of our resources and the way to get in touch with us. If you have questions about how this democracy works. Civic's one on one is a production of Nhpr.org New Hampshire Public Radio.
Nick Capodice: [00:43:10.16] Ok. Election security. Boring.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:43:19.76] Oh, my God.
Nick Capodice: [00:43:26.09] Ready? Yep. Here we go. Yeah.
