Transcripts For CSPAN Campaign 2022 Dole Institute Discussion On Election Integrity 20221021

Thank you all for being here. Sorry about the cold weather. Were here because with the controversy over president trumps refusal to accept the results of the 2020 president ial Election Results, our country has entered some precedented unprecedented territory. Voter registration and public trust in Election Results are on the radar screen and away they have never been before in our lifetimes. One of the questions on the midterm ballot this fall is how our democracy itself will weather the storms. We are here to discuss that today with a true expert on these issues, sean moralesdoyle, director of the Voting Rights program at the Brennan Center for justice. Hes a seasoned litigator with experienced civilrights and constitutional matters, and has handled a wide variety of labor and employment cases. He got his undergraduate and law degree from northwestern university. Sean, thank you for being here. So, a lot has happened since election day 2020. Lets start with voter access. Your center issued a report a couple weeks ago showing between january of 2021 and last month, at least 21 states enacted 42 laws that restricted access the voting in some way. Of those 33 in effect for the midterms that are happening in a couple of weeks. What shape do these laws take and how the will they affect the process we will go through as a country . Sean the shape they take varies from state to state. Not all these laws are the same. There are some trends. The majority of these new restrictive laws target male voting mail voting and put restrictions on voting by mail. I think that is a reaction and a demonstration and illustration of the fact many of these laws are reaction to the 2020 election. In 2020, as many of you probably know, we saw a shift towards a lot more mail voting because we were in the height of the coronavirus pandemic and many voters felt less comfortable going to the polls. Many states expanded access to mail voting in 2020 many people took advantage of that. In large part, because people were able to access voting by mail and other forms of voting in 2020, we saw record turnout in 2020, more than we have seen in a century of president ial elections. That turnout happened for a lot of reasons, but i think it was possible because of the access voters had to options like mail voting. Rather than seeing the response to that massive turnout being a celebration that we had americans participating in our democracy like never before, unfortunately we have seen a bit of a backlash. That backlash has been unabated by animated by lies about the vulnerability of our Voting System to fraud. About the 2020 election supposedly being rigged. It has motivated this state of new restrictions, many of which are aimed at mail voting. There are plenty of other restrictions as well but that is the primary focus. What effect it will have in 2022 is hard to know for sure. But we have already seen some clear examples of the effect it might have. Perhaps the best example, the most clear example of the kind of affect one of these provisions could have with regard to mail voting is in texas. Texas is among the states that passed these restrictive laws. S. B. 1 is really an omnibus bill that contains many restrictions on voting. One of those, just one of those many restrictions is a new rule in texas that you have to put either your drivers license number or the last four digits of your Social Security number on both your mail ballot application and on your ballot when you return your mail ballot. I think that requirement sounds at first brush like not that big of a hurdle to clear, either putting down your license or last four of your Social Security. But it resulted in thousands and thousands of applications being rejected in the march primary alone. And the reasons why are many. One is the way this works is you put down your number, you mail in your application, and that number is matched up with your Voter Registration record. If it doesnt match, your application is rejected. But if you registered to vote using your drivers license number and when you fill out your mail ballot, you put the last four of your Social Security, no match. Vice versa, same problem. Or if you registered it while back when you did not have to put either of those things down , then you wouldnt have either in your record and your application gets rejected. On the mail ballot that you fill out, on the envelope is where you put down this number but that cannot be on the outside of the envelope for everyone to see. It is underneath the flap to keep it private. And a lot of people just missed it. The way these things work is not always obvious to people. Just that one little restriction that ever sounds like is not much literally lead to thousands of peoples votes being rejected in just the march primary. That can give you a taste of what it looks like when we have many provisions, many laws across the country in november. Not all of them will have that severe of an impact. Some of them will be less than that. But when these restrictions are layered on top of one another, restriction after restriction, and voters are having to adjust to new rules they didnt have to follow just one election ago, i think we could see serious impacts. Ill just finished by saying it wont always come in the form of voters being rejected and outright disenfranchised. Some of it is just about the costs that are imposed on voters when they are trying to exercise their fundamental right to vote. That means theres a lot of work that has to be done to help people clear those hurdles. They may end up clearing them, but all of the work that could be done to just turn out the vote, get people engaged, and see that turnout like we did in 2020, so much of that now has to go towards helping people clear these hurdles. We should care about that too, both because it ultimately detracts from just getting people excited about voting, but because i think if someone waits in line for eight hours to vote, they may be willing to do it. We should not be ok with the fact they have to. In fact, going through that experience this time may have a real effect in elections down the road. Gerald let me offer the devils advocate argument. I think what people advocating these laws would say is that it was necessary to respond to what happened in 2020 when election procedures were changed on the fly to some extent in many places because of the need to hold a National Election during a pandemic, and that the changes that were made were not systematic and there was a need to tighten up the process. And thats a logical and understandable reaction to what happened in 2020. Are they wrong in saying that . Sean i would say, by and large, yes, they are wrong. Part of the reason is that most of these restrictions are not what you are describing. Texas did not rapidly expand mail voting. Some states did. Texas did not. It has some of them most restrictive mail voting. They just added more restrictions on top. There was not a problem with people returning ballots. So, so much of these so many of these researches are aimed at solving a problem that didnt exist. We actually looked at the litigation that followed the 2020 election and many people have heard now as a result of the january 6 committee, there were some 60 lawsuits filed by the Trump Campaign and allies to try to resist the outcome of the president ial election, and they didnt go anywhere because for the most part, they were entirely baseless. They put forward these conspiracy theories that have now turned into widespread disinformation about the election. We traced those conspiracy theories through to the restrictive legislation that is being introduced in 2021 to see how many times the conspiracy theorists pushed forward an in a state in 2020, do we see legislation that is addressing that Conspiracy Theory . It was quite prevalent. In almost every state where this was happening, we saw those kinds of socalled problems being addressed in the legislation in 2021. So many of these bills are not addressing real gaps in the system. They are addressing problems that were made up in an attempt to resist the outcome of the 2020 election. I do think that there are ways our election system can be improved. I just dont think most of these new restrictive laws are actually aimed at doing that. Gerald how would you describe the character of the voter fraud problem in the country . How much is there really and what form does it take . Sean we so often hear the word voter fraud and i think people use that to describe many different things. Voter fraud is vanishingly rare, almost never happens. And certainly does not happen at a rate that will impact the outcome of major elections like a president ial election. But, we do sometimes see misconduct in elections. It does not tend to be voters who are engaged in it. Sometimes political campaigns do bad things. I think maybe the most prominent example in recent memory was in North Carolina in 2018. A candidate for congress, his campaign was tempering with peoples mail ballots. That is a problem. It is also a good example of the fact that when people do things like that, they get caught, they get prosecuted. That election outcome was not certified because of this misconduct. We actually do have a lot of checks in our system to ensure that people cant get away with that kind of thing. And so, occasionally, someone in a position of power, a political candidate engages in misconduct. Even that is fairly rare. But the idea that there is some sort of widespread conspiracy among voters to cast ballots in someone elses name or cast ballots when they are ineligible, that is extraordinarily rare. It makes sense that it is because the sort of calculus does not really make a lot of sense. Going and casting one pallet for somebody else ballot for somebody else when that is a felony offense you are likely to get caught for an prosecuted and prosecuted, what is the motivation . You are not really going to change the outcome of an election that way. Instead, you will put yourself in serious risk of prosecution. Gerald let me ask you to address one law as a case study that captured a lot of attention, the georgia law which did restrict voter access in some ways. Proponents argue that was overstated. It makes registering to vote harder in some ways but also requires drop boxes for early ballots, expands the early voting period, and reduces the window for requesting an early ballot down to three months. What is your reaction to those arguments . Sean i think some of what happened in the way of that legislation being crafted is that they it mandates drop boxes but limits how many of them you can have in a particularly county. You can say we are mandating drop boxes but the reality is these large counties, the number of drop boxes are dwindling down to a small amount. Some of this is just semantics and people playing games with the pieces they want to highlight. The pieces you highlighted then leave out Something Like the line ban. It makes it a criminal offense to provide someone with water and snacks while they are waiting in line in a state that has a history of very long lines. Its also true theres a difference between deciding not to expand access to voting and restricting access to voting. What i mean by that is a state that decides that they will keep their 30day period for applying for a ballot rather than expanding it is probably doing less harm than a state that had a 60day period and cut it down to 30. Voters get used to the way they are able to cast their ballot. Taking away early voting is going to have more of a negative impact than deciding not to offer more early voting, if that makes sense. So, i do think that those restrictions matter even if georgia started from a more expansive position. I think what is interesting about s. B. 2 in georgia is that georgia has had a fairly expansive mailin Voting System for a long time. Far more expensive than the new york and many of its neighbors. In that anybody could cast a ballot by mail and that is not true all over the country, certainly not texas. They didnt seem to have a problem with it until 2020 when a lot more voters started using mail voting and a different set of voters started using mail voting. There was a major shift in that it emboldened the partisan makeup of who was voting by mail but also the demographics. Far more black voters relied on mail voting. The response is that is where we will restrict access to mail voting. Making it more painful to wait in long lines. Research has demonstrated that voters of color are much more likely to wait in long lines. These restrictions seem to be targeting the voting of certain communities. There was a proposal in georgia that ended up not making it into the law because of how much of a reaction it received to get rid of voting on sundays. That matters in georgia because theres a long history of black communities using sunday voting through souls to the polls initiatives to get people out of the polls on sunday. Targeting sunday voting is a very particular choice. That is why the department of justice is suing georgia for intentional race discrimination for passing the law. I think, as i said before about this texas law, some of these restrictions may not on their face sounds so imposing to people, but part of what is happening here, the way restrictions work on voting in 2022, it is not the same as the way this happened in the jim crow era. These are not the blood tools of that era just this infringing wide swaths of the community. There are still examples of that, like felony disenfranchisement. More often than not, we sometimes talk about death by a thousand cuts. It is little restrictions layered on top of restrictions on top of restrictions. And the way that those interact with one another, it often creates this sort of byzantine system for people to navigate in order to cast a ballot. It does not disenfranchise everybody, but an ox enough people out here and there. One of the other things that happened is there have been changes in the way elections are certified and who decides the winner and who declares the winner, who certifies the results. That is perhaps an equally controversial part of the georgia law and other places. Gerald what is going to be different and is anything about that process were you, about this years midterm elections . Will decide who won and who lost . Sean i am not so worried about that for 2022. But there are some caveats to that. I am worried about that a little bit for 2024. We did see in addition to you referenced earlier about the restrictive laws passed around the country. The Brennan Center has tracked every piece of state legislation and every state legislature affecting Voting Rights. Weve historically always categorize those as either restrictive laws, expansive laws, or neutral laws. They make it harder to vote, expand access to vote, or they are just changes to the rules and dont do either. We did see this unprecedented wave of restrictive legislation in 2021 and 2022. Also expansive legislation, that tended to be in different states. But in 2021 for the first time, we saw this new category of legislation that we did not have a name for that was aimed at changing, like you said, the process for how elections work. And it didnt necessarily make it harder to vote but it might change who is in control of the count. It may create a higher risk of partisan actors playing a role in the administration of elections. So this year for the first time, we comprehensively tracked that in our Voting Rights tracker, our roundup. And we actually saw just as many of what we call election interference laws passed in 2022 as restrictive laws. That does give me concern, but i will say the worst of those laws have not passed. There was a bill introduced in arizona that would have given the Arizona State legislature the power to reject the outcome of elections. Thats crazy. The arizona leadership in the legislature agreed and they did not let that bill get anywhere. They reverted to every single committee so it would not go anywhere. This bill in texas, the predecessor to that which came literally hours from passing, s. B. 7, it only did not pass because the democrats in the Texas Legislature walked out and killed the bill basically. It contained a provision that was called overturning elections. That was the title written into the bill. It would have given judges, partisan judges the power to reject the outcome of election even without proof there was an issue that should have called into question the outcome of the election. The next day after the democrats walked out and broke q uorom, the legislatures responsible for it started backtracking, saying we dont know how it got in there. The entire house already voted for it so they did in fact support Something Like that. I think they realized just how bad it looked and maybe some of them did not realize what was in this bill. Most terrifying changes to the rules have not passed. The ones we have seen pass sort of tweak the system in more indirect ways. Senate bill 202 in georgia and other laws that changes who is in control of county Election Administrations. Some counties change it in a way that makes Election Administration more partisan. They give the state more power to remove county Election Officials. That is a concern because of the risk it creates for somebody to do something wrong in the future. Whats troubling about 2024 is that now we see many people running for office to be Election Officials, to be the people that run elections who themselves denyy the outcom of the last election and say some pretty scary things about future elections. If the people who run our elections dont believe in democracy, then we are in a scary place. Gerald i obviously want to come back that to that. I want to make note of one thing you made note of briefly which has gone unnoticed, there have been some states that have done the opposite. They have actually expanded access to voting. Your report said at least 12 states have enacted 19 laws that expand access to the vote. Where is that happening and what is its meaning for this years election . Sean its happening in a lot of places. Unfortunately, as i said before, there is not often overlap between who is expanding access and it was restricting access. We have these diversion trends in different parts of the country that are making it so your access to the ballot increasingly depends on where you live in the country and that is a problem. We at at the Brennan Center have been involved in a lot of work over the last few years to try to get access to voting. We pushed for things like automatic Voter Registration and restoring Voting Rights for people with convictions in their past, sameday registration. We have seen bills doing all those things passing in, unfortunately, we have seen Voting Rights has become an increasingly partisan issue. A lot of times where these bills pass depends on which party is running the state legislature. That is why you are seeing different friends in different parts of the country. I will say it is not entirely about party. We have done some research on where we are seeing restrictive laws introduced that we can talk about in a minute. Before talking about that, i would say to your question about what impact it will have on this election, many more of the expansive laws take time to implement or the people who passed them acknowledge that they take time to implement. When we advocate for state to adopt automatic Voter Registration, for instance, we dont push for that to go into effect like that. We want to make sure it is done right and done well. When new york passed an automatic Voter Registration law in 2020, the time horizon was it would go into effect in 2023 and a number of other state agencies in 2024, to give these agencies an opportunity to actually do the work to make this thing happen. Fewer of those expansive laws will be in effect for the upcoming midterm elections and the restrictive laws are. In some places, it was just codifying changes that were made in 2020 as a result of the pandemic and saying we really like that everybody can vote by mail. We will keep that. A number of those will be in effect for the 2022 election and i think it will help people maintain the habits that they developed. Gerald as an aside, there are several states that have had heavy vote by mail over some years where republicans have done quite well. There was kind of a disconnect to some respect with the partisan arguments on that front and the witnessed reality of recent years. Sean 2020 was an aberration in the way mail voting worked in so many ways. Historically, the Republican Party has relied more on mail voting. In 2020, you have the Republican Party scaring its conviction to eat away from constituency away from voting by mail with this false rhetoric about fraud. It is hard to say how much of that shift in 2020 is going to stick. I think people were voting by mail for a very particular reason in 2020. And because of all these restrictions, i also think the political machinery is taking a different attack in 2020. Get out the vote campaigns are less likely to encourage vote by mail if they know there will be a hurdle. Gerald let me pin you down on this point specifically. Do you think we will see this year state legislatures stepped in and try to affect change or declare the outcome of an election . Sean state legislatures, no, i dont think so. We have seen them do some things to increase the possibility that someone else might do that. Gerald like . Sean like an election official or like a that they increase the possibility that some kind of disruption could be used as a basis for making some poor decision. So, they have increased the likelihood of poll watchers engaging in intimidation. Or they have scared Election Officials with new criminal offenses that they face. We sued texas over that same law, including a provision that makes it a crime for Election Officials to solicit mail ballot applications. It is a crime for a nonpartisan election official in texas to encourage someone to vote by mail. That means that Election Officials have to worry that if they give people the right information about voting by mail, they will be accused of a crime. That is one of many examples. They sort of tilt the scales a little bit or intimidate Election Officials a little bit or create new election police, sometimes people call them. It gives other people the opportunity to interfere more than i expected legislature to. Gerald i asked that because you at the Brennan Center has warned about the independent state Legislature Theory being invoked. I will try to explain it but i will let you and tell us why it is something you have pointed to as a cause of concern. Sean so, the independent state Legislature Theory is a complicated legal name for a radical legal theory that is being pressed before the Supreme Court right now. That basically would remove many of the checks and balances that currently exist on state legislatures when they regulate elections. Any of us who had Civics Education understands the way state governments work. State legislatures pass laws, governors can veto them or approve them. State courts can strike them down if they violate state constitutions. In many states, the people connect laws through ballot initiatives, constitutional minutes can also restrain legislatures. They are not allpowerful. They have checks on them. What the independent state legislator theory says is not when it comes to elections, federal elections. State legislatures basically get to do what they want. State courts cannot say what they want, state governors cannot say anything about it. Election officials dont really have a say. It is just the state legislatures. That is as crazy as it sounds. It has no basis in 200 years of courts interpreting the constitution. It does not have a basis in history. It is not what the framers intended. But it was gerald it was advanced in the 2000 election. Sean it was referenced in the bush v. Gore opinion, so it did not come out of the blue. It is not the law now. It would only be the law of the Supreme Court decides to. Gerald explain the case before the Supreme Court where this is at issue. Sean this came up from a case out of North Carolina where the North Carolina legislature engaged in gerrymandering. They drew the lines in North Carolina that clearly benefited the majority party, the republicans. Both parties are guilty of doing this in many states around the country. The u. S. Supreme court has basically washed their hands of this and said we will not do anything about it. When they did that a couple years ago, they said that states can do something about it. If states want to restrain partisan redistricting, if state courts think it violates state constitutions, they can do something about it. Thats exactly what the North Carolina Supreme Court did. They said this partisan gerrymandering violates the North Carolina constitution, we are striking it down. The legislators responsible for that map appeled to the u. S. Supreme court appealed to the u. S. Supreme court and said the North Carolina courts dont get to tell us if we violated the North Carolina constitution. When we are regulating federal elections, they are no check on us. They are asking the Supreme Court to endorse that view. To say even if the North Carolina constitution bans partisan gerrymandering and the North Carolina Court Decides that is what you did, they cannot say anything about it and the gerrymander will remain in place. Thats exactly what this would mean for any state legislature enacting a law about federal elections if the court were to adopt this theory. Gerald do you want to venture a prediction about what the current Supreme Court will think of that argument . Sean i dont like to predict what the Supreme Court will do, but what i will say is there are definitely members of the Supreme Court that in the past suggested they would embrace this theory. There is real reason to be worried they will adopt it. That said, i think there has been a lot of advocacy done and still to be done before the court to show them just what a terrible decision with that would be and how chaotic it would be come including some from folks who people might not expect. A conference of all the chief justice is of the state Supreme Courts filed an amicus brief to say do not do this. I think you often think about these issues as purely partisan issues. If it is a Republican Court trying to stop democrats or help republicans or Something Like that. The chief justices of the states Supreme Courts are not particularly leftleaning groups. Many of them are republicans. The chief justice of the texas up in court saying you cannot do this. They know the Important Role that Supreme Courts play. I think that this think that theres real hope that advocacy like that and many other amicus briefs that i expect will be filed next week will show the court just what a dangerous road they are going down. Gerald that raises a broader question, which is what the attitude of the courts generally speaking has been about the issues weve been talking about, particularly voter access but also regulation of elections and the election process. You are a lawyer. Some of this will be hashed out in the political arena but some will be in the legal arena. Is there a pattern in the courts that have emerged . Sean yes, unfortunately, a very negative pattern in my view. The federal court the protection of Voting Rights. I dont want to say entirely but they definitely have retreated from their former role. For a long time, the federal courts served this role as the protector of Voting Rights. So many of the important decisions around Voting Rights over the years have come from the federal courts enforcing the Voting Rights act of 1965. And for a long time, that was there was widespread agreement both among lawmakers and on the court for the Important Role the court played there. Here we are in the Dole Institute senator dole played an Important Role in amending the Voting Rights act in 1982 to make clear that section 2 of the Voting Rights act did not require proving racially discriminatory intent, it just required showing a law would produce discriminatory results. Just last year, looking at those amendments from 1982 that bob dole played such an Important Role in getting done, the Supreme Court seriously hampered the ability to use, to do just what they were trying to do. To challenge a law because it produces racially discriminatory results. That was the last of a long series of decisions the Supreme Court has engaged in the last decade that makes it harder to protect Voting Rights in federal courts. In 2013, the court famously, basically nullified a different part of the Voting Rights act in 1965 that required preclearance of changes the voting in parts of the country with race discrimination. That made it more incumbent on advocates to bring affirmative suits to try to challenge the scrim in a tory provisions. Last year discriminatory provisions. In the meantime, there has been a series of what we call shadow docket provisions where they are not actually ruling on a case on the merits. They are not issuing an opinion. They are just making decisions on procedural issues. The kind of fly under the radar lot. People dont realize what the court is doing. That is why we call it a shadow docket. Through those decisions, they have sort of distorted this principle which is some times called the percell principal. Courts should not change the rules to an election right before an election. That is confusing. You should not change it right before an election because that will cause more chaos. The court has expended that so dramatically that now its four months, five months before a primary election, the federal courts are saying you cannot strike down the law, it is unconstitutional because we are too close to an election. In february, we are too close to an election. That means when states pass these laws in 2021, theres no theres very little hope of getting federal courts to intervene and stop them from going into effect before 2022. That is why we have so many of these laws that will be in effect in 2022. People are suing the challenge laws in florida. None of them are going to see a final decision in time for the 2022 election and we are all fighting an uphill battle and all of those lawsuits. We can no longer rely on the federal courts to play that protective role. That is really a concern. If they were to adopt the independent state Legislature Theory, we could also not count on state courts to play that role. Then, we start to lose so many of the checks on state legislatures that we used to have. That is why i am really worried about 2024 and what might happen if state legislatures are left to run amok. And i think we should all be worried about that because it isnt the way our system was meant to function. Its not what congress intended when they passed that law in 1965 and renewed it a number of times since. It is not what our constitution intends. We like checks and balances. That is something we agree upon and we should be really worried about a scenario where partisan politicians get to make decisions about how our elections are run and theres no checks on that. Gerald i want to turn to you all for your questions so be prepared. Let me ask you about that point finally before we turn to the audience, which is to say the 2024 election that looms out there. If you take all the things we have been discussing here, wrap them together, what does it all portend for 2024 . Let me again put a little devils advocate argument. Is it possible if we get through this election and these changes have been made and everybody gets their say and the election comes out ok, that that will be a good thing because then everybody will calm down and agree we have a system that works . Sean yes, i think that is possible. I realize a lot of what i have been saying appears do and gloom and i dont want everyone to leave here feeling terrified. I am confident in our democracy. As someone who works on voting issues and issues affecting our democracy every day, i will say to all of you, that i think we have a accepting 2020 perfect. We saw unprecedented attacks on democracy. We saw unprecedented attempts and insurrection on our capital. We survived it. We saw a pandemic, before the election throw everything into disarray and we saw Election Officials and legislatures and governors responded in a way that allowed us to see recordbreaking turnout during the height of that. We got through it, and it functioned fine. I think we will get through 2022. I hope that the system works, and we should believe in it. And that it can function in 2000 24. We have a decision you have to make collectively about that. The more peoples the faith is undermined come the scarier it gets. Democracy only works if people believe in it. I say these things about these threats, in order to say this is the problem we face. We need to address. Not to say we have gone off the hatch. I think we have to collectively decide we do want to democracy to work hard to protect it. I want to sound the alarm without being alarmist. There is plenty of public pollings that suggest that confidence has been shaken. We can get to that later. I want to open it up to your questions, we both have microphones they both have microphones and ill get to as many as i can. If you want to submit a question on climb it is question bill questions one word. If you have a question you stand up so we can see. I want to remind you a question is that. It is a question, not a speech. It has a . At the end of the sentence. Raise your hand and we can start here, and we will move around the room. One thing i struggle to understand about the 2020 election was there worth perceived you or and you have the constitution says the Electoral College votes are counted. His set that something we should fix before the next president ial election, or was that a theory that was made up out of nothing do not need to . It is a great question. I think the answers a bit of both. It absolutely the legal theory pushed by john eastman, is bunk. It is made up out of folk cloth. Even he knew that. I think some of the testimony from the committee keeps saying john eastman and admitted he is the architect of this idea that they can send fake electors and reject the electors by the states. He admitted if you were in front of the Supreme Court he would lose 90 zero. This is a court that has been retreating from the protection of Voting Rights. Even the people have been pushing this theory acknowledged that his line and they will not cross. It does not make sense. The legislature should not be able to change the rules how elections work after the fact because they do not like the outcome. Nobody thinks the count act works that way. The electoral count act, which is the law that implements the constitutions requirement was written a long time ago. Not particularly well. I think there is room for improvement, and congress is on bipartisan basis considering a reform. I think that is a good thing. But, i do not think it is necessary to stop what was happening in 2020. I think it would have clarity because this is become a focal point. I do not think reforming for count act is necessary to protect against an attempt to overturn our elections with sufficient to push back against the threats we face. They go much further than John Eastmans theory. I assume you are in favor of the bipartisan electoral vote count reform . I think theyre pushing it. I do think it a good thing . It will be good, even if it did not happen, john eastman was proposing cannot happen. Critics even if it does happen you think there is one for dispute on that . I think if it does happen and there is more work to be done to protect our elections from the attempts to undermine them. In other words that is one specific farfetched threat. The one we saw in 2020. It did not get anywhere for a reason. It is when we need to be preparing for it. There are many other ways that people are seeking to attack our democracy. I think Congress Needs to do more than past electoral count tax reform. We were pushing congress very hard to pass the john lewis Voting Rights act and freedom to vote act which began on law. John lewis for devote act, the dash cam very close. It did not get across the finish line because the filibuster. I thinks that what Congress Needs to do to fix our problems. Maybe not all of them. That would be alive. A lie. Just to be clear. The gist of the electoral vote act would be to make clear the Vice President does not have the power to come in and say yes or no we excepted do not accept. It provides clarity on what happens if somebody challenges provides more procedural clarity for how to address things going wrong. Further questions . Maybe a bit peripheral. I was reading something that was making an argument that paper ballots on a largescale my be preferable to the Electronic Systems as a means of helping ensure the people that trust in the outcome. A what is your perspective . I think as a matter of Election Security it is good to have either paper ballots, or a paper trail. There are accessibility reasons why we need to provide Electronic Systems. For voters with disabilities. And we can have Electronic Systems that function. Up until recently, there are many places where the Electronic Systems did not create a voter verified paper record, and everything was stored electronically. I think it is important to have a paper record that a voter can verify and say that is my vote. For purposes of auditing the result of an election afterwards if necessary. I think it gives us more confidence if there is a paper record. That does not mean every ballot has to be a paper ballot. So it is sort of maybe an asked question. I want to say that is different than a push a Fringe Movement to require hedge counting of those ballots. I do not think that is a good idea. I think hand counting can be a failsafe on the backend during your recount, but it will be it takes elections virtually much harder to administer a headcount. The equipment that we have to optically scanned paper ballots is fully up to the task. Just to distinguish. By and large, do people have a paper backup in most places now . Yes, now, i think that changed a lot the last few years. Especially after many of us heard about attempts by foreign powers to meddle in our government, i think there is a big push with bipartisan funding from congress to upgrade our Election Security and a lot of that was to move away from these old pod. These old Electronic Systems that did not have the paper back up. I think people are voting with paper ballot or a paper trail in 2022. Others . Right there. Do you think of voting age to 16 would be a good way to expand Voting Rights . We do not take a position on that question. I will not endorse it or oppose it. I think it is an interesting question. I think there is a bit of movement developing. I think it is important we get people engaged in the credit process as early as we can. There are some reforms that do not go as far as letting 15 year 16yearolds vote that help with that. A number of states have started enacting preregistration set so you can preregister at 16. So the people who get the drivers license. You can get them registered when they get their drivers license. There will be registered when they come of age. There are states that allow 16 and 17yearolds to engage in a democratic process and otherwise. Two people workers. Poll workers. I think we see see a lot less civic education. It is important to engage folks at that age, so they when they go off on their own, move out of their homes and go to college. They are already see that as part of their job as citizens. I think for those reasons, there is a debate to be hot about lowering the voting age. But, we do not take a formal position. Go ahead. In 2020, especially most recently in kansas in the august primary. There been numerous demands for recounts after election were certified. Do you think the optics of demands for election recounts makes people more or less accepting of Election Results . That is a good question. I think a lot of states have automatic recounts as the margin is too narrow or depending on the margin, they can there is a presumption you can get a recount if you want. And i think recount sometimes help ensure faith in the outcome of the election. It makes people feel like we double checked. They played an Important Role, and sometimes the safe can be found during the recount. I think the idea count can be helpful to ensuring public faith in elections. Unfortunately we are at a moment of those calls for recounts are coming from not from a police from wanting to check the outcome, but from what has become widespread conspiracy theories about rigged elections. If that is the starting place people are coming from, they are unlikely to leave the outcome for the recount either. At least for that proposition i do not know if that will help. I think that, i hope that, you know that these absurd partisan review saw following 2020 even those partisan reviews were completely unable to prove their list fought and could not honor that anything. I hope that helps people see there is nothing a foot. I am a word worried what it does is it reaffirms whatever narrative people have in their head. Just hearing that there is a recount. Hearing there is an audit. Just hearing there is a review that confirms their worst fear. There is a lot of evidence, or we talk about voter fraud. Even if we are saying it is a meth. People just hear the barda fraud it and it helps reaffirm that is a thing. So i do worry that the more people question the outcome of elections, even if the answer is no, the the outcome was right. The asking of the question over and over again with no basis undermines faith. Others, david . Katie clark suggested the problem with a voter restoration registration comes down to we never, in our society resolve the question whether voting is a right or privilege. They said is not mentioned intel in the constitution until the 14th amendment. Would you agree, do we need another amendment to establish everybody has the right to vote . I think theres a right to vote in the constitution. It is not true it is not does not appear until the 14th amendment. It is true it is not addressed explicitly, but the fact that the house of representatives is elected by the people was in the original constitution. The guarantee of republican form of government. I think i do not think we need clarification for the right to vote. The Supreme Court acknowledged the right to vote many times. Theres lots of caselaw about it. Congress has enacted legislation to support the right to vote. I think that comment is still right i do not know what we as a nation agree on how we perceive the right to vote. I think there are people who view it as a privilege. I think there are people who view on not only has a right, but responsibility. I do not know we are in agreement on that. I think it is unfortunate. I think it has always been the case theres a right to vote, and unfortunately with the right not extended to everyone from the beginning of our country. Our nation was property white man that could vote. Fortunately, most of the history has been a story of expanding the sanchez make it universal. Expanding it through the reconstruction amendments, the 15th amendment to black men. Expanding it to women with the 19th amendment. Expanding it through the 24th in the 26th amendment. We have repeatedly moved in the right direction and made very clear we want everybody to have access to the. But, it does seem and we have these debates there is some folks in the country that do not seem to be bought into that. I think that is the problem. I do not think the solution is constitutional amendment. I think the constitution gives us that right. It is more a question of changing peoples hearts and mind. I had conversation with the former Prime Minister in they describe the system of people required to vote. Good idea that idea . Not a policy that we have taken a position on, but i think we have a lot to learn from countries like australia and many other that do you voting not only as a right but responsibility. I think turnout and elections and uniteds the United States is often dismal. We have become far too used to that. Part of it is because we are still having this debate on who should be able to do it. The history of Voting Rights is baffling to other people in other countries. The fact we have for so long on whether it is ok to make it harder for people to vote. It is baffling to people. The fact we deny people the right to vote because they were convicted of a crime decades ago. Even know they are living next to go. It is baffling to people because some of so much of our history is who we will who will participate. We are coming at it from a wrong angle and be looking to other countries who are come at it from this is everybodys responsibility. Everybodys expected to participate. We have time for one question. Do see our democracy decreasing more in the future . I think 20 20 and give this a lot of hope that we might be in a moment where a lot more people are engaged. We sell record turnout and so far, we have seen high turnout. I think despite this fight over Voting Rights is indicative how central this has become to our politics. It is indicative how much people care about our democracy. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who, taking the wrong approach and trying to make it harder to vote. And attacking our democracy. There is a lot on the other saturday a question. We talked about the expansive laws being passed in many states. I think voters are engaged with this idea of Voting Rights and democracy in a way i do not know it has been before. This is the thing people care about. People are turning out in voting. This is a scary moment in some ways, but that is what i said we have a decision to make collectively which way we will go. There are a lot more people engaged with the prodemocracy side it then in a long time. This is a priority issue in a way it has not been before. Im hopeful, when we resolve that question, we resolve at the right way. We are in a much healthier and better place we have been in recent times. I think we are in a really important moment. Where things could go one of two directions. In some ways it is closer to heading down the road away from democracy then we have been. At least in my lifetime. In other ways, we are potentially when the country rejects that road, or we could be in a much healthier place democracy. I did not get into this earlier. But a reference it. I want to say that, we think about it as a partisan issue. It is. If no denying that. More than it ever has been. When they worked on the Voting Rights act in 1982, when it was renewed in 2006 it was bipartisanship. It is not that anymore. It is very partisan. That is unfortunate. It is not only partisan politics animating this. We looked at every one of those restrictive voting laws introduced across the country. We look to see what is the pattern . What predicts they will be introduced introduced . Is it party politics. Is it republicans are injured restrictive and democrats introducing expensive . If more republican the more restrictive it will be . That divide does exist. It is a partisan issue. What we found above party, race predicts where restrictive legislation will be introduced. Restrictive bills were introduced by the widest districts, of the most diverse states. Republican states controlled by republicans in both houses and governor are very that are very white were less likely to be introducing restrictive legislation than republicans control with a lot of racial diversity. It was not only the districts where the widest districts of the most diverse introduced legislation, but the districts with the highest level of racial resentment where you will see restrictions. This fight we are having is a fight about partisan politics. It is a fight about trying to maintain minority control. It is not just about partisan politics. Trying to maintain minority control is about demographic shifts. And resentment, and issues we never resolved about race and related issues. I think we have a question about how we are going to what decision will make about democracy, collectively. In order to resolve that we need to be honest with ourselves about what that fight is about. Is into a fight about whether we believe in democracy or a fight about whether we believe in democracy i should say differently. You do not believe in democracy if you believe your site can lose. You do not believe in democracy until you accept you might lose power. If the majority is against you. There are a lot of people that are grappling whether they are ok being in the minority in a democracy. I think we have to answer the question that we are ok with that, and we want democracy. That is the mama we are faced with. Moment we are faced with. I wanted to know what that study. I think we get caught up in this conversation as if it is partisan. I think theres more going on them partisan politics. We need to grapple with that if we want to come out on the right side of this question of whether we have a democracy in the u. S. Shone at is hard to imagine a more important topic. Thanks for doing that with us. I think everybody walks away with more to think about then they walked in. That is the service that i appreciate. Thank you, and thanks for having me. [applause] we will be here next week. Scott reed will be here to talk about the race for control the senate. It is interesting to say the least. Hosted bkc pham and kansas city public television. Watch these debates live on cspan, cspan now, our free mobile video app, or oral online at cspan. Org. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We are funded by these Television Companies and more. Schools and businesses went virtual and we powered a new reality. Mediacom supports cspan as a public service, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Coming up this morning, university of michigan krystal ball editor kyle contact talks about key races in the election. Then we are joined by Senior Technical Advisor for the january 6 committee to talk about his book the breach. Washington journal starts now. Host this is the washington journal for october 21. The busy newsweek internationally and domestically as President Biden announces new efforts to control gas prices and nationally as