offers. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more including comcast. >> you think this is just a community center? it is more than that. >> comcast partnering to create wi-fi enabled lists for students from low income families to get ready for anything. comcast, along with these television companies supports c-span2 as a public service. >> host: thank you so much, as a journalist, for writing this. after reading it i felt this was a definitive document and the big truth of what happened in 2,020. you say you are writing it for the great ideological middle that includes journalists. with the beginning of it, really begins with a chilling conclusion that you make about being on the precipice of a potential second civil war. tell me about that and what are the warning signs you are seeing? >> we don't make a prediction about another civil war. we hope vividly there are psychic forces loose in our country the create not just volatility but the potential for deep and permanent estrangement. we don't talk about a civil war of the kind we read about or see in movies like gettysburg or others where there are bullets and bayonets and hundreds and thousands die. we don't talk about a civil war like that. we talk about a civil war that is one of gradual, rhetorical, and procedural separation. a national divorce. it is procedural, rhetorical, a cleaving of the sense of unity. of us as americans identifying with one another and on behalf of financial not only truths but institutions. we describe that process starting over a disagreement about what happened in the midterm election. i won't going to too many details. i want people to see it for themselves, judge it for themselves. david and i thought about how this could happen. what we present is not far from the reality we are experiencing right now where poll workers in certain jurisdictions are given more latitude than they have before, many open carry states in this country in which people observing the election process can and will be armed in full accordance with the law, there could be a disagreement that because no one really wants it to but nevertheless becomes very intense and something accidental happened, we don't talk about intentional premeditated act of violence but something springing forth that is unpredictable, bloodied, deadly consequences. the nation looking at it in horror and one political party saying we cannot look away from this. we must do something in reaction to it and that sets off a chain of events which creates this divorce, this permanent cleaving of america as we know it and create something divided and unrecognizable. >> host: in a way -- & & plausible that it was terrifying. i don't want to give away the book but there are so many examples, if you give me one it might help people understand how easy it is, for instance, states withholding revenue from the federal government. >> one of the things we put a lot of thought into was how many ways this could come about. this is not inevitable. one of the key lessons of this book is there are ways, pathways out of this that all of us engage in. whether it is through a provocative act, particular polling place or several smaller acts like we are seeing in arizona or nevada or other places, we are seeing election deniers want us to be scared of voting which i'm very concerned about because voting is very safe in this country and they want us to doubt outcomes of elections in which they lose. we have become so accustomed to the idea that our fellow citizens are not our fellow citizens we might disagree with on some things but rather our mortal enemies, neighbors, family members, friends, people running elections in these places, hundreds of thousands of them could be involved in a massive conspiracy that nobody is talking about. a lot of them are leaving. we are seeing rates as high as 50%, experienced election professionals, both parties and in some ways republicans are experiencing it worse than democrats all over the country so that is happening. in that environment you could start getting to the point quickly whereas a political leader or citizen, i don't want to be part of this other part of the country, i don't want to be related to the more connected to them. we see the seeds of this being planted. going to a border state, that's not what the union was meant to deal with. the union was meant to protect our common borders and deal with it collectively as a country. you can see this happening on either side of the political spectrum, we get to the point we just decide i can't the associated with the. do we start an tethering ourselves, unraveling themselves economically? many states give one dollar and $0.50, one dollar and 30 sent to the federal government for every dollar they get back, they could start rationalizing it that way. we rely upon interstate commerce in so many ways, that could start been effective in so many ways. this is not inevitable. it is not a prediction but something we are concerned about. we raise disagreements between states over abortion. there are billboards in several states, texas, mississippi, alabama sponsored by the state of california saying if you need an abortion, we are here to help. that is one state going to another state and saying your laws are unrecognizable to us. we have different laws and we will rescue your citizens from your state because of this disagreement. >> guest: with congress not governing. >> host: the state is cleaning. >> the idea of states feeling so separate from one another that this can be a revenue thing. one state can say we are not going to give our federal revenue to washington anymore and we dare you to try to collect it. we are freeing our citizens from that obligation, come and see how well you are equipped, as we suspect you are not, to collect this federal revenue. like-minded states say that state is onto something a we will do the same thing and then states that don't agree say we will no longer recognize commercial, travel, citizenship rights of those renegade states. this could have a propulsive dynamic to it that we write the book intentionally to scare people a little bit and say these are psychic forces, you can't deny they exist, but there is a way back. i want to note, we talk about this in the book about the attorney general of texas, ken paxton, filed a lawsuit in the supreme court in december 2020 under their original jurisdiction. the united states supreme court at trial court and a case between states and other republican attorney general's, we don't like election rules and other states so we are going to challenge those election rules in those other states. think about how anti-federalist that idea is. imagine what those same republican attorneys general would have said if the attorneys general of california or massachusetts had tried to do the same thing in 2016. also, over a month since the election that they knew what it was about. >> host: the words you use in the book in our nation has been sick before, but it has healed. we've been through a lot of to melt. the vietnam war, slavery, we had much closer elections since the 1960s but the one thing that is different is we have never had such an organized attempt to discredit and undermine our election system. talk a little bit about that and why this moment is different. why you are so concerned about this moment. >> we have a lot of disagreement in this country and that is not unusual. the way we resolve those disagreements is through the ballot box and our elected representatives. never before have we have a coordinated, continuous attack on that very process, the process of how we resolve our disagreements. we need a basis to resolve our disagreements. every democracy does. that relies on the consent of the governed and rule of law in the united states of america. we are seeing consistent attacks on both of them to the point where many americans no longer believe that an election was secure or valid if their side didn't win. in 1960, vice president nixon undoubtedly believed, whether he had evidence for it or not, that in the one state that decided the electoral college, illinois, there might have been fraud. there was no evidence of a, disagreement over whether it existed, he presided over the joint session of congress that elected his opponent in the presidential election and did so out of sense of duty. vice president gorged the same. those elections were decided by one state, they were much closer than 2020. 2,020 was not a very close election at least in terms of modern history. the largest margin of victory of any presidential election of the 20 first century when barack obama wasn't on the ballot. 7 million votes difference in the popular vote. a minimum of 3 states in the electoral college. all of those states had margins over 10,000 votes. it seems narrow, but election lawyers like myself will tell you in the era of recounts, audits and other things, 10,000 votes is a landslide. there's never been a statewide election anywhere in the united states with greater than a thousand votes margin. very different from 2,000. we've never seen this kind of continuous attack, 725 days, on the 2,020 election and those attacks continue. they have led to threats, harassment of our public servants, election officials all over the country, and those threats are only growing. >> host: it feels like the big lie is winning out over the big truth. >> guest: it feels that way in certain parts of the country. how do democrats question elections before? answer, yes. we write about it in every instance. that is part of the modern political conversation. 2,000, we go into and talk to one of the litigating attorneys involved, go back and refresh our memory about that. there was a true dispute over voter intent and ballot design. plenty of court said there are legitimate questions that need to be resolved and the law is hard to work out. ballot design and voter intent, did voters vote for someone mistakenly because of the ballot design? that deserved to be litigated and a difficult process. democrats raised questions as did republicans. 2004, a small number of democrats raised objections about ohio, 2016, there were lots of unhappy democrats who wondered if that election was legit, raised questions about it. stacey abrams raised questions about the georgia gubernatorial race, we describe all of that. but not one of those democrats found with the exception of stacy abrams who was the nominee, a nominee who endorsed to john kerry did in 2,004. al gore accepted the ruling of the supreme court and none of them stormed the capital. none of them raised money and drifted and drifted and drifted proposing wilder and wilder and wilder new conspiracy theories to explain something that never happens because the last theory had been clearly debunked. that is one of the daisychain processes here that aggravates david and i because it never ends. there is always another explanation. even the most current one, which is about drop boxes, that is not where it started. that is the twentieth iteration. we have 20 iterations of one suppose in crime, you have to ask yourself logically, how could that possibly be? answer, it can't. what aboutism is dangerous in his conversation. we are very emphatic about this. the answer to election the nihilism is not more election the nihilism. it will only end and irretrievably for this country. >> host: it does not feel like we are in that space right now. i ask you a question i can't answer which is why? why are we at this point? as you outlining your book there have been so many other moments we've been on the precipice of a great national cleaving or national divorce as you put it? i will give you a provocative question about that. which you cite in the book, from representative jamie raskin who observes that throughout our history, when we had big demographic changes, that has never occurred without violence and upset. i'm not saying or suggesting it is the main factor at play but is it a factor? and why now? >> we are talking about the phenomenon that surrounded trump for many years. i also think we have an incentive structure right now, we are facing difficult times and there might be difficulties that normally come along with that. but unlike the original sin of slavery we had to get passed during the civil war or the ongoing issues related to civil rights in the vietnam war where there were substantive divisions, the issues of whether our elections are secure is not an issue in the country. our elections are more secure than they have ever been. we talk about this in the book, more paper ballots than we ever had verified by the voters. we can go back to recounting the audit. 95% of voters voted on paper in 2020. 75% to 80% in 2016. the entire state of georgia had no paper ballots in 2016. all paper ballots in 2020. pennsylvania was mostly non-paper in 2016, all paper in 2020. we audit all those ballots. we clarified the rules, more postelection litigation that confirm the results. the underlying system works. the lies are still there. people are profiting off of them. >> host: we want to get to that. >> guest: half a billion dollars, donald trump is raised off of this in the past two years. they are gaining political power. it might be temporary but they are gaining political power off of these lies. we have to do something about that incentive structure. >> host: we know that the lies are being told. early on in this phenomenon, as you go about reporting, i want you to distinguish between the liars and the lied to. there are many many smart attorneys, political consultants, and other elite in the party who must know that these are lies about our election system. i ask you once again, why are they incentivized to tell these lies? is it a fear of loss of place? loss of culture? >> there is a very direct answer to that in terms of their ability to hold onto their job and their political power. this is a highly motivating issue within republican primary electorates. there is a way that political strategists count likely voters. you know this, the higher you are to the number 4, the more likely you are to vote. most campaigns build their strategy around 4-4, 2-for-3-four voters. 4-3-4 voters. the big lie is a motivating factor that turns out 0-4 voters who never show up or those who show up once every 8 years. republicans don't know any other way to keep their job than to try to satisfy these voters that will come in unexpected numbers in primary contests to send this message. they will not where to battle to talk them out of it because they learned or they assume, haven't learned but they assume that if they try, they will suffer the political equivalent of a metaphorical stoning. >> reporting out of capitol hill from republicans who privately voted to decertify the election who said it was because my people want me to do that. >> this is a minority rule strategy. this is a concession they will never get the majority. in campaign after campaign around the country the election deniers who won primaries were the weaker of the republican candidates, or having difficulty in elections they should win easily. democrats agree with them on this point because they supported some of these candidates in the primaries thinking they would be the weaker candidates. ultimately, the question is, is this a rational strategy, as morally depraved as it might be? or is it an irrational strategy? i happen to think it is an irrational strategy long-term because we might not have a democracy much longer that even a minority can rule but minority rule strategy, back to the reagan administration, people forget the 1980 election was much closer than people remember. we remember the 1984 election. if someone had told ronald reagan that he could get elected losing the popular vote or winning the electoral college, that was the strategy to pursue, i feel confident ronald reagan would have ushered that person out and said that's not what we are going to do. he got hammered in the 1982 midterms. that used to be something both parties rejected. now it seems to be the core strategy of one party, we are going to attempt minority rule because we don't see a path forward with our base to achieve majority rule. that path forward requires them to tell the majority of their party what might be difficult for them to hear which is we lost an election. more voters voted for the other side. we should be resetting and fighting out the next election. there is a structural parallel. you go back to the gilded age, the massive transformation from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy. that is late 19th century, early 20th century. a time of massive economic, cultural, social dislocation. people felt dislodged from an understood way of life. things were hurtling at them in ways that were completely unexpected that they were unprepared for. that created a great instability in american politics. congressional majority swung back and forth radically at that time. we had a deeply embedded partisan press. parties either owned -- county parties own newspapers, candidates own papers, governors owned newspapers, and that partisan press attacked the opponent and protected the political figure. does that sound familiar? to what we are going through now? voters constantly looking for someone who had answers about this great set of dislodging and disrupting external factors, created tremendous volatility and an alienation of our politics but all of that is present now. the one big difference is you have one person, you can't separate any of this from donald trump. he is the person given this rhetorical rage and continues to farm that rage among voters who cannot believe, despite a preponderance of evidence, he would deceive them on this topic. he is, and they are being deceived. >> host: that is pivoting to my next question about the most important big truth, the chance that some of these folks are watching, hopefully they will buy your book, but if they don't, if there are just a few big truth that you feel from this book they need to walk away with, what are they? >> what we try to do. the election deniers would like to play an endless game of whack a mole where the same stories about suitcases, ballots, keep having to be whacked down and pop up again. try to tell a positive store which is the men and women, republicans and democrats all over the country somehow managed the highest turnout in american history, 20 million more voters than we have ever seen, 2 thirds of all levels of eligible voters which we have never seen in this country. managed that in the middle of a global pandemic. they couldn't plan elections socially distanced. they had to meet with staffs in offices, some were getting sick. they managed this with unprecedented scrutiny and vitriol being directed at them. that's the real story of the 2020 election. we know it was the most secure ever, not only did we hear this from trump's own department of homeland security and fbi and department of justice, but we've got the documents to prove it, the paper ballots and audits and court decisions to prove it. there is other evidence that even the election deniers know this is true. donald trump had a legal right to recount in michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania under those state laws. we might member in 2016, joe stein took advantage of those opportunities and had recounts and they confirmed the results, donald trump did win the 2016 election by winning majority of votes in states that comprise the majority of the electoral college. i said so at the time of the evidence confirms it. in 2020 donald trump requested statewide recounts in none of those three states. in fact, every member of congress who objected to the electoral count was elected on the very same paper ballots. that gave them the authority to object to the electoral ballots, electoral votes. you can't make this stuff up but if you think about it, our talk about this all the time. i worked in elections for 25 years, we don't have one national election, we have 10,000 little elections at any given point in time. everything up to november 8th this year is 10,000 little jurisdictional elections. in order to steal a national election of any kind you would need a conspiracy of millions of people all over the country, half of whom are from the other party, and have none of them talk. it is not possible. and so this whole thing is based on the big lie, there is an affirmatively good story to tell about the 2020 election. the greatest success of american democratic process in history and we should be celebrating it. >> in focus groups with trump supporters, they talk about how they became trump supporters and aggravated with what is existing in america from their perspective. frequently they will say first i was sad, now i am mad. sad about the economy or the border or crime or other things they feel are not the way they ought to be. to those, i would say there is something to be happy about. i really mean this. elections in this country are not a federal responsibility. they are a local responsibility. when you go to your precinct, you see your neighbors. my mother was a poll worker for 25 years in addition to being an executive for at&t in the 60s and 70s, something highly unusual for a woman in this country. she took time off from work to be up all worker. she did that to keep track of the neighborhood. she is a busy person. and to fulfill a civic duty. be happy about what american democracy actually means in terms of how we do it. yes, there are election administrators and professionals, but there are hundreds of thousands of volunteers and they are your neighbors who do this work not because they are going to be paid a lot, not because they are going to be prestigious, not because they are going to get a parade or an award or be on a ladder climb to political power. none of those things are going to happen. they are not interested in any of those things. you know what they are interested in? the core values of this country. the things that maybe you are sad and then mad about. not in this space. that is something to take pride in. because it is working. our elections are better than they have ever been. they are more verified, more verifiable, more resilient, more accessible, all of those things are not accidents. there is something by which somewhere in washington pours out a little potion, drops in a couple drops of water and this whole national thing opens up. it is mutual agreement in small town after small town after small town, large cities, suburbs, rural areas or by common agreement we work on behalf of the continuance of our american democratic experiment. i urge you, if you are mad about lots of things, don't be mad about that. take pride in it. be happy about that, and let that truth sink in, because it is not going to go away unless you take a hand in trying to destroy it. >> host: i love that you are speaking directly to the folks you are trying to speak to in the book. one thing you did in here that i haven't seen before and i think is so important was the sympathy and kindness that you showed to some of the victims, as you call them, of the big lie, and there are many, whether it is in the form of financial penalties, people who are serving jail time due to the insurrection, who believed that donald trump told them to go there and got caught up in it. talk a little bit about those people and why it is important not to brush their stories and their apologies under the carpet. >> there were 74 million people who voted for donald trump in the last election, they are not insurrectionist's, they are mostly good americans. they preferred another candidate in the great american tradition. they are the natural targets for the live. the lie that is lining the pockets of the grifters that are spreading that lie. they are incentivized to keep these people angry and divided from their fellow americans so that they can keep getting those $25 contributions, those $30 fees to watch a documentary, the entry fees to see a rally. that is all lining someone's pockets. the people who are targeting their businesses, their entire commerce, at these individuals. it must be hard to live in a media bubble like that and be hearing that your democracy is being stolen from you. you can imagine what kind of behavior that could justify. it doesn't absolve that behavior. people committed, committee, lacks should be prosecuted and served time but it must be very difficult and we do have a lot of sympathy for people constantly hearing your democracy is being stolen. imagine any of us hearing that. i see this across the political spectrum. this is not a 50/50 thing, this is not moral equivalence, this is coming entirely from an extremist part of a right wing. but it is not 100-0. there are some kernels of this growing on the other end of the political spectrum. we have to be wary of that, there are people who want to keep us angry. i heard the term recently rage farming. there are people getting rich off of farming our rage. that struck home for me. >> the farmers have been punished. the people on the bottom who are co-opted. >> there are means by which accountability, accountability is often slow, very slow. there' ll be some political accountable to, some who deny the election will lose in large part because of that, some will win but many will lose. there is also an accountability in the legal sphere. there are lawsuits going on against those who knowingly said false things about dominion's smart tech, those companies are suing, they made clear in court documents they are wide open to discovery of their systems, those who spread lies are reluctant to similarly pervasive discovery of what they knew and how it conflicted dramatically with what they said. that's a form of accountability. there are those who have been identified in a documentary over making false statements about what they did with their own ballot, that's a long-running process. accountability will be slow but it will, we believe be achieved, and over time send a message that this is not a space that is free of consequences. it may create profit. it may create momentary political gains, but it is not a long game because the facts the we talk about in this book are not going anywhere. >> host: there is this motivation, incentive structure here. tell me a little more about the great thing because it is real. >> it began before 2016 and went through the trump administration to some degree. we probably remember the presidential advisory commission election integrity which was mono partisan and game to from the beginning to yield a certain result and even with all of those resources and gaming by the administration, couldn't find a single case of fraud or any evidence this was a problem. in 2020, we saw this beginning from early on that donald trump and others were delegitimizing ways we have been voting for centuries. mail voting, which we have been using since at least the civil war, republican legislatures had really taken a lead on, places like utah and arizona which republican campaigns relied upon more effectively than democratic campaigns. mail voting is likely to be used by older voters and property owners and republicans perceive that to be a core part of their base. this graft continued, this was designed to lay the foundation for if donald trump lost, he could claim the election was rigged. we saw this in messaging throughout 2,020 and going back to 2016, at least when he was spreading these lies. after the election, after january 6th, after the inauguration on january 20th we see a real effort to monetize these efforts. they were sending text messages and going out on social media making claims they were unwilling to make in court, that they knew would get hammered in court if they subjected them to scrutiny that they make on social media and drive a ton of smaller donations. the documentary which we will not mentioned by name because it is completely made up. it refers to a beast of burden. we will say that. it has literally been referred to the fbi and the irs and the makers of it for fraud by the republican attorney general in the state of arizona who is a candidate for senate in the past primary election. the makers of this were recently referred for contempt by a reagan appointed judge in texas whose group is ongoing but they know they can collect these dollars and we've seen evidence from places like open secrets that trump himself raised half $1 billion. >> we are sympathetic in this space, we really are. i went through a lot of the letters people awaiting adjudication for storming the capital -- >> host: we publish some of them here. >> they were open documents submitted to the court. we got some blowback some progressives, who don't have publicity for these people, they are criminals. hold off, read these letters. in which they say, not quoting them directly, the spirit of them is i never believed someone would tell me a lie about this. i got caught up in it. it is the biggest mistake of my life and i wish i had never done it. you could say they are just trying to get a lighter sentence and they will say anything to a judge, maybe that is true. when i started my career as a police reporter, i got what i like to think is a somewhat sophisticated crap detector. these right to me like letters of people who had taken a journey. i do feel sympathy for them. at one core level, they thought they were doing something right. to david's point, they were told this election was stolen and you have an obligation to protect our democracy and they thought i think that is right. i do have an obligation. i am an american. at a passionate level, i am part of the story of this country level, i get that. their journey was oh my gosh, i had real feelings but i wasn't told the truth. i was manipulated. i wish i hadn't been. they go into great detail how sorry they are about the people who are injured, the police officers especially, the trauma the congressional staff and others experienced and their sense of disbelief they could ever get to that place. i have genuine, genuine compassion for them. and we write about it for a specific reason, because those journeys are not invented. >> host: like you said, there's all sorts of victims. that would be a more dramatic example of people serving jail time but there is the graft victims. i want to ask you, how much of that money? millions of dollars were raised on the false pretense that there was a fraudulent election that needed to be litigated, millions of dollars were raised by individuals close to the president as well as the president himself. how much of that was used in fighting fraud? >> we quote patrick byrne, former ceo of overstock.com who says in his own book which we read in preparation for our book, none of it was spend. spent. all these republicans who send all their money in thinking they were going to help stop the steel work, his work, not mine, not david's, fleeced, fleeced. that is not major garrett saying fleeced, not david becker, it is patrick byrne saying he believes the election was stolen, his theories long since debunked, but on this particular, quite heavy question, those are his words. >> the recounts i mentioned donald trump had available in michigan, wisconsin and consuming income estimates that would have cost $20 million to request and the evidence makes clear that he had raised $200 million during that time. he would have had to pay less then one tenth, a dime on the dollar, of the money he had raised, to go through the legal resource of getting recounts which had all paper ballots and were ready to do it, waiting for him to do it but he didn't spend a dollar on that. he kept saying there were going to be lawsuits from you can't go a week without hearing my pillow guy saying there's going to be a lawsuit that will be mind blowing. we haven't seen those lawsuits. we are still hearing about these lawsuits that are going to be filed at any point in time, defamation lawsuits from certain candidates. the reinstatement, which even some of the election deny supporting legislators have had to make clear in states like wisconsin, that is not a thing. .. we can't reinstate someone who lost the election. there were electoral vote slates that were certified that were delivered by law to the national archives and no competing slates that were certified. and they were counted appropriately in a joint session, presided over by the losing vice presidential candidate and the sitting vice president and by the losing vice presidential candidate and the sitting vice president. and still the degree to which this craft continues and targets, they're not targeting biden boaters with this. they are not buying it. they're targeting the sense of discipline supporters of former president. they are the ultimate, as major pointed quoting patrick byrne, they're the onesan getting fleeced. >> this is a point about the recounts never undertaken. you have to pay, as importantly, you have to accept the results. you have to pay and accept the results. former president trump never paid because he would've had to accept the results. if you accept the results you take three states off the map and this ends. that was within his rights, clearly within itsd financial ability and clearly would've been consistent with the pledges he was making to those with whom he was raising money. and across the board i didn't create those facts david becker didn't create those facts. former president trump created all of those facts. >> and just as important as the books message about setting the record straight on 2020 is the warning about certain aspects that have become embedded into our political culture. even ourti election system with poll workers who believe the big lie, now volunteering in droves. what are the lessons that we should take away and look out for in terms of your biggest concerns going into these midterms that a couple of weeks away? >> guest: yeah, i think one of my biggest concerns is that the election deniers have much easier job than those of us, the vast majority of us, who are protecting democracy. those are protecting democracy, the majority of americans, have to protect an entire 360-degree aspect of our democracy. the election deniers only have to pierce one point. and what we see them doing now is they are staging its performative these things that we're seeing in arizona, the things we're seeing in nevada, the claims that they are training and arming of observers. and my fear is that yes, some of that is going to manifest itself. there are going to be some voters were intimidated. but my fear is that the goal of recovery it and make voters fear the act of voting, fear the active participating in our democracy. there was a wonderful that came out recently that said 40% of alle voters are worried about voter intimidation. when the reality is maybe 40 people will really expect voter intimidation and acts of those in arizona and nevada and of the should be investigated and prosecuted. but for 99.99% of american voters they're going to find a process that's convenient,nd that's familiar, and that safe. and what the deniers want is for voters to self suppressed, for them to lose confidence in their democracy, regardless of who they're voting for. a win in that circumstance. that's a real risk right now for us anything especially in the days leading up to the election on going to be very much watching. >> host: that was my story about the army of poll workers exposing that. and while you're right that the concerns are really about voter intimidation, aren't your concernsns also though that thee people again are being used as vehicles to raise meritless objections which event could be used by attorneys and folks in the party to mount challenges to elections all over the place? >> guest: challenges are one thing. successful challenges or another. trust me, david knows us better than i do but i've gotten a chance to meet and get to know election administrator all over the country. they know they are under intense scrutiny. they are doing what they always do, , the best work on the preparatoryy work, and the challenge about something so thanks might beht suspicious, tt isn't, won't go very far. number one. will be harassment, it will be a wasted legal fees, wasted attorneys energy. but the court say they follow the procedures because they didn't it's a small thing or it is traditional. he can be remedied. i don't worry about those things structurally because i believe the system is sound. and to her earlier point that of than it's ever been. the one thinga i think david ad i also have concern about is because of all this intensity of spirit, let us say diplomatically, about election outcomes,ac there's going to bea lot of close races in a lot of close states. and since that this midterm election is of existential importance, not necessary to put feel as to what they feel is more true than what isis actually true. your feelings matter t in this space, there's going to be anxiety and anticipation for information, and results are goinglt to be may be slower than people want. we may not know who controls the house by the end of tuesday night, wednesday morning after election day. in some cases we may not know who won senate races or governors races for a couple of days. that doesn't mean anything is wrong. it means we're counting the ballots, making sure it's verifiable, making sure i can live up to that scrutiny. but in that space of uncertainty, people could have doubts that become much worse than that. >> guest: and, in fact, the system into the violent or volatility. and you hit a key point. we have to divide the stuff between what happens from now until november 8 p.m. andnd what happens from 8:01 p.m. on. i've a lot of confidence in the process actually working up through the closing of the polls. we also need to be reporting on efforts too intimidate voters ad other things. i relied upon your reporting at others. it was really, i mean, it's important that we know about this.. i talked tout the election officials, they are worried about it. vigilance is really, really important. but i've a lot of confidence that we see record early voting in many states including georgia right now. it seems be racially balanced. it . it seems be something that i've witnessed taking advantage of. but once the polls close they are going to be efforts to delegitimize the process by, let's face it, re, losing candidates. the winner has no reason to delegitimize a process. we should be very, very vigilant for anything candidates who perceive that they are losing even if there temporarily when he as we're counting the ballots normally through a process that we always. i just tweet from your senator that criticized that certain party,ta certain areas controlld by one party take longer to count ballots than others. that is false. we have never counted ballots on election night in this country. it's impossible to count all ballots on election night in this country. we take time to count the ballots right because of their unit accurate and to get a pass. and thect only reason we think e know who won elections is because the margins are very large. but in narrow elections isns gog to take us quite some time. my take is days. it might even take us weeks. california takes among the longest time to count ballots in the country anda we never worry about that in a presidential election because we know who won in california. but there are 52 new congressional districts in that state and some ofe them are goig to be close, and the could defy control of the united states house. >> host: one of the other the difference is that you identify in here compared to our history of close elections and contentious elections is the fact that there is this infrastructure being built in advance, legal infrastructure, versus 2000, forgo instance, whe nobody could have foreseen that was going to be the close of election and be a contested election or close but not contested, and that the legal infrastructure sprang into action as needed in that instance, whereas now it's being put together in advance in anticipation of potentially just that type of scenario. how worried are you, for instance, about what happened in otero county, mexico, with county commissioners just refusing to certify an election until the state supreme court said sorry, you got to do that? >> guest: : i'm glad you brought that up because it is the model for what could happen in many places around the country there there you had three republican members of the county board who refused to certify the primary. remember this wasn't even the general election, it was a primary. there are guys won. the clerk subject to certify this cup the professional election official, , and all the prototype to survive because they had a gut feeling they could trust the machines. but i think it's also a model of how the legal system can work in this case,e, that the attorney general, the secretary of state, the newew mexico supreme court acted very, very swiftly, had a writ of mandate singer to certify the election. still one of those three of them someone who had literally been sentenced for his role in january 6, at the same time refused to but two of the three did certify the election. i think we're likely to see attempts like that on on a lr scale in the general election, particularly when election the knights have lost the election. there are two concerns here. one is is a legal system could hold a? is would uphold the rule of law and actual will of the voters? i have muche more confidence. i think that is going to happen. what have a great deal of concern about ise that takes time. might be days, might be weeks, it might be months but that takes time and during that time the grifters can turn up the heat onro people's anger, and tt will createe an environment that is right for political violence. i know in talking to election officials all over the country the very word about this. it something will have to keep a close eye on and try to do our best to tamp down that anger and the potential for violence. >> guest: let's talk about machines for just a second. because they scan ballots and count the ballots. then there's the paper record that they david hogg about. audits are conducted, you scan a certain percentage to make sure what the machine said is what is representative in the paper ballots. that's the verification process. in night in my county ine decided to not have machines. they want to go back to hand counting the ballots. there discovering three things. all of which were predictable. one, it's very time consuming. the people are doing it are like i can't believe this takes so long. two, m they have made mistakes. they've had do recounts because, though they are trying to do it correctly, human error creeps in. three, they are exhausted and did not even nearly halfway done with this task. that's why we have machines. i would like to suggest to people that the way we count balance is not dissimilar from the way we scan a fedex package. it's optically recorded and put into a verified database. one difference is everything that's at a local office is sealed in that pic is not assessable any other way but it's more or less the same thing. thing. so i ask you, would you rather deliver your package via fedex or drive it yourself? because that's what we're talking about. no, you would want to drive it yourself. that's why fedex is a multibillion-dollar global company. because we hand over things toin be scan and to be moved. it'sis not a this in the process but you don't drive the package across country to an address you've never been before. >> host: just one second. do you think we need to change the way we articulate to the american people? >> guest: i try to find ways. i'm trying to find ways. >> host: these are basic civic, education -- >> guest: to make this more sensible trade to the recently teamed up on this book is because major as an expense and a skill set that i don't possess. i mean he'smp a journalist. he's covered campaigns.mp he knows the trump effect so well. he's covered the whited house. i have devoted my career 25 years to this esoteric little world of election administration, , which is so fr down in the weeds, here at the dirt. it's nuts and bolts. the reason it's great for people who have doubts to volunteer to be a a poll worker is they son learn that it's not can you just don't show up and start heading up pieces of paper to people. i mean, it is a 365 day a year job, and jeff to show, you had to get trained for hours, short hours before the polls open as the hours after the close because there are so many checks and balances and redundancies and bipartisan observation that people have to go through. b and to be honest, i don't expect everyone to get into the weeds as. far as i do. this is my job. but the hand c counting think hm and you brought up the challenge is what you think is a key to this, the challenges are all about reducing the guard risk of democracy so that it actually increases the opportunity for losing candidates to try to steal an election or to at least continue the grid, right? and hand counting is a great example of that. there is literally no one who's ever c win an election is in his hand counting is a good idea. i mean come on my ballot it is 37 different races. it has six pages and i'm one of the shorter ballots in the country. it's impossible to do that and hand count and to get ballots quickly. one ofse the of the dynamics we see is the same people are sayingr and counting are saying wele have to balance count on election night. those two things do not work together. election officials have so we do need to educate people more because what the grifters are trying to do is to create more of an opportunity for them to rest out about elections when they lose. >> host: you all into the book asking whether we go from here? so i'm going to ask you that question. where do we go from here? >> guest: we go to a place where we treat our elections and the people who help us participate in them as sacred space, as not another thing partisan carnival. back away from that. we ask questions about it. we scrutinize it, yes, but we don't treat it like just another tactical place for partisan disagreement. that's the way forward. and that takes leadership. that takes people who are involved in the process to not be open hypocrites, meaning you raise doubts about an election as you are campaigning. you raise doubts as those are being counted, and then when you go ahead, suddenly bless the system as fraud free. there are a few candidates right now who have done that exact thing. that is an open air act of hypocrisy. must be evaluated as such, described as such, absorbed as such. and we have to take the typical sort of rhetorical give-and-take in politics in which you can emphasize or deemphasize on lots of different positions, things you used too say, things you usd to believe about policy. there's a lot of give-and-take there. you watch it. i watch it. but not here. treat this as as a sacred sps it is. >> host: major garrett, david becker, thank you so much. hope that the great ideological middle as you call it, i hope everyone goes out and buys your book. >> guest: thank you. you. >> booktv every sunday on c-span2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. at 9:15 9:15 p.m. eastern ik hold the line for wasngn, d.c. metropolitan police officer michael flynn one shows his 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