All. Do you have apprehensions about mailin voting in particular i do. Plus worries over voter rights. When Voter Suppression happens, it happens foreign meddling. N minority the russians are not trying to interfere in the election of 2020, they are interfering. And a weakened Postal Service. The Postal Service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nations ballots securely and on time poll watchers, delayed results, and conspiracy theories this morning, how safe is your vote welcome to sunday and a special vote watch edition of meet the press. Announcer from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, this is a special edition of meet the press with chuck toddy mor happy Labor Day Weekend to everyone not only may this actually be the most important election in our lifetime it certainly will be the most unusual or unlike any election in our lifetime this year because of the covid19 pandemic for the first time a majority of americans say they plan to vote early, and that has huge consequences according to this weeks nbc News Survey Monkey poll 52 of americans say they plan to vote early, 33 by mail, 19 early in person but there is a huge split between how democrats and republicans plan to vote 54 of those who lean republican plan to vote on election day in person while among those who lean democratic, 71 plan to vote by mail or early in person. That is all but certain to lead to an Election Night in which President Trump may appear to be leading because those election day votes are counted first and are republican leaning, only to fall behind joe biden in the following days and weeks as mostly democratic mailin votes are counted. There are so many questions surrounding this election. Will President Trump declare victory on Election Night and insist on mailin ballots counted afterwards are fraudulent will the Postal Service be able to get those ballots in on time . Will hurdles be put in place to make it more difficult for black and hispanic voters to get to the polls . How many mailin ballots will be disqualified and why and could weeks of legal challenges make 2000 and its hanging chads seem simple and quaint those are just some of the issues were trying to deal with all this week on vote watch on nbc news and msnbc starting with this special edition of meet the press. Were going to begin with a crush of expected mailin votes and an election, the likes of which we have never seen its my greatest concern, my single greatest concern. This president is going to try to steal this election. Theyre trying to steal the election from the republicans. The stakes could not be higher, as the two parties clash over how to conduct an election in the middle of a Global Health crisis more than 190 million americans in 44 states are eligible to cast a vote by mail without an excuse beyond the coronavirus. In 2016, 33 million voters or about onequarter voted by mail. This time, it could be more than twice that number. For months the president has engaged in a campaign against mailin voting, though he is voting by mail himself, to delegitimatize the results of the election if he loses. Voting by mail is fraught with fraud and abuse. If you do universal mailins with millions and millions of ballots, youre never going to know what the real result of an election is. I dont like this mailin ballot deal. A Washington Post analysis found 372 cases of voter fraud out of 14. 6 million votes cast by mail in the 2016 and 2018 alone. Academics have studied this, lawyers have studied this, democrats have studied this, republicans have studied this and no one can find any evidence of rampant voter fraud. The president s fear of mailin voting may be rooted in the 2016 election where he overperformed on election day in key battleground states. In florida, for instance, Hillary Clinton led before election day by 247,000 votes. Trump won election day voters by 360,000 and won the state. In the fight over mailin voting, the Postal Service has become a flash point after an urgent warning last month to dozens of states that it cannot guarantee all mailin ballots will be counted. Postmaster general louis dejoy backtracked before congress. The Postal Service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nations ballots securely and on time will you put the sorting machines back . No, i will not. You will not. I will not. The a caugchaotic primary cy it took pennsylvania 28 days to count all its primary votes. In new york, it was 42 days. States like wisconsin, georgia and texas were plagued by long lines at the polls, 11th hour Court Rulings and failing voting machines. It is pouring out here. How long have you been waiting about three hours. Youve been waiting here three hours . We stood in line and kept hearing, you know, theres machines coming. We didnt know if things were broken it made me think this is this must be what Voter Suppression looks like. If you have a 69, 70 voter turnout in our president ial election in november, na could take that could take days. And experts worry a long timeline could erode voter confidence in the election and become Fertile Ground for disinformation campaigns. If the Election Results are close, will you trust them sometimes in the back of my mind if theres a i dont know. And joining me now are two men who have represented their respective parties for years and know as well as anyone what might what we might expect this november. Its mark elias and ben ginsburg when we say recent with ben, we mean this past week recent ben, welcome to retirement, i guess, and welcome back to the show mark elias, to both of you let me start with just doing the landscape of lawsuits as we stand right now. More than weve ever seen for one election cycle the rnc is involved with 41 lawsuits in 19 states. The democrats have 18 different lawsuits in 17 states. We know its more than weve ever seen before yes, some of this is covidrelated. Mark elias, since youre involved in many of these suits, let me start with you. Of all of these lawsuits that are out there, what are the one or two that you think most urgently need to be decided and resolved for us to understand whats going to happen in november well, first of all, thank you, chuck, for having me on ben, congratulations on your retirement i think that there are a few categories of lawsuits that need to be resolved and pretty quickly. The biggest ones have to do with the rules involving the processing of absentee ballots some states ballots have to be received by election day in order to count some have to be postmarked by election day to count. Late received absentee ballots is one of the biggest reasons for rejections that we see in elections. Weve been litigating to try to move states to the postmarked by election day as a way to make sure that voters are not disenfranchised due to delays in the Postal Service and the like. So i would say that thats among those important cases that have to be resolved you know, ben ginsburg, this is one of the phenomenons in that not every state has the same rule when it comes to a postmark yes, its one of the glories of the federalism that we practice here in the country i mean whats true is a recognition that this is a different election because of covid, but also a recognition that states and counties which do administer elections have safeguards in their laws to be sure that people can take credibility in the results of the election and your leadin to the show, there are questions about the credibility of the Election Results, which makes those safeguards in state laws important to be sure that theyre in place and known well, ben, let me ask you the reverse of the question i asked mark whats the one or two lawsuits that you think particularly from the republican side of the aisle that you think are crucial the results of absenteee vot will be countes right. So there are, again, the safeguards in state law to be sure that the person who casts the ballot really is the person who signed the envelope as well. Its important to have those rules down the way ballots are going to be collected, absentee ballots will be collected, is very important to have down theres a phenomenon known as ballot harvesting. Theres a case up before the Supreme Court, precisely who can get absentee ballots and turn them in needs to be known in each state mark elias, that has been a touchstone here, who collects the ballots, where do they get dropped off. I know youre involved in a couple of these. What state or two do you believe this is most acute yeah, so first of all, the case that ben mentioned is a case that im actually involved in litigating. It helps illustrate, i think, part of whats at stake for democracy this fall. The case in arizona, which is currently pending before the Supreme Court to see whether theyll hear the case, involved an arizona legislative enactment that was brought after shelby county, after the state was no longer subject to preclearance, in which the ninth circuit found that the state banned thirdparty ballot collection as a way to intentionally discriminate against latino voters it wasnt an accident, it wasnt happenstance the legislature in arizona purposely passed a law to prevent thirdparty ballot collection to disenfranchise some voters. We know that native american tribes around the country have similar concerns about thirdparty ballot collection. But a lot of what were seeing from the republicans dont deal with thirdparty ballot collections, it deals with states using drop boxes. Weve seen republican secretaries of state in various states prevent counties from trying to institute drop boxes ben ginsberg, what is the concern on the drop box . Lets find a technicality to complicate this process or is there real evidence of issues that your side is arguing . Well, the evidence people have evidence of drop boxes being abused, then it should come forward with real specific instances. The theoretical problem with drop boxes is theyre boxes sitting out there in public. If there is a problem with whos collecting the ballots and whether in some states there are blank absentee ballots going out, that people can collect we fortunat ws to get Adequate Security around drop boxes well, and theres cameras i know that in ohio they claim that they have 24hour surveillance on that front i want to shift to something that we may now see in North Carolina, and that is an attempt at double voting it may all be due to something the president said this week take a listen. So let them send it in and let them go vote and if their system is as good as they say it is, then obviously they wont be able to vote if it isnt tabulated, theyll be able to vote. So thats the way it is. And thats what they should do i dont like the idea of these unsolicited votes. I never did. Ben ginsberg, i want to start with you on this as the president undermined his own argument here by essentially endorsing attempted voter fraud. Well, the clip had some mangled syntax in it, but there are there are any number of states which do allow voters to vote absentee, to be able to track their voters and see if theyre received or not and if theyre declared valid by the local jurisdiction if theyre not, those states do have ways for people to go in and cure whatever happened to their absentee ballot in arriving youll vote a provisional ballot or in some states youll just void the absentee if it comes in, but there is a way to do that perfectly legitimately if your absentee ballot is not received you know, mark elias, could you see a scenario where essentially a state like North Carolina is flooded with basically people that wanted to be sure their vote was counted, showed up twice and only lengthening the amount of time it takes to even find out whose votes are legit or not well look, i hope the people of North Carolina dont follow what is really irresponsible advice from the president and its really shameful that he said what he did because the fact is its a felony in North Carolina to vote twice you know, the attorney general said he needed to look up state law to see that. Im here to tell him what the state law is so it not only will slow up the process, because those second votes will get caught. There wont be people whose ballots are counted twice, but hes putting at jeopardy those individuals who may be listening to him and following this really, really irresponsible statement. But it could also gum up the works. All right, lets talk about post election day and some of these nightmare scenarios. Ben, ill start with you you were involved in 2000 and, mark, youve been involved in various recounts over the years, successful in most of them so, ben, what is your nightmare scenario what are your nightmare scenarios here that youre most concerned about that you think viewers ought to be warned about well, 2020 will not be 2000 2000 was the recount of one state under very tight deadlines, but that was met. Whats different about 2020 is the onslaught of absentee ballots and the number of states that have extended the deadline for when those ballots can come in postmarked on election day, but when they can come in. Thats putting a huge amount of faith in the Postal Service to deliver the ballot so i guess my nightmare nightmare scenario is theres a prolonged count because of all the absentee ballots and then lo and behold after whatever that deadline is in the state, three days after the election, a week after the election, a bunch of ballots come in that the post office just kind of lost. And so its not the fault of the voter that those votes werent counted, what do you do then that bumps into the Electoral College dead lun deadline. Mark elias, what are your various nightmare scenarios that you think we ought to be prepping for so a couple of things first, to bens point, what he just described in fact a variant of that happened in 2018 in the senate close senate and gubernatorial elections in florida. You may remember that andrew gill gillum lost by 0. 4 of a percent and senator nelson lost by 0. 1 of a percent part of that did deal with delayed mail ballots due to a sorting facility that had had a closure due to terrorist pipe bombs being mailed through it. Whats instructive about that is how senator nelson and mayor gillum reacted, which is they didnt attack the process, they didnt a workers of bad fair nelson in that we fought hard during the recount, but then we understood that the votes that had been cast had been counted. What i really worry about is a president that right now is laying seeds of doubt about democracy every day, and he is trying to undermine the u. S. Postal service, confidence in it, confidence in mail balloting, and i hope that post election day he acts more responsibly, although i dont have high hopes for that well, the reason were dedicating a full hour to this is because of our concerns about how the vote will be counted, what will things be like after election day, and, therefore, why we have two lawyers leading our show today anyway, mark elias, ben ginsberg, ben, good luck with retirement i see what youre trying to do it will suck you back in, my friend they will suck you back in. They may. Congratulations, ben. Anyway, thank you both. Much appreciated up next, well take you to one of the largest vote Processing Centers in the country and show you what happens to your ballot after you mail it in stay with us im a verizon engineer, and im part of the Team Building the most powerful 5g experience for america. Its 5g ultra wideband, and its already available in parts of select cities. Like los angeles and in new york city. And its rolling out in cities around the country. With massive capacity, its like an eight lane highway compared to a two lane dirt road. 25x faster than todays 4g networks. In fact, its the fastest 5g in the world. From the network more people rely on. This is 5g built right. Only on verizon. vo while you may not be running an architectural firm, tending hives of honeybees, and mentoring a teenager your life is just as unique. A Raymond JamesFinancial Advisor gets to know you, your passions, and the way you help others. So you can live your life. Thats life well planned. Welcome back with 190 million americans eligible to vote by mail, spurred by covid concerns, states are preparing for an unprecedented surge in mailin ballot so what happens to your ballot after you mail it . We asked my colleague, jo ling kent, to take us to a Processing Center in Orange County, california, south of los angeles. Reporter in Orange County, california, the final sprint to election day begins on october 5th. In a month all of these envelopes will be stuffed with ballots and sent out to voters once theyre returned here to the registrar, thats when the process kicks into high gear Orange Countys nonpartisan chief elections official, neil kelly, oversees the fifth largest voting jurisdiction in the United States. He says hes running a militarystyle operation to handle whats likely to be the biggest mailin vote ever. I think were probably going to see upwards of 90 honestly for the november election. Reporter that could add up to 1. 2 million in Orange County. Kelly has been anticipating the onslaught since the pandemic hit in march, investing more than a Million Dollars in new machinery and doing dry runs to prepare. You know, i lose sleep a lot at night i think every election official does one of the things that i lose sleep over is making sure the voters understand their options. The options, mail in your ballot early, drop it off in one of these secure d