it's interesting to me that here we have a hot august night and we weren't quite sure what kind of attendance we were going to get tonight. but i'm i'm quite impressed by this turnout and a little curious as to why it is. but i suspect part of the reason why there was a turnout such as this is the two people who are being represented on the stage here tonight by the executive directors of their centers. and that's president carter. and for who demonstrated that you could be a decent, honorable person and still hold the highest office in the land. and i think there is not just simply a nostalgia for the idea of decent, honorable people

being president, but a recognition that in some sense our republic requires it. and secondly, they demonstrated a real ability for civic friendship and for personal friendship, even though they were bitter political rivals in the 1976 presidential election after their presidencies, they became very close friends. i was telling paige earlier today that my favorite exhibit here in the museum is the funeral, president ford's funeral, and president carter's speech at the funeral, which is just profoundly moving. it's a really beautiful speech and just such heartfelt delivery and some sense hope on its own right? well, with that, i'd like to introduce our two guests tonight. i'm going to start on my far left there. you're far right with gleaves whitney, who is the executive director of the gerald ford presidential foundation. and should be familiar to most

of you. and if you look at your fliers, you can see the biographies of both our speakers and i should point out that this is at best a kind of thumbnail sort of accomplish moments of both of them. i spent some time in preparation for this googling miss alexander and just a staggering list of accomplishments and achievements. really incredible experiences next to graves is paige alexander, who is the chief executive officer of the carter center, and she contacted us a while ago and told us that she'd be in grand rapids and we'd like to get together. and we immediately saw the opportunity and said, well, if we can put her on our stage, we should definitely be putting her on our stage.

and we're like, well, in late august, will it work? and lo and behold, that has worked so thank you, paige, for coming to grand rapids and welcome to the ford museum. we're thrilled to have you here. i'd like to begin tonight's panel with just a few comments, and then i'm going to ask questions of paige and gleaves, and they'll take it over from there. for the most part. it is a concerning political moment. i think most of you know, in our country today, if you look at some of the polling data that we have, a majority of americans believe that we are already in the middle of a civil war in this country. it's a cold civil war, but it's a civil war nonetheless. a majority of people who had voted to elect to reelect president trump in 2020 believe

that their state should secede from the country. 41% of biden voters believe that the country should divide into different states. so the sort of things that led to the first civil war acts of violence, talk of secession, all of this has been renewed once again. a poll done by the kennedy school at harvard university established that half of voting age americans under the age of 30 think that our democracy is failing. a another survey found that 46% of americans believe a future civil war is likely in this country. 43% feel it's unlikely. an 11% were simply not sure. almost half of americans believe some sort of civil war is likely in this country. and i think one of the things that we are dedicated to is to

keep that from happening. if we possibly can. if you studied the history of spain in the 1930s, you'll know how ugly those kinds of civil wars can be and trust in our institutions, our at historic lows. i have a graph here about trust in government to do what is right. it is lower now than it was during the depths of watergate and vietnam. it's one of its lowest rates ever since we've been polling such stuff. so failing institution has concerns about violent us concerns about this 237 year experiment in democracy falling apart seems to be a very big part of the day, and that's kind of what we're going to talk about is the sorts of things we need to pay attention to, to try to hold this together and whatever else is the case that the 237 year sustained democracy is quite a remarkable achievement and something we'd

like to preserve. so that i'm going to begin asking questions of our panelists. and, paige, i'd like to ask you first one of the things the carter center does a lot of is election monitoring, and they've done a lot of it in foreign countries and said to say starting to have to do it in this country in the wake of the 2020 elections, americans have become both more aware of and concerned about how we run our elections in this country. what are the sort of difficulties that we face in terms of trying to figure out how we can have elections accepted broadly among the populace? i thank you, jeff, and thank you all for being here. i think it might have been a little bit of the food, a little bit of the air conditioning thing, i promise you, from georgia. we did not bring this hot weather. this is part of the reality of the world. now. but i know the 2020 elections at

the end of the day were this safest, most secure elections. the us has seen almost every state ends with a paper ballot at the end of the day, but there are other systems in place. you know, it is that is one of those stories that doesn't get out there because there are other stories that that that take up space. but when we looked at this i started at the carter center believes and i started in our positions in the summer of 2020. and i've been living in amsterdam. so i was like overseas, came to georgia to take the job. i'm from atlanta originally, but i landed on june 1st. and if you remember june 1st, 2020, georgia was the hotbed of covid. and so i'm landed from europe that had flatten the curve. i got off the plane and cdc says, have you been to iran or china? i thought, i'm surprised that's your question. but okay. and then i drive down the streets in atlanta as the weekend after the murder of

george floyd. so i see the aftermath of the protests. i get to my parent's house and i see washington where i live for 25 years being tear gassed. and i thought how am i going to go where the carters center goes? 113 different elections and 40 countries? when i think we're going to have an issue in the united states. and so i called president carter and said, i want to talk about how we do this overseas. if we're not willing to hold a mirror at ourselves and figure out if we're doing it right. and so we have now looked at what are some of this similarities overseas that we need to think about in the us? how do we build trust back in the election process? we do independent observing and monitoring in 40 different countries, different elections. we're doing it today in zimbabwe as we speak. we've got 98 observers looking at the elections in zimbabwe. so fast forward 2020 and now

2022, we did it in georgia, arizona got a little bit here in michigan, north carolina. we're actually starting to look at this at home because i think it's important that independent, nonpartisan observation, it's easy to walk into a foreign country with a carter center shirt on and people are like, oh, the internationals are here, but when you walk into georgia with the carter center shirt on, it's kind of says something very, very particular. and especially because we wore blue, which we should not have worn blue. i didn't realize that the color had been usurped while i was living in europe. apparently you can't wear blue or red unless you're, you know, so doing this in a nonpartisan way is one of the reasons why we want to have conversations at, you know, so bipartisan and nonparty and say, how can we build back trust in an election process? so people feel that when they're casting their vote, it's being counted. there are no little man in the machine changing the votes, that

it's being counted appropriately. and so that's one of the ways that, you know, from 2020 moving forward, we've started looking at how do we build back that trust. so difficult to do. yeah, it is like, how do you build that trust? well, you know, i think shining a light on things is always the best way to do it. and so if you're able to say this, you know, i had forgotten when i went in in georgia and i voted the first time i started believing the stories. i heard that there's right there was a qr code. that's all that there was like maybe like how do i know that qr code was real? but i didn't realize. i didn't remember until i voted the second the third time because we had a few runoffs that year that, that in fact when it showed on the screen what it was, that was my actual ballot. and it printed it out with a qr code. but my actual ballot was there so i could see who i voted for when i stuck it in the ballot

reader. and so i thought, well, that's what we have to remind people. like, it's not that, you know, when your id was checked, it wasn't checked properly or that somehow these machines aren't working there was a paper trace. and so that's why risk limiting audits, which is something we did in georgia, to count to make sure that actually the qr codes match the paper winners. so if we have to do that to build back trust, we will. it's a lot of effort, but i think it's important. i think we have to shine a light on it. people have to understand when you go and vote, how those votes are counted. so gleaves, your his story in how how have we gotten to this moment and how did this moment compare to other sort of crisis moments in american history? great question, joe. thank you. but first, i just want to say express my appreciation just as jeff and paige have that so many of you have come to join this conversation. we're going to have a q&a

period. afterwards, i want to greet our c-span audience, our zoom audience, as well as you here in the auditorium, and really appreciate the discussion that i hope we can have moving forward this evening in due course. just a little background statement here before i directly answer your question. paige and i were talking about this earlier today. you know, we're involved. you and i are really lucky, fortunate to be involved in work. that's more than just the job. i mean, it's kind of regarded as a civilizational mission. you know, we have this opportunity and we talk a lot at the forward presidential foundation about the fact that ignorance of democracy, perhaps is one of the most the greatest dangers to our democracy. it's a shame when two things happen. it's a shame when people, first of all, don't even believe that they have a voice in our democracy. so why bother? why would they bother to get

involved? why would they bother to vote if they don't feel that they have a voice in the first place? and that's something that some of the work from our colleagues over the presidential museum have been doing a great job of empowering people so that they have a voice and then they feel motivated to get involved, engaged, and that begins the long and romantic and wonderful adventure of learning about this democracy and their role in it. and they're capacity as citizens to make changes that are needed that respond to the things they need to see to make their lives work better, and to make our communities work better. so historically, we have some, of course, very tense times in american history. i don't think this is the worst. let's just get this out. we had a civil war between 1861 and 1865 in which it did come to blows. serious, serious decades of

squandered opportunities and tension, especially as we moved west. we could not resolve the issue of whether slavery would be taken west. as we grew. so how are we growing today? think about it. there's a little bit of an analogy there. we are opening our borders. we have accept it a much more diverse population than that we've ever had in our history, which presents great opportunities and great challenges. but the debates that are around those opportunities do echo some of the things that we heard in the 1850s, when the 1840s, when you had a no nothing party, you had these nativist parties that wanted to just kind of cocoon ourselves as americans and keep everybody else out and excluded. i don't think that's an option anymore. i think we're at a point in our debate, of course, we want control immigration. of course. but immigration we're going to have it's in the nature of our country. so that would be, for example,

historical analogy that i would say comes from previous times. also presidential actions. let me tell you, folks, 1800, you know, between adams and jefferson and aaron burr. but those were so colorful and interesting. i mean, we are boring by comparison, as we say in texas. i guarantee you it was a lot more interesting in those days, the tensions. i mean, you had media in those days that were really stoking the fires of, you know, the federalists hating the democratic were republicans and vice versa. lies through the lies repeated with thomas jefferson and john adams supervising the media production of these articles that were blatant lies. so we've had some rough times. the 1960s. well, see, i'm just old enough to remember a bit of. 1960s. you got a good laugh with that one? that's right. some historian that.

that's right. that's right. the 1960s were really interesting because i what i remember well, i had a brother who graduated from the air force academy, and so he was flying a force in the vietnam era that kind of has a way of riveting your attention when there's a lot of civil unrest, a lot of anti war protests. that was a period of of great protests. the college i went to had old main burned down at that period. for example, 1970, where there was a lot of destruction. i mean, we worry about seattle and portland and some of the things that have happened. ladies and gentlemen, i think a lot of you also remember the 1960s, if i could say, and we remember that there was a lot of unrest we had three prominent americans assassinated, for pete's sake. now, a lot of people are predicting the kinds of rough passages that we had then as we enter this this new period. but as in story and there are a lot of factors that came through this, i'll just mention one thing briefly. i think we underestimate made

the impact. well, a couple of things, but one i want to just mention right now that great recession of 2008, 2009 that exposed caused so much of the inequality in our country. the people feeling that you had the finance sector who was kind of you know, they were manipur hating things and ripping off the rest of the country and kind of have these sweetheart deals and no one goes to prison and that kind of thing. i think 28, 29 you look at what happened then. then you see, of course, the tea party movement come out. you see occupy wall street never the twain shall meet there. remember how tense that was just 11 years ago. and then after that, of course, you have bernie sanders. you had a populist movement. bernie sanders on the left, and donald trump on the right. and remember what happened in michigan. everybody in michigan in 2016, during the primary on the democratic side, who won and bernie sanders and jefferson,

jeff and i were talking about this yesterday and a fair fight. you know, if the clintons had not been so much in control of the process, bernie sanders would have had a good possibility being our president. you know, he certainly the nominee and the democratic party at that time. and then, of course, trump coming down the escalator and our country never been the same populism has arisen in a way, and populism is also not new. let's be good historians here. let's put this in perspective. we had populism in 92 with pat buchanan and and ross perot. we had populism back in 68 with george wallace. we had populism back in the 1930s with huey long. this is not new. we should not be shocked that this happens. this periodically happens in american history when the average person, the average guy feels he's gotten the shaft. she's gotten the shaft. it's hard to raise her family. it's hard to keep a job. it's hard to get ahead. you know, one of the things, if you study populist movements in american history is they tend to

arise when there is great skepticism about the so-called elites. and that's a term that we hear thrown around quite a lot. you know, the elites and perception that the elites, whoever they are, are corrupt and that they're running this country to their own advantage. and not to the advantage or the interests of the average american. what do you think of those kinds of claims? do you think there is a kind of coterie of elites who are running things to their own interests, you know? well, historically, as you point out, populism happens when people feel that they are otherwise not being heard. and it becomes a popular movement. but it's a popular movement again, just an existing incumbent usually. and so what populists and tends to do is empower our people, but only certain people, only the people that you can plug in to

that vein, that dopamine, that that person needs to feel that their voice is finally being elevated, heard. and so when you put that on, you know, in many cases rural america, you know, coming from, you know, atlanta, which is kind of an island of blue and a sea of red, know, you know, what happens outside a big city and so the populist populism and the populist movement happens because of that. i would say that you know what concerns me about populism is what can be the hollowing out of our institutions and our liberals democracy. because if the only argument you have is that i don't like what they're doing, then you've started other people like, well, that's the other side does that. and you know we're the united states of america. and if you're supposed to have actual liberal democracy, see where people believe in institutions, they believe in

checks and balances and executive power. and our representatives judicial. and if you start hollowing out those institutions, then you're not left with much. and so i think that's what concerns me most about populism. we see it in europe. i mean, certainly saw it in, you know, in the netherlands. you see people who are just sort of tapping into this vein of anger and and you have to find ways to talk. at the end of the day, i'm ceo of the carter center, but i'm also a wife, mother, a daughter. there are other places i can have conversations with people that are not just about politics or not just about the carter center. and you've got to find ways to have this conversation. otherwise, you've just entirely other your neighbor and i think that's what we're running into right now. know so gleaves, how do you think the relationship between ford and carter might provide the carter model for exactly

what paige was just talking about? even though jeff works for me, i swear i did not tell him to pitch a softball. but i think i'm about before a race, you know, we're going to have fun with that. so we're going to both have fun. oh, my gosh. where do you begin with this very interesting relationship between governor carter and vice president and then president ford? i think that they have modeled what so many of us need these days. if you look at a relationship that began a little rough, i remember they were fierce rivals as they you know, as governor carter went through the primary process in the democratic party and emerged as the candidate he sharpened his attacks on president ford. and some of them we were just talking earlier tonight. let's take one example. let's just get one out. this is because i'm in a and i like to pop. i like to to pop preconceived

notions. let's take the debate where president ford remember where president ford's stumble. and he said there is no soviet domination of eastern europe. how many of you remember that? now, if you go upstairs, you know, as one of the beautiful things about jerry ford is that every peccadillo, every weakness, every thing that showed a vulnerability, it's up there in that museum. and when his cabinet and when people around him would say, why would you have these expression of your weakness there? he would always say, because history matters. people need to know the truth. we are fallible. so president carter, of course, would take advantage of that. but let's just say for the record, is a little sidebar here. governor carter would take advantage of that. president ford had recently been to the vatican and met with pope paul the sixth, and he had also

been behind the then iron curtain countries. and he had spoken to people in these countries that were directly impacted by the soviet empire. what he meant to say, can you still hear me? yeah. okay. we're having a mic issue. okay. thank you. what he meant to say was that there is no spiritual domination of the soviet empire over eastern europeans. and, of course, he was vindicated by 79, 80, 81 when you had solidaire, you had like valenzuela, you had people the velvet. you know, the beginning of the velvet revolution. this is something that paige could speak to because she was in prague in those years around 1990, 92, we were talking about that earlier. so that's an important correction or at least adjustment to make. but of course, governor carter is going to take advantage of that faux pas. now they go through of course, a

very close election. president ford is down more than 20 points, 25 points in the polling and in the campaigning. it looks like he doesn't have a chance. he scrapes and claws his way back, you know, to at one point, one gallup poll actually shows him with a lead like a week before the election. alas, he did not have enough time because those polls were going back and forth. and on tuesday, when they voted, governor carter won. and from that point on, governor carter was very, very gracious. do you want a lump in your throat if you're feeling a little emotionally flat right now? let me tell you what. i'll give you a lump in your throat. you go upstairs and there are three places where governor carter now president carter speaks about his friend jerry ford and one of the most famous, of course, is on january 20th, 1977, when president carter has

been sworn in and he's now giving his inaugural address. and one of the first things he does is he says, i want to thank my predecessor, president ford, for doing tal our land. he stops his inaugural address. you can see this upstairs. he stops the inaugural address. he pivots president ford stands. they shake hands in one of the most beautiful moments in our lifetime. and president ford thanks him. former president ford thanks and sits back down. and you can see carter is sort of collecting himself. now fast forward to 2007. fast forward to the moment when president carter is giving the eulogy for his friend and president carter at sort of the climax of the eulogy, he says, i cannot think of a better way to talk about my friend jerry than

to repeat the words that i repeated so many decades ago. i want to thank carter clutch. as you can tell, he's fighting. he says. i want to thank my friend for doing all he did to heal our land. this iteration is really what a great political friendship as well. president carter said. this may be your line page, but i love this line. president carter and president ford were on stage together and they were asked about their friendship. and president carter said of all the former presidents, we have the best friendship of any of them, including adams and jefferson. look at what they came over, came. how did this happen? paige can speak beautifully to this as well. but it happened because at the core of both of these human beings was a heart of gold, a

sterling character, unshakable integrity, a sense of fair dealing and decency and integrity that would take them through all their public life and their private lives. and this is what allowed them to become friends. they knew they knew they could trust each other. there's another there's another little display up there. and i know you've seen it, but it's about the post-presidency. and president carter's interviewed and we have the interview and it's go to this museum. see it up there, joel and morel and brooke will give you a first class tour and president carter is asked, well, did you have any serious differences with president ford? president carter said no. fundamentally, i don't have any major disagreements with any decision president ford made as president. and this helps explain you know, president ford was known to

deregulate. you know, the economy. the federal government had a lot of rules and regulations back in the early and mid seventies, and he started to deregulate. carter picked right up and then reagan became president, took all the credit. but the deregulation did actually start ford and carter. yeah, absolutely. so there were a number of things where president carter so respects and and president carter is keeping president ford in all the briefings, you know, the monthly briefings. in fact, he said to the former president, whenever you're in washington, d.c. and president ford would go back to washington, a lot to speak and teach in the classroom. and also, he was a member of american enterprise institute. whenever you're back, you're welcome to have lunch with me in the white house at any time. and this this wonderful friendship arose, i think here i want page to pick it up because she can tell the next installment of an airplane trip and what happened in the post-presidency.

and so he. well, i since to bring this back to modern day you were in the middle of debate season so it's tonight tomorrow night tonight right so when you go home if you watch it having been taped or if you're watching it, remember that president carter or governor carter and president ford, when they were on stage, governor carter always said, my distinguished opponents view is and he always said the words my distinguished opponents. that was i mean, that was the civility between them, even when they were running against each other. and so that just gives you a basis for understanding when two men are running for the highest office in the land. there's a way to do it with civility and president carter tells said interesting in story that when anwar sadat died i he president carter president ford and president nixon were on the plane together to go to the

funeral. and he said it was incredibly awkward and and he said but he and president ford started talking and hours went by and they didn't stop and they just continued the conversation. and from that point on, 1983 on, they did 25 events together. president carter was here. president ford was down in vienna. and it's because they respected each other and they knew that their post-presidency is we're going to want to find them. was also very much going to be their best presences. they both had fairly limited terms and so i think that that is and i joked with gleaves because when i came, i was here last summer and we hadn't met yet and, and, and a couple of my colleagues were with me and i said, well, let's run across the museum. i'd really like to see the ford museum. so i dropped my car to the front and said, if gleaves whitney is here, please let him know that ceo of the carter center is here. so i started we started making our way through and we stopped

right at the election. and i was like, then gleaves found me and we got swept away and started talking. so i went back today so i could see what happened after the election. i mean, you know, spoiler alert, i kind of do not entirely. and to have an opportunity to see also what president ford did and what he put forward as his persona was just very much in line with what president carter did. you know, we were joking earlier. you were talking about how president ford grew up and impoverished, you know, a mother who ran away from her husband, his father. you just didn't do back then. and i was like, yeah, but my guy was a peanut farmer. like i say, he didn't wear shoes until he was eight years old. so you realize they both came from very similar backgrounds, that of villages, small towns. and and then they had the highest office in the land and they took that to mean something after they left office.

and that's so we're trying to emulate that. and i wish we could see a little bit more of that in america right now. but they they set a standard that we're continuing to try to live up to. we are committed to that in our two institutions, our we are committed to that. and our two institutions are committed to that. and this is why, you know, we signed on to a wonderful initiative of the carter center for candidate principles for integrity, good elections, elections of integrity, fair elections and page can address that more. but i do want to say about that plane trip, it was awkward until nixon left that part. once nixon left, i mean, didn't want to have to. oh, yes, once nixon left the seating area where presidents ford and carter were, then everything calmed down and they could resume because nixon was kind of dominating and talking about foreign policy and all that kind of stuff.

but the other thing that we need to say here that in that friendship, that was forged were also so many commonalities that that they discovered about each other. i mean, just look at even that their family structure, you know, three boys and one girl, both of a service in the navy, you know, they had a whole lot of things in common that they took pride in. i mean, the fords were very involved in their episcopal and trip church. the carters, of course, very involved with their southern baptist church. you know, they just enjoyed a lot of the same things together. they connected this people and that also meant that betty and ross, the first ladies, connected and everybody in this room, of course, knows betty's story. you know about, first of all, the breast cancer and the revolution she achieved in women's history almost single handedly. and the fall of 1974, when she made it safe for women in our to talk about breast cancer at the

dinner table, it was a taboo subject in public and a lot of awkwardness at the dinner table about all after betty ford, her interviews, you know, 60 minutes and newsweek cover stories that this country changed in the blink of an eye and then the other thing was, of course, mrs. carter was both as the first lady of georgia and as the first lady of the united states was interested in the issues of people with mental health problems, disease and struggles. and, of course, then during the carter administration, it came out that mrs. ford had these addictions, and that was the second thing. so, you know, all of a sudden, she made it possible for people, for families. think of the family. is that needed to talk about the addictions that were destroying their families. think of all the families that were changed because now there could be an honest conversation about these things. again, mrs. ford and mrs.

carter, i think, found each other in that conversation, and they became very close. and that's why they go back for they always had something to work on and talk about. now the mental health issues, you know, much like addiction is this country has gone through opioid crisis. people talk about that now, but they weren't. i mean, 40 years ago, that was not a conversation. the same thing with mental when people are having a mental health crisis, you know, none of us became she worked so hard to destigmatize the conversation but it wasn't until covid where it really became destigmatize because parents could talk about it when their children were going through it, when parents were going through and elderly were going through it. and so i think both of them were trailblazers in a way that just in the 21st century, we're now seeing these are conversations you can have at the dinner table and our conversations that were supported by both men had very strong wives.

they also both have very strong mothers. and i think that that that conversation was something that was allowed to happen in their households that weren't necessarily allowed. and, you know, my grandparent and my parents household at the time. so. i think that's a really good description of how their friendship evolved and why it evolved the way it did. but politics is about something different than friendship, and so you kind of drew our attention to things that they already had in common. but politics in some ways is about discovering goods that you can pursue in common with each other. and i think that for a lot of people, that seems to would be what's missing in our political moment is finding people on both sides of the aisle who are willing to identify goods that could be pursued and in common with each other. do you think that the world was different for them back then, where they could where they could find that those those kinds of things that transcended just party interest or self-interest have or has our

moment kind of evolved and just this conflict and conflict, the ideas of what is good and what is right, you know, that's a that's a tough one because i think that day and age was very different than where we are now. and with social media and people's ability to sort of exist in an echo chamber now of what they want to hear. you didn't have that back in the seventies and eighties. you you picked up the newspaper. you talked to your neighbor but you weren't bombarded constantly with have you seen this story either by email or facebook or news and so their commonality existed because we had limited bandwidth to the information that we had. and so that's, you know, was not fiction. i mean, it was really facts were facts. and everyone accepted the facts for what was presented to them. but now there's so many facts out there that it's hard to tell what is fact and what's fiction.

so i think you yeah. back to yeah there's conversations about being able to pick up the phone and call someone and have a conversation versus just forwarding an email or just click activism where you're saying, oh, this is an interesting issue. i want to make sure i get involved in that and sign up for this listserv or sign up for this, you know, event. well, once that happens, those all the events, you're going to hear me report. you're not going to hear anything. on the other side. and so to have the commonality of whether, you know, breast cancer addiction, mental health, you find a weakness and then you talk about it together as opposed to finding a weakness and just digging in. so i think it's just too hard time to compare right now from because we listen to what we listen to as part of it's part of the joys of being so socially connected and able to reach out to people. it comes with it's a curse as well. i saw.

i so agree with that. you know, page, i think a lot about how our society has changed because of social media. my wife, mary eileen, you know, has been in media for 40 years and that's her whole career. we talk about this kind of thing a lot at the dinner table and. if you look at, say, a bell curve of our society and, you know, sort of the hump of the bell, the center axis there, we're sort of where most people are. but look at the tails and what has happened. if you look at the surveys of what has happened to our population, you know, you want short tails on the bell curve. that means people who are way out in the extremes, you want them really short. and what has happened in the last ten, 15 years statistically is that those tails have gotten really long. and that means we have extremists out there that are virtually unreachable. and why did this happen? because extremists now have a

voice through social media, as you just said. yeah, the no extremists in human history have had before. now, that's that's sort of the news bulletin from this historian about something that is unprecedented. think about that. you know, extremists were just the quaint, you know, uncle f your you know, your thanksgiving dinner and didn't do much harm because everybody thought, oh, yeah, that's that's uncle ted. and he's just, you know, then i call ted, whereas now they can reach millions of people. and so i, like to look at our work, what you're doing at the carter and what we're doing at the ford is if you look at that half, you got the tale that we're not going to reach those folks on the left and the right at the extremes. but there is a zone in there. it's not in the heart of the bell, but it's sort of on the margins, but not out there at the tails. those are the americans who are worth reaching and saving and pulling in to the norms of our

culture, to the amazing history that we have, the redeemed of country, that we have to find, that they do have a voice that counts and the election integrity that you all have done so much good work on to fight for that and believe in it. so that's muswell hill sociology lecture tonight. i just think that, you know, we have to be clear about where we do have agency and make a difference and bring those folks in the margins in. so you're metaphor suggests that still a rather large consensus among the population in this country that transcends a lot of the political divisions what's the nature of that consensus? i mean if you think about there being this kind of middle in the country, what are the things that seem to matter to people that they agree on? i sadly, i think they they agree to disagree more than anything else that's out there right now. the political polarization just

has, as we said, it has othered the other side. so, again, as i said, when i take it as i'm, you know, i'm ceo, but i'm also a wife, mother, a daughter there are conversations. i have kids in school. i you can find space where you can have that conversation. i think at the end of the day, everyone's voting their pocketbook. they're concerned whether it's their taxes, whether it's medicare, whether it's social security. people are going to vote that. and so how do you have a conversation around that? well, the politicians don't. they just like bury that and it becomes a non policy discussion. and so you know for so they find areas that are sort of on the extremes you know oh i heard that there were a little man in voting in the voting box as changing my vote. and so part of what this candidate principles that we are

working on together and you can look it up, it's actually called principled candidate sort and you can see having candidates say that they're going to adhere to the civility of the election, that regardless who wins, you know, they can pursue legal battles up until a certain point. but they're they're going to adhere to the results. and you know, we had this in georgia when you had stacey abrams, who you know, did not necessarily concede the election, but she signed the candidate principles. and brian kemp signed it. so we knew when that election happened, we would be able to say they signed it. and brad ratzenberger, our secretary of state, and b, when signed it, we had 60 candidates throughout the us and that was just when we launched kind of right before the election. and now we're going full on with it, you know with ford, with the carter center, the baker institute, with the mccain institute, all of this is to say

we want to hold, as we said in our op ed, and see in an op ed we did last year, you know, people want their politicians to be held accountable all too, to being adults. and so i think as issues come out, they will get raised during this campaign season. but it's watching for the tail wagging the dog. yeah, i want to get to that squishy middle like again not straight in the middle, but on the sides, because there are people who voted one way in the last election and won't do that again. and voice of the people have switched sides, just sharing facts, educate people, making sure they understand about their vote, their vote. and i don't know if you're going to ask about voting, you know, bigger voting issues, but know we have 10,000 election jurisdictions in the united states, 10,000 and in georgia itself, we have 159 counties, second only to texas and 159 counties that have different

election rules, subclause seven, some close at six. some have drop boxes, some don't. you know, it is really besides how you vote with the actual ballot when you walk in, all the systems are the same, but people feel disenfranchized. so if they can't access it because oh well, when i was in macon i voted this way and i could vote after work up until 7:00. but apparently you can't do that in savannah. and so when we look at it's wonderful that it's decentral ized and states have the ability to do it, but it's also a curse because without that centralized nation, you don't have control. and in 40 countries that we work in, there's a central election commission. so, you know, when people are misbehaving, you know who to blame. and you know that election commission is going to hold them accountable. that's just not the way it works in the us and so good news is you can't hack every election across the united states at the same time because they're all so

different. the bad news is, you some of them can get hacked and they could be the important ones and people can't vote as easily as they should be able to. and so those are things that we have to actually pull together and make sure people understand how you vote in your neighborhood, how that happens, how your voice can be heard. and that's a really interesting point. you know, just the mechanics of holding an election and in the united states at the time, place and manner of elections is dictated by the states, not by the federal government. you'd have to have a constitutional amendment to change something like that. so given the unlikely hood that there will ever be a constitutional amendment on that, how would the carter center, in their actions, kind of operate in all these different jurisdictions that you have to operate with? i mean, how could you possibly cover all that territory? well, i think president carter and president ford started together the federal election

commission, a federal reform commission, and they came up with some suggestions. and so this was 2004, i think. and so harbor help america vote, act, hiv, va how the act was put in place. but it took 18 years before they actually started putting federal funding into it and so the reality is that states can't necessarily afford to do all of this on their own. and so, you know, there's seven states that don't even have a civics curriculum in the united states. so if you're starting at the lowest level of elementary school students and there's no required civics curriculum, and then the state only puts. $0.05 per student for civics, $0.50 per students for stem and stem is important. but at the end of the day, $0.05 for civics is not going to have you raising citizens who understand how voting works or understands how how democracy

works. so when they get to voting age and, you know, arizona, i'll use as an example when in maricopa county people heard about that the cyber ninjas came in because they wanted to recount the ballots people were worried about like what happened in arizona. they took all the machines off property out of maricopa county's election facility to redo the votes to recount them. well, now, maricopa county can't use those machines anymore. they've been out. they went outside the building. no one knows what might have happened. they've got millions of dollars now that maricopa maricopa residents are going to have to pay to actually bring those machines, to get new machines that are safe and secure. so when you've got a state that's responsible for running its own elections and you don't have the federal funds between 2018 and 2022, $1.3 billion in

federal funds was pushed into the elections because it was covid, because they were worried about, you know, did the russians hack the 2016 elections of $1.3 billion between 2022 and 2024, that only put in 70 million. it. so where does that leave that leads dark money coming in to try to help elections. but if the federal government started to take responsibility for it, which is again what president ford and president carter had suggested in 2004, how's this going to get paid for? so it comes down to the state budget. state has to decide between education and voting. it comes down to dark money. you know who's paying for money to go in to train election administrators, election officials. we have money to do that. but then we've gotten vilified in the press that, you know, were using chinese spies to train people how to do elections in fulton county. so it is it's worrisome to figure out how you run an

election in a way that the states have control, but they're also supported by the feds and, yes, these long standing structural issues, i think, are quite concerning because we don't seem to be able to get a handle on just a couple of things. president ford, in interviews, it was after 2000 well, is when he was working on how he would say the two things that rip off the american voter gerrymandering and money overwhelming congressional districts from the outside, which is mccain-feingold right. it and that would be to account for the latter. yeah, but form of the gerrymandering think about it president ford like to think of our country as having balanced populations in every congressional district. so the voters would hear full airing of the issues. think about if, if, if the safe seats just keep growing and growing, which is what has happened in our democracy, then

that means more and more americans sorted themselves, likely and they are not hearing the full debate. and that really does rip off the voter because the voter then doesn't really have a choice. i mean, in california, you might have what, 20 million people who say 25 million people who are voting and 13 million are voting for one candidate, 12 million maybe you're voting for the other, but they don't hear the full debate and that is what hurts them. and president ford was perennially worried about that. and we've got to change our habits in this country structurally. well, i think we'd like to have some time for the audience to ask questions as well. so if you would like to ask the question, please raise your hand and we'll bring you a microphone. so that you can people on zoom can hear you as well.

thank you very much for a for a very inspiring discussion. so inspiring that remembering the sixties, i get even teary when you talk about it, but it's not enough to just go back and say things were better or it's not enough to go back and say things used to be worse or worse. the hope today in our current situation, you stole my last question by and i'll say we're going to try to end on something hopeful i'll say the hope is that people now care about democracy. they care about voting. we have had more people voting, more younger voters coming out because they know that their voice will be heard. so the fact that people care about this, i think is very important. i'll also say ambassador susan page, who's here from university of michigan, is on our board. when she was ambassador, said she had this wonderful comment she made it july 4th overseas. she said, even though our democracy is self-evident, it is

not necessarily self enforcing. and so we can't take advantage of what we have. we actually have to participate in it. and i think people are realizing that now. and that's that's great. you know, talk to a high schooler who doesn't think, yeah, i should vote. i mean, there's climate, like climate. you're killing the world. i mean, usually it's my kids telling me everything that we've done wrong. my generation is ruining the world for them, but it means that they're going to get out, participate, and so that's my that's why i'm hopeful. oh, good. i think my. you, too. yeah. we've been really lucky a professor can she in this community to have a number of members on our board of trustees here at the foundation who are committed to education and i'm thinking of people like doug davos, peter secchia, hank meyer, who's in the audience, others who are really concern and they do understand that one of the greatest threats to democracy is ignorance of democracy or, not having a voice

in that democracy. so i'm proud of the efforts of my predecessors here at the ford presidential foundation, who've done so much to bring ten, 12,000 kids a year through our museum and make sure that they are aware of how our democracy works. yes, the mechanics, but more importantly, that it's people at the end of the day, people of character. at the end of the day that makes a democracy and the leadership necessary to be part of that democracy work. so i have a lot of hope and the rising generation, whether it's through our divorce learning center and our curricula there, whether it's through the ford leadership forum, jeff is the director of that effort for the college students and young professionals and then the continuing education. you all are lifelong learners. you know, you will talk to your grandkids you'll talk to your neighbors. i see the hope right here. so that i flatter you enough if

i can abuse my position here. just briefly to address your question, it goes back to something cleaves was talking earlier. democracies are inherently fragile systems of government that are incredibly difficult to operate, make and run. but precisely because they're fragile, they're also resilient. and if you look at american history, you'll see all these periods of crisis. but those periods of crisis always end up generating this resiliency in the public. so i still have hope in the resiliency of america in and i think that we have a nasty habit of bouncing back from our own mistakes. hope. just to address the issue of hope that you spoke to in our own state of michigan, you may or may not be aware of paige in the last five years, largely based on grassroots efforts

which started in the grand rapids area, created an independent redistricting commission for our legislative districts in the state and as a result of those efforts, our legislature now more closely reflects the democratic republican divide in our state than it had in the past, when gerrymandering was still the rule of the day. i one thing actually one thing on that, because gerrymandering is, you know, the united states is so interesting because our election officials, most of our election officials actually elected to office. so they're partizan to begin with from the very beginning. so you've got secretaries of state that are republican or democrats, but they have also done a very nonpartisan job on the elections themselves. i mean, some the most outspoken about the safety and security of the 2020 election were

republican wins in georgia. brad ratzenberger's saying, you know, this is how the vote went in arizona. you had you we saw people speaking out but gerrymander. is something that two thirds of americans in a poll, two thirds of americans don't believe in political processes on redistricting. but 50% of americans don't understand how else redistricting can be done. so i think michigan's done it in a really interesting way. that is different than north carolina is undertaken, for example, now. so i think there are models can be used and i would like to see the us learn from itself. so back back here please. why that some. of those i think you for you a guy coming in. second thing is i have a question. i am vietnamese american in very

near 30 years ago. so basically i one say democracy back now please wake up america. i, i when you come to this and i come in here for freedom, but the freedom vietnam because you have in excellent, great you can sit down here and say how well security you know enough security because then it really is. is there a question for our panelists? i have a question please state the question. yes. so you've been here. is that the election is secure. can you tell me why the violence is the enemy up in table, georgia, and pick out in the

souk and why need choi they not have the people come in and because the and why california is the right like hungary how is that free by that i thank you for your question. i think if you if you read about those instances as in that you've mentioned you'll find that in certain places it looks nefarious. but if you actually watch the entire video, you can see those were not hidden ballots. so it's hard and i'm happy to have a conversation with you afterwards. but i you know, i know i believe in what you saw and what you believe in. it's just something different than the courts have believed or what i've seen. but i'm happy to talk to you afterwards and i'd just add, i think there have been. correct me if i'm wrong, 65 court cases, which sort of indicated that the system worked

and recounts in france. that's not to say that there aren't problems and it's not to say that there is some fraud, but the scale of the fraud was not great enough, according to these court cases, to have overturned an election. yeah. yeah, there were there were there were 13 improperly cast ballots that came out of the georgia election. and that's what they after three recount. so yeah it's there there's human mistake that happened so next question i hear the term democracy being used over and over again, but rarely the term republic and i was always taught that the united states was a republic, not a democracy. and i wonder if the panel could address that and clarify that for us. i love that question. that's an excellent point, because it is historically accurate. our founders actually were afraid of democracy and so they contained the democratic element.

if you look at sort of the the nature of constitutions, they can either, you know, have monarchical or authoritarian element. they can have an aristocratic element, they can have a democratic element and are are more monarchical element. they gave the in article two of the constitution, they gave the presidency a little bit more power than they had originally entered the debates because they counted on george washington being the president. frankly, it came down to a character of george washington. they gave the more aristocratic element to the supreme court, the you know, the six year terms and they contained the democratic element in the house of representatives. so you had a mixed form of government, mixed constitution, in which all of the interests that would arise in these different elements would counter each other. and that was a republican form of government also. then you had the representative element because remember, so many republics in the ancient world were much smaller.

and as a result of that, people could, you know, go and talk to each other far flung areas when riding a horse was, you know what was far flung. whereas once you got to the united states in the modern era, the the area covered is so huge. you have to have representative government in this republic, this constitutional backed. we are a constitutional republic, technically. so you're absolutely right. thank you for a great question. that's a good answer. yeah. but you know what? the political philosopher up here, hair doctor. professor poulet, here it is. you know, it's it's a it's a complicated story because. that was really the debate, whether we were actually creating a republican form of government or not. and the critics of the constitution criticized the document for not being sufficiently republican and, you know, the argument you can see boy here, just be careful what

you wish for in federalist nine, hamilton argues that the big innovation in american politics is in the science of representation that they understand how representation works. and when you think about it, that's an innovation in political life that you have representative government and then madison argues in federalist ten that that system of representation requires an extended republic because the critics of the constitution saying this can only work on a small scale. and madison says, yeah, but if you look at all these republics in the past, his phrases, they are as short in their lives as they are violence in their deaths. and so that's what he's trying to avoid. and he thinks the way to avoid that is to extend the government over greater territory and more people, a greater population,

and then solve the problems through a system of representation. i have nothing to add in the federalist papers unless it is sung in hamilton. so yeah, my hope is that maybe the next generation when meanwhile we'll do a whole federalist papers so we learn all of that. and i've just got to say, speaking of hamilton, speaking of the federalist papers, here's your homework assignment. i hope everybody in this room goes home and reads a very short federalist paper. federalist one, written by hamilton, where hamilton talks about the virtue of moderation. it's an excellent, really little overview of what of how our constitu republics should work and it sets the stage for the following 84 federalist papers. but moderation should be the guiding principle. that's right. of of the federalist papers and of the discussions that are going to rise around this constitution, how we're going to live together peaceably.

that's a homework assignment. i'm going to ask you next time the answer. sorry. the other part of your homework assignment is apparently to learn something. what was taylor swift person. she exists compose. i believe we have a question or. know what? what time is it in the back there? if you want to bring. elections four years public microphone. yeah. well she she had a question too. yeah. come back. i worked at polling places for a number of years as chairperson and i always looked for absentee ballots as being the place where you could make mischief. and i think people keep talking about recounts when the issues seem to me to be that people who shouldn't have been able to vote might have voted, and that the

mischief was in last minute rule changes and nobody seems to address that. recounts seem to be radical loss after a while, but those switches bothered me. yeah, i think switched in mid election season is is something that is difficult. so let me give you just anecdotally what i saw because when the carter center was asked to be the nonpartisan observer in the georgia elections in 2020, i was in county, which was won trump by 76%. i was in fulton county, which is the largest county in georgia. and dekalb county the second largest county. so i watched the recounts in each of these places. one of the things with the absentee ballots have been in this small county in fact, in georgia, north georgia, i watched them counting the absentee ballots because there is a democrat and a republican sitting at a table, which i'm

sure you all had to hear, and they would hold up the ballot and they would look because someone always would write in pence for president. the absentee ballots looked a little different. and so there always to be a discussion between the two. you know what what was intended by this. but the difference is that in georgia when the absentee ballots were mailed in don't forget all have a secret ballot and you don't want your personal information being there. so it was the georgia bureau of investigation that would actually look at the signature on the envelope open. and then if the signature was verified they would open the envelope. the envelope go one place and absentee ballot would go another place. so it could be count it. but you did separate it. so then there was the question of i want to see signatures and that became the rallying cry of i how do we know the signatures were valid? how do we know the people could really vote while others envelopes were kept separately by the georgia bureau of

investigation so you could determine that everyone who was counted here actually had a matching signature. and so i think the signature match is a big deal. i think whether or not someone was actually registered at that address with that signature is done of time and then the votes are counted. so when you have a recount you're looking at it separately. but i think the rule changes are very difficult but i know in georgia our absentee ballot even during covid was not necessary early that high that it would have could have changed the election anything funny had happened but i watched how these things were counted specifically and 2000 meals that exactly that documented in 2000. yeah we can have that conversation later let's let's to some of the other question think a little bit so at the does the equal amount

prosecutors former president. yeah i would i would like to take this opportunity to thank our panelists thank page so much for coming to grand rapids.