anything for this nation but continue to divide and conquer. i encourage everybody to go watch the documentary, the secret life of the democratic party, and it will shed a lot of light on who these people really are. they don't care about us. they care about money and power. and the people need to come together. i agree donald trump might not be the best speaking person, but i honestly feel he is a new era of paul revere. he is letting us know what these people are doing to us. he loves this country, he really does. there's very few republicans or even a few democrats that support him on this because they know what is really going on. host: ga. that is the last call for this

hour. thank you for those who participated. coming up, we will hear from david becker on efforts to increase voter confidence in the upcoming election this year. later on in the program, wayne crews about their oort -- annual survey about what it costs the average american when federal regulations are put into place. that conversation is coming up on "washington journal." ♪ >> >> c-span's coverage of this summer's political conventions. we had to chicago for the democratic national convention. here democratic leaders about

their vision for the next four years as they fight to retain the white house. on c-span, c-span live, or c-span.org. watch our full coverage of the democratic national convention. catch up on past conventions anytime on c-span.org/campaign or by scanning the code. friday night. watch the 2024 campaign trail. a one stop shop for what the candidates across the country are saying to voters along with first-hand accounts from political reporters, fundraising data, and campaign ads.

friday night at 7:30 p.m. eastern. our free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. ♪ >> the house will be in order. >> this year, c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we have been your primary source for capitol hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government. taking you to where policy is debated and decided all with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting. powered by cable. >> washington journal continues. joining us, founder and executive director for the center of election innovation and research and co-author of

"the big truth," supporting democracy. what's your intended purpose? guest: nonpartisan nonprofit, working with republicans and democrats from maine to california, alaska to florida, to help them and support them in elections that voters should trust and do trust and now more than ever we are doing a better part on that. our elections are as secure as they have ever been but so many americans unfortunately believe host: the exact opposite. host:how do you work with officials? guest: we work with them as they try to share best practices across the country like rhe countable paper ballots of which 95% of americans are going to vote on and helping them with procedures where they audit the ballots to make sure that the machines count them correctly. helping with voter registration to keep those lists as accurate as they have ever been before.

sharing data better, keeping the data up to date in their states as voters move or die to reflect the voters accurately and we provide research to help inform them on best practices. host: i want to talk about those candidates but we had one on the democratic side and now we have a brand-new one. what does it mean as far as the election process for you? guest: in reality we've never had a democratic nominee for president, but we do now, but two weeks ago joe biden was the presumptive nominee, but there had been no wealth. both parties have rules's saying there has to be a delegate vote before there is a official nominee. but biden withdrew there was no official candidate in they are now working through their process you have plans in place

to get through this process appropriately. the process has been open and consensus. the democratic party has rallied around one particular candidate who quickly wrapped up the delegate votes necessary to receive the official nomination. every voter in the country should understand that at this point, every single ballot everywhere in the country is going to have the democratic ticket as officially chosen by the democratic party and republican ticket as officially chosen by the republican party. host: no early printing or scratching out the name, nothing like that? guest: in fact many states are still holding primaries in the coming weeks as we speak in that process is still going to play out. if the democratic party had waited until the end of their convention for their nominating official it would have been ok in every single state but as it happens they did it earlier. the first mail ballots go out on september 26. the ballots have not been

printed yet. they will be printed shortly in the next coming weeks. host: talk to us about the virtual roll call. is it the same as in chicago? guest: under party rules, yes, in 2020 they have virtual roll calls. the convention had been virtual. they established those rules in place. they confirmed, remember, these are not secret ballots. there's no real problem here. you publicly express who you are voting for as a delegate and there's no problem here, it's consistent with party rules and a ceremonial vote in chicago. the official vote has already taken place. vice president harris appears to be the nominee. host: there were rumblings from some republicans about changing the candidate out leading to lawsuits. guest: as you have seen, there

have been note lawsuits. that was all just politics. there's nothing behind that, no legal basis. because the party didn't have a nominee when biden withdrew, there was nothing to replace or substitute. there was a lot of disinformation swirling about where the democrats couldn't substitute a nominee, but the fact is they didn't have a nominee so there was nothing to substitute. the official nominee is going to be harris, placed on the ballot with her vice presidential choice. host: what are the things you are watching closely when it comes to election integrity? guest: they are as secure as they have ever been because of the professionalism in the space and bipartisan improvement. i mentioned voter lists. states are sharing data in getting better information, ensuring as we have had for 20 years that every single voter

needs to provide id under federal law. we have better voter lists than ever before and we have more paper ballots in the country than we have ever seen for 100 years. that means that the paper ballots in almost every state, including every single battleground state, they have paper ballots that we can go back to and confirm the intent of the voter it recount if necessary. we can audit it to make sure that the machines counted them correctly. the only states with a significant number of non-paper ballots are states like louisiana, mississippi, tennessee. we will see more security than ever before, more transparency than ever before. we will see poll watchers and observers from both parties, campaigns, throughout the country watching the process overall. what we should be aware of is that process has security, we should let it play out and we live in a divided country, the margins are likely to be narrow in some states and when margins

are narrow that is something that election officials cannot do anything about, it just means we have a closely divided state it it might take a few days to predict who won the election. we often think that we knew the winner of presidential races on election night, but we never actually do the winner. the official winner isn't declared in two weeks afterwards and the results are narrowly divided, so it might take a few days. host: claims from republicans that on several fronts there were things that were not well done when it came to the counting and tabulation of votes . how has not born itself out as we face another election? guest: in two thousand it spurred a lot of positive bipartisan reform, like the help america vote act, which large majorities of democrats and republicans, it made the voter lists more accurate, has required paper ballots and spurred auditing a ballots. in 2012 there were allegations of long lines at polling places.

after that, president obama established a presidential commission cochaired by his former counsel, bauer and ginsberg, spurring a lot of professional bipartisan improvements in the election system to get to where we are today. host: our guest is with us until 8:40 five if you want to ask questions about election integrity and security, you can call the line. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. (202) 748-8002 for independents. text us your comments at (202) 748-8003. you talk about who is watching the polls, among them the republican national committee putting out theiown team. this from a statement from earlier in the month,

"comprehensive training sessions will be conducted every month on the monitoring of ballot sites d tabulation centers giving the voluntee knowledge and skills needed to oversee potential proin the electoral process and guaranteeing that every vote is counted accurately and fairly," going on to say "attorneys will be at every processing center in the program starts with l committed to battleground state polling sites, secretary of state offices and republican county war rooms." is that a welcomed presence when it comes to overall integrity? guest: a lot of those things are good. first of all they are acknowledging transparency in the process where the observers are allowed and will be everywhere, counting rooms and in many election administration locations around the country. you are hearing them acknowledge the importance of training, which is important. regardless of if it is democrats or republicans, both parties will have a big presence in

those counting centers and elsewhere to make sure the process is running appropriately and it is important that these people are trained. you are essentially a fly on the wall in these locations. i'm a former department of justice lawyer in the civil rights division. i used to monitor elections all over the country at thousands of polling places and one of the things they train you, even as a department of justice lawyer, your job is to simply observe it. you don't interfere with the poll workers, who are doing an important job volunteering. you don't interfere with voters. you don't talk to them is the process is going on. if there's a problem -- when i was a department of justice lawyer i would call those officials and ask them about it. specifically the poll watchers, they need to be adequately trained. hopefully based on that statement, they are will be working hard to train them in appropriate conduct so they don't interfere at all and

hopefully we will have a lot of observers who are well trained and well behaved and polling places observing and confirming. host: i guess one of the things you have to do is define what interference is. what's on the line when it comes to interfering, when is that line drawn? guest: obviously you don't want to intimidate or hover over these workers. we will have hundreds of thousands of not millions of them working around these spaces. these are neighbors, family members, the parents of children that our children go to school with and we should recognize that when this is happening. they are doing the best job possible under tough time constraints, getting up early in the morning, 4:00, 5:00 on election day, they might not be leaving until midnight or later. respect the people working the process, they are heroes in many ways and are doing an important job. if you see something legitimately wrong, there are

authorities, election officials in every jurisdiction you can call. there are people if you have a well-trained program, you know who those people are, told them where you are going to be, they can handle a problem if it occurs. host: this is david becker joining us taking your calls on election integrity when it comes to campaign 2024. ron starts us off in philadelphia. you are on with our guests, go ahead. caller: good morning. i have always had a question on two things. one, ballot harvesting, is it legal? number two, if a person signs with an x or an illegible signature, how is that handled under the scrutiny of the election protocol? those are the two questions. guest: both really good questions.

ballot harvesting is a term used as a pejorative, but it basically means that someone is returning a ballot other than their own. could be a spouse returning a ballot for another spouse, family members or a nursing home worker returning ballots for voters who might not otherwise be able to get out and return them. probably this answer will not surprise you, this varies by state to some degree. but the laws often allow for people to return ballots for a close family members and for people who are disabled or who otherwise have trouble getting out. there has been a lot of disinformation spread about this, including a fake documentary withdrawn by the producers that it was widespread, it really isn't widespread. it's used almost entirely for close family members and people who need that assistance in many ways. of course, this is only for male voting. someone who wants to vote in

person, that's available in 47 of the 50 states. 97% of all americans can vote early in person, it's a wonderful way to vote and those are among the votes counted and reported out first on election night and you can also choose to vote on election day. as far as verifying signatures, that's done in every single jurisdiction where they check it against the signature on file that the vote or put on their registration form were sometimes at the motor vehicles agency. x might be a problem -- if there is a signature mismatch for some reason, most states allow for a check on that signature and then some kind of notice and securing process where they contact the voter in advance after they see the signature and say it doesn't look like this matches or that there's a problem or something might be missing on the envelope and they give the voter a chance to independently confirm before the envelope is opened. they give a chance for the

person to come down and verify that that was indeed there ballot before opening up and counting it. those are really good processes and all the more reason that if you choose to vote by mail, return the ballot as quickly as possible so that if there is something on the outside of the ballot, election officials can notify you. host: judy is on the republican mine in indiana, fort wayne. you are next. caller: a little bit of something about me, i am old enough to have watched the first convention in 1952. very middle-class democratic family goat -- growing up. now that i am retired, i'm a republican, my husband and i changed our thinking during the reagan years. because of jimmy carter. anyway, i do work in the polls in indiana and have for five years.

i feel they are so good, at least in our town. we use machines, but we vote, we have classes for our workers. and when we work, we are there from 5:00 in the morning until almost 7:00 that particular voting day. we don't leave until every vote and if someone works without the final one, someone goes into the parking lot to make sure they finish and if someone slips away quickly, the republican and democrat go over to it to push the vote button. i just feel indiana is such a safe place to vote and i feel confident. i love politics and i love c-span, because i get to hear all the voices. i do not ask my friends who they vote for.

some of them cannot afford to have cable, therefore they don't see everything. they are influenced by national television. i've spoken too much and i'm sorry. host: no no no, thank you for calling, judy, we appreciate it. guest: thank you, judy. i'm so glad you called. there are literally hundreds of thousands of judy's all over the country. people serving their community, their neighbor, they don't care how they vote. they are coming in for training days before the election, coming in really early in the morning to help set things up, working very, very long days, staying late and working alongside people of the other party and they don't care. it's about serving the community . serving our democracy. what judy is saying in the indiana, i can guarantee you you will see it everywhere in the country. doesn't matter if they are blue or red states or something in between.

every single state there are so many people like judy, heroes and citizens giving their community and neighbors voices in their elections, giving up time and energy, doing it in a way that just embraces the best of american traditions, not asking about who someone is voting for, not trying to encourage people to vote for a certain candidate, they are giving everyone a voice. it's one of the reasons that elections in indiana and nationwide are as secure as they are. host: from the perspective of the caller it sounds like there are checks and balances for the people involved. guest: that's exactly right. this is happening all over the place. in almost every single process there's no way one single person can perform part of the process by themselves. they are always accompanied by other people who are also poll workers. they are often bipartisan teams with observers watching these

processes. there are multiple redundancies. you might have a vote count on a machine on some kind of a removable media, but also on a paper tape and maybe multiple paper tapes. those are all reconciled and checked over multiple periods of time and that's why they certify the election because you need to double check those numbers and make sure those numbers match the people who cast ballots. so much work goes into this that people don't realize and the best way to discover how secure our elections are is to do like judy, volunteer to be a poll worker. you will see how many redundancies and checks and balances are built into the process so that you can be confident that the results of the election are correct. host: we get this question a lot from the phone calls, dan in pennsylvania asked if

noncitizens will vote in primaries or presidential elections. guest: there's a 1996 federal law saying that noncitizens cannot vote. it was a bipartisan law. every single voter who registers the vote needs to provide id, driver's license number or social security number that can be checked against the files at the motor vehicles agency. if you think back to the last time you went to the dmv, you had to show proof of legal presence and sometimes that's citizenship like a birth certificate work passport and sometimes accrues you were not a citizen, like a green card or a work visa. that's in the motor vehicle database and it can be checked to make sure you're ok. we know those protections have been enormously successful. states like georgia have gone back and done a complete audit of their voter file recently in the last two or three years. they found literally zero noncitizens voted in georgia in recent elections. they have the tools necessary to

do that. it occasionally happens were a noncitizen will register to vote, we know it's usually accidental, a form will be shown to them and they fill it out and they don't understand it. we also know that these people almost never vote. there's a very good reason for that. if someone is here and not a citizen, they might be documented in working their way through the process of becoming a citizen or they might be undocumented and have risked a lot to come here, probably to live a better life for their families. whether or not you believe they should be here, they will never paint a bull's-eye on themselves to say hey, here i am, just to cast one ballot in an election where 160 million ballots are cast, they will get found, deported, and prosecuted. especially for someone who is here in a documented fashion and working their way towards citizenship, if they are found to have registered to vote or even worse, voted, it will

likely disqualify them for citizenship and result in deportation. guest: -- host: in any election cycle, to what amount does election fraud occur? guest: it occurs and it is not zero of a very low. i'm a former doj lawyer who has worked in these spaces for quite some time. election fraud is one of the easiest things to find. there are multiple places to look for it. on the voter file, in a request for ballot work if you vote in person. if you have voted in person and try to impersonate someone else, you have presented yourself before 5, 10, or more witnesses who can identify you. if you send in a mail ballot for someone else, your signature is not going to match, driver's license number, you are probably not going to know it and you have created a documentary paper trail of your crime. the likelihood is that if you submit a valid for someone who is not yourself, that person is very likely, there are very

likely to try to vote and when that person tries to vote, it will be a huge red flag for election officials to investigate the prior ballot and they will find you. voter fraud does occur, very rarely, and when it does it's discovered and prosecuted. it's a really great way to risk growth -- going to state or federal jail for the great privilege of having cast one extra ballot in an election of 160 million. host: this is wayne crews -- this is david becker of the election center research program joining us. caller: i think you are one of the best there. mr. becker, i appreciate your words, they are very comforting, however, in massachusetts, not being a singular state with this , you are automatically registered to vote when you go to the mass rmve.

undocumented, illegal, lines of them at the rmve. i saw it for real last week. i know this is not hyperbole, this is fact. they get the mass id, they get their drivers license because massachusetts voted to make the highways safer, wanted illegals to have driver's licenses. the next button pushed is registering them to vote. massachusetts is not alone in this. when they are registered to vote, we are not an id state. there is no requirement for id when you register to vote. when i renewed my driver's license a few years ago, been voting here 34 years, they registered me to vote. i've been voting for 34 years. i could have submitted two ballots. i don't happen to be that kind of person. i love your words, they are

comforting and soothing and whatever, but this is a real thing and we've got 10, 12, i don't know how many illegals. and they aren't just voting in local elections. there is no differentiation in the system. so you know, sorry, i would love to feel comforted, but i'm not. host: guest: ok, that's marge. guest:i think a lot of people see what's going on at the dmv and get some impression about what's happening, but here's the thing, there are systems in place behind the scenes that voters are not seeing. for instance, when you go into it dmv, because of real id, you must show proof of legal presence. you won't be able to get on an airplane next year or less you have a real id compliant id and in almost every state and i think that massachusetts is one of the states that is real id compliant, to get an id like that you need to show proof of legal presence. i encourage everyone to go on to your website at your dmv and

look at what you need to bring. someone like marge might have been there multiple times and shown their proof of citizenship way earlier, which is why she may not have been asked to that because hopefully we live in a country where we don't have to show our papers over and over again, but they are checking that information for real id. when someone shows their documentation and that documentation, if the documents show they are not a citizen or doesn't confirm they are a citizen, there should be processes in place. people will not see this because it will be on the screen that only a voter or citizen going to the dmv can see, there will be different screens different people can see based on the documentation they have shown to dmv. if states roll out what they call pre-registration, where 16-year-olds can get preregistered to get

automatically registered when they are 18, a 16-year-old will not get the opportunity to register to vote. there are a variety of things happening behind the scenes that people may not see if they are just looking at the lines and they will not be able to see an individual just going in. there have been occurrences where mistakes have been made in this process. the state can fix those mistakes. when noncitizens have registered to vote, they have been discovered. so, if anyone wants to claim, please listen, if you are worried about voter fraud, there are people, especially people who might be losing elections, who want you to believe and want to raise money off of you based on the eight idea that voter fraud led to a stolen election and what we should all be asking for is where is the proof? there will be an extensive paper trail of this. this person will have shown up at the dmv without papers sufficient to document citizenship and if that is the case, it can be discovered in

the fact is we are not seeing evidence of that on any kind of scale. host: scott, richmond, democratic line, you are on with our guest. caller: so glad you are having this conversation today. i have a quick question. recently, i saw a lady who was a whistleblower, she worked in one of the polling places. she blew the whistle that there were one foot thick stack of suppose it mail-in ballots that came in that were unfolded at all. every one of them had been typed . you know, had been filled out by a computer, except for, you know, someone checking the bots. i would like to know how that happens and how these mail-in ballots cannot be folded and still delivered in boxes to the

polling place. guest: this is a piece of disinformation that swirled a lot, especially spread by losers, losing candidates in an election, they show videos on these things, people claiming they are whistleblowers, but the fact is these are entirely false. every single one of them. there are reasons that there might be unfolded mail ballots. they might have been returned in person or delivered in person at polling places. secondly, ballots that are filled out are almost -- i have literally never seen, outside of maybe some ballots that were machined as designed, voting machines in places like georgia and pennsylvania where you vote on a touchscreen and they instruct the ballot to be machine marked. in most places, say perhaps with a disability you might do that, but almost all of them are hand marked infill by hand and create ballot images that can be

reviewed. these are all often public records. again with all of these claims, ask why they are being spread on social media and why are they not being brought into a court of law? if there were thousands or millions of unfolded manufactured ballots that couldn't be tied to the voter lists, which wouldn't occur at all, there would be extensive evidence trails. we are sitting here now 45 months from the 2020 election, 45 months. dozens of legal cases and we still have not had one shred of evidence presented to any court anywhere in the country to cast out on the 2020 four 2020 two elections despite multiple opportunities. well over 60 cases brought in the immediate aftermath of that election brought before judges appointed by the losing presidential candidate himself. multiple defamation cases brought against people like kari lake, rudy giuliani, against fox

news and in every single one of those cases the best defense would have been -- you were telling the truth, the fraud existed. in every single one of those cases they didn't just lose the argument, they did bring it. they conceded liability. rudy giuliani went right to the damages phase. kari lake went right to the damages phase. fox news settled the case before it went to trial for nearly $800 million. that's a lot more telling than a video you might see spread on social media claiming certain things. we all need to be much more sophisticated media consumers. a lot of people across the political spectrum want to raise money and get us angry and divided against our fellow citizens, who want us to believe that our fellow citizens are our enemies. there are at -- enemies across the world, russia, china, iran, who want us to hate our fellow

americans. we have to be sophisticated media consumers against those kinds of things and recognize that we have more in common as americans then those who would choose to divide us. host: wisconsin recently ruled that dropbox is would be a part of the election system. guest: those are essential to integrity. we will have mail-in voting. 39 states allow mail-in voting without any excuse. it has been with us since the civil war, maybe earlier. it's a secure method of voting for those who choose to vote in that way. if you think about it, dropbox is the most secure way to deliver it short of handing it to an election official. they are secure, locked up, checked regularly, eliminating the middleman of the postal service, which you can choose to use that as well, but the postal service will take some time and there will be multiple stops on the way. a dropbox goes right into the hands of the election officials.

election officials pick it up almost always that same day within one or two hours. they document that the ballot came in and that it will be counted quicker, often, then if it came in by mail. if you are choosing to vote by mail out there, it's a perfectly secure way of voting, but make sure you get it in early. for example, dropbox is a very secure way of delivering that right to the hands of election officials. host: bob, virginia, go ahead. guest: the most important -- caller: the most important issue facing the united states is guaranteeing citizens the right to vote and this can be guaranteed by 8 -- by issuing identification cards like a credit card. this card would have your birth date, location, the area you are registered to vote in. it would have verification of your u.s. citizenship, like

photo id and all other relevant information. when you vote, this card would be inserted in a voting machine. if a candidate that you are allowed to vote for, they would be displayed on a touchscreen. then you could make your selection impressed none. the machine will register your vote and print you a receipt showing who you voted for. this receipt would have a random code number that you can use to verify your vote on the internet . with this system there would be no reason for early or late voting, because these machines would be available everywhere. such as military installations and other countries. with this system your card would only allow you one voting ballot in the district you are registered in.

ok, got that thought out there. gave a lot to the guest. yeah -- guest: yeah, you're quite right. we are one of the only countries in the world that doesn't have a national id registry. that is because we have chosen to be very decentralized. we are a very federalist system. we've given power to the constitution to run elections at the state level. that's why we have some states offering more than others, some making mail-in voting easier than others, some states using different machines and others even within a state different machines from county to county. it's an active choice and there are pluses and minuses. decentralized systems make it virtually impossible, realistically, to hack a national election. you cannot get into one system and change it. you cannot even get into one system to change a system -- a single state.

there are multiple systems in places like florida, pennsylvania, michigan. decentralization comes with significant advantages and as a society republicans and democrats have chosen not to nationalize elections in washington, rather to allow the states to do it. that has yielded some benefits particularly regarding security. one other thing, there was a point about concentrating all voting on a single day. this has become a talking point among some. i cannot stress enough how insecure that might make elections. elections, really, if you concentrate all voting into a single 12 or 14 hour period in november you create a volatile single point of failure across the country. it wouldn't just be a point of failure that could be attacked by bad actors overseas or there might be violence or something like that. it's much more likely you can see power outages or traffic or

whether. we saw this in nevada 2022. we just saw the crowd site -- crowdstrike issue affect early voting in arizona. because it was early voting there wasn't that much activity and it didn't really affect the election. if you want a secure election, and you don't want to concentrate all voting on a single day. that's why it's really good that blue and red states across the country offer some kind of opportunity to vote early in person by mail if they choose or by election day. host: the caller tangentially brought it up, overseas, military, when is my vote counted? guest: it depends on when it arrives. one of the biggest challenges for members of the military and those serving overseas is receiving a ballot in time and returning a ballot in time. every state allows for those to come after election day, if they come. there has been some improvement on that. i work on this when i was with

the pew charitable trusts a decade ago. there was an act in 2010 that required military ballots to go out 45 days before the election to allow for plenty of time for those to be received by members of the military no matter where they are serving, give them time to review and fill out their ballots and return the ballots back. we discovered it could take as long as 18 days for the ballots to get out one way and come back another. that's where the 45 days came from with that initial roughly 45 days for consideration of the ballot. hopefully military voters will have those but they also have the alternative of the federal right in ballot, they can fill it in and right in who they want to vote for so that ballots will be cast for federal offices and some states allow for electronic delivery. there is controversy about that because it's less secure than paper delivery and it might

impact the secrecy of the ballot to some degree, but states are trying in multiple ways to make sure that the military serving overseas can vote and that they get extra time for the ballots to be received by election officials. host: let's hear from donna in illinois. democratic line, you are next up. caller: i would like to ask you -- in regards to the maneuver that donald trump tried in 2020 with calling the secretary of state and asking him to change the number and arranging for new delegates, that entire maneuver, with that, would -- is -- with network again? can he do that again and find people who will go along with it? guest: thank you, donna. i am concerned a losing candidate could try to pressure election officials in cause division and spread lies about

an election. we saw that in 2020, of course. we should note that it didn't work in 2020. election officials stood firm to their principal and did what they needed to do. in many states to their great credit the people who voted for a losing candidate stood up for voters and for their votes to be counted as they accurately were in every state. that is a very good sign. we have further reason for optimism. 2022 we had something called the electoral reform act passed, putting further guard rails the process in establishing a timeline by which electoral votes need to be ascertained and voted for. making it clear that the vice president doesn't preside over the joint session of congress on january 6 and doesn't have the power to decide to disenfranchise entire states because they happen to vote for

the opposing candidate. we have seen in our history at least twice in modern history, republican and democrat, where sitting vice presidents presided over the joint session three times, if you count vice president pence, after the 1960 election, vice president nixon presided over the session where his opponent was the river -- declared the winner and vice president gore over the joint session where george w. bush was anointed the winter and of course, 2021, january 6, vice president pence as well, anointing president biden the winner. i have confidence that this strategy if employed by the losing candidate will fail, but i'm most concerned with losing candidates over the past four years who have been willing to spread lies and insight anger and violence and the violence it troubles me, the potential for violence troubles me a great

deal and it is one of the reasons that especially election officials who are in the same party as the losing candidate, how they have been just so courageous and acted with such principles. people like secretary raffensperger in georgia or the governor of arizona, with county election officials all over the country doing the same thing, they really stood for the best of the american democratic experiment in tough times. host: you talked about this and it was just decided here in d.c. that that election will get another hearing on august 16. how will that proceed in light of the supreme court immunity decision? guest: the immunity decision led to some troubling outcomes, essentially, but it didn't close the door on the prosecution of president trump.

it left open the possibility. justice barrett's decision was instructive and there were certain acts engaged in by the former president that were clearly on presidential ask for the prosecution. what we will say in the next phase of the district court's hearings as to what degree certain actsa for alec -- acts or allegations fall into its category. you thought it was unofficial that attempt to organize state electors. the president has no role in overseeing a presidential election. that is left to the states under the constitution. the idea that a president would call a secretary of state of either party and demand that that person find just enough votes for them to be anointed the winner?

imagine if you were a republican and a president obama had done that in 2016 and said hillary clinton lost your state, find me 10,000 votes in the state of michigan to make hillary clinton the winner. republicans appropriately would have been outraged over that and that is what happened in 2020 with former president trump. i think that the judge will find is justice barrett -- justice barrett alluded and it was an unofficial act and the burden of proof will still be there for prosecutors where they need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that donald trump engaged in crimes. guest: -- host: our guest is the caustic -- co-author of "the big truth," thank you for your time. guest: thank you, pedro. host: coming up, we hear from david becker -- from wayne crews