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the place you call home. at sparklight it's our home too, and right now we're all facing our greatest challenge. that's why sparklight is working round the clock to keep you connected. we're doing our part so it's a little easier to do yours. >> sparklight suppos c-span as a blic service along with these other it's providers -- television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. ♪ >> host: welcome back to "washington journal." we are join joined this morning by david becker or with the center for election innovation and research. we'll be discussing election integrity and ad recent survey about voter confidence. david, good morning. >> guest: yeah, great to be here. >> host: of course. thank you for joining us. so let's start there. remind viewers of your work and the mission at the center for election innovation and research. >> guest: sure. we're a 501(c)(3), nonpartisan

nonprofit. center for election innovation research are, i founded it in 2016, and it works to support election officials all over the country, red states is and blue states, democrat and republican, to manage elections that voters should trust and do and, of course, that's a big issue we're dealing with right now, particularly the do trust part. even though over the course of particularly the last two decades, our elections are more secure, transparent is and than ever before. >> host: so and how is the center fundedsome. >> guest: we're completely nonprofitted, funded by a variety of donations and donors around the country. >> host: let's get into this poll. i'm going to show an ap article about it. this poll was published on tuesday, and it shows that relatively few republicans are confident that votes will be counted accurately during the 2024 presidential election. here's a breakdown of those poll results. so the question again is how

many u.s. adults are highly confident that 2024 votes will be counted accurately. so even among all adults, only 44% -- that's less than half -- but 7 is -- 71% of democrats, 24% of independents, 22% of republicans. so not even a quarter of republicans and independents. how concerning is this partisan divide that you see in this poll? >> guest: both the overall numbers and the partisan divide are very concerning. and they're not just concerning as a snapshot, but where we are right now. and it's important to recognize that as we sit here today, we are nearly 1,000 days since the november 2020 election. during that time well over 600 courts have considered -- 60 courts have considered claims there were significant problems with the elections. all t of them were rejected

including by trump-appointed attorneys. there is still not, to this point, 1,000 days after the election, not been a shred of evidence accepted by any court in the united states that demonstrates any kind of significant problems with fraud. and and yet these doubts persist. in fact, we just heard the national republican party chairwoman express some of these same concern cans that, oh, we know there were problems in 2020, and that's just false. in 2020 we had the highest turnout in american history, somehow during a global pandemic. and election officials met the challenge. it was one to of the great success stories in american history not because of the outcome, but because the process worked so so well. and so during that time what we were able to do is have more pre-election litigation that clarified the rules before the election. we had more paper ballots that could be audited and verified postelection than ever before and, in fact, we had more audits than ever before. and we had more postelection litigation that confirmed the

russians -- results. the 2024 was the most secure election the united states has ever -- 2020 election was the most secure the united states has ever had, and 2024 will be even better. >> host: i want to let our viewers know you can go ahead and start calling in you have questions for david about election integrity or want to weigh in on the topic. democrats, 202-748-8000. republicans,bl 202-748-8001. independents,, 202-748-8002. text messages, 202-748-8003, or send us a tweet @c-spanwj. we're going to get to you in just a moment. david, what are you -- let's talk about the roots. youu talked about, we talked about this partisan divide in this poll. republicans are about three times more likely than democrats toee say they don't think they'e going to trust the 2024 election

results. what are the root causes? is it fixable? >> guest: it iss fixable. it's going to take some time, t not going to be fixable right away. in the past we've always seen a slight partisan differential in voter confidence with the winning party always being more confident than the losing party. that's somewhat normal, and we've seen that over time consistently. but the overall level of confidence in the country was always relatively high. whatnc we've seen differently in this cycle is that the losing presidential candidate not only refused to accept the will of the people, but also continued to spread lies. and for those people who were in media bubble withs who were consuming that toxic combination oft falsehoods, it sinks in over time, and they've really understood that. in 2000 we didn't have that problem. in 2004 we didn't have that problem. subsequently, we didn't have that problem because up until

2020 the losing presidential candidate accepted the will of the voters even when it was very close such as in 2000 and 1960. so we're seeing that just constant drum beat of lies really affect the confidence of voters. that's a really troubling thing, because it's not just the people think that one election was stolen. what we're seeing is that eventually people believe that all elections are stolen and elections don't have any meaning whatsoever. that's really dangerous for a democracy. it's what our adversaries in countries like china and russia and other autocracies have tried to get people in democracies to believe, and they've failed generally. but now we'rehe seeing it domestically work which really weakens american democracy. >> host: well, we're already getting lots of calls. again, we're talking this morning with david becker of the center for election innovation andti research. so let's get to some of those calls now. first up is rhonda in jersey shore, new jersey.

democratic line. what's your question or comment, rhonda? >> caller: hi, good morning,er america. my comment is about the supreme court ruling where the trump administration and his cronies were trying to get the supreme court to allow states to overturn a duly elected electoral college to put in who they want to be president, and all of that is squashed. and we have major news stations out here actually promoting these lies. you know, this whole thing about hunter biden is a lie, and the whistleblower is the actual culprit of dealing with the chinese. it's like trump gets to go out

here and continue to lie and is never held accountable, not even by n the local news stations. fox news, newsmax, oh, thank god we shut down one america news in new jersey. we shut 'em down. but newsmax and fox news, after being suedwn for all these billions of dollars, they still continue to do it. and it's terrifying me. you know? >> host: rhonda, we get your point. let's give david a chance to address it. >> guest: yeah, thanks, rhonda. rhonda's talking about a case call moore v. harper, it was actually out of north carolina, about the statewide redistricting where the state supreme court had had that ruled that the state legislature had violated the state constitution in north carolina with ma particular -- a particular map. and the question posed was whether the state legislature was not subjects to the checks and balances that we all learned about in elementary school and on schoolhouse rock, and they

could do whatever they want. thisis is a theory, a very radil theory called the independent state legislature theory. and rhonda's quite right, it was promoted by supporters of the former president in the aftermath of the 2020 election to try to tell legislatures that they could ignore the will of the people, they could just appoint electors however they wanted even if it was in direct contravention to how the people voted. and what the supreme court said -- and it waseo a very important case in terms of establishing guard guardrails for 2024 and onward -- three democratically-to appointed justices joined the chief justice and said, no, that's not the case. state legislatures are still subject to the checks and balancesar of their state court systems and their state constitution and the state executive. and if a losing candidate comes to the united states supreme court to expect at the united states supreme court is going to allow a state to anoint the loser as the winner of a presidential election, i think

the united states supreme court clearly said don't even bother coming here, we're not going to do that. >> host: all right. our caller is in mississippi. james is on the independent line. >> caller: yes. i wanted to know, sir, about the electoral college votes. why did the republican party insist on something that's being disingenuous with voters? why is it that they don't understand that the popular vote is more important than the way they've got their system set up? that meansns that they don't hae the work hard, prove a point to the american people that their policies are right. so they don't want to have, you know, one vote -- give each person one vote. so why is it that they keep

saying that it's something illegal, and also i don't know if i want to even watch it. if they don't show president trump, the investigation, if theys don't show him go to cour, ultimately,ing they let the american people see it, i'm not going to vote. because i want to see -- even president biden. if president biden gets indicted, the american people need to see for themselves. they joked about january 6th when they had the investigation, and everything that those people said and did on january 6th pertained to our conversation we're having. all those people served with republicans. there was no -- can you explain to me how the republican party can say it's some kind of scam when -- was the add administration. anden most of the party, he hide

them. these people are not republicans. i need people to speak more. we need to see more of these people, the whistleblowers or the people making these statements against him. we need to hear from them. the media don't never put these people on. they testify, they don't ever tell you that these are republicans.l they always let you get away with the democrats said this, the democrats said that. two are republican whistleblowers against president biden, and we found out that one of them was a crook. nobody is talking about that. >> host: james, we got your point. i think he's, i think he's talking about the fact that perhaps transparency could help. he mention january 6th. a lot of the people who testified to the january 6th committee were fellow republicans who were criticizing trump. i think he's talking about some of that partisanship. what are your thoughts? >> guest: yeah. i mean, it's true that if you

look at the january 6th subcommittee and a lot of the other testimony that's being sought, for instance, now by the special counsel, it's almost entirely republicans who are testifying with factual information about whatg occurre. i think the caller was also bringing up a point about the electoral college which, of course, there are -- there is an active discussion going on and disagreements about whether the electoral system we have which only affects the presidential election which says the electoral votes determined by the statess decide the presidency, not the overall popular vote. whether it's a good idea or a bad idea, and a lot of us have strong opinions on that, it is enshrined in the united states constitution. it was part of a compromise in the institution that was accept a long, long time ago. -- accepted a long, long time ago. and in order to change it, until likely require a constitutional amendment. so it's the system we have. there are rules of elections, i think s it's really important to state, there are rules of elections that exist all across

the country for the election, and some of us like some of the rules, and some of us don't like others of the rules. and that might differ depending upon what party you with belong to oryo what state you live in. but those rules are set, and by the time election day is set, we play by those rules. you can't complain about the rules after the election if you didn't win the election. youct can't -- if you're the bet field goal kicker in the league, you can't lose the super bowl by a couple of points and then claim that field goals are worth five points. we know the rules. they were clarified and established befores, the 2020 election more than ever before, and those ruled applied to that election. i think it's really important, in the past we have always had candidates who accepted that. >> host: and also we should point out, i mean, there's been controversy when the popular vote and the electoral college have two different results. but in the 2020 election, biden versus trump, biden both won the popular vote and the electoral college vote. >> guest: right. >> host: so that particular

circumstance, they both lined up. >> guest: the 2020 presidential election was decided by the widest t margin of any electionn the 21st century where barack obama wasn't on the ballot. president biden won by over 7 million popular voteses across the country. -- votes across the country. he won the electoral college by a relative landslide, very close to what president trump won in 2016. so it wasn't a particularly close election in terms of recent history where we're very closely divided nation. certainly not nearly as close as an election like 2000 where it was one state decided by 537 votes or 2004 where it was one state decided by many more votes, 120,000, but one state could have changed the outcome. let's go to tim now. tim is in fairview, pennsylvania. republican line. >> caller: yeah. i think the reason we're having this discussion at all is

because with the 2020 election never really was thrashed out in the courts. i remember c rudy giuliani was e was on the case before he was taken off it, he had over a thousand affidavits if poll workers, both a republicans and democrats, that saw all sorts of irregularities. and they were never allowed to be heard. such as the truck driver that very publicly came out and said he drove a truckload of ballots in thed middle of the night in that night from bethpage, new york, down tolan caster, pennsylvania -- to lancaster. mollie hemingway wrote a wonderfully-researched book called "rigged" that she documented chapter and verse thousands of footnotes about the irregularities of the election. dinesh d'souza had that wonderful film where he usedded

the pings off of cell phones, the same kind of pings that they used to locate missing persons of the people going back and and forth from private homes to drop boxes, dozens and and dozens of times with mailboxes. the gateway pundit does wonderful reporting, and i've seen many of the films that they had on the cameras on the drop boxes -- tim, i'm going to stop you there because i know david wants to respond. tim represents a lot of people who have believed misinformation about the election. can you respond. >> guest: yeah. i think this is a great example of how all of us, regardless who we support in the presidential election orss which party we belong to, have to get out of our media bubbles. we have to get out of the bubbles which feed us media which makes us feel better about things and instead look for media that challenges us. i know i try to do that on a regular basis. the simple facts are this: i

know there are people who disagree with this, but these facts have been established over time. all of the so-called affidavits, all of the so-called evidence actually was considered by the over 60 courts including trump-appointed judges. on christmas eve of 2020, i tweeted out several of the quotes from these trump judges in pennsylvania, georgia and wisconsin. they did look at the evidence, all of theni evidence proposed. they found nothing there. most of it was either misconceptions, people misunderstanding what was happening, some of it was the highly questionable as to whether or not it was truthful. all of the evidence was considered. it demonstrate thed very, very little. there's no point a in debunking all of these things, because they've been debunked multiple times and they're still resilient lies. the truckie driver, that was investigated fully. it was determined that the truck driver was likely untruthful. it was completely debunked by law enforcement officials. the issues that were raised in the so-called documentary that

was just mentioned, the makers of that documentary have just been sued this past week by the state of georgia because georgia would not -- georgiaed asked for all of the evidence they had so they could thisor invest it, and the makers of that document9ly -- documentary still months and months later refused to releases that evidence. please break out of your media bubbles. please look at the evidence. the courts, including trump-appointed judges, have reviewed everything and they've determined the 2020 election was decided properly. >> host: i'm pulling up an atlanta "atlanta journal-constitution" article. the republican secretary of state the, brad reffens berger sued the organization behind that documentary, filed it in fulton county, georgia, because they said that documentary made allegations, but the people behind the documentary did not

provide thatpl evidence after months of requests. i also want to bring up,, this is an article by nbc use because that last caller mentioned rudy giuliani. it says, and this article's from july 7th, so both of these articles are recent. it says the disciplinary board for the d.c. bar association recommended friday that former trumpti attorney rudy giuliani e strip tired his law license over reckless fraud claims afterre te 2020 election. the panel announced its findingses in a 38-page decision centered on a postelection lawsuit giuliani filed in an effort to dismiss thousands of votes in the battleground state of pennsylvania won by president joe biden. quote, mr. mr. giuliani's efforts to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election has helped destabilize our democracy. hislp e a malicious and meritles claims have done lasting damage,

end quote, the panel wrote. so again, not only has rudy giuliani been a accused of spreading misinformation, but he isis facing disciplinary action forli it. >> guest: if i may, i mean, i think there's -- we don't have to just trust the courts to tell you that all of these things are lies. these people have admitted that they're lies when they've been put under oath finally. rued -- rudy giuliani famously said this is not a fraud case when he was questioned under oath. sidney powell said no one could have reasonably expected that what i was saying was the truth. these are republicans that are asking for this information from the makers of this documentary, republicans and the state board of elections in georgia, the georgia secretary of state. and it's unfortunate that tease lies have still persisted despite the fact that courts, other t republicans, other conservatives are debunked them consistently. >> host: let's go back to the phone lines.

lijay, waldorf, maryland, democratic line. you're on. >> caller: hi. so, yeah, your guest there is a valuable commodity there. trump -- [laughter] i didn't hear the whole thing so far, but trump's one of the main reasons why, you know, his unprecedented presidency, you know, is the reason why a lot of this, is happening with the vor confidence and things, was the lie -- because the lies are just incredible. fact checking, both republican and democrat, you've got people like david david cay johnston, a republican, have checked what trump said when he was president. and there was tens of thousands of lies recorded during his four years. and before, of course. so, yeah, that's one of the major reasons why. and what we need though is c-span to find a republican guy who's saying what this gentleman's saying.

the problem is, of course, the exteam republicans -- extreme republicans, the maga republicans and even people in charge now in the congress republicans in the house, their attitude is that if you -- if it's a democratic idea about a nonpartisan commission to investigate electionmo fraud, tn if it's a democratic idea, then it's probably a scam. so if you're a republican and you go for that, then we're going to penalize you for doing that. anyway, i'll hang up. but keep up the great work there. >> guest: thanks. yeah, this actually have been a lot of republican and conservative reviews of the election. i think the best one is one called lost, not stolen, which you can find at lostnotstolen.org. and it was written by several prominent conservatives, people like ben ginsburg who was campaign counsel for president george w. bush and other presidential candidates like mitt romney, people like bush-appointed judges, jay

michael ruddig and thomas griffith who wrote this report and came to the same conclusions that the trump-appoint judges did, that others did, that there's no evidence that the election was stolen whatsoever and and that it was secure. i wrote a book along with major garrett at cbs news called "the big truth" that also outlines a lot of the facts around the 2020 election cycle. and the fact that in many ways the claims made about election fraud are slandering the public servants, the men and women who run elections all over the country, republicans and democrats who give up their time, who are not recognized for their work, they don't get rich and famous from this work. they did a remarkable job under incredible stress, and their work withstood the scrutiny that came after the 2020 election and continues to withstand that scrutiny. i think one of the other things that's notable is there have been lies spread by the losing presidential candidate in 2020. one of the most prominent was that a mail balloting isn't

secure. it is secure. and not only is it secure, mail balloting used to be promoted primarily by republicans. republicans used this to great effect in states like arizona and utah and nevada and many, many other states where it was republicans who promoted the idea of mail voting. it tends to be people who are older and own property, and republicans believed they were predominantly their voters. we have seen for the first time ever a shift because of the lies spread about mail voting where democrats now vote more by mail than republicans do. and now you're seeing republican campaigns like governor youngkin in virginia just came out with somethinge this past week where he's really trying to encourage his to own voters, republican voters, to come out early and vote by mail after all of the disinformation. >> host: all right. back to the phone lines. akron, ohio. mike is on the independent line. >> caller: yes, good morning.

yeah, thank you for your span. yes, i used to be a poll worker myself in the city of akron. i stopped that in 2020 of after the pandemic. hopefully, i may come back soon is. i'll be 70 in a new month -- few months, so maybe -- i think i've got one or two good years left in me. i am an independent, and and they asked me when i signed up, independent to be poll workers, you need to d -- we need to know which party you prefer. akron is a very blue city, i believe we've got at least one republican on the city council, i vote republican every single time for city council because i don't want an all-democrat city council. i do vote left, and because of that the i was matched up with a republican poll worker. they always match us up one-on-one. independent -- [inaudible] vice versa. they are the most respectable,

honest people i've ever met. i don't care, all of my poll workers right, left, independent, doesn't matter. i never had an ounce of trouble with any of them. and it's the -- a shame that it's gotten this way. now, when it comes to president donald trump, let me say this: i do not hate that guy one bit with. i don't hate anybody. i think he'll be a great, fantastic president on a reality tv basis, okay? reality tv, be fine. but he can't have the skills to be a real president. i don't want him to go to prison. [inaudible] i just want him, you know, him, melania and barron can have a nice life someplace else. i have not an ounce of hate for that guy, but i do want -- i do believe that the poll workers, i will say this to my grave, the most honest people i've ever met. >> guest: i'm so grad mike called. mike, thank you for that, and thank you for your service as a

poll worker. i mean, it really highlights the fact that every single election we have, especially big elections, rely upon hundreds of thousands of volunteers all across the country who give of their time. they get paid very little for this, who work very long hours on election day and during early voting, and they work across party lines, republicans, democrats to give voice to all american voters. it's one of the most inspiring things i've ever seen. i've been doing this for a quarter of a century. i've been in thousands of polling places visiting with polling workers. it is something that should be rscelebrated, and it's one of te reasons that it's so important to push back on the disinformation about stolen elections, because what that really mean moos is they are -- means is they are trying to get you to believe that these hundreds of thousands of g americans, half of them from one party, half from another party, have conspired to steal election from the american people. that's a slander, it's false. and people like mike and the hundreds of thousands of other

volunteer poll worker deserve better than that. and i hope, i hope, mike, you'll continue to volunteer. i hope you'll recruit others in the community. anyone who's listening to this, if you want to really understand the checks and balances in elections, how it's impossible to steal a national election, how there are so many points at which every single ballot is verifieded, volunteer to be a poll worker. it's a great way to see it from the inside and be a part of american history. >> host: what are some other, you just mentioned perhaps volunteering could help to have some insight, what are some other kind of best practices or recommendations that you think could help in i mean, because we've talked about even most poll facilities have both republicans and democrats monitoring how ballots are cast, later how they're counted even in states like georgia where republicans are in charge of the state and the governor and the secretary of state. you still have people who believe the election was stolen. so what is the solution?

>> guest: so, first, again we have to state the facts. the facts are as you just said, the poll workers around this country come from both parties. they're out there to volunteer tors help. they're not trying to steal an election. and even if one tried, they would be caught instantly because of the checks and balanceses and the multiple peoe watching which gets to the second point. there are observers all over the country representing both with campaigns, both parties. they're watching every single aspect of the process. for instance, i don't know if people remember in 2020 in wayne countypr in detroit, michigan, there was a riot outside of a counting center, a large counting center in detroit where supporters of the losing presidential candidate were banging on the windows and the doors and is really threatening election officials and poll workers who were counting ballots saying they wanted to be in so they could observe and claiming there were no observers: this were literally 200 observers on the other side of the door in that room, half

ofrs them republican. that'sro important, and it's really fantastic that we have that level of transparency. election officials practice extreme transparency. they know it's important. even during the last thousand days they've invited election deniers in to see how elections work. they've shown them their machines, they've shown them their processes, they've invited them to ask questions. that's all very, very important. i think one of the troubling things is though that that has not been enough, that people are stills consuming the lies. they're understandably disappointed about the outcome of the election. there's not an american citizen whoen hasn't experienced an electoral disappointment. that'sec incredibly disappointi. there are gaters who are -- grifters who are making -- >> here on c-span2 we're going to break away from live coverage to the u.s. senate.