c-span is your unfiltered view of government we're funded by these television companies and more, including comcast. >> you think this is just a community center? no, it's way more than that. >> comcast is partnering with 1,000 community centers to create wifi enabled lift zones so students from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. >> giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> joined by charlie cook editor and publisher of the cook political report. mr. cook, good morning to you, sir. i want to start with that topic that we began our program with today, the news last night that senate democrats announced this $3.5 trillion budget plan the top line number the details still to come and road ahead to move it through budget reconciliation. what would this battle mean for

election 2022 coming up and the politics of this debate going forward? >> thanks for having me on, john. you know, you have this in politics like life you have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time and for political parties you have to on the one hand keep your base satisfied and so that they will vote, but on the other hand you have to reach over here in the middle into that 10% of people, 10% or less of people that are true independents don't lean either way, are not terribly political but are up for grabs. so it's a balancing act not too hot, not too cold. when a party, when they do enough to delight their base, you know that they are not helping themselves with independents and if they are with the swing voters you know that they are not helping themselves with their base. it's a delicate balancing act that's going on and i think one of the challenges we have these days and i'm not saying this

just by democrats because it's true both ways is that we are in a period where the parties look at everything in a zero sum -- as a zero sum game, winner take all. no matter how small your election victory, you've got a big mandate and you saw that with republicans in 2017 and '18 and you saw that with democrats, are seeing that with democrats right now. that even a tiny mandate, they see -- or a tiny margin, they see as a major mandate to do big things. but i think democrats are having a hard time balancing and for president biden keeping both wings of the party happy. that's a real challenge and that will be a challenge in the next election. >> let's stay with that balancing act and go to voting rights. president biden goes to the national constitution center in philadelphia, a big speech on voting rights, the members of -- democratic members of the texas state legislature in d.c. to

push that issue and to not be in texas to avoid a quorum on that texas law, but s-1 the for the people act all but dead in the senate, at least doesn't seem to have the support to move on its own. do you see that balancing act there? >> well, i wish parties would stop doing these kitchen sink bills where they put everything but the kitchen sink in so if there are individual aspects of any of these pieces of legislation that people will hate. rather than pick each one, one at a time, run them threw up and down each provision and i think you have a better chance of getting things like that through. now, i'm going to alienate both democrats and conservatives because i think both sides have gotten a little bit over their skis on this whole set of issues of fraud on one side, suppression on the other that on the one hand and i will talk about this more in just a second

there is very, very, very, very little voter fraud in this country and just look at the convictions and president trump and his justice department for four years. eight years under george w. bush. but at the same time very, very, very few people have white, black, brown, very, very few people are encountering any obstacles to voting. i was looking at a survey that was taken right at this election for the voter study group, the democracy fund, they gave people a list of eight possible problems that they could have encountered voting and among whites it was -- missed the registration day, unable to find the correct polling place, requested a ballot but it never arrived or arrived too late, was told i didn't have the right identification, was told my registration was on the list. among whites it was 1% or 2% for each of these problems. for african-americans it was 3%, 4% or 5% and for hispanics it

was 5%, 6% or 7% in the language barrier accounting for some of that. i'm not going to say that there aren't some state and local elected officials who seemed to be more republican that seemed to be trying to make it more challenging for certain segments of the electorate to vote and that those segments happen to be more democratic, no question about it, but when you look at the voter fraud number during the four years under president trump there were only 184 convictions during the entire four years and these things about the election, you have had 90 different federal and state judges, over nine of them or nine of them were appointed by president trump and basically none of them found anything here and, you know, think about the eight years and you president bush, george w. bush, they did a

major voter -- what they call the voter -- ballot access and voter integrity initiative. they only charged 119 people, 86 convictions over five years. you know, we've seen -- you know, heritage foundation did a study where they found there were only 563 convictions in the last ten years for voter fraud or any kind -- fraud of any kind, election fraud, voter fraud and in the last 40 years it was -- i think it was hoover found 1,322 proven cases over 40 years. how many billions of votes were cast during that time? but, you know, and i think just to close this point up is that we are now at a point in politics where nobody ever loses anything. either i win or i've been cheated. one way or the other. and we see that in both parties

on both ends of the ideological spectrum and part of this is just political segregation. so many people live, work, socialize with people just like themselves so that everybody they know vote and they segment their voter -- what their readership, listenership, viewership on tv, other than c-span, they segment to the point where they don't hear anything other than what they want to believe. so we are in -- it's a challenging time, no question about it, but, you know, i think it's deplorable to keep anyone that's a legitimate voter from voting, but the caller earlier today that said illegal immigrants if they had a california driver's license they can vote. show that to me. okay? don't just tell me that you heard it on a radio talk show or read it on the internet someplace. show something concrete because there's not a state in the union that allows people that they know are illegal immigrants to vote. that just doesn't happen. >> i do love it when a guest

listens to the calls in the segment before before joining us for a segment. c-span viewers, the c-span viewership certainly know charlie cook, the cook political report, it's 176th appearance on c-span today dating back to 1985, back when we were still calling you charles cook, it was november 1st, 1985. if you want to join charlie cook this morning, democrats can call in at 748-0800, republicans 748-8001, independents 748-8002. charlie cook, you were talking about razor thin majorities who govern as if they are not in razor thin majorities. when did that start? you went back to republicans and the trump administration, but when did that start and how did the majorities act in the old days whenever those were? >> that's a great question, john. i think our entire political

system basically started changing about 30 years ago. around 1991-'92 and that this was sort of the ultimate reach, hopefully it's ultimate, but the thing is that in the old days you saw a fairly substantial percentage of people in one party would say they approve of someone from the other party. i mean, for example, eisenhower and kennedy each of them had 60% job approval ratings at the 100-day point among people in the opposite party. and that starting in the early '90s we started seeing things get more and more partisan and the opposition to bill clinton when he was elected in 1992 over those next eight years the animosity among republicans towards clinton and his administration just reached proportions that we had never seen before. then during the next eight years of george w. bush you saw

exactly the same thing happen, the other way around, where the level of animosity among republicans and then it just sort of keeps building, building, building from that point on. so that now you've got the vast, vast majority of voters are just voting straight ticket voting, all democrat, all republican. we are not at a parliamentary system for the most part. i mean, i think it's remarkable that in 2016 every single u.s. senate race was won by a candidate of the same party as carried that race that night in the presidential. every single one, and then in november it was all but one, 34 out of 35, susan collins was the one exception. 96% of all members of the house represent districts that their party carried. people are going one way or the other. it's just a party vote and if it's a clean party vote then one

vote more than the other side you take as a mandate. but i think it's a culmination of sort of four escalating waves of partisanship that sort of hit the system and made it -- used to be -- you know, we had -- going into 1992 republicans had won four of the five most recent presidential elections i think it was seven out of the 11 since the end of world war ii but at the same time democrats going into '94 democrats had won the house 20 times in a row. in the senate 40 consecutive years. in the senate 34 out of 40 years, but then starting in '94 you started seeing this more partisanship really, really kicking in. the political behavior today bears no resemblance to what it did before the 1991-1992 period. >> maybe it's a good segment to

begin on the line for independents. joe is up first out of maine. you are on with charlie cook. good morning. >> caller: yes. thanks for taking my call. good morning, charlie. i just -- it's my understanding -- you said that -- you keep talking about past elections. in this 2020 election there were one person charged with fraud, he was a republican from pennsylvania who had repeatedly voted for his passed away mother. that went through the courts, he was charged and convicted. there was no hugo chavez that interrupted in the elections in 2020. there was no martian votes. there was no fraudulent votes. there was one case. could you comment on that? and my other question or comment quick is the republican senators

all took an oath during the impeachment to be a fair and impartial juror. i know that's not exactly what you are talking about, but let's say they used that for toilet paper. >> joe, you bring up a couple different issues. >> before i forget, i have add so i tend to forget what happened before. yeah, i mean, whether it's one case -- i was reading the other day there was a case in texas where a guy served some time in prison and was parole under texas law while you are in jail and still on parole you are not allowed to vote but afterwards you are allowed to vote. this guy was apparently at his local polling place was the last person in line to vote, was quoted or shown on tv or something for having waited six hours to vote, he votes and then it comes out somebody

investigated, finds out, well, he shouldn't have because his parole wasn't over. when prosecutors have looked at a lot of these cases a lot of it is just mistake. someone thought they were registered to vote or thought they -- and didn't and, you know, the vast, vast, vast majority of these people are born and raised in the united states. there is no reason to challenge them but people do and personally i'd go for universal voter registration for anybody that's a citizen. when you get your driver's license or id card for welfare or whatever then you show it and then after that nobody can challenge you, you know, you have to vote in the right place. but there is a lot -- but, you know, on the democratic side there is this feeling that people are having to walk over broken glass to vote or that certain people are and on the other side that people are stealing votes left and right

when there are very, very, very, very few cases. these sworn affidavits, it's all garbage. >> well -- >> go ahead. >> go ahead and finish your comment. >> i fogot where i was going next. eight years under george w. bush with a republican justice department, four years under trump and if there was a significant voter fraud in this country, i suspect in that 12 years we would have seen more than the few cases we saw. >> we will head over to the chesapeake bay out of annapolis this is scott, republican. good morning. >> caller: good morning. yes, i'd like to challenge the idea that illegals are not voting in the election. i have a personal experience that i was renewing my driver's license at the dmv and i was chatting with the lady that was behind the counter about it and she goes, oh, well, we give

illegals driver's license because all they have to do is prove residency and we do that and then while they're filling out their application, the next question on the screen says do you want to register to vote? she goes i know for a fact that there are illegals, many hundreds of thousands in maryland that have come in, they get residency status, they get a driver's license status, they get a driver's license and also at the same time are signed up to register to vote. whether they're -- >> did you personally witness a not u.s. citizen vote? did you witness this or is this secondhand? >> i did not watch them vote. i watched them sign up to vote at the dmv. >> and you knew for sure they were not u.s. citizens. you knew that. >> i think we lost the caller but go ahead. >> the thing is, it's always hearsay. i heard this. i read this. somebody told me this or that.

and when judges, when prosecutors go to really look at the details, they find out that doesn't wash. i mean, that you had nine different trump appointed federal judges look at these things. either hear motions or cases and they didn't see anything. you know. over half of the federal judges in the united states are republican-appointed judges. why the heck haven't they found more? >> gulfport, mississippi is next. austin, democrat, good morning. austin, are you with us? we'll to go samantha here in washington, d.c. go ahead. >> caller: good morning. two points. i'm a native. i'm african-american. at one point i was a republican.

when the klan took over the party, i became a democrat and proud to be. my concern is the lies that are being perpetrated by the likes of the current governor, the lieutenant governor in texas, the governor doesn't run the state. the lieutenant governor runs the state. and this guy is quite questionable. this dan patrick, who was out -- who is out of the state of maryland, who has a strange, shady background and it is coming to texas and had a talk show like alex jones. and it's very racist and anti-anything that would be democratic or would give people their rights. he along with paxton, the attorney general, who has been under federal indictment since 2017, i believe, maybe earlier

than that, on criminal fraud charges and so forth. and of course, trump's justice department did not want to press the issue. and these are people who are the worst kind of criminals you can possibly have. >> mr. cook? >> i had to mute the thing. the dog is in a nearby room and is not happy. >> we're totally fine with that. we understand zoom television. >> when i'm not talking, i'm going to mute. factually speaking, the caller is exactly right. under the texas constitution, the lieutenant governor really does have more power constitutionally than the governor does. with the legislature and all this. that is absolutely true. and the only sort of exception to that is if you've got a governor that is like very

assertive and can, like george w. bush, he had a democratic -- actually, he had a democrat speaker. but sometimes a governor can become equal or slightly greater. but constitutionally, technically speaking, that is absolutely true and it is true the attorney general is under indictment. i don't know the details of the case. but texas is a state that it is getting, i'm not saying it is getting more democratic but it is getting less republican and it is moving more toward the middle. and it had not moved as much as some people thought it might by november of last year, but as other people from other parts of the country move in, it becomes less texan. it becomes less southern. that's what you're seeing in georgia, north carolina, a lot of these other places. it is an influx of people from other parts of the country and

the suburbs are growing and the small town rural areas, the most conservative, most republican right now, those areas are contracting. so that's why you're seeing real changes in voting behavior in some of these states, fast-growing states. and conversely, in some of the midwest industrial states, it is actually democrats are having to pedal harder and harder. they're having more challenges with working class white voters. so there is a push-pull in different parts of the country. i didn't get into the specifics but i'm trying to stay away from the subjective stuff. >> what's an example of one of those democratic states where they're pedaling harder? >> michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania. look at everything going on in those states. they were competitive but the democrats were naturally better off than they are now. and we're just seeing, we're

seeing college-educated whites, specifically college educated white women, that are moving away from republicans and toward democrats over the last 20 years, and at the same time, working class whites, particularly working class white men that are migrating over the other side, and we're seeing that in state after state after state. so we are going through a realignment in this country. it is not just an all one direction realignment. different pieces of the electorate moving in opposite directions. >> ft. collins, colorado. this is charles, an independent. good morning. >> caller: my contention about voting is also, gerrymandering. what i've seen, when a politician can make districts that severely favor them, then we get to a point where, okay, i'm a guy and i'm a republican

in a 90% district. okay? and i want to speak out against donald trump because i don't believe he's doing something great. well, all trump has to do then is go to that district and yell rino and your career is over. if that district was balanced, then i think we would see more people coming across and be more pragmatic because their jobs aren't on the line. and we come to a better america where the republicans or democrats on either side can speak out. and that's why i'm so adamant about hr and sr-1. i want to see that done. i want to see the money out of. there i want to see citizens united gone. thank you, charlie. >> well, first, you made one of my points for me. that hr 1, i think one of the mistakes made was because they put everything but the kitchen

sink, gerrymandering, voter -- they put all of it into one thing. and gave lots of people different reasons to oppose it. why don't they just do it gerrymandering? for most people, it is when the other side draws lines that you don't like. now, if i had a magic wand and i could wave and could i do one political reform in this country, it would be the whole country go to an iowa like system where you have a commission of statisticians draw the lines, ignoring where incumbents are. keep them contiguous, as compact as possible. that is the gold standard. some of these other states have some other commissions that are not bad. but to me, now, both parties are

guilty of this when they're in power. and you know, maryland where i lived for almost 30 years, democrats controlled the legislature and did horrible things in terms of trying to diminish republican voting. just as republicans are right now, trying to do that with us. and we need to, the joke is, instead of voters picking your elected officials, we have elected officials picking the voters. and that's really true. i think this is a much bigger problem than campaign finance or voter fraud or voter suppression or anything else. i think this is the number one. i don't know of any -- i think of only one state legislature that voluntarily gave up the right to draw maps. they don't like to give with a. so in the states where they have been forced to by ballot initiatives, for example, to

draw maps independently, that is the only places it has happened. and there is a trend but most states don't have the ballot initiatives where you can force it over the objections of a governor or state legislature. it is a huge, huge problem. when you look at votes cast for president and then how many state legislators from each party, house members, that sort of thing. you can see some pretty bad things happening that personally, i'm not a lawyer but i would think under one man, one vote, it wouldn't be allowed. we are seeing federal courts get in sometimes when you have really bad cases. in my judgment, not nearly enough. you did see in it north carolina and pennsylvania before the last election. >> you know, charlie, on the issue of redistricting, there is a give on twitter whose twitter handle is @redistrict. i wonder if you think he would be a good twitter follower for

viewers? >> yeah. that's david wasserman from the cookly report. and he is a walking computer. and just smart, smart, smart as he could be. and he is sort of our quantitative person. david is very, very good. and someone can't go wrong if you have the slightest interest in politics to follow david. particularly fun on election nights when he'll say, watch out. x, you know, area hasn't come in or something like that. but they're not a whole lot of people that can do that. and david is definitely one of them. >> and he'll always let you know when he's seen enough to call a race as well. we'll go up to connecticut. this is tom, a republican. good morning. >> caller: hi, charlie. a suggestion. put your hands in your pocket. it is distracting. >> it is also distracting when

you say something like that. let's go to bill in palm springs, california. a democrat. >> good morning. one thing i will say, it's interesting to me, when we're listening -- >> yeah, bill. what's the interesting point? bill, are you still with us? okay. john, elbow lake, minnesota. independent. good morning. >> caller: yeah. i would like to mention a couple things. the voter fraud cases. one of the least prosecuted cases in the country. to follow up on these, we have a secretary of state here in minnesota that even the court won't look into these cases. and then the mention of low numbers. when you're in swing states, it

doesn't take much to change things. and i think people should be aware of that. >> i'm very aware of it. the thing is, it is pretty hard to prosecute things that are rare. and prosecutors do from time to time find it. but it doesn't -- you know, take the george w. bush, john ashcroft and later, alberto gonzalez was the attorney general after ashcroft. five years, they had 300 investigations. only 119 were charged. and 86 convicted. and under president trump, it was 184 convictions total. the thing is, it's not that these people -- certainly president trump and his administration, they were looking for it. they didn't find it. so it is hard to prosecute something that hardly happens. and i think it is part of a,

people can't accept that they lost an election. and after the 2004 election, democrats were all convinced. george w. bush, republicans had stolen ohio. they didn't steal it. we just lost a close election. you can lose elections legitimately. it doesn't have to be theft. i keep coming back, if there was a problem of democrats, minorities, liberals, whoever, committing voter fraud, why in the world wouldn't republican justice departments, republican attorneys general, presidents and a republican-appointed federal judges, why wouldn't they have found some? i mean, some more than the microscopic number that we've had. and i think people are just living in an alternative universe. they are absolutely convinced

when they don't win an election, it had to be stolen from them. >> less than 15 minutes left. the cook political report. cook political.com. you can continue to call in on phone lines. you've come back a couple times to this point of the super tight margins. and the tribalism in this country. so who are the people, however small it is, who are the people in the middle? who swing the elections back and forth? >> that's a great question. the people that are the pure independents that do not even lean -- partisans, people who call themselves democrats or republicans, they vote 90% of the time straight down the line. theon question is do they show up or not? the vast majority of independents will confess that they lien republican or democrat. and 80% who lean democrat will

vote democrat. they're not really independent. they just like to call themselves that. so it leaves a little sliver between 5% and 10%. for the most part, there are exceptions to the rule. i should put my hands down. for the most part, these are people that don't follow politics that closely. a lot of them don't read newspapers in any form or listen to news or watch news. they tend to not be interested in politics. they tend to not trust politicians or political parties. and they're just not terribly engaged. and they tend to get interested in elections very, very late when it starts getting, when the elections are getting closer. so are they more centrist than they are liberal or conservative? yes. but it's not so much that they're just right on, between the two 40 yard lines

philosophically. a lot of them just don't strong opinions. if someone has strong opinions about public policy, the chances are pretty good they're either conservative or liberal. one or the other. not always, but more often than not. so these people in the middle are somewhat kind of disengaged. part of what has happened in the process is that our policies, and i have to use my hands on this. our parties have become more ideologically sorted. when i came to washington almost 50 years ago, if this is democrats, you had a lot of conservative moderate democrats. particularly from the south and rural areas. and at the same time, you had a lot of the republican party, liberal, moderate republicans. particularly from the northeast. from the west coast. the suburbs of chicago and that sort of thing. but there was a substantial

overlap between the two parties. what happened in congress, what happened is conservative and to a certain extent moderate democrats, they died, they retired, they lost general elections, they lost primary elections or they switched parties. and the same thing with the liberal, to a certain extent, moderate republicans. died, switched parties, lost primaries, whatever. and then within the electorate, you have the same thing. where conservative democrats just sort of leave the party or just stop voting democratic. same thing with liberal republicans. so now our two parties are ideologically sorted so that we do have, we now have a liberal party and we have a conservative party. and you know, it is what it is. the people in each party that were the ballast that kept their parties from going off into a ditch from the left or the

right, are for the most part, gone. to the extent that you have gerrymandering, to the extent that people tend to watch or listen or read news from the perspective that they already agreed with, so it reinforces their point of view, you see this gap between the two sides getting bigger and bigger and bigger. >> so what would it take -- what would it take to have something other than a super tight margin in upcoming elections? is that what you foresee for the foreseeable future? >> i think one of the things, we're in an era now that because the parties are so evenly divided, narrowly divided and evenly divided, each party is within striking distance, nationally speaking and in competitive states and districts. each one stays within striking distance of the other. so the ability, you know, in the

past, we've seen and whether it was, whether it was ronald reagan or richard nixon winning huge land slide victories, on the other side, lyndon johnson, winning a land slide, '64. whether it is 49, 48 states, and winning big percentages of the vote. toward 60%. that can't happen now because, because each party has a higher floor. because they've got so many people who will vote with them no matter what. but a higher ceiling because of people just like that on the opposite side. so our two parties are just, they're locked in with high floors, low ceilings. and we're small things that can happen, a little slice of

independence in the middle. push them over one way or the other. i think that's what we saw in the last month before the last election. it certainly looked like it was headed toward a certain outcome. and then i think for these independents who again, remember they don't trust politics or political parties. they're thinking, they're all talking about a democratic wave. and democrats taking over everything. and building up a bigger majority in the house and taking on not only the senate but a big majority in the senate. taking over the white house and they started thinking, what was they heard about democratic socialism and medicare for all. abolish i.c.e. and defund the police and all these things. i think they just kind of got, they got scared and you saw biden's numbers came down just a little bit at the end.

and you saw democrats for the house that suddenly, they're calming down. democrats in the senate came down. we were headed a month before the election. you had people as republican and conservative as ted cruz and ed rollins who managed ronald reagan's campaign in '84 who were saying, the race is over. or in cruz' case, it was suggesting that this could be a blood bath of watergate proportions. that's where this race was, i think, a month out. but again, it doesn't take many votes for, among those independents to push the election one way or the other in a competitive state or district with the high floors and low ceilings. >> about five or so minutes left. larry has been waiting, pennsylvania, democrat, good morning. >> caller: good morning. how are you, man? i want to say to mr. cook, do

whatever you want to do with your hands but i have a question to you. what do you think about the grassroots of your community that you live in, this is where you go to vote, and when you vote there, that it is the moral krot of the destiny of your state or the national or wherever you want to go? i have a statement for you, too. here's my statement for you. now, i heard you say, we have really, really good presidents, the president we just had, do you think that guy put us in a state of emergency that we all need to know where we want to vote and who is calling the votes, 80 judges say, hey, there was no voter fraud, and yet here people keep saying the same thing. >> you bring up a lot of points.

>> larry, before you get off, could you explain the first part of your question about people in your neighborhood? because i didn't quite get that. that's the part of question that i want to focus on. >> that's my apology. i cut in on larry there so he's not with us. >> oh, okay. well, i think there is an old expression. birds of a feather flock together and i think it is absolutely true that we tend to move to places like, that we feel comfortable with. people like ourselves and it is that political segregation that i was talking about earlier. but i'm not going into which presidents were good or bad. it's my job to stay in the middle. you know, i think the one encouraging, i think i've been kind of down a good bit over the last 40 minutes. but we just had a record, back to back record high elections. we had the highest presidential

turnout since 1900. in 2018, we had the highest mid-term election turnout since 1914. and one of the biggest things in this election, yes, how do those independents go? one way or the other? the other thing is which party suffers a bigger drop-off. the trump loathers, the people who hate president trump who turned out in big numbers to vote against him? do they decline more? or the trump lovers? the people that turned out for him, now that he's not on the ballot, literally or figuratively, do they turn out in lower numbers? how does the little group in the middle, how do they go? and it is which side suffers the greatest drop-off? in politics generally speaking, it is when a party is seen going too far. my notes have gtf. going too far.

that's when parties tend to get into problems. i would just point out that for the first time in american history, we now have had four consecutive presidents lose control of both the house and the senate during their presidency. four in a row. clinton, george w. bush, barack obama, donald trump. and it is because the parties are getting closer and closer together and we're seeing these things. but the parties are becoming so monolithic, so parliamentary. and what happens is as a result, public policy, what i call ping pong policy. it goes from -- sort of careening from too far left to too far right, back and forth. for anybody in business, you know that's kind of hard to plan for. hard to count on. i'll return it back to you. i talked way too much. >> we'll try to get one or two

more calls in. a republican, go ahead. >> caller: good morning, mr. cook. i'll have to start reading your news letter. i've been voting for a long time and i've never questioned the results of a presidential or any other election, form matter. what scares me about this last election, what makes me wonder as to what the results really were, was the fact that a number of states appear to have violated their own laws and even constitutions. i've been hearing for a long time that the united states of america is a land, a country of laws. when you disregard your own laws and your own constitutions, you cease to be a country of laws. and that is what i believe to be the biggest threat to the future of american liberty and freedom. >> let me turn it over to charlie cook. you can hang on the line.

>> the things in terms of violating constitutions or laws, we would have to get to specifics. was the united states in 2020 facing the biggest public health disaster in a century? yes. biggest since the spanish flu. the spanish flu of 1914. 1918, sorry. 1918. and there were things done to accommodate getting more people a chance to vote, either by mail, and there is absolutely no evidence, and ask any republican secretary of state, election official in a state that has vote by mail. utah, for example. or to go and vote early so they wouldn't be in long lines, where they could catch the

coronavirus. but yes, there were modifications made. but the thing is, we were moving toward vote by mail already. there already, you may not know, already seven states that were 100% vote by mail before the last election. and that, you know, the term is convenience voting, allowing people, getting them to where it is 24 hours, you can drop your ballot box off at the nearest library, or vote by mail. and i personally like to vote in person. but a lot of people don't. the thing is, i defy anyone to show me any evidence at all where a state or local government violated their law, violated their constitution, and it made the outcome, it changed the outcome of election.

>> we'll have to end there this morning. although did you mention your dog. i want to ask you your dog's name before we go. >> penny. she's a pit mix that we inherited from our daughter. and penny doesn't like to be cooped up. >> penny a good dog. thanks for joining us as always with the cook political report. cook political.com if you want to check out their website. we'll see you back again soon. >> thanks. today legal experts testify on the voting rights act and two supreme court rulings dealing with the equal right to vote. live coverage before a senate judiciary subcommittee begins at 2:30 eastern on c-span3. online at c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio line. c-span is your unfiltered view of government.

comcast. >> do you think this is just a community center? no. it's way more than that. >> comcast is enabling so students from low income dpams get the tools they need to be ready for anything. >> comcast supports c-span as a public service, i know what these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> yesterday in philadelphia at the national constitution center that president biden spoke about voting rights, legislation in the united states, and the impact they're having on democracy. >> so hear me clearly. there is an unfolding assault taking place in america today, an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections. assault on democracy. an assault