podcast on c-span now. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. as a 2024 presidential campaign continues, american history tb presents its tv series, historic presidential elections. learn about the pivotal issues of different eras, uncover what made these elections sister, and discover their lasting impact on the election. 1876. despite losing the popular vote, republican ohio governor rutherford hayes defeated new york owner samuel tilden. it was a contentious election that had to be decided by a special election made up by the u.s. house, senate, and supreme court. of the result remains controversial and impacts the

country after this day. watch historic presidential election saturdays at 7:00 p.m. eastern on american history tb on c-span 2. you we are going to speak to michael mcdonald. he is a political science professor at the university of florida. michael, welcome to the program. >> great to be with you. >> you created or operate the u.s. elections project. what is it and why did you start it? >> well, originally, it was just a platform to put out updates for my research. i calculated turnout rates for the country that are used broadly by media, academics, policymakers, and so i wanted to have a way to disseminate that information as new elections occurred. but then in 2008, i started tracking early voting. and i was doing that with the national exit polling organization. and so i just as a lark posted that online.

then 1 million new hits later i figured i better do this every election cycle. license moved all that content over to the new u.s. election map website and that is where you will see those numbers this cycle. >> okay. well, early voting has started today in pennsylvania. we will put that on the screen. there are a few other states. minnesota and virginia starting on friday then vermont and illinois next week. how many -- how much of the total vote is done before election day? >> well, it is hard to know with certainty because we have been on an upward trajectory over the past two decades as more states have made early voting options available. and voters like the convenience of voting early if that is the way they would like to vote. so we see this upward trend. and then we had the pandemic. so over half the votes were cast by some early voting

either in the mail or in person or however early in the 2020 election. so we just went off the charts. nearly a doubling of our early voting we have been seeing in some methods like by mail. and then it reduced again back to 2022 levels. but we are still kind of in that upward trajectory from 2020. i think we are going to see somewhere around 45% to 50% of the votes this time around cast early if we stay on this upward trajectory but it is really difficult to know until once we see people voting. >> and as far as the breakdown between democrats and republicans voting early, what you see there and those trends? >> generally, overall, democrats tend to prefer voting early but if we look down into the methods of voting there have been some interesting patterns and some of those patterns got upended by the

pandemic. so, prior to the pandemic, it was generally republicans that were voting by mail and democrats voting in person early. then when democrats wanted to protect themselves during the pandemic they switched to the mail balloting and republicans heating trump's rhetoric decided that they were going to vote in person. and so we saw patterns yet upended in the 2020 election that had been there for a couple decades prior. after the election in 2022, we saw some reversion back to the patterns we saw before 2020, but not all the way. so it looks again like we still have this dynamic word democrats still tend to prefer mail and republicans -- we will have to see, i think they will -- may prefer in person, early. we will have to look at the statistics. >> and as far as that breakdown between in person early and

mail in or dropbox, how does that impact security? is one more secure than the other? and what happens to those ballots before election day and how are we assured that they are protected? the are protected? >> election officials have a number of safeguards in place to make sure that the ballots they send out to people are the ballots that they are getting back track it in numerous ways. they have identification procedures to make sure someone is not voting for someone else. number of safeguards are in place. you will find republican secretaries of state and other officials who run elections say their elections are secure, this is widely regarded as secure just the same way as voting in person on election day. if there are issues looking at it, it's with the mail ballots and how people need to vote by mail. because the one-way in which people disenfranchise themselves most recently --

frequently in the lection is not following the mail-in ballot procedures. we have to follow them closely. if you're going to use a mail- in ballot, follow all the instructions. each state is different. if you move to any state, familiarize yourself with the procedures within your state. follow those procedures and make sure your ballot is cast properly. lots of election offices have online trackers, so you can see if your ballot has been received and accepted by election officials see you can have the added sense of security, knowing that your ballot has been received and validated by election officials properly. this is the most frequent way. every election cycle, hundreds of thousands of people have ballots discarded because they did not follow the procedures. if you're going to vote by mail, be sure that you are following all the instructions properly. >> went to those early votes

get counted? do they start counting them as they come in? do they wait until election days? do they wait until the polls close on election day? >> election officials can't count physically county who voted for who until election day. but they can do some preparation. when a male ballot comes in, usually there is on the inside of the envelope, another envelope called the security envelope. this will get separated from the larger envelope. and they will check it over to see if the signature is matching properly, other identifying information on the piece of paper matching up as we expect it should. so those sorts of preparatory procedures can be done by

election officials. it's just that the actual counting of the ballot cannot be done until election day ri itself. >> michael mcdonald, political science professor at the university of florida, thank you so much for joining us today. >> joining us now is barbara call check of george washington university, director of the institute for food safety and nutrition security. thanks for giving this your time. >> thanks for having me. >> we invited you because of this outbreak of wisteria. what happened and how was it caused? >> this outbreak is associated with boars head deli meats. it's caused by wisteria manus academies. a foodborne pathogen that can be very very serious for pregnant and postpartum women. anybody with a compromised

immune system. it grows naturally in the environment. products like hotdogs and deli meats. there is contamination in the establishment producing this product and it has caused so far nine deaths and 57 hospitalizations and over 7 million pounds of product have been recalled. >> when the stories came out about this, one of the stories you have probably seen is the boars head plants. just to show you at home, bugs, mold, mildew, how does it get to a point where those things are being found together? lt >> that's a great question. one of the questions that a lot of people in the food safety community have. in a ready to eat establishment, like the one producing that product, it can be sanitized and cleaned every

shift multiple times. it takes a long time to grow. that suggested it was not being cleaned on a regular basis and it should have been. i've read on the noncompliance reports cited by the virginia department of agriculture and consumer sciences, and i have to say i was appalled. they talked about taking the cover off one piece of equipment. it started smelling rancid. there was caked meet around the equipment and that should not happen, and these violations were going back a year, so it raises the question of where was management in the establishment? where was management at boars head and management within the regulatory agencies and why didn't they do something? >> the inspections come into play when looking at places that manufacture these products on the mobile, state or federal level. >> boars head is a federally

inspected plant because their product crosses state lines. so they fall under the jurisdiction of the u.s. department of agriculture and specifically food safety inspection service. food safety inspection service, also called fsis sometimes enters into cooperative agreements with states -- virginia is one of those states -- where they then deputize the inspectors in the state to conduct the inspections for them. and under federal inspection regulations, if you are producing these products, you have to be inspected on a daily basis, not continuous but somebody has to go out and expect it regularly. if you are slaughtering animals it has to be continuous inspections, usda inspector or a state inspector has to be to continuously but an inspector will come into the establishment. they would look at equipment, they will look at the walls, look at the coolers, they would

look at the floors, they are looking for potential problems, and the listeria, we know, is an environmental pathogen. it grows at room temperature, even cold temperatures and we know it likes to live in drains and water. one of the things in inspector would look for is condensation, is it dripping onto product? ro are there dripping pipes? leaking roof? are there drains flooding? all of those are docunt in the inspection reports from that establishment. >> one of the report that mentnswhat you said, the food and beverage institute, billy mcwilliams, a public affairs specialist said the plant remains closed until the establishment is able to demonstrate it can produce a saved product. the facility is inspected by the virginia department of agriculture and consumer services as part of the

cooperative inspection program where states provide inspection services adding that the state program must be at least equal to the usda's program and approved by the usda. >> yes and one of the questions is why wasn't the usda auditing that program? where was the breakdown? the inspector did not move the complaints up? because typically, you would after seeing 69 different instances. those go back to august 2023. these illnesses and deaths could have been prevented, but they were not. where in the regulatory process was the breakdown it's going into usda inspection database. why wasn't anybody looking at that data? i have questions for the regulatory agencies and we been

asking them. but boars head at the ultimate responsibility of making sure that they were producing safe food for consumers and they failed and we need to hold them accountable. >> if you want to ask questions about the topic of food safety, call 202-748-8000. and independence 202-748-2002. if you want to text us your comments, the questions you would ask personally, what would those questions be? >> one of the questions that many of us have is typically -- >> you can watch the rest of the program online at our website, c-span.org. we will leave it here and take you to live testimony by former google a.i. and open a.i. employees on the regulation of artificial intelligence. live coverage on c-span