cecelia ralph to chair the council of economic advisers. joined by the senior fellow heading the political reform program at new america. here to join us to talk about a new proposal calling on the increased role of the federal electiont in the process. before we get into your proposal, let me ask you about the election itself. record turnout, record participation and by the federal government's own statement, a secure election, the most secure in election history. what are some of your observations and things you found surprising? the electionest: was a very secure election by all standards. in the weeks and months leading up to the election there was a tremendous amount of litigation

and dispute over how mail-in ballots would be counted and some other issues of electioneering. following the election, there's been, as everyone is aware, tremendous amount of litigation and a fair amount of uncertainty as to how and when results would be certified. , butbeen a secure election it is an election in which there is a tremendous amount of disputation over how votes would be counted and when and whose votes would count. all of that has created tremendous fodder for all kinds of conspiracy theories about the election itself. host: your proposal with new america foundation, the headline on the piece says america needs

a new federal election agency. part of what you write is this, voting is -- as a result, most americans distrust our elections and unfortunately have had some reason for their skepticism. fair, secure and straightforward voting is the foundation of a functioning democracy, but a lethal combination of partisan politics, a long-standing neglect and sheer cheapness is because their system to fall into disrepair. to fix it we need to give american democracy infrastructure the same attention and resources we gave two other national priorities. of a federalea agency that would oversee elections. we have to understand first how elections operate in the united states. every state and local jurisdiction sets their own rules for who can register, when

they can register, this year we saw that highlighted with the arguments about when mail-in ballots should be counted and who should get a mail-in ballot. is that depending on where you live, you have different voting rules and in a country in which we have some national elections the depend of the voting rules everywhere, we wind up sharing the same present, congress and senate, all of us depending on where we live, it may be hard or easy to vote. we may live in a lopsided district or a competitive district. we may live under independent redistricting commissions, we may live in a place where it's easy to get paper ballots, we may live in a place where the election trail is not as clear

and secure. the idea is basically that we are one country and we should all vote under the same rules and everything should be fair and equal because we are all americans and we should all be treated equally. host: the problems with america's elections, all voters are not equal. you argue our elections face security challenges. voting is too complicated and federal oversight is severely lacking. let's talk about that. we have the election assistance commission is a federal agency and commission. what is their role? guest: their role is pretty limited. at this point it's mostly just to administer funds to help local administrators, to make sure everyone can vote under the help america vote act. commission that's been

pretty deadlock for a while. it doesn't really do all that much. minimal role in enforcing violations. the fundamental problem is there's just no baseline for how people should vote in this country, which is why there have been so many fights over voter suppression, voter fraud, early voting, mail-in voting. we are living in a country in which we all depend on a safe and fair national election. yet where we vote very much determines how hard it is for us to vote and creates tremendous uncertain great area of -- gray area of

litigation. --a sense it's that just creates tremendous opportunities of for grievance and for legitimacy . the foundation of any democracy is that we have elections that are free and fair and equal. everybody's vote counts equally and that is something that really seems like we don't have so much here in the united states. proposedyou see this federal agency on elections the more than just an agency that provides money and assistance for states to vote, but actually helps them with the process of voting? do some security that has gone

by -- that is done by homeland security and other agencies within the federal government 202-748-8003 >> we have this -- the commission you mention, this also federal election commission which regulates campaign-finance . it's an equal number of republicans and democrats which means it's deadlocked and does nothing and it's basically totally ineffectual. some aspect of election security overseen by different agencies and there's the voting rights violations that are enforced by the department of justice. there is this patchwork of federal agencies.

a patchwork of state and local jurisdictions and what it means is there is no one clear set of rules. but also that at the federal place that is no one oversees the election process as making national standards which congress would need to have. a useful analogy is to the environmental protection agency, which richard nixon put in place when the environment was a clear problem and we were seeing clear degradation of the environment and there were a lot of different federal agencies that have various jurisdictions over different parts of the environment and what nixon did is he put them all under one toncy with a clear mission protect our environment and then over the years, congress

strengthened the agency by giving them particular powers and putting in place particular national standards. whatnalogy works because we are seeing and have been seeing over the last several decades is a degradation of our electoral process to hyper partisanship. we've seen more and more state legislatures trying to shift the rules to benefit their party. we have seen more litigation undermining the consistency and faith in our national system of elections and we see more and more opportunistic political actors trying to say that any results that do not help them are illegitimate and, because there are so many different rules and such different incoherent enforcement. it is easy to find imbalances and inconsistencies and that

tolly undermines our ability run elections that are widely seen as fair and free. which is the foundation of democracy. host: our guest's with new america foundation, advocating for the increased federal role in running u.s. elections. do you support that? if so, the line to use 202-748-8000. if you oppose that, 202-748-8001 . you can send us a text 202-748-8003 with your thoughts. tell us your name and where you are texting from. you mentioned the ineffectiveness of the election assistance commission. you write a little more about the potential criticism of a federal agency. outrote critics could point this agency could be used for partisan advantage. that's why it must have a strong

mandate based on widely supported principles of democratic fairness as well as an empowered inspector general to monitor potential abuses. we propose an extensive vetting appointees. a bipartisan list could be put forth confirmed by the house of representatives. that is a twist right there having the house approve that. nonetheless, would you agree in these times it's hard to get people to agree on who a nonpartisan person is. agree, which is why i to ground important this agency and principles we can all agree on. free and fair elections in which all voters are treated equally in which the process is straightforward.

i think a strong inspector general is extremely important. critics have pointed out that such an agency does put a large amount of power in the federal thernment, which is why intentions of that agency is important. there are a lot of lawyers and folks who are committed to ensuring that we have an election every time we vote that and treatd free people equally. and what we see and what we have seen for many years in this country is that there plenty of local jurisdictions that have lyt treated all voters fair and equally.

there are states that have done a tremendous amount of gerrymandering. there are a lot of states that made it harder for some people to vote largely because of what party they tend to support. these behaviors and actions really undermine our collective faith in our democracy. certainly it is challenging to find people who are seen as nonpartisan. but i think there are principles we can all agree on as the foundation of a fair and free democracy and that having consistent standards everywhere is really essential to having elections that we can all agree are legitimate. host: you mentioned the environmental protection agency. give us an estimate of how big you think this sort of federal agency on elections could be.

how big, the number of personnel, the budget. it depends on visions. i don't want to put a firm number on it. it has to be a few hundred staff people probably to oversee -- ithing depending depends on how much congress really wants to allocate for security. important -- at the end of the day it might save taxpayers money because a lot of the money is spent in purchasing of election security across the

whole range of state-level jurisdictions and if we can streamline that process and make it more efficient and also all ,he money spent on litigation .hey have to pay for that host: so house democrats have proposed hr one, some of the ideas you are talking about included in that package? guest: one way to think of it is that it is an add-on to hr one. hr one sets a baseline and an important baseline for fair standards, treating all estates equally. independent redistricting commissions. basic standards for voter registrations. what the agency does is it

fortes one central hub enforcing those rules, but also helping local administrators. they've done incredible work to make this election run smoothly and fairly. often they are attacked by their own state legislatures and state governors who were trying to get them to do partisan work when they want to just administer elections fairly. i think we should see this those locallping election administrators to do the work and give them the support and resources and also helping to share best practices. hr one. be an add on to forink it is essential really putting a floor on what

should be pragmatic. host: talking about increasing federal role in federal elections. we asked if you support or oppose that. he's also the author of a new book, the case for multiparty democracy in america. we have calls waiting period upper mar brougham, maryland supporting the idea. caller: thank you for taking my call. i think this is too important for us to take a hodgepodge approach across the nation. i think like highway signs are all green and stop signs are already throughout the nation that our voting system should be one way. not done here differently than somewhere else because it does allow for things that have happened recently to come into play. i think it is too important for us to not consider that.

i know it's difficult to do something. i would take it a step further. not just offering help, but really consider all being on one page. i don't see why that would be problematic. we all want to be able to play by the same rules. , itfor those who don't causes to raised eyebrow if you want openings for confusion. i'd like to hear your remarks. have a great day. guest: thank you. i like your analogy to highway signs. another way to think about this after world war ii, we built the interstate highway system to standardize travel across the country. had one set of roads was consistent everywhere and was

also a national security issue. so in the case of a national emergency it would be easy to move resources. you could certainly draw parallels to our election system that given the password nature. it is easy to find a hole somewhere. as a national security issue it make sense to have one secure national system.

election security experts have been warning about vulnerabilities in our system. biden won and really came down to five states that were reasonably decided. you can imagine a few jurisdictions and the results could've gone a different way. because we have this very closely divided electorate in elections do come down to a very small number of seats. we have the georgia summer election. that will come down to just a few jurisdictions. -- georgia senate election. ifs also bad for our economy we have election uncertainty. it creates a tremendous uncertainty. if you care about the economy,

national security, you should care about having a clear set of standards for our elections. washington hear from with lonnie who opposes a rule. wart: -- caller: i'm a cold soldier who fought against communism and i'm going to put it like this. i was a missile tech radar communications computer whiz. i'm the guy responsible in 1985 for sending multiple packets over the mail to the pentagon. this computer situation has gotten off track. my son is a computer i.t. engineer and i know what he does and who he works for and i'm not an essay, but you guys and your computers need to go away. we need to make this a manual system. we all need to get up off our spots, go somewhere and vote. if it's a kiosk or live where everyone can see it.

no one needs to be getting in with a thumb drive or disk or anything else in this foreign mass, everybody in the country outside our country wants to be in our system. get them out. goodbye. host: any response? lonnie is right in one respect that there should be a paper trail for all ballots. providing an of opportunity to check if things are uncertain. i think this agency would require all election jurisdictions to have paper ballots which is an important security backup. require --should not depend on everything to be electronic.

to have artant federal agency in charge that every jurisdiction has a paper trail because without it, things could get screwy. mentioned thatbs paper trail that had increased from 2016 about 80% of votes cast had a paper trail compared to this year were 95% with a paper trail regardless how the vote was cast. where does this leave states in terms of states setting -- what would be left for the states to do in terms of setting their election laws, rules and policy? -- no this federal agency would only have jurisdiction over federal

elections. house, senate, president. states have a lot of local elections are governors. cities run their own election. the cities and state could still run their own elections however they want. this would concern federal elections. dealing constitutional power they would have. name this agency is setting a floor, a baseline standard of what constitutes a free and fair election. more, theyant to do would be free to do that. but it really sets the baseline of how you ensure free and fair elections so that everyone's vote is counted equally. let's hear from willie in mississippi. caller: thanks for taking my

call. i am supporting this. they need to do away with the -- i bet college and a you he wouldn't volunteer to count those votes. election they were not voting in every election. that's not what this is all about. it's all about being on the same track. in my state they do a lot of suppressing of the vote. states they have a whole entire month to early vote and they vote on weekends. you have same-day registration.

people go down to register and vote that same day. i just want people to understand, people have things to do. food andvered your your food did not get there and you were mad because i had to go and vote, how would you feel? that, with the idea we the federal government and this agency would say here's what you need to do for early voting. is that part of your proposal. that would require an act of congress to empower that agency. hr one, that there would be an enabling piece of legislation that congress would pass that would be a baseline standard in this agency would

help to implement that. and also make sure states follow the standard rules so that if you are voting in mississippi or in california, you get treated equally and your vote counts the same. let's hear from edward in cypress, texas. everyoneood morning to at the c-span team. i wanted to ask a quick question. the previous gentlemen had made soomment about not being gung ho about the electoral college. i have that same energy. specific ask very question as it pertains to gerrymandering. prettyder myself to be a bipartisan person but i wanted to ask when pertains to

gerrymandering do you believe the process is maybe a little maybeanced in that it's -- for lack of a better word, it's a little too uncontrolled. do you really believe gerrymandering should be something that is ever-changing or should be much more the consistency. redistributed and manipulated to be in favor of a specific part of the next go round. thank you and have a blessed day. topic of the gerrymandering. what some states do is they have independent redistricting commissions, which are not partisan. trying toot one party

advantage itself. of competingumber considerations in drawing districts better. an independent redistricting commission said to do a pretty good job in canada. the u.k. also has a national independent redistricting commission. so the idea is that we shouldn't let pars and legislatures draw districts in a way that unfairly advantages their party in the next election. that's like playing a game of football and whoever gets -- whoever scores a touchdown gets to decide on what rules it wants to play for the rest of the game

so the team that's good at passing says you have to pass on three of the four downs. that disadvantage is the team good at running. play sports, we have a consistent set of rules. it doesn't matter if you win, you don't get to then change the rules. in politics, if you win the election, you are in power and you get to change rules. that's been going on a long time in this country. two folks have mentioned this in a row and i think the electoral college makes no sense. never really served the role the framers expected it to. it was sort of a late summer compromise and all the framers

were sort of exhausted and couldn't agree on how to elect a president. and no other country in the world has ever looked at it and said that's a good idea. the requiresd say a constitutional amendment and throughout the history of the united states, we had numerous debates about getting rid of the electoral college going right back to 1800. , therers of arguments have been four times in which one chamber did pass a constitutional amendment to alter the electoral college only to see the other chamber not approve it. it's been something we've been trying to get rid of in some form or another for a long time and it sticks around because in one of the two chambers there's always at least one third of the representatives who think it benefits their party to keep the

electoral college. but it still makes no sense. the: you talked about parties. your new book is about the two-party system. quickly, why do you think the country would be served by having more parties rather than what we have now, essentially two ruling parties. guest: if you look at what's been going on, this hyper partisanship. you can look at it in terms of this election issue which we've been discussing. when you have two parties competing for narrow majorities. do tolittle thing you can

rig the vote in your favor becomes that much more important. and then once the other side starts doing it, you feel justified in doing it. that escalating hyper partisan warfare and it's been going on , including of areas elections. it's destroying our faith in democracy. it's become red versus blue america. when you think that half of the country is evil or dangerous because they support different party -- they support a different party, that creates a sense we just can't come together and solve the problems we need to solve. is anarty democracy alternative vision in which there are numerous parties and the coalitions are a little bit more flexible. instead of democrats trying to cross the republican stretch across the democrats, different

parties forming different coalitions and no one party thinking if only i could rig the vote in my favor. there are no permanent majorities. there's just different governing coalitions. also a two-party system forces identities andwo we know from group psychology divide people into two teams, see that face the other one as dangerous. some people might be out there watching this saying haven't we always had a two party system and why is it a problem now. there's a couple of reasons why it's become a real problem. although we've had a two party system in name. what we had for a long time are

two very loose and overlapping party labels. and a lot of different state and local parties. that created some loose jointed whohis in our party system went across the aisle because they didn't have strong identities as democrats or republicans. you could say we really had something like a four party system. as politics nationalized in the , that system collapsed into a two party system. now politics is thoroughly nationalized. very closely divided and it's divided over this question of who are we as americans. what is our national identity. america is this multiethnic

society in the most dangerous way to divide a multiethnic society is to have one party for arguing that america should be multicultural society and another party arguing that we need to go back to more traditional values. singleld have more of a identity. binaryt creates this high stakes which is incredibly dangerous. one of the narratives coming out of the selection is latino voters are not a monolith. but our party system makes them into one. ascentralizes them democrats. i think a multiparty system would allow many communities to express the diversity of even

there within communities and create a space in which everything was not zero-sum, which is destroying our democracy. in many ways that with the core of these problems. -- that was the core of these problems. i hope people engage. thety much almost all of democracies are multiparty democracies. the u.s. is an outlier. that would require electoral reform. calls withgo back to lee druckman. go ahead. caller: good morning. trumpid you think of firing chris krebs? the only one that's putting

doubt on this election is trump and his cronies and fox news. we don't need more federal role in elections. it was great,id that we did a good job. it is trump. i have republican friends and i've been a democrat my entire life. been5 years old and i've voting since i'm 21. and we never had problems. we could discuss anything. whohis piece of work trump should be tried for treason hisuse he's putting up right hand to uphold the constitution and now look what he's doing now. thoughts, they mentioned chris krebs and his statements about the security of the election. certainly trump has taken

strange, byuld say american standards, approach to the transition of power, that's putting it generously. reasonsink one of the why trump has been able to cast so much doubt on the electoral going ons because for two decades now, the republican party has been casting doubt on the fairness of the electoral process and many republican elected officials have been. you look at trust in elections for republicans and it's plummeted. arguings have also been there is tremendous voter suppression and that may be even that cost democrats the election in 2016. and had democrats lost this

election, there would be a lot of arguments on the left that somehow voter suppression or some unfair process because democrats to lose. i'm not sure. i'm pretty sure biden would have conceded. pollingif you look at , these over many years, you will see there is a lot of doubt being cast on the system and the reason for that doubt is because as i've said there are different rules everywhere and a lot of those rules are put in by partisanisan -- legislatures. and there's also tremendous litigation activity around those rules. not to defend trump in any way. i think he is a committed threat to our democracy.

but he didn't come out of nowhere. thealk about trump as supply of misinformation and conspiracy theory. market fors also a that and a market that has been created over many years. say we think we can just will get trump out of here and end this uncertainty and illegitimacy will go away. host: the president keeping up his efforts to challenge the election results with a tweet this hour saying i'm not fighting for me, i'm fighting for the 74 million people, not including the many trump ballots that were "tossed." let's go to carmen in chula vista, california. good morning.er: i'm for more federal restrictions.

there's so much room for interpretation for each state and for each county in return. seeing, we need clarity because it's causing a lot of confusion. we need to standardize each of the elections and how they should be run. people talked about the early voting. this affects a lot of poor folks. they need early voting to be open on sundays because a lot of people work six days a week. these are very small ways of repercussionsthe are not even able to be counted will. -- not even able to be counted. people are very naive in

there isn't manipulation because politics is about power and when that comes in, pretty much anything goes. i'd like to give an example in citizens votedhe to allow felons to vote. and it was overturned by trump appointed judges. thinke repercussions i florida would've gone to democrats. no doubt about it. host: thank you for the call. any further thoughts on what she had to say or thoughts on your proposal. correct that is torida voted overwhelmingly give x felons the right to vote in the state legislature overturned that.

it's something federal standards felonslarify is that x have a right to vote. they have served their time. that's the standard in most states. but again, if you live in lon, youand are an ex-fe are disenfranchised. that was something that was done by a partisan state legislature. republicans in florida thought it would help democrats if more x-felons voted. this is the funny business and partisan shenanigans that undermines our sense that our elections are on the level.

carmen's sentiments echo the concerns a lot of people in this country, the rules are rigged against them. and if were going to live in a democracy, we shouldn't feel like somehow the rules are rigged against us. host: really enjoyed the conversation this morning. thanks for being here. >> tuesday, steven mnuchin and jerome powell testify before the senate and can committee, updating the urgency measures of relief triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. watch live on tuesday, on c-span , on at c-span.org, or listen live wherever you are on the c-span radio

>> france is dealing with that second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. recently, president macron outlined how the country will ease some of its covid-19 lockdown restrictions in time for the christmas holiday season. ♪ pres. macron: fellow citizens, when on october 28 i spoke to you, i told you i would report to you on the epidemic and the decisions that would be taken some one month later. the number of positive cases of covid-19 per day has gone down substantially. it was above 60,000. last week the figure stood at 20,000 cases per day on average. after reaching 33,500 patients hospitalized on the 15th of november, moha