together to get something done that will benefit everyone. host: have you been able to find a new place to live? caller: i did. a family member had to rent it in their name so that i could live there. i am paying them a subsidized amount. i have three children. there is no way i would be able to find an apartment that i can afford. i'm just on ssi right now. i used to be a teacher. host: good luck in the weeks and months ahead it. thanks for all your calls this morning. we are back tomorrow morning at 7:00 eastern. we will take you to a discussion been hosted by the american enterprise institute looking at strengthening america's trust in

presidential election results. it's just getting started live here on c-span. >> groups filed dozens of lawsuits. come january 6, republican members of congress repeated allegations of voter fraud and they voted against accepting the electoral slate. disbelief became action. action when store -- protester stormed the u.s. capital. the controversy continues and reverberations continue. a recent blog post showed that only one quarter of republicans polled thought joe biden was legitimately elected president. if the goal is to --

representative democracy doesn't work if people refuse to accept elections. various countries where long -- young democracies can collapse. having said my say about why we are here, let's introduce the panelist. david is the executive director and founder of the center for election innovation and research. james -- they ensure that all voters can vote conveniently. daniel is a scholar and works in public opinion. he is the director of the survey center. he specializes in research, politics, culture, identity. john is a resident scholar here. he is the author of three books, two of which are on elections.

justin is a professor at stanford university department of political science. his focus is on congress, elections, social media. he published a report on the allegations of election fraud in 2020 and has published peer view articles on voter id. kevin is the founder and executive director of election reform network. he spent seven years at the democracy promotion with the national democratic institute with common cause in massachusetts. welcome to our conversation. let me pitch the first question

to daniel. what does polling tell us about the long-term and short-term trends in public trust of elections? >> thanks for the question. i appreciate the invitation to join this discussion. it's helpful to restate the problem. we are experiencing historic lows. pew and gallup have reported this for half a decade. americans believe that government does what it's right has declined. we're are looking at 50 year lows, the lowest reported score was in a poll from 2011. this is widely known that americans don't trust their government. there have been fluctuations. we have seen the confidence after september 11 terrorist

attacks. we see a little bit of resurgence now after the pandemic. there is a slight increase in confidence to do what's right. the interesting thing is this low point in support of constitutional government is associated with what they think about the administration of elections. despite concerns that americans have about the operation of government to address issues, americans have been upbeat about the functioning of the election system. gallup has said the majority say they are somewhat confident that votes will be counted accurately. we have seen some fluctuation. the lowest reported support that gallup has reported is 59% as recently as 2020.

there is a significant decline over that time. we started at three quarters being confident in how elections are ministered. that is down to 59%. the number of americans who say they are very confident in how elections are run it, that has declined as well. about one out of five say they are very confident. the interesting thing about this and what's happened recently is the difference in the administration of elections didn't used to be a partisan affair. there weren't differences between what democrats and republicans thought about elections until recently. looking at some gallup data, we have seen ebbs and about who trusts elections.

given how evenly the two parties have meshed, no one side complains a series of unbroken victories. the pendulum swings back and forth. there were no consistent winners or losers. the losers felt a little lest trustful of the system. that shifted significantly when their side one. that might be changing. in the weeks after the election, a number of different polling organizations tracked week by week results of public confidence in elections. up until the votes were cast, they were roughly parallel in terms of how much support they had for the balance being counted accurately. it mutely following the election, the polling showed a

three point drop in republican confidence elections. it is fair to say we don't have a general problem with confidence. we have a specific problem with republican confidence in the administration of elections. 2020 a turning point. another poll showed 55% of republicans believe the election was stolen. donald trump is really the real winner of the election. there is a little bit of good news and all of this. although we see significant challenges in terms of how confident americans are, at the local level people seem to be much more confident in how their voting system is running. among republicans, both democrats and republicans feel confident in their local precincts.

gallup showed that nearly 80% of americans say that where they are voting, things were counted accurately. >> thank you very much. next question for profession -- just in. you studied the allegations about fraud in the 2020 presidential election. can you tell us about the sorts of fraud we talked about? >> absolute. thank having me for this important discussion. just to think about the broad types of fraud claims out there, there are three buckets. the first is there were illegal rule changes made, changes made without the consent of state legislatures and as a result, that is tree bearing poisonous

fruit. everything is somehow illegal. the second claims is that there was some amount of illegal votes being cast. the most often claims is there are dead people voting. or people have moved out of the state and are voting in the state where they are no longer allowed to vote. the final bucket of claims is about the counting of the votes. this could be allegations about the way voting machines operate or how election administrators inserted ballots that were not the jetta met lee cast. -- legitimately cast. another way that they look for statistical signals about the election.

there is some deviation from the past. there is clear evidence that something is amiss and the public should understand there is more fraud happening. we take these claims very seriously. we try to identify as many of these claims as we could. we try to assess those claims. we made the assessment of the claims is that they failed in one of two ways. the first way that some of these claims fail as they've identified some pattern, the pattern is not surprising. it doesn't provide the deviation one might suspect. perhaps the issue that comes up most when i discussed this with people. i played poker with someone who is an election skeptic. he wanted to bring up bellwether counties.

it is quite surprising that joe biden won the election by securing only one of 19 the weather counties. i mean a county that had correctly voted along with the winner of the presidential election in 1980. donald trump went 18 of them. this on its face is surprising. it fails in a couple of ways. to better understand what's going on with dynamics across counties, what we've seen over the last 40 years his democratic support is concentrated in small urban counties. publican support is concentrated in a larger number of more rural counties. democrats win presidential elections by winning fewer counties and republicans. it's not surprising that joe biden didn't when a lot of counties. what happened with bellwether counties is 2016 they swung very hard toward donald trump.

you see that there was a high proportion of the vote in those counties. if you were to run a simple model, i would predict the democratic vote shares using the 2016 vote share. now i'm going to make a production about who's going to win that county. what we find is we would expect joe biden to win 1.2 of those counties. his performances in line with normal state of affairs across other counties. we've done that prediction in a number of ways. just briefly, there is a related claim that received the most attention as part of the texas lawsuit that joe biden had a one and a quadrille you and chance of winning the election. that was based on two types of analyses. one looks at the deviation of

overturns from georgia 2016 to georgia 2020. joe biden had a different vote shares in hillary clinton. we identify a number of statistical issues in the way that was done. even if we correct those things, it's not surprising that things change from one election to the next. we showed that viewership in the super bowl from 2016 to 2020 changed drastically. we would find a similar likelihood of those two super bowl audiences being the same. the world has changed. the second broad pattern that we discussed in our analysis or the second where the claims fail is because the pattern identified isn't true. one example is a high-profile

study that was released at the end of 2020 that made the claim that there was clear evidence that there was a specific -- suspiciously high absentee voting -- absentee voting for joe biden. we dove into that claim and looked at the data. this was an artifact of the way the data were entered in the spreadsheet. when you corrected that, there was no evidence of over performance. this pattern was not true with claims on dominion machines. it is more conspiratorial about correlations between the number of ballots in a state. these simply aren't true. there is the result of some basic error. we are happy to keep investigating these claims. as they come up, we will keep looking at them. as of right now, the claims have

failed for these two reasons. they are either not true or there is not a deviation. >> thank you for that. john, based on what we've heard so far, it sounds like on the political right there is a disconnection of sorts, this trust is high. actual proven evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential contest is low. certainly evidence that there was widespread fraud that could tip the scales one way or the other has it been proven. do you have insights on how we can understand and explain the diversions? >> thanks. thank you to dan and justin. i want to bring back something dan brought up. i think there are all sorts of

reasons we should be unhappy with the fact that election results are not being accepted, that people are doubting the legitimacy of people who are in office. i do think there is a strong component of this lower measures of trust how your vote was counted, even more broadly about how the election went, feeling good about the results and losers feeling bad. those numbers flipped. if donald trump had won the election in 2020, the numbers would look different. that's not to say there is some evidence that reaction on the republican side has been stronger, to say it's a long-term trend. i do think it's a difficult problem to say we are going to

up voter confidence when a lot of the movements doesn't move as much as the movement between the parties and there is doubt. this is a natural phenomenon as well. the losers are upset for a while. i know we are going to get to potential solutions. i don't want to get there too soon. i am cautious that there are solutions. where i think we are going to have a hard time is the idea that we are just going to debunk all election claims that are not true and everyone is going to believe that. i am all for debunking. that is a good enterprise for people across the political spectrum. some of it is not going well. the arizona audit by a lot of measures is not going to be helpful for republicans.

any postelection audit like that is going to be criticized by the other side. it's hard for it to persuade people, even if was run better than it has been run. there are things you could do that would limit some of the uncertainty. i don't guess going to change every mind in the book. i do think making elections more transparent or resolved at an earlier stage, we can get to that in the second round of questions, would be helpful. it's a difficult problem. there is deep distrust in the other side and different understandings of what's appropriate and how we should run elections. you sometimes hear there was not a lot of voter fraud. that's true in many ways. certainly in a limited sense.

i think that claim gets expanded to say let's not think about election integrity issues. that's not think about voting rolls or the way we count or transparency of observers or the things that do get it some of those issues. we have a difference of opinion on how to vote on the right and left. we say there isn't a lot of fraud, that is true in one sense. it is dismissive of some of the concerns the parties are divided on it. >> thank you. let me turn to you now. we've been focusing our conversation pretty heavily on the political right and its confidence in the election. we have also seen election result the nihilism on the

political -- denialism on the left. there is the complaint of the 2018 georgia gubernatorial election was stolen from stacy abrams. how widespread is election result denial on the left? where is it coming from? is it perennial? is it getting higher or lower? >> thanks for allowing me to join this great panel. it's really remarkable. we appear to live in a country that is divided as we could be. tens of millions of people can't process the idea that their candidate might have lost in a

country that is so closely divided. this is something that is not unique to the right. there have been instances going back to 2005 with allegations unsupported by evidence that voting machines in ohio had flipped 120,000 four then president bush from john kerry. there were allegations in 2016 of voting machine issues that led to donald trump winning the election. the jill stein campaign paid for recounts in michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania. there have been other instances where candidates have denied that they lost or raised questions. i want to state that this is not a moral equivalence.

those efforts were generally not supported with rare exceptions by john kerry. hillary clinton did not support questions about election losses. the exception we see now is far greater on the extreme right of election denial. it is being fueled by former president trump, who use the platform of the white house to claim rigging before the election ever happen. it goes back to august or earlier when he preceded his supporters with the idea that the election was going to be stolen and invested in the idea that he was going to delegitimize the election, the exercise of democracy. one of the things that is important, i like justin's three

buckets of classifications election denial claims. there is the issues of the rules changing. this sometimes comes up in other collections, not to the extent we saw this year. what we saw in 2020 was there were rules changed because of covid. sometimes by republicans, sometimes by democrats. in every case, the campaigns and parties were well aware of the chant -- changes. they chose to challenge some, they chose not to challenge some. in pennsylvania, the pennsylvania supreme court raised the fact that they ruled that postmarked ballots in pennsylvania could be received as long as they were postmarked by election day could reseat -- come up to three days after election day. at the same time, the pennsylvania supreme court ruled

that any ballot was not sealed within inner secrecy sleeve was not to be counted. that was a decision democrats did not like. ultimately, the biden campaign and the democrats decided not to appeal. the u.s. supreme court did not find a federal question. this was true in many states. the texas decision to limit drop boxes to only one in harris county, that was a decision democrats didn't like. we have a system where you respect the rule of law. the rule of law his plate out. by november 3, we knew the rules of the game. we all knew the rules of the game. similarly with legal votes, we have a system right now where our voter lists make sure the

votes are cast by legal voters. it's better than it has ever been. our voter lists are more accurate than ever before thanks to electronic registration, which 30 states belong to. that is not really as much of a concern. the concern that is similar is this vote counting vote machine concerned, which we have seen the left embrace in some cases. now we see the right embrace it to a much larger degree. what i think we have to take note of is objectively speaking it, when dhs and others came out and said this was the most secure election in american history, that is 100% accurate. we went through the most secure transparent election in american history. we had more paper ballots than

ever before. 95% of all voters cast their ballots on paper. we had more audits of that paper than ever before in almost all of the battleground states. he had multiple audits in arizona and week counted every single paper ballot in georgia three different times, three different ways, once by hand. the voting machines had no impact on that. every one of those confirmed the results. georgia did not have paper ballots in 2016. it was the first in 20 years. we saw more pre-election litigation than ever before the clarified the rules. some things the democrats liked, some things that republicans like. we saw mower -- more postelection litigation. we were very successful in 2020.

that's why some of the denial is so concerning. i want to make a point about something john said. we are seeing the election denial, it's normal to see some of that the side of the losing candidate. we are seeing something different right now. it is exceptionally so on the side of the losing candidate in the presidential race despite republicans doing well down ballot. because it is so disproportionate, the delegitimization of mail-in ballots or vote counting, it only affects republicans and not independence or democrats to the same degree. we see a disastrous result for republicans, that the georgia senate runoff was the harbinger. we saw lower turnout in areas where republicans were revoking

-- voting because of the and a chill -- election denial. those of the kind of things. we have seen this on the left, but we see on the right now is at a very different scale than anything we've ever seen before. >> thank you. let me turn to kevin johnson. this phenomenon of election results denialism, is it caused by features of the election system? you have worked overseas. are there things we do here that invite distrust? >> thank you. it's a good question to talk about the structural side. thank you for including me in this panel. it's great to hear with the others have had to say. there are a couple of structural pieces.

i do want to echo what you said in your intro and what david mentioned. those things don't really explain. the primary driver of what we've seen is really about individual malfeasance. the willingness to tolerate disrespect for the rule of law that is at eight new level. there are a couple of structural things to talk about. i think the key issue in comparison with other countries is how election disputes are resolved. if you look at countries with a national election, they have a national judicial body it with the responsibility of making a decision on who won a close election. that makes clarity from the beginning, what's going to happen if it is close. that puts the decision in the hands of judges who are

positioned to weigh the evidence and come up with a decision. that -- our case is ambiguous. it is ambiguous at the national level. you ran a great panel on this issue last week. that uncertainty in a way leads us to pre-disputed elections as bad luck or a strike of lightning. the are not prepared for. it's like what do we do now? a democracy should be measured by how well it handles those elections. the analogy of building a vessel for the waitress weather, not average weather. election should be designed to deal with the toughest challenge they will face. there is a 2010 survey, if the election for governor in your

state was close, the you think it could be resolved fairly? only 38% say yes. 30% say they don't know. there is so much lack of familiarity in the population about what the mechanics are. take a country that has a tribunal, everyone knows. i would take that a primary issue. the second issue addresses distrust on the left. this is one we have to keep in mind. the electoral college. a significant percent of the population believes -- doubts it because it doubts the principle that the candidate with the most votes should win. if you go back, it's a fantastic example in which the way leaders back to the founding fathers of point out the flaws in the electoral college and tried to

change it. it endures because we have a high amendment hurdle. one side could benefit from the distortions. the risks are many and manifest. 2020 added an additional risk, faithless legislature risk. we are seeing state legislatures position themselves to able to declare an election failed and take back the right to name the electors. that's a dangerous trend. the problem is it becomes a binary. it is assuming that you either support national popular vote established by an amendment or you defend the status quo. i would argue both positions are risky for our country. there are intermediate solutions that maintain the federalist basis of the electoral college

in the constitution, but prevents it from being violated. the last thing i would mention briefly is the absence of the fairness doctrine. media had the right to reflect the obligation by balancing both sides. the technical context for that change as we go from the internet. there ought to be a way to put that idea of public responsibility back in via companies. we talked before the show started, david throughout the anger industrial complex. it is just enormous. companies are minting money by making people angry. that is fueling what is going on. there are issues about how we could curtail that. it is something we should keep on the table.

>> thank you. we are a little over halfway through our discussion. at this point, i would like to remind viewers to please give your questions. you can email them or send them to us on twitter. let's talk about ways the public trust might be bolstered. we have heard some comments that it won't be easy. let's talk about it anyway. let us speak with our public opinion expert. could you talk to us a little bit about the ways public opinion is shaped and tie that in with whether those factors can in some way be drawn upon to

bolster a presidential election results. >> right. i don't have a lot to say about solutions. i think we can look at some of the perceptions among democrats and republicans to understand the nature of these challenges. first off, there is a lack of civic education. because our election laws are varied and complex, there is a lot of lack of knowledge among the rules, who can vote or who can't vote. a study was released the couple of years ago that found half of americans were not sure if you could vote if you were late in paying your taxes. a similar number said if you had

an outstanding utility bill or rent. 60% of americans said they were not sure their state allowed them to vote if they didn't have a permanent address. it's not just rules about who can vote or can't, it's about when you are allowed to vote. there is a lot of confusion. of people living in states with early voting, only two thirds correctly identify their state as a place were you can vote before election day. among people who live places without early voting, close to half said they weren't sure if they could vote before election day. a lack of knowledge about voting rules is significant. another thing i thought was notable in the same study is the voting reforms that are often discussed, they are incredibly

popular. people who have been convicted of felonies and serve their terms, whether they should have their voting rights reinstated. the majority of americans support that. the majority support same-day registration and believe in automatic registration. you should be automatically registered to vote. these are largely policies with bipartisan support. what makes -- making election day and national holiday, that enjoys widespread bipartisan support. on the others, government issued ids mandatory for voting, that enjoys support by the majority of democrats and republicans. it is a bipartisan support. the other thing i thought was

interesting, the idea of mandatory voting. i'm not saying there is any chance this is going to happen in the u.s. half of americans believe they would support editorial voting. it's lower in places like germany and france. it is significant that 51% support this idea. when it comes to understanding the sources of distrust, a couple of things are worth mentioning. a number of the panelists alluded to this. the rise of polarization is playing a role. we have gotten to a place with the other side winning is perceived as the end of the world. the worst outcome. it's going to be a threat to democracy if the other side maintains control. i think that is incredibly detrimental. it leads to people being heavily

invested in the outcome. they can't accept the other side winning an election. the other thing is political leadership. because the system is so complex, people rely on media and political leaders to help them make sense of whether a contest was fair, reticulated among the losers. if your candidate lost, you need to hear from the candidate to say the election was fair. the election system worked as it was supposed to. the losing side is not hearing that from political leaders. that undermines support and sows mistrust. the goal should not be to running flawless process.

it should be open and transparent. the last thing i will say, the importance of gracious losers. we talk about the importance of winning elections. when it comes to losing elections, the concession speech is really important. it allows for a coming together. it allows for both sides to participate in the peaceful transfer of power. it may not have been perfect, but it was run well. trump didn't give a concession speech to bring people together. even after became clear that he lost. he sowed doubts about the outcome.

it marked a first in modern election history. the last thing i will note, political segregation and media bubbles. a lot of my work focuses on the idea that people around us, our friends and family, they influence the information we have and what we know. we are seeing among democrats and republicans an increasing number of people who only have friends and family that reflect their political position. they are surrounded by people who share their political leafs and that leads to the adoption of extreme attitudes. it becomes much more easy to retain these false ideas because no one is challenging you.

when i think about some of the sources of misinformation and the lack of confidence, that is something we need to pay attention to. >> the bully pulpit and its ability to establish opinions either for or against can't be understated. one wonders what would've happened in 1960 if richard nixon had said he was robbed and did not accept the results. let me move on with a question for justin. this is something daniel alluded to. conservatives often turn to bolstering voter id requirements, there is a lot of public support or it generally. you have written about this.

give us your take on voter id. is it good policy? should we be looking to something else? >> just the quick answer, there doesn't seem to be good evidence that imposing an id requirement leads to a boost in trust in elections. generally, i can't think of a policy with a bigger disconnect between the discourse around it and its effect. if you look to the left, it's portrayed as this imposition that is going to create hurdles for many people vote and result in hurting voter turnout. if you look at the literature, that is not the case. time and again, research paper says estimated a null or a

small. a paper that focuses on north carolina and voter id law, we find that 3000 votes were deterred in the primary election. there was some confusion after the law was removed. 5000 were deterred in the general election. these are small numbers of voters. what's going on here, the first thing is many people have identification, 98% of registered voters have identification. among the people who don't, these are individuals who turnout a low rate. even if you impose these hurdles, you are not deterring people who would've turned out.

we tend to find very few effects on turnout. as i alluded to, it isn't as if when these laws are imposed we see the returns that the right portrays they might have. one claim is that there are lower instances of fraud. in a recent paper, there doesn't seem to be a decrease in fraud claims. other scholars have shown there doesn't seem to be trust after they are put in place. i think we are left with an interesting policy discussion. there is a view that voter identification laws make sense. if you talk to everyday people, maybe it make sense to show your id when you vote.

because of the rhetoric and the anger industrial complex, it's very difficult to convey that intuition to people on the left. stepping back from that, if there are 2000 voters turned, it's not getting the return we wanted to have. maybe that is not a good idea to turn away those 2000 voters. we should look elsewhere. it doesn't seem like voter id laws we the place where we are going to get people to buy -- by into the veracity of elections. >> thank you much. david, let's hear from you. what policies would you favor to strengthen public trust elections?

>> thanks. first of all, i tend to be an optimist about things generally. before the election, even during covid, i was very confident and said so publicly that the election would be run very well. that was correct. the election was run very well given the challenges that election officials faced. i am less optimistic today than i've ever been. i am pretty pessimistic right now. i worry quite a great deal. as was mentioned, i am going to regret coining this term, the anger industrial complex, the livelihood, they have become wealthy by pushing anger and

division and allies. they are drifting off the sincere disappointment of people who voted for the losing candidate. that really disturbs me. you see the people who are doing the right thing, the people who are performing their jobs impeccably well, people like secretary of state raffensperger in georgia, al schmidt in philadelphia, these are all republicans. they are being attacked and threatened, we see more physical threats against election officials and their families than ever before. that is kind of the side of it. there are some solutions. so many of alluded to this. justin made this point well. the idea of increased access

with something that was perceived to be only on the left. increased integrity was only on the right. for those of us who work with election officials, those are not only not in opposition, they are complementary in most cases. when you look at policy, you can come up with policies that increase integrity while also making sure that eligible voters are not excluded from the process or don't face barriers they shouldn't have to face. those are unifying themes among election officials from the most conservative to the most liberal. i do think one possible solution is to create a floor for election policy. i kind of think of it is taking some things off the table. there -- they are so fun to mill

to infecting democracy. things like the idea that we should have access to mail and or early voting. those are good for access and voters find them convenient. they are a key aspect of election integrity. the more alice cast early and by mail, the more they serve as an early warning system for potential malfunctions and technology or fraud or cyber interference in the process. all of those things can be discovered well before the polls close. in 2020, we were successful that. over 100 early or mail votes were cast. that was far away the most we ever had. that made our system have a lot of integrity. there might be some provisions in their that respond to

legitimate concerns associate with the right, like election day receipt of ballots, no more ballots come in and after election day. that is the law in the vast majority of states. ballots must be in by election day. drop boxes help with that integrity. people who wait for the last minute can deliver them directly to election officials. i think there is an aspect of aggressive transparency that can be included. election officials like aggressive transparency. there were a lot of concerns about observers not being allowed into locations. those were false. they were in every vote counting location and polling places. the campaigns had plenty of

opportunity. we can enshrine that further into law to make sure poll watchers with the campaigns or parties should be allowed to observe those processes as they go. lastly, a lot of this derives from concern that the voter lists aren't accurate. voter lists must reflect both all eligible voters and only eligible voters. i'm not only talking about fraud. the biggest challenge with voter lists is the fact of mobility. people move a lot. one third of all americans move within four years. they don't think about changing their registration until right before the election. that makes it difficult for election officials. one of the great things that has happened in recent years, the

developer of something called the electronic registration information center. people can check it out. it's a nonprofit that i led the effort to create. states can voluntarily join. it is now up to 30 states. more states will be joining this year. it helps states identify when people move in when they might have an eligible voter that is not registered yet. it helps them get eligible voters on the list and helps them identify people who might have moved. because of that, two thirds of all voters live in a state that is a member of eric, we have the most accurate voter lists we've ever had. we will have more accurate lists in 2022 and 2024.

keeping those lists clean and accurate, it's an aspect of integrity and access. it's important because we just saw an election where the losing candidate used perceived differences between the states to try and leverage the idea that voters couldn't trust the results in states with they didn't like the outcome. if you look at ohio, georgia, florida, they are almost identical. widespread early voting, drop boxes, election day voting, paper ballots. the only difference between ohio and florida and georgia is the outcome. that's why we see the attempts to leverage these perceived differences to create distrust among the electorate. i think there is a role in creating a floor at the federal level to lessen that impact. >> thank you for that.

kevin johnson, same question. what policies do you support? do you think the left and right can agree? >> there has been a lot of progress in the professionalism of our administration. that should be something we build on. one way is to help election officials do more. survey show local election officials are the most trusted sources of information. other survey show they want to do more voter education and don't have the resources. there should be more funding. there should be more money for election officials, some federal to support voter education.

you need voters to understand how it works. how results are determined and how it is confirmed. suggestion to, the threats against officials are outrageous. we need to elevate that position to wait frontline workers were elevated during the pandemic. these are critical supporters of our most important infrastructure. if people are talking about a provision to criminalize harassment of election officials. that is worth thinking about at the congressional level. i think we need this notion of the respect for the institution. when officeholders take an oath, they reference god. candidates should treat candidacy with a solemnity and

respect. whether that's an oath i'm not sure. you should not be a candidate if you do not declare your willingness to abide by the rule of law as regards the results of the election. maybe we can make a candidate oath. candidates should state provisions for the filing of papers that could include your concession speech. you file it in advance so it's clear you are prepared. presidential debates asked the question, do you plan to accept the results? this is the rule of law at its most essential. it needs to be respected that way. i mentioned the electoral count act. a lot of work needs to be done there. it looks like there mayit may wl n

progress. we were talking into thousand one about the 2000 election, in 2000 about 2004 -- in 2005 about 2004. the secretary of the united states was a formal member of the presidential campaign of the winning side, and there is evidence that individuals put their thumbs on the scale, not determinative, perhaps, but certainly not the neutral role a democracy should expect from its leading state election officials, so there are many secretaries of state who rise above the structural limitations of a position that is inherently partisan. that's a risk factor. it is increasingly a risk factor now that we have candidates who

are explicit result in iron and who may well -- result denier and who may well be running in swing states in 2024, so we need to think about how we create election leadership that is independent and impartial and give them more discretion over the interpretation of the results. get legislators to back off and the policy setting, not doing the micromanaging they have been doing recently. david: let me put the question to you, john. you have a deep knowledge of the long history of american elections and how they are often rough and tumble events. the politics can be pretty nasty are there. all that in mind, are there policies that you see some hope in in terms of trying to strengthen public trust in elections question mark -- in

elections? are there things we might learn from the past. >> i think these problems are deep and involve winners and losers and policies of election administration will not be the sole answer, but there is a fair amount we can do within the system that would limit the field of conflict and people feel more confident that elections are resolved more quickly and more accurately. david becker's list, i come at it from a different way, which might be helpful, because i think right and left have to think about these issues. the issue that i think always should be mentioned is voter registration. david is right. we have come a long way on voter registration since 2000 because of reforms the states have

made, reforms of the voting rights act. david referred to the eric system, a great system for states to share information with each other because we don't have nationalists, but more needs to be done and that gets politicized by the terminology we use, but broadly speaking, there's a lot of work to be done where we can build lists that people feel like our as comprehensive as can be but also as accurate as can be. there's that -- that underlies a lot in terms of voter turnout. if there any gains to be made, that might be an area where we look. there are other areas. david mentioned transparency. i guess i will in -- i will agree in part with kevin and disagree in part. a lot of the world has unitary systems, with judges that can

make decisions unilaterally, but a lot of what we do in our system is based on transparency of both parties watch each other. we see that in polling places, where there are republican and democratic watchers. there are some issues as to far how far those washers can go -- those watchers can do in what they are supposed to do. i don't think this changes the results, but new procedures in other areas, you know, we haven't thought through where some of those observers are, so i am more willing to double down on let's look at the processes we have in place, make sure we have parties watch each other. sure, their -- sure, there can be cameras. it is easy to be dismissed

because trump and others are making a point of specific allegations. it is an important thing we should move forward on. the stability of elections. here, david mentioned the huge increase in election litigation, both since 2000, certainly, at another increase in this election. that's also good to a certain extent, but i do think we have seen the supreme court and its personnel principle -- -- and its purcell principle making people more skeptical. elections are longer now with mail-in ballots. changing the rules, change in procedures, close to the election is very undemocratic, it confuses voters. obviously, there are some

emergencies and there is a question as to what our emergencies. if something happens on election night, maybe a court will step in, but that's controversial. courts, perhaps even expanding into state court decisions and executive decisions, but let's keep it as stable as possible during the election period and resolve our disputes earlier on. that would be helpful. there are challenges on the democratic side in this case. i have talked to some democratic election lawyers. they are split on these issues, but some really even argue their perspective, the democratic party's perspective. it may be helpful to make changes to elections. the question is voter confusion, legitimacy. others are problematic. counting. counting with some speed. david mentioned this. there are a lot of factors emphasized both by the left and

right, but i do think there has been a trend towards less of the vote coming in on or near election night. broadly speaking, that's caused by a lot more voting by mail, more provisional ballots, and specifically, in some cases, some states, colorado for example, it is possible, they do it very well in colorado, where you can have mail in voting and yet get the ballots in by election day and counted quickly. we heard about officials counting absentee ballots, mail ballots. i favor being able to count them . there are states you have to resolve, but that would be helpful -- there are issues you have to resolve, but that would be helpful. but moving toward a system where ballots are completely kinda by election day would be --

completely counted by election day would be helpful. when you have states that are not finished by election night, people ask questions. where are the votes? where are they coming from? so be better about counting votes, getting them counted quickly, and better accounting for the ballots counted slightly after election day. it could be helpful to people and, to some extent, address their concerns that there might be something going on. a couple more things with accounting -- with the counting. we haven't mentioned audits. the arizona audit. i think that is going well, but we certainly have moved towards things like risk limiting audits. it is a very specific type of audit for a specific purpose, to efficiently assess whether votes were counted as cast, but broadly speaking, audits, or

even post election looks, may be brought out in a much more official way than now, which would not affect the results. those could be good things. i mentioned kevin's point about election judges. i agree with him on this point. our judges are not election specialists. many countries have election courts. states do that to some extent. more of that would be helpful, and states being able to train their judges to look at these things, or do after looks that don't affect election results, where judges who are more serious, trained and focused on these issues look. that's important. i will quickly mixture -- quickly mention the electoral college. the electoral count out. things haven't gone that well in a number of ways when thinking about the machinery of the electoral college after the

electors cast their votes in december. i am not sure we can lock all that down by changing the electoral count act, but one big principal, and this would apply -- one big principle, which would apply to democrats and republicans, is that once the electors cast their electoral votes, there is not much more to be said in the states after that. that does not mean congress does not sometimes have a role in asking, well, questions about their votes in some extreme cases. but for the most part, we need to resolve elections quickly, by the time the electors vote, put those electors in place, and those sort of results we really shouldn't be going behind. kevin: all right, john. thank you very much.

let's move to the audience q and a portion of the program. we have about 20 minutes left here and we have a number of questions that have come in. let me put this one out there first. an audience member asks a question. "can we assume that if voting was only in person with picture id at one's designated precinct on serial numbered paper ballots with counting to begin immediately after closing the polls and not stopping that recounts would be easy and we could achieve the desired confidence and integrity of the voting process?" you would like to take a crack at this one, i see. go ahead. >> that's an excellent way to yield much more distrust, because what is going to happen is many more voters are going to have difficulty voting. people have to vote by mail in

every state. there are some voters who have to vote by mail even with an excuse. there are overseas voters with ballots coming in sometimes days and weeks later. there are provisional ballots -- john mentioned this -- they have to be reviewed and adjudicated. the more you concentrate voting in a single location and point in time the longer counting will take, the more uncertainty will creep into that period of time, and what we know is the solution that works for the best integrity, putting aside the de legitimization, of elections, is what states like ohio and florida have done, implement measures that republican secretaries of state in republican states have done, allow for preprocessing of ballots before election day, and then, if you noticed, florida

and ohio in particular had results almost immediately. the only reason georgia didn't is when you have a very close margin, the small number of ballots that need to be reviewed, like provisional ballots, like military and overseas ballots, that can lead to some extension of time, but overall, the way to magnify integrity is spread it out over a longer time rather than a 12 hour period. >> i agree with you. i have been in favor of large-scale voting by mail for a long time. decentralization of elections, some states are going that way. the trend has been away from voting on election day both generally and certainly after the last election. i don't think we are going to have a unitary system of voting, that we are going to have all states moving to vote by mail,

so i think david is right that i am in favor of voting in person early over, mail voting -- over mail voting, but states can have an enormous amount of mail voting and early voting. i don't think that's the future. we are down to six or seven states that were doing a lot of voting on election day, but i do think that the set of processes for even states like colorado, which does a lot of things like voting by mail, and yet trying to get those ballots in by election day, however one does that, is important, because they can come up with results pretty quickly because most of their system takes place by election day. that is the important point. kevin: all right. thank you. there's a number of questions on

the electoral college reform as a vehicle for improving trust and understanding of elections. i will lump them all together. a number of members have suggestions about how the electoral college could be reformed without scrapping it in a way that would make it more understandable to the public and bolster trust. who would like to take a stab? >> i will take a crack at that. you have to say upfront that electoral college reform is always going to be difficult. it is in the constitution and, primarily, the changes that are needed require an amendment process. that said, what we have been developing along with other groups i think has the potential of creating a middle ground, and that policy is two changes

basically. the first is that states change from actual human electors who cast one vote to casting electoral votes that can be expressed in decimal form. the second stage is that each state is required to give electoral votes to the top two candidates proportionally. this follows on or modifies an amendment that passed the senate in 1850 with two thirds support and does a couple of things. it means swing states don't dominate. it makes every state matter. it effectively makes it impossible for the popular vote winner to lose. and it makes it truly a national election, but at the same time, it protects a lot of what the right ones to see -- what the right wants to see, protection

of state level management of elections, and proportional representation. it takes a lot of work, but there's something for both sides and it would fix a lot of what is wrong with what we have. kevin: thank you. ok. more questions coming in. this one is a two fold question from justin. a member of the audience asks can you comment on the dozens of examples of election counters who reported witnessing problems of double and triple counting ballots for democratic votes and, more generally, these reports, individual reports, with the internet, can spread particularly quickly about not only the fraud question but the public perception that can

spread very quickly. what should we do about it? you want to take that, justin? justin: yeah. an interesting question, and it builds on a thing that is commonly cited when you hear people express skepticism about the election. ok, even if there is not the statistical evidence, there are thousands of pages of affidavits from people who worked the elections who are making claims about the process, something untoward. we are analyzing a bunch of those now to better understand the complaints made. one impact we see here is that ballots are put through the machine two or three times. of course, if you read -- sometimes he put it through the machine multiple times -- you put it through the machine multiple times if the machine jams. a misunderstanding among workers

about how the ballot is processed. another misunderstanding in the arizona art it is you have -- arizona -- in the arizona audit is you have workers who, in the presence of both parties, transcribe the legitimate vote of the ballot onto a new ballot to make sure it is counted correctly. the third claim is sort of the vague claim made that it looks like there is something weird happening. so there was the allegation about votes being delivered to different places, delivery truck drivers or other instances where coal workers said there -- where poll workers said there was something odd they couldn't understand. it is impossible to stop these sorts of rumors from spreading. the best way to combat them is to combat them, make easily

available information available about how elections are administered. it is impossible to stop these conspiracies once they are out there. that's why it is all the more important to have candidates endorsed the results of the election. -- endorse the results of the election. it is difficult to unring the bell about questioning the results of the election, because people will believe what they want. >> think of georgia. two senate runoff elections, extremely consequential for the republican party, and no one is talking about them. no one is talking about why the republican senators lost in georgia. just emphasize the good faith,

statesmanship, leadership as a key factor in this work. >> one quick comment. i have read a lot of these affidavits. what you see when you read these affidavits is they are either false, and i am not attributing a motive to the people who have written them, or the people do not know what they are watching. they are unfamiliar with the process and that unfamiliarity has been leveraged by election denier took the tray something as being wrong -- denier to portray something as being wrong. every ballot is tied to a registration record in every case, and the fact that ballots are serial-numbered, and you have to be a voter on the record to get a ballot, at a ballot can really be counted once in every tabulation. the best thing to do

for every person is volunteered to be a poll worker. they see it intuitively, get to know it, if they are experienced, and they don't make these claims. there's a reason that governor kemp, who used to be secretary of state, duncan, raffensperger, republican election officials and michigan -- officials in michigan, in arizona, can testify to the fact that these are mistaken claims at best and outright false at worst. the best way to know that is to get inside the process. once you do, you see the checks and balances in place and the reason my fraud is extremely rare and we can be confident in results. >> i don't think david meant to say this, but it is unclear a little. an individual ballot can be traced back to an individual on the registration list.

what you meant is a universal ballot is accounted for, but -- >> disconnected. a ballot can only begotten by a registered -- can only be gotten by a registered voter and what is on the ballot can lead be counted once, but there is a disconnect. you cannot trace the ballot back to who used it to preserve secrecy. an important distinction. >> an audience question on the issue of perception versus reality. there are many well intended americans who saw things on the internet that were alarming, frightening to them, raising questions to their mind about the integrity of the way the election was covered. we had an awful lot of fact checking going on, a lot of effort.

it is not clear how much utility that had. so a broader question about public opinion. and you can chime in on this. what stuff is out there that's believable? are there ways that politicians, election administrators, others, can somehow address this without putting people off, without hardening attitudes and creating a camp of believers versus -- creating a camp of believers versus disbelievers. >> ideally you would have a place where facts are presented in the clear and evenhanded way. that is what you want. the media doesn't operate like

that and americans don't consume media like that either. there is evidence that americans now choose the media outlets or personalities that reflect their political predispositions, so it is really hard to break through because you are already primed to think there is potential fraud and, you know, your friends or neighbors are saying i saw last night on msnbc or fox news that this looked peculiar and i think on the leadership side we talked about the rules of political leaders and media elites, but the whole idea of just raising questions is particularly pernicious, because what you are doing is undermining confidence in the system, because these questions are for the most part unanswerable and are supposed to be that way, so that's a critical concern. the other thing i think and, you

know, if our goal is to take some of the heat out of these discussions and depoliticize them, one thing you see in polling, and you have seen it for a while, so it has become conventional wisdom, which is that when more people vote, it favors the democrats, and when fewer vote, it favors republicans, and that is not really the case. as we see a real alignment -- a realignment of white blue-collar workers to the republican party, that's less true, so now republicans are less likely to want to prioritize more people voting than they were even just a few years ago. >> thank you. thank you. we are down to less than four minutes left, so we will have one more audience question, a

little bit of a speed around. we touched on this a little bit. again, because this is an important one. a question. what can congress do with respect to trust in the integrity of the presidential election? or is it hopeless? >> yeah. i would mostly like to hear for the others -- here from the others because i am looking for ideas. reform of the electoral college. for presidential elections in particular, the electoral count act is well over 100 years old. it held up pretty well, but i think john alluded to this, making clear the ceremonial nature of that joint session and limiting the grounds for objection to things like faithless electors, failure of

electors, could be relevant. there is room for the federal government here. and i don't know how to make this happen, but the leadership of people like liz cheney, brad raffensperger, l schmidt -- al schmidt. these are people who did their job exceptionally well and continue to, and i think finding ways to support courageous leadership is really important, and that does not mean trying to turn republicans who are supporting the rule of law into democrats. that is absolutely not the case. we need to have a comfort level with the fact that we disagree on policy but we will support certain foundational elements of democracy because that's who we are as americans. >> thank you. do you want in on this or should i move on?

all right. your thoughts, john? john: i will be quick. i have made this point before. in theory, there is a big congress could do at the federal level. it is unlikely big things will be done and most action will be to the states. if i had to pick one thing out of my list before, i think we should be not afraid of being able to count the votes more quickly. we can do it accurately, do it well, and getting votes in by election day is part of that, but i do think getting quicker, more accurate counts that are clear to people, what the initial counts are, would do something to dampen the tensions in that period after election day when the rumors start and people get worried about the integrity of elections. >> thank you. a little over a minute.

justin, do you want to finish. -- to finish? justin: a number of things the states want to do, if congress would give them the money, it would solve a lot of problems. other issues we have to discuss -- cybersecurity around elections is still very big and perhaps clarity and better best practices around campaign donations, sort of lobbying. >> last word to you, kevin johnson. kevin: first thing we should do is consider passing redistricting, independent redistricting provisions. 60% of republican support it. it would contribute to reducing polarization and remove a conflict of interest. they should not judge elections even though the constitution says they should.

one thing we saw last year, the democrats not ruling on the iowa elections. >> all right. kevin, dan, justin, and john, thank you for sharing your expertise. and thank you to the audience. i am sorry i could not get to all of your questions, but i will try to reply to them on twitter today. thank you for joining our event and we look forward to seeing you at the next. have a great day. ♪ >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including charter communications. >> broadband is a force for empowerment. charter has spent billions upgrading infrastructure, technology, empowering

opportunity in communities big and small. charter is connecting us. >> charter communications supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. coming up today at noon eastern, white house press secretary jen psaki will take questions about issues facing the biden administration. you can watch live coverage here on c-span. >> the senate gavels in today at 3:00 p.m. eastern to consider the nominee for general counsel for director of national intelligence. a vote to advance his nomination is scheduled for 5:30. tuesday, a vote is scheduled about whether to begin debate on the election reform bill. on the house agenda this week, protecting workers against age discrimination, credit fairness

for lgbtq-owned businesses, and reducing pollution caused by methane. house members return for legislative work tuesday. watch live coverage on the senate on c-span2, the house on c-span. both are online and on the c-span radio app. @cspanwj. it's not just the return to normal in temples weekend or family activities. in terms of the economy. your job. are you back at work? is your office or place of work planning to reopen or fully reopen? maybe they never closed. we would be interested to hear your experience and what you may anticipate in the weeks and months ahead as things open up in the economy. the associated press polled americans and their thoughts on the pandemic. their summation the headline many americans resuming previrus activities. they write that many americans are relaxing precautions taken during