to keep world healthy. we can use the work -- the help of everyone. anyone who can pitch in and help us we would appreciate and we would love to. thank you very much. katherine: thank you. i want to thank charles, and we henrietta, john, martha and charles this morning. thank you very much for participating in our conversation today. we are adjourned. thank you. >> jerome powell testifies tuesday on the federal reserve's response to the coronavirus pandemic for the house oversight coronavirus crisis subcommittee. watch the fed chair live

starting at 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span three, online at c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. >> next, a conversation about presidential election integrity, voting laws and ways to improve the administration of elections. the american enterprise institute hosted discussion. >> good morning and welcome to this american enterprise institute event on election securities. i am the resident scholar and i will be your host. let me give you a roadmap about how our program will proceed. i'm going to say a few words about why we are having this program. second, i will introduce our panelists and we will talk until about 11:00. after that, we will have audience q&a. to get your audience in the queue, emailed to elaine or tweet us on twitter.

you don't have to wait until after 11:00 estimate your question. we tend to get a lot of questions at these events. the sooner you get it in, the better your odds of getting an answer. let me move us along to our program. the trust of the results of residential elections has been intense over recent years. some democrats believe donald trump won the 2016 election through russian interference. an even larger percentage of republicans believe democrats stole the 2020 presidential contest. the reaction to last year's contest was exceptionally intense. the president and various individuals and groups filed

dozens of lawsuits. come january 6, significant republican members of congress repeated allegations of voter fraud and they voted against accepting the electoral slates. this belief then became action. action that resulted in protesters storm the u.s. capitol. six months later, the controversy continues and the reverberations continue. a recent blog post shows only one quarter of republicans pulled believe joe biden was widgeon billy elected president -- was legitimately elected president. democracy does not work if people refuse to accept the results of elections if they do not trust what they are being told. let me look overseas where various countries can collapsed

due to allegations of stolen elections. let me know introduce our panelists. first, david becker is the executive director and founder of the center for election innovation and research. he has helped elected officials from both parties to ensure voters can vote conveniently. daniel cox is a resident scholar here at aei. he specializes in survey research, culture, identity and religion. john fortier is also a resident scholar here at aei. he is the author of three books. one is a guide to the electoral college. the other book is absentee and early voting. justin grimmer is a professor at

stanford university. his research focuses on congress, elections, social media and data science. he recently published a report on the allegations of election fraud in 2020 and has published peer-reviewed articles on id policies. last is kevin johnson, found of an executive director of election reformers network. kevin has spent seven years at overseas democracy promotion, a decade on the board of common calls in massachusetts and is on advisory bodies. let me pitch the first question to my colleague daniel cox. what does this tell us about the long term and short term trends of an election? daniel: i appreciate the

rotation to join this important discussion. it is helpful to restate the problem. we are experiencing the story close in confidence of government. pew and gallup have recorded this. we have seen a number of americans that believes government does what is right. we're looking at a 50 year lows. the lowest reported score was a poll conducted in october 2019. it is widely known americans do not trust their government. we have seen a reintegration of public confidence after the september 11 terrorist attacks. we are seeing resurgence now after the pandemic. we are seeing a slight increase in confidence. the interesting thing is that

this low point in support of confidence in government, it is dissociated for what americans think about the administration of u.s. elections. despite concerns americans have about the operation and function of government, americans have been remarkably upbeat about the functioning of the u.s. election system to for the past -- election system. gallup has shown americans have somewhat confidence that votes will be cast and counted accurately. the lowest reported support gallup has recorded is 59%. that is as recently as 2020. a couple caveats to this generally positive you is there is -- positive you is there is a significant decline. restarted around three quarters of americans being confident in

how elections are being administered. that is down 59%. that is a significant decline. the number of americans who say they are very confident in how elections are being run, that has declined as well. we are seeing one in five americans saying they are very confident. the interesting thing about this and what has happened recently is the differences in confidence in the administration's election did not used to be a partisan affair. looking at some data, we have seen ebbs and flows in responses to who trust elections. -- who trusts elections. given how evenly the two political parties have been matched in recent years, no one sighed can claim a series of

unbroken victories. the pendulum swung back and forth at the presidential level. there were no consistent winners or losers. the losers felt a little less trustworthy of the election but that shifted significantly when their side won. in the weeks following the 2020 election, a number of different pulling organizations tracked results of public confidence in the election. up until the votes were cast, democrats and republicans were roughly parallel in terms of how much support they had for the ballots to be counted accurately. immediately following the election, pulling showed a three point drop in republican support. it is fair to say we don't have a general problem confidence in our electric system.

2020 really does seem to mark a point. -- to mark a turning point. there was another hole that showed 55% of republicans thought the election was stolen and that donald trump was the real winner of the election. there is a little bit of good news in all this. although we see the national level, 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 that at their local precinct, things are being tallied accurately.

kevin k: thank you very much. next question for professor justin grimmer. you studied the allegations about fraud in the 2020 election. can you tell us about the assessment and the source of fraud being talked about? justin: absolutely. thank you for having me for this discussion. just think about what are the types of fraud claims that are out there, let me put them into three buckets. the first that is most repeated is there were illegal rule changes made. changes made without the consent of state legislatures and as a result, the trees bearing poisonous fruit. the second set of claims that come up often is there is some amount of illegal vote being cast.

voting in a state where they are no longer allowed to vote. the final bucket of claims is about the counting of the votes. allegations about the way dominion or other voting machines out ray. this could -- machines operate. this could be about how election administrators inserted ballots that were not generally cast. [indiscernible] another way a number of people have proceeded is they looked for signals there was something weird about this election. some kind of deviation from the past.

we take these claims very seriously. we tried to identify as many of these claims as we could. we dove into them and tried to assess these claims. what we found is they failed in one of two ways. the first way some of these claims fail as they have identified some true pattern in the world but it turned out this pattern is not surprising. it does not provide the deviation one might expect. perhaps the issue that comes up the most that i discussed this with people if i play poker on friday night with someone who is an election skeptic and this is the first thing he wanted to bring up. it is quite surprising joe biden won the election while securing one of only 19 bellwether

counties. 19 of those counties are still around. donald trump won 18 of them. first, to better understand what is going on with dynamics across counties, what we have seen over the last 40 years his democratic supporters concentrating in small number of urban counties. republican support is concentrating in a larger number of more rural counties. when democrats win presidential elections, they tend to win with fewer counties than republicans. it is not surprising joe biden did not win a lot of counties. what happened with bellwether counties, in 2016, those counties swung very hard toward donald trump. he won a very high portion of the vote in those counties. if you were to run a simple model that would to say in all other bellwether counties,

democratic votes showing a county. when i say i am going to make a production about who is going to win that county, what we find from our models is we would expect joe biden to win about 1.2 of those bellwether counties to his per foot those bellwether counties. his proportion is along the line of what we would expect. just briefly, there is a related claim -- i think it is one that received the most attention as part of the texas lawsuit. joe biden had a one in quadrillion chance of winning the election and that claim was based on two different kinds of analyses. one analysis looks at the deviation of vote returns from georgia 2016 to georgia in 2020. that is not surprising. it finds joe biden had a different share than hillary clinton.

we identified in the paper a number of statistical issues in the way that was done. even if we correct all those things it is not surprising these change from one election to the next. another example, we show viewership in the super bowl from 2015 -- from 2016 to 20 changed dramatically. we would find a similar likelihood of those super bowl audiences being the same. the second way these claims fail is the pattern that is identified simply is not true. one example is the relatively high profile study that was released at the end of 2020 that made the claim there was clear evidence there was a suspiciously high absentee

voting for joe biden. we dove into that claim and looked at the replication data. we found this was an artifact of the way the data were entered into the spreadsheet. once we corrected that, we found no evidence of over performance. this similar pattern, we find with claims not performing with the dominion machines are not fair. high correlations between the number of ballots in state. these claims are not true and are the result of some error in statistical research. we are happy to keep investigating these claims. as they come up, we will keep looking at them. as of right now, both the claims have failed for these two reasons. they are either not true or they are true and not a deviation. kevin k: thank you for that. john fortier, based in what we

have heard so far, it sounds like on the political right, there is a disconnection of sorts. this trust is high but -- mistrust is high but proven evidence of fraud is low. evidence that there was widespread fraud that could tip the scales one way or another in the contest has not been proven. how can we understand and explain the divergence? john: thank you to dan and justin. i want to go back to something that dan brought up and emphasize a little more than he did. 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 delving the legitimacy of people in office.

i do think there is a strong component of this. the only in the lower measures of you trust how your vote was counted by election officials but also broadly about how the election went and if a person is legitimate. the simple point is those numbers flip. if donald trump had won the election in 2020, the numbers would look different. that is not to say i think there is some evidence and the reaction on the republican side has been stronger early on. i do think it is a very difficult problem to say we are going to -- [indiscernible]

elections especially have the loser being upset for a while. i don't want to get there too soon. i am cautious there are solutions. i don't think -- right think we will have a hard time going is the idea we are going to debunk all election claims that are not true and that everyone is going to believe them. i'm all for debunking. i think that is a good enterprise for people across the political spectrum. some of it of course is not going well. i think the arizona audit by a lot of measures is not helpful for republicans. any postelection audit is going to be something that is going to be criticized by the other side. it is hard to imagine it persuading a lot of people even if it were run better. i do think there are some things

we could do that would limit some of the uncertainty. limit some of the lack of clarity. i don't think it is going to change every mind in the book that i do think -- but i do think making election somewhat more transparent, more clearly resolved at an earlier stage would be somewhat helpful. i think it is a very difficult problem because there is a distrust in the other side but also very different understandings of what is appropriate in how we should run elections. one last point is there is not a lot of voter fraud. that is true in many ways. certainly in a limited sense. i think that claim gets expended to say let's not think about election integrity issues. let's not think about voting rules or the way we count or

transparency of observers or other things that do get at those issues. we have difference of opinion on how to vote. some of this feeds into that. thanking down security ceric -- banging down security theories is one sense but is also dismissive of some of the concerns already czar divided on it is not going to help us in the long run. kevin k: thank you, john. david, let me turn to you. we have been focusing our conversation on the political right and its confidence in the election. we have also seen election did nihilism -- election denialism on the political left. 2005, some prominent democrats

claimed george w. bush rigged the ohio result. there have been complaints the 2018 georgia gubernatorial election was stolen from stacy adams. how widespread is election result denialism on the left and where is it coming from? is it a perennial or is it getting higher, lower? what is your read? daniel: thank you for the -- david: thank you for the question and allowing me to join this great panel. we appear to live in a country that is as closely divided as we could be. yet tens of millions of people cannot process the idea 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

completely unsupported by any evidence voting machines in ohio flipped a margin of for then president bush from john kerry. there were allegations in 2016 of voting machine issues that may be led to donald trump winning the election. of course the jill stein campaign paid for recounts in michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania as a result of that. there were other instances where left-leaning candidates have denied they lost or somehow raised questions about it. i want to say very importantly this is not a morally equivalent. those efforts were generally not some worded -- were not supported. hillary clinton did not support the challenges to their election

losses. in general what we are seeing right now is far greater on the extreme right of election denial. it is of course being fueled by former president trump who used the platform of the white house to claim rigging before the election ever happened where he preceded his supporters with the s ide the election -- the idea is election was going to be stolen. -- the idea the election was going to be stolen. i like justin's three buckets of classifications of election denial claims. there is the issue of the rules changing. this is something that sometimes comes up in other elections not

to the extent we have seen it this year but we saw in 20 especially with covid is there were some rules being changed. sometimes by republicans. sometimes by democrats. in every single case, the campaigns and parties were aware of these role changes. they chose to challenge some. someday challenge not to challenge -- some they chose not to challenge. a good example was pennsylvania where the pennsylvania supreme court, many people related to the trump campaign raised the fact the supreme court had world that postmarked ballots in pennsylvania could be received as long as they were postmarked by election day could be received up to three days after the election day, which was something republicans did not like. at the same time, the pennsylvania supreme court ruled any ballot not sealed with an inter-secrecy sleeve was not to be counted. that was a decision the biden campaign did not like.

ultimately, the biden campaign decided not to appeal because it was a split decision and the trump campaign did in the u.s. supreme court did not find a federal western. -- federal question. the decision to limit drop boxes to only one dropbox in harris county. similar republican decisions in ohio. ultimately, we have a system where you respect the rule of law. by november 3, we all knew the rules of the game. we liked some of them shared we do not like some of them. but we all knew the rules of the game. with illegal votes, we have a system right now where our voter list, the ability to make sure that votede are not count -- that votes are not cast by legal voters is more accurate than ever before.

so that is not as much of a concern. the concern that is similar is this vote counting vote machine concern, which we have seen the left embrace in some cases. we are seeing the right embrace it to a much larger degree. what i think we have to take note of is objectively speaking, when dhs, trump's dhs and others said this was the most secure election in american history, that is 100% accurate. we went through the most secure transparent and verified election in american history. we had more paper ballots than ever before. 95% of all voters every voter in battleground state cast their ballot on paper. we had more audits of that paper than ever before. almost all of the data ground

states, we had audits. multiple audits in arizona and we literally counted every single paper ballot in georgia three different times three different ways including ones entirely by hand. the voting machine had no impact on that. every one of those confirmed the results. georgia did not have paper ballots in 2016. this was the first election in two decades where they had paper ballots. we saw more pre-election litigation. the will of law one out. something's the democrats like -- some things the democrats like. we were very successful in 2020 and that is why i think some of the net -- some of the election denialism is so concerning. i want to make a point about something john said. we are kind of seeing the

election denialism -- it is normal to see some of that from the side of a losing candidate. we are seeing something different now where it is exceptionally so on the side of the losing candidate in the presidential race despite the fact republicans did very well down ballot and because it is so disproportionate, because the delegitimization of mailing ballots and how voting counting is happening and really affecting only republicans. what we are seeing is a disastrous result for republicans that the georgia senate runoff was the harbinger of that. we saw a slightly lower turnout in areas where republicans were voting in the january runoff t han we did in democratic areas. those are the kinds of things. even though we have seen this on the left, what we are seeing on

the right now is at a very different scale. kevin k: thank you. let me turn now to kevin johnson. i would ask you, this phenomenon of election results to nihilism, do you think it is a cause -- caused to some degree by particular features of america's election system? you have looked overseas. are there things we do here that invite distrust? kevin j: it is a good question to talk about the structural side. thank you for including me in this panel. it is great to hear what the other panelists have to say. there are a couple structural pieces i want to talk about. i do want to echo what you said in your intro and also what david mentioned. those things do not fully explain what we have seen.

the primary driver of what we have seen is really about individual malfeasance and the willingness to tolerate disrespect for the will of law -- the rule of law. that said, there are a couple 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 that have a presidential election, most of them have a national body, a judicial body with the responsibility of rendering the decision on who won in a close election. that makes clarity from the beginning what is going to happen if it is close and it puts that decision where it belongs, in the hands of judges who are institutionally positioned to weigh the evidence. our case is remarkably ambiguous. what will happen if there is a

close election. you all ran a great panel last week as it relates to the electoral count act. that uncertainty leads us to treat this -- to treat disputed elections as a strike of lightning. we are not prepared for it. arguably, a democracy should be measured by how well it handles elections. the analogy of building oceangoing vessel designed for the worst whether it is going to face, not for average weather. elections should be designed to deal with the toughest challenge they are going to face, which is a tough election -- which is a close election. there is a 2010 survey. the question is if the election for governor of the state was close or disputed, do you think it would be resolved fairly echo only 38% said yes. 30% said they did not know. no one really knows. there is so much lack of

familiarity in the population about what the mechanics are. you take a country that has a tribunal, everyone knows what the mechanics are. i would cite that as a primary issue. the second issue and this addresses distrust on the left is the electoral college. a significant percentage of the population believes that -- doubts the legitimacy of the electoral college because it violates a principal they hold true. the candidate with the most votes should win. if you go back -- a fantastic example of the way american leaders back to the founding fathers have when it out the flaws of the electoral college. they have tried to change the electoral college. it endures because you have a high amendment hurdle and one side or the other always benefited from the distortion. the wrists are many. i think -- the risks are many.

2020 added additional risks. what we might call legislature risk. we are seeing legislature -- state legislatures positioned themselves to be able to declare an election has failed and take back the right to name a state of electors, which is a dangerous trend. the problem of talking about the electoral college is it becomes so binary. you either support national popular vote established by the npb compact or you to send the -- or you defend the status quo. i would argue both positions are risky to the point of recklessness. there are intermediate solutions that maintain the federalist basis of the electoral college that is in the constitution but that prevent that principle from being violated. the last thing i will mention very briefly is the absence of the fairness doctrine. it used to be that media --

companies given the right to use rod casper had to reflect that obligation balancing both sides. the technical context for that change is when you go from spectra to the internet. there ought to be a way to put that idea of public responsibility back into media companies. you were talking before the show started. dandy -- david throughout the line, the anger industrial complex. it is enormous. companies are minting money by making people angry. that is a lot of what is fueling what is going on here. it is something we should keep on the table. kevin k: thank you. i should note that we are a little over halfway through ira discussion portion of the -- through our discussion portion of the program. i would like to remind viewers

to please get your questions in. can email them or send them to us on twitter. let's talk about ways public trust might be bolstered. we have already heard some comments it will not be easy. let's talk about it anyway. i want to speak to our public opinion expert. can you talk to us a little about ways public opinion is shaped and tie that into whether those factors can in some way be drawn upon to bolster faith in presidential results? daniel: as a public opinion scuttled her, i don't have a lot to say about the potential

solutions but we can look at some of these perceptions among democrats, republicans and the public at large to understand the nature of these challenges. i think because our election laws are varied and very complex, there is a lot of lack of knowledge among the public about what are the roles, who can vote, when you can vote. there was a study released a couple years ago that found half of americans said they are not sure if you are allowed to vote if you are late in paying your taxes. a similar number said the same thing about whether you had a outstanding utility bill or rent payment. 60% of americans said they were not sure if their state allowed them to vote if they did not have a permanent address.

it is not just the rules about who can vote and why. it is also about when you are allowed to vote that is the source of a lot of confusion. of people living in states, only two thirds correctly identified their state as a pate where you can vote early -- a state where you can vote early. among states without early voting, close to half said they were not sure if they can vote before election day. the lack of knowledge about rules is a significant impediment to voting. the other thing i thought was notable in the same study is that the election voting reforms that are often discussed and i make no pretense of knowing whether these are effective or not but they are incredibly popular. whether it is enfranchisement of people who have convicted a felony and served their term, whether they should have their

voting rights reinstated, a majority of americans support that. a majority of americans support same-day voter registration. they believe in automatic registration. when you're dealing with the dmv , you should be automatically registered to vote. these are largely policies of bipartisan support. making election day a national holiday. this is another policy that enjoys widespread bipartisan support. on the other side, making government issued ids mandatory for voting. that enjoys the support of democrats and republicans. that has been associated with the right more than the left. that is a policy of bipartisan way. -- bipartisan support. the other thing is the idea of mandatory voting. i am not saying there is any chance of this policy in the u.s. but it is interesting more than half of americans said they

would support mandatory voting. it is lower in places like germany, france and the u.k. it is still significant that 51% of americans supported this idea. when it comes to understanding the sources of distrust, i think there are a couple things worth mentioning. a number of the panelists alluded to this. the rise of political lowrise asian is playing a role. we have gotten to a place where the other side winning is being perceived as the absolute worst outcome. it is going to be a threat to the democracy. i think that is incredibly detrimental and leads to people being so heavily invested in the outcome, they cannot accept the other side winning an election. that creates a whole host of problems particularly in trust in the system shade the other

thing that is the elephant in the room is political leadership. because the election system is so complex, people rely on media and political leaders to help them make sense of whether the contest was fair. if you're candidate lost, you need to hear from the candidate saying election was fair and everything despite the fact it was imperfect, the election worked as it was supposed to pick not hearing that from political leaders, that undermines it should be largely open and transparent and competent. and i think, the last think i

will say are gracious losers. we talk about the importance of, you know, winning elections and everyone wants to say about the winner. but when it comes to losing, the concession speech is important. it was run well. the fact that trump didn't give a typical concession speech to bring folks together even after it became clear that he lost, he continued to argue the outcome, i think it marks in modern election history. the last thing i'll note when talking about the sources of doubt has to do with political segregation and media global. a lot of my idea is that it

influences what we have and what we trust. we're seeing among democrats and republicans that have close family members that disclose their political beliefs and that really 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. > jerome powell testifies to stay the federal reserve's response to the run of errors endemic -- before the house oversight subcommittee. watch the fed chair live on c-span3, online at c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. ♪

♪ >> up next, secretary of state tony blinken outlines foreign policy priorities for the biden administration. this is from the annual conference on the americas. >> nonetheless, while secretary blinken couldn't be with us in person today, we are grateful he did take the time to record a presentation specifically for the washington conference on the americas. before we hear from him, let me stress that in secretary blinken, we have a leader who understands the unique place of the americas in u.s. foreign policy. for two decades, secretary blinken has been a foreign policy advisor to president bide