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>> next a look at claims of election fraud from the 2020 elections. the american enterprise hosted the event. >> good morning and welcome to this event on election security. i will be your host. about how our program will proceed over the next 90 minutes. i want to say why we are having this program. i will introduce our panelists and talk to 11:00. and audience question and answer and email. and #with election security. you don't have to wait until after 11:00. we get a lot of questions after

these events. [indiscernible] >> let us move along to our program. the results of the presidential elections have been intense nep recent years. many people won the 2016 election. our age old american election, our reaction was exceptionally impacted a president who regularly complained that the other party was stealing the election and groups by dozens of lawsuits and scran 6, 2021, significant members of congress

repeated allegations of voter fraud and voted against. displeve when became action and protestors storming the u.s. capitol. six months later, the covers continues. a recent plog posts showed that only one quarter of republicans polled believes that joe biden was legitimately elected president. the result is indisputeable long-term well-being and democracy doesn't work if people refuse to accept the results if they don't trust what they are being told. and the various countries where they could collapse. having said my theory about why we are here let me introduce our

panelists. david becker is the founder of the nonpartisan for election innovation and research and ensure [indiscernible]

allege of election fraud in 2020 and per review. last and is kevin johnson of election reform networking. and advancing structural change. [indiscernible] first question to my colleague. what does polling tell us about the long-term and short-term trust in public elections? >> thanks for the question and really important discussion. i think it is helpful to restate

the problem and experiencing historic lows in government and widely known. few have recorded this and number of americans that don't believe what is right and 50-year lows. lowest reported score was in a poll in 2011. this is wildly known that americans don't trust their government and there have been fluctuations and actually seeing a resurgence now after the pandemic and increasing confidence in government but the really interesting thing is that this low point in support of government is associated what

americans think about the administration of u.s. elections. so despite what americans have about the operation and ability of depoft, americans have been upbeat about functions of the election system. and majority of americans saying they are somewhat confident that they will be counted accurately. and lowest reported support is 59% and that is as recently as 2020. genuinely positive view is that a significant decline over that 15-year period so we started around three-quarter of americans how the elections are being administered and 9% and then america caps who are saying

they are very confident how elections are being run. that has relatively as well as what we are saying that one in five americans are really confident. what has happened the difference in the administrations elections is it did not used to be a partisan affair. there were not differences between what democrats and republicans thought until recently. again, looking at the al up -- gallup data, we have seen ebbs and flows in responses to who trusts elections. given how evenly the two political parties have been matched in recent years, no one side can claim a series of unbroken victories.

the pendulum swung back and forth, at least 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. that might be changing now. in the weeks following the 2020 election, a number of different polling organizations tracked week by week results of public confidence in the election. and 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, polling showed a three point drop in republican support. republican confidence in elections. so i think it is fair to say that we do not have a general problem with confidence in our election system, we have ace -- a specific problem with republican confidence. 2020 really does seem to mark a turning point.

there is another poll showed 55% of republicans believe the election was stolen and that donald trump was the real winner of the 2020 election. there is a little bit of good news in all this. that although we see the national level, really 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. particularly among republicans, both democrats and republicans feel confident that at their local precinct, things are being tallied accurately. and gallup shows nearly eight in 10 americans say where they are voting, things will be counted accurately. kevin k: thank you very much. next question for professor justin grimmer.

you studied the allegations about fraud in the 2020 presidential 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 important discussion. so first, 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 in anticipation to the election. changes made without the consent of state legislatures, and as a result, the trees bearing poisonous fruit. everything that comes subsequently is somehow a legal. -- illegal. the second set of claims that

come up often is there is some amount of illegal votes being cast. the most often made claim in this bucket is that there are dead people voting, or perhaps people who moved out of the state and are voting in a state where they are no longer allowed to vote. the final bucket of claims is about the counting of the votes. here, this could be allegations about the way dominion or other voting machines operate. or how election administrators perhaps inserted ballots that were not legitimately cast. [indiscernible] another way a number of people have proceeded is they looked for statistical signals there was something weird about this election. some kind of deviation from the past. this is clear evidence there is something amiss, and more fraud happening in these buckets. what we do in this study is we take these claims very seriously. we tried to identify as many of these claims as we could.

we dove into them and we tried to assess these claims. what we found when we made the assessment is they failed in one of two ways. the first way some of these claims fail is 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. if we were seeing a lot of anomalous voter fraud. perhaps the issue that comes up the most, when i discussed this with people who -- i play poker on friday night with someone who is an election skeptic, this is the first thing he brought up,

bellwether counties. a frequent claim it is quite surprising joe biden won the election while securing one of only 19 bellwether counties. and by bellwether county, i mean accounted that had correctly voted along with the winner of -- a county that had correctly voted along with the winner of the presidential election since 1980. at the start of the election there were 19 of those counties still around. donald trump won 18 of them. this on its face perhaps seems a bit surprising. but it fails in a couple ways. first, to better understand what is going on with dynamics across counties, what we have seen over the last 40 years is democratic support is concentrating in small number of urban counties. whereas republican support is concentrating in a larger number of more rural counties. the result of this is that when democrats win presidential elections, they tend to win with many fewer counties than republicans. so it is not surprising joe biden did not win a lot of counties. that does not quite explain the bellwether counties yet, but what happened with bellwether counties, in 2016, those counties swung very hard toward donald trump. and so you see that he won a very high portion of the vote in those counties. and so if we were to just run a simple model that would to say in all other bellwether counties, i want to predict the democratic share in the county. just using the 2016 vote share. and i say now i want to make a

prediction 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. so his performance is in line with what normal state of affairs is across other counties. we did that prediction in a number of flexible ways and i'm happy to talk more about it. briefly, there is a related claim, i think it is one that perhaps received the most attention as part of the texas lawsuit. that joe biden has something like 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 in 2016 to georgia in 2020. and perhaps not surprisingly finds that joe biden had a different vote share than hillary clinton. so, we identified in the paper a number of statistical issues in

the way the hypothesis was tested. -- the wrong hypothesis was tested. even if we correct all those things, it is not surprising that things change from one election to the next. in another example, we show viewership in the super bowl from 2016 to 2020 changed dramatically using the same test. we would find a similar likelihood of those super bowl audiences being the same. of course we would not conclude there was somehow some padding of the numbers in 2016, just that the world has changed. the second wrong pattern we discussed in our analysis, 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 that there was very clear evidence there was a suspiciously high absentee voting return for joe biden in a number of georgia counties. we dove into that claim and looked at the replication data. what we found was this was in

fact 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 not being true we find with claims not performing with the dominion machines are not fair. also i think more conspiratorial claims about high correlations between the number of ballots in state. these claims are simply 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. and we are doing this we think in an objective way. 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 on what we have heard so far, it sounds like on the political right, there is a disconnection of sorts.

distrust is high, but 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 another in the contest has not been proven. do you have insights on how can we understand and explain the divergence? john: thanks kevin, and thank you to dan and justin. i want to go back to something that dan brought up and maybe emphasize a little more than he did. look, 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. but i do think there is a strong component of this, not under the

lower measures of do you trust how your vote was counted by election officials, but also broadly about how the election went and if a person is legitimate, of the winners feeling good about the results and the losers feeling bad about the results. the simple point is those numbers flip. if donald trump had won the election in 2020, the numbers would look different than they are today. that is not to say i think there is some evidence, the reaction on the republican side has been stronger earlier on, but it is a long-term trend. but i do think it is a difficult problem to say, we are going to up voter confidence in this when a lot of the movement, the overall movement of the election is not much higher than the movement between parties, and this is an international phenomenon, elections have the loser being upset or a while.

i know we are going to get to potential solutions and a second round of questions, i don't want to get there too soon, i am cautious there are solutions, where i think we are going to have a hard time going is the idea that we are going to debunk all election claims that are not true and that everyone is going to believe them. i am all for debunking, that is a good enterprise for people across the political system -- spectrum. some of the ones that are not doing well, arizona audits are not helpful to republicans and certainly any postelection audit is something that is going to be criticized by the other side, so it is hard to imagine it persuading a lot of people because it would be run better than it has been run, but i do think there are some things we could do that would limit some of the uncertainty, the lack of

clarity. i don't think it is going to change every mind in the book, but i do think making elections, some more transparent, -- somewhat more transparent, or resolved, and i can get to some of those things in a second round of questions, i think it is a very difficult problem. there is deep distrust in the other side, and also different understandings of what is appropriate and how we should run elections. one last point, you sometimes hear there was not a lot of voter fraud. i think that is true in many ways, certainly in a limited sense, but i think that claim sometimes gets expanded to say let's not think about election integrity issues. that the right is interested in. let's not think about voting roles for the way we count or transparency of observers, or other things they do get at some -- that do get at some of those

issues. and we have different opinions on the right and left. and some of this feeds into that, conspiracy theories -- banging down conspiracy theories because we say there really isn't a lot of fraud, that is true in one sense, but i also think this massive of some of the concerns the parties are divided on that is probably not going to help us in the long run. run. we have been focusing our -- kevin k: we have been focusing our conversation pretty heavily on the political right, confidence in the election. as i alluded to earlier, we have also seen election results in nihilism on the political left. 2016 some on the left claimed trump stole the election with the help of russians. in 2005 some democrats claims george w. bush rigged the ohio results. to tip the ballots in his favor.

of course there were complaints that the 2018 georgia gubernatorial election was stolen from stacey abrams. how widespread is election result did nihilism -- denialism on the left, and where is this coming from? is it just a perennial, is he getting higher, lower? john: thanks for the question and thank you for allowing me to join the great panel. it's remarkable, we live in a country that is about as closely divided as we possibly could be, and yet tens of millions of people can't process the idea that their candidate might have lost in a country that is so closely divided. you are quite right, this is not something that is unique to the right. there have been instances going back to 2005 allegations, completely unsupported by any evidence, that voting machines

in ohio had flipped a 120,000 -- roughly 20,000 margin of victory for them president bush from john kerry. there were allegations in 2016 of voting machine issues that maybe led to donald trump winning the election, and of course the jill stein campaign actually paid for recounts of michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania. as a result of that. and there have been other instances where left-leaning or democratic candidates have denied they lost or somehow raised questions about it. but i also want to state very importantly, this is not a moral equivalence. this is, those efforts were generally not supported with rare exceptions by the candidates, john kerry did not support the challenges to the election loss. and 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 use the platform of the white house to claim rigging before the election happened. it goes back to august or even earlier, 2016 where he preceded -- pre-seeded his supporters with the idea the election was going to be stolen, really invested in the idea is going to delegitimize the election, the exercise of democracy. one thing i think is really important, i really like the three buckets of election denial claims. there is the issue of the rules changing. and of course, this is something that sometimes comes up in other elections. not to the extent we have seen this year, but we saw in 2020, especially with covid, there

were some rules being changed. sometimes by republicans, sometimes by democrats, but in every single case the campaigns and parties were well aware of these rule changes. they chose to challenge some. they chose not to challenge some . a good example was pennsylvania where the pennsylvania supreme court, many people in the trump campaign raised the fact the supreme court had ruled that postmarked ballots in pennsylvania could be received if they were postmarked by election day, they could be received up to three days after election day, something republicans did not like. at the same time in that same decision, the pennsylvania supreme court ruled any ballot was to not be counted. that was a decision mcgrath did not like. the biden campaign did not like that. ultimately, the biden campaign and democrats decided not to appeal and the trump campaign

did. the supreme court did not find a federal question. this was true in many other states. the texas decision to limit drop boxes to only one dropbox in the third largest county in the united states, similar republican decisions in ohio, one dropbox per county. ultimately, we have a system where you respect the rule of law. the rule of law was played out and by november 3, we all knew the rules of the game. we like some of them, we did not like some of them, but we knew the rules of the game. similarly with illegal boats, -- votes, we have a system wherever voter lists, we have to make sure the votes are cast by legal voters is better than it has ever been, significantly better than 20/20. -- 2020. they are more accurate than ever before. including blue states and red states.

that is not as much of a concern. the concern that is similar is this vote counting, vote machine concerns which we have seen the left embrace in some cases, and now we are seeing the right embrace it to a much larger degree. what i think we have to take note of is that objectively speaking, when dhs and others -- trump's dhs and others came out and said this was the most secure election in american history, objectively speaking that is 100% accurate. we just went through the most secure, transparent, verified election in american history, we had more paper ballots than ever before. 95% cast their ballot on paper. we had more audits of that paper than before, and almost all of the battleground states we had audits, multiple audits in arizona, and famously we counted every paper ballot in georgia three different times, three

different ways, putting ones -- including ones entirely by hand. the voting machine had no impact on that. every one of those confirm 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 than ever before the clarified rules, the rule of law won out. some things democrats liked, something republicans like. we saw most postelection than ever before. -- postelection verification than ever before. we were very successful in 2020, and that is why i think some of the election denialism is so concerning. i want to make a point, we are kind of seeing the election denialism, it is normal to see

some of that. on the side of the losing candidate. we are seeing something a little bit different, where it is exceptionally so on the side of the losing candidate in the presidential race, despite the fact the republicans did very well down ballot. because it is so disproportionate, because the delegitimization of things like mail ballots, things like folk -- vote counting is really only affecting republicans, not independents or democrats, we are seeing potentially a disastrous result for republicans that the georgia senate runoff was the harbinger of. we saw a slightly lower turnout in areas where republicans were voting in the january runoff than we did in democratic areas, because election denialidm has been so successful. -- denialism has been so successful. those other kinds of things, even though we have seen this on

the left, i think what we're seeing on the right is an additional and on a different scale. kevin k: thank you. let me turn to kevin johnson, and ask you, this phenomenon of election results denialism, you think it is caused by teachers -- features of the american election system? you have worked overseas. are there fears here that add to distrust? kevin j: it's a good question, thank you for including me in this panel. great to hear what the other panelists have to say. there are a couple of structural pieces i want to talk about, but before doing so, i do want to echo what you said and what david mentioned, those things don't relate, fully explain what we have seen. the primary driver of what we have seen is that individual malfeasance and willingness to

tolerate disrespect for the rule of law which is that a new -- at a new level. that said, there are a couple of structural things to talk about. i think the key issue in comparison to other countries, is how election results are resolved. if we look at countries that have a national presidential election, most of them have a national body, a judicial body or tribunal with a responsibility of rendering decision on who won in a close election. that makes clarity in the beginning, 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? it's ambiguous. you all ran a great panel last

week, that uncertainty leads us to treat disputed elections as bad luck or a strike of lightning. we are not prepared for it, it f it happens, it is like what do we do now. arguably, a democracy should be measured by how well it handles post elections. i think the analogy designed for the worst weather, not for average weather. likewise, election should be designed to deal with the toughest challenge they are going to face, which is a close election. this shows up in public opinion. the question is, if the election was closely disputed, do you think it would be resolved fairly? only 38% said yes. 30% said they don't know. because no one knows. there are so much lack of familiarity about what the mechanics are. you take a country that has a tribunal, everyone knows with the mechanics are.

i would cite that as a primary issue. a second issue addresses the mistrust on the left. more than on the right, but we have to keep in mind because it could come up again in the future, it is the electoral college. a significant percentage of the population believes that they doubt the legitimacy of the electoral, because it violates a principal they hold true that the candidate with the most votes should win. there is a book that is a fantastic example of the way in which americans have pointed out -- american leaders all the way back to the founding others -- fathers have pointed out the flaws in the electoral college, have tried to change it, and it endures because we have a high amendment hurdle, and because one side or the other always benefits from the distortion. but the risks are many and manifest, and i think 2020 added an additional risk, what we might call faithless legislature risks.

we are seeing state legislatures position themselves to be able to declare an election has failed and take black the state -- the right to name the state of electors. which is a very dangerous trend. talking about the electoral college, it assumes that you either support hands down around the amendment 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 in the constitution, but that prevents the principle from being violated. the last thing i mentioned very briefly, the absence of the fairness doctrine. it used to be that media companies given the right to use that had to reflect the obligation to society by balancing both sides.

obviously the technical contact for that changes when you go from spectra to the internet, but there ought to be away to put that idea of public responsibility back into media companies, we were talking before the show started, the anger industrial complex. it is just enormous. companies are missing money by -- minting money by making people angry. and that is what is fueling this. there's a whole first amendment funnel of issues of how we can curtail that but it is something we should keep on the table. kevin k: thank you. we are over halfway through our discussion program -- portion of the program. at this point i would like to remind viewers and listeners out there to get your questions in, you can email them or send them

to us on twitter by using the #. let's talk about ways public trust might be bolstered. we have already heard some comments that it won't be easy, but let's talk about it anyway. but you talk to us a little bit about the ways in which public opinion is shaped, and tie that into whether those factors can in some ways be drawn upon to bolster presidential election results? >> i don't have a lot to say about the solutions, but i think we can look at some of these

perceptions among democrats, republicans and from the public to better understand the nature of these challenges. first off, you can say lack of civic education, misinformation, but because election laws are varied and complex, there is a lot of lack of knowledge among the public about the rules. who can vote, who can't come out when you can vote. -- who can't, when you can vote. there was a study that was released a couple of years ago that found half of americans said they are not sure if you are allowed to vote if you are late to pay your taxes. a similar question about rent payments, they were not sure. 60% of americans said they were not sure if their state allowed them to vote if they did not have a permanent address. but it is not just who can vote,

it's also about when you are allowed to vote. of people living in states with early voting, only about two thirds correctly identified their state as a state can vote early before election day. among people who lived in states without early voting, close to half said that they were not sure if they could vote before election day. i think the lack of knowledge is an impediment to voting. the other thing that was notable is that the election voting reforms that are often discussed, and i make no pretense of knowing whether these are effective, they are incredibly popular. whether it is people who have convicted felonies and serve their terms. whether they should have their voting rights reinstated. the majority of americans support that. the majority of americans support same-day registration. believe in automatic

registration. so when you deal with the dmv or another government agency, you should be automatically registered to vote. and these are largely policies with bipartisan support. making election day and national -- a national holiday, another policy that enjoys widespread bipartisan support. on the other site, government issued ids. making them mandatory for voting that actually enjoy support. it has historically been associated with the right more than the left, but it is a policy of bipartisan support. the other thing i thought was really interesting is the idea of mandatory voting. i'm not saying there is any chance of this policy in the u.s., but it is interesting that more than half of americans said they would support mandatory voting. it's lower than places like

germany, france, and the u.k., but it is still pretty significant when it comes to understand -- significant that 50% of people support this. when it comes to understanding, there are couple things worth mentioning with trust. first of all, a number of the panelists alluded to this, but i think the rise of political polarization is playing a role. we have gotten to a place where the other side winning is being perceived as the end of the world, the absolute worst outcome. a threat to democracy if the other side is taking over the government for two or four years. i think that is incredibly detrimental and leads to people being so heavily invested that they cannot receive or accept the other side winning an election. i think that creates a whole host of problems, the other thing is political leadership. because the election system is

so complex, people really rely on the media and political leaders to help them make sense on whether the contest was fair. shapely among the losers. if your candidate lost, you need to hear from the candidate, the election was fair. i lost, despite the fact it was imperfect, the system worked as it was supposed to. the losing side is not hearing that from political leaders. that undermines support and mistrust. the goal should not be to run a flawless process, but should be largely open and transparent. all indications are 2020 was such a contest. the last things i will say is the importance of gracious

losers. we talked about the importance of winning elections, but i think when it comes to losing elections, the concession speech is really important. it allows for a coming together. it allows for both sides to say this is one of the most important aspects, the peaceful transfer of power. again, it may have not been perfect but it was run well. i think the fact that trump did not give a traditional concession speech, after it was clear that he lost, he continued to sew doubt, i think it marked the first in modern election history. the last thing i will note has to do with political segregation. a lot of my work focuses on the idea that the people around us, our immediate friends and family, implements the

information we have, what we know, and quite frankly what and who we trust. we are seeing among democrats and republicans, an increasing number of folks that only close friends and family members who -- only have close friends and family members who reflect their political predisposition. they are surrounded by people who basically share their political beliefs, and that really leads to the adoption of more extreme attitudes, conspiracy theories. we see this on both the right and the left. because parties are socially segregated, it becomes more easy to retain these false ideas because no one is challenging you. these are the things, when i think about some of the sources of political misinformation and lack of confidence, i think we need to pay attention. kevin k: 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 wrong and -- robbed and he was not accepting the results. anyway. a question for justin. something that daniel just alluded to. one reform conservatives turned to his bolstering voter id. there seems to be a lot of public support generally, particularly on the right. you have written about this. can you give us your take on voter id? is it a good policy, or should we be looking to something else? dan: the quick answer if that -- there doesn't seem to be good

evidence that imposing a voter id requirement leads to a subsequent boost in trust and elections. -- in elections. more generally, what it does, i can think of a policy with a bigger disconnect between the effects. if you look to the left and how people talk about voter id laws, it is a massive imposition, it's going to create insurmountable hurdles and results in the limiting of voter turnout. especially with the democratic party. if you look at literature, that is not the case. in fact, time and again research papers have estimated what is close to some instances, it tends to be a very small number. for example, in a paper that focuses on north carolina and voter identification law, we find that on the order of about

3000 votes were deterred in the primary election, perhaps because of confusion, about 5000 votes. were deterred in the general election. there was a massive number of votes cast in north carolina, these are a small number of voters. what is going on here? why this big disconnect? the first thing is that many people have identification. 97% to 98% have identification. among those who don't are people who turn at a really low rate. if you impose an additional hurdle, you will not be turning away people who are quite likely to turnout. we tend to find very few effects on turnout for voter identification laws. as i alluded to on my additional response on the other side, on the other side, we are not seeing the kind of returns the right is saying they have. one claim is there is lower incidence of fraud.

a recent paper showed there doesn't seem to be decreases in the number of fraud claims. what is more, other scholars have shown there doesn't seem to be a bump up in trust. i think we are left with policy discussion there on the right and the public more generally, there is a view that voter identification laws just makes sense. if you talk to everyday folks, they have this intuition. because of the rhetoric and anger industrial complex on the left, it is very difficult to convey that intuition. folks on the left might also point out that the policy is not getting the return, perhaps that

is not a good policy are good -- or a good idea to deter those 2000 voters. i guess i would say we should look elsewhere if we want to bolster trust. it does not seem that voter identification laws are not where we are going to get people to buy into the veracity of elections. kevin k: thank you much. david becker, let us hear from you. what policies would you favor to try and strengthen public trust in elections? david: i should start by saying i tend to be an optimist. i was someone who before the election, even during covid, i was very confident and said so publicly that the election would be run very well.

i think that was correct. i think the election was run very well, objectively speaking. especially given the challenges election officials faced. but i am less optimistic than i have ever been. i am pretty pessimistic right now and i worry. as was mentioned, i am going to regret having coined this term. but this entire ecosystem whose -- ecosystem, this anger industrial complex, whose livelihoods, they are not the best and the brightest but they have become wealthy. by pushing anger and division and lies, and they are drifting -- drifting -- grifting off the sincere disappointment of people who voted for the losing candidate in the presidential election. that really disturbs me.

furthermore, you see the people were doing the right thing, the people who are performing impeccably well, secretary of state raffensperger, nevada, city commissioner al schmidt. his staff. these are all republicans. they are being attacked, censured, threatened. we are seeing physical threats more than ever before. that is the space i am in. but i think there are some potential solutions. as many of us have alluded to, for too long, the idea of increased access with something -- was something to be perceived on the left. integrity was perceived to be on the right. for those that go out in the field and work with election officials, those two things are

not only not in opposition, they are complementary in most cases. when you actually look at policy. and you can come up with policies that increase real and perceived integrity while also making sure eligible voters are not excluded from the process or don't face barriers. those are unifying themes amongst election officials from the most conservative republicans to liberal democrat. i do think one possible solution is to create a floor, a federal floor for election policy. i think about it as taking some things off the table. they are so fundamental, and their integrity and access -- they are both integrity and access oriented. things like the idea that we should have easy access to mail and early voting options. those are not only good for access, voters find them convenient, but importantly, they are a key aspect of election integrity.

the more ballots cast early, by mail, the more they serve as an early warning system for potential malfunctions in election technology, potential fraud, cyber interference in the election process. all of those things can be discovered well before the close of polls when votes are cast early. in 2020 we were incredibly successful at that. over 100 million early or mailed votes were cast, that was by far and away the most we have ever had, which made our system have a lot of integrity. there might be some provisions in their that -- there that also respond to legitimate concerns, things like election day receipt, no more postmark ballots. that is the law and the vast majority of states including most blue states. ballots must be in by election

day. drop boxes help as well, because people who wait to the last minute can deliver them to election officials. through secure drop boxes. i also think there is an aspect of aggressive transparency that can be included in the floor. election officials like transparency. for instance there were a lot of , concerns about so-called observers not being allowed into locations to observe the counting of ballots. those were false, observers were in every location, the campaigns had every opportunity. we can enshrine that further into law, to make sure that poll watchers with the campaigns should be allowed to observe , not interfere with, but observe those processes as they go. lastly, a lot of this derives from concern that the voter

lists are not accurate. voter lists must reflect both all eligible voters and only eligible voters. and when i talk about only eligible voters, i'm not only talking about fraud. the biggest challenge election officials will tell you is the fact of mobility. people move a lot. about a third of all americans move within a four. -- four year period of time. if someone move right now, the odds are they would not think of updating their voting registration until september or october of 2024. that makes it difficult for election officials. one of the great things that is happened in recent years, and i say this somewhat humbly, the development of something called the electronic registration information center. that is a nonprofit that i love -- lead the effort to create the participating states voluntarily joined, started with seven

states, now up to 30 states in 2020. more states are going to be joining this dear -- this year. and it helps states identify when people have moved within states, identify when they might have an eligible voter. and it helps them get eligible voters on the list and identify people who might have moved. to contact them and get them to update their information. because of that. because two thirds of all voters live in a state that is a member, we actually have the most accurate voter lists we have ever had, and are going to have more accurate lists as more states join. but keeping those lists clean and accurate is absolutely an aspect of not only integrity but access. is really important because we just saw an election where they using candidate used perceived differences between the states, sake -- fake perceived

differences, to try and beverage -- leverage the idea that voters cannot trust the results in states where they did not like the outcome. if you look at election law in states like ohio, georgia, there must identical. widespread early voting, election day voting, paper ballots. yet, the only difference between ohio and florida on one hand, and georgia on the other is the outcome. that is why we are seeing attempts to leverage these perceived inferences to create -- perceived differences to create distrust among the electorate. i think there is a role in creating a floor so we can lessen the impact. kevin k: thank you for that. kevin johnson, same question. what policies you favor that can strengthen public trust in presidential elections? kevin j: there has been a lot of progress, david's comments

illustrate. the professionalism in election administrations. that is something we should build on and one way to build on that is to help election officials do more. a lot of surveys show local officials are among the most trusted sources of information, others show they don't have resources and capabilities. there should be a lot more funding. this is critical national infrastructure and it is not funded like that. there should be more money for election officials to support voter education about this. exactly this dispute resolution size i mentioned -- side i mentioned. we need voters to understand how it works, how it happens. how it happens that the result is confirmed. suggestion two, on the election and administration side, the

threats posed against election officials are outrageous and we need to elevate that decision away frontline workers were elevated during the pandemic. these are the critical supporters of our most important infrastructure, our democracy, a provision to criminalize harassment of election officials that is really worth thinking , about. at the professional level or -- congressional level or the state level. likewise, respect for the institution take an oath in which they reference god. candidates should likewise treat candidacy with the solemnity and respect it deserves. 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 that election determined by law and the courts. maybe we can make a candidate

both, or candidates should have stayed provisions for the filing of candidate papers should include your concession speech. you file your speech in advance so it is clear you prepared. this notion of debates, ask the question, do you intend to -- a ridiculous absence of norm there, but it is the rule of law at its most essential. it is to be respected. those are a couple of things. i mentioned that you covered it very well last week, clearly a lot of work needs to be done but it looks like it could well be bipartisan progress there. the last topic i will touch on was not an issue this election, that if we were talking in 2001 about 2004 -- in 2005 about 2004. in both of those elections, once -- one state decided the

election, the secretary of the state 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 many of the secretaries of state performed tremendously in his last election, there are many secretaries of state who rise above the structural limitations of a position that is inherently partisan. but that's a risk factor. it could increase as a risk factor now that we have candidates who are explicit result deniers 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 how do we give them more discretion over the

interpretation of results in a way that make state legislators to back off in the policy setting, not doing the micromanaging they have been doing recently. kevin k: 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 around there. all that in mind, are there policies that you see some hope in, in terms of trying to strengthen public trust in elections? are there lessons we might learn from the past? john: let me first remind everyone, 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 in our system

that would limit the field of conflict and make people feel more confident that elections are resolved more quickly and more accurately. i think my list degrees a lot -- agrees a lot with 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. i was not going to mention -- 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, david's program, the eric system is gaining steam, it is a great system for states to share information with each other because we don't have national lists, 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 -- are as comprehensive as can be but also as accurate as can be. and kept up-to-date. that underlies a lot in terms of voter turnout. if there any gains to be made, that might be an area where we look. the other areas -- david mentioned transparency. i will agree in part with kevin and disagree in part. kevin noted, a lot of the world has unitary systems, with judges that can make decisions, 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 -- as to how far those watchers

can do in what they are supposed to do. this election, obviously with changes made, raised some issues. i don't think the issues changed 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 put in place, make sure we have parties watch each other. there can be cameras. and other nonpartisan ways of looking. but having both parties there at every stage is a real issue. it's easy to dismiss 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 purcell principle making people more skeptical. about decisions being made that change elections while the election is going forward. elections are longer now with mail-in ballots. 45 days before election day. changing the rules, change in -- changing procedures, close to the election is very undemocratic, it confuses voters. obviously, there are some emergencies and there is a question as to what is an emergency. if something happens on election night, maybe a court will step in, but that's controversial. i do think, courts, perhaps even expanding into state court decisions and executive decisions, trying to say, let's keep it as stable as possible during the election period and

resolve our disputes earlier on. that would be helpful. again, i think there are more 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. even if you win a lawsuit. the question is voter confusion, legitimacy. others are problematic. counting. again, david went into this, -- 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 not impossible where you can have mail in voting and yet get the ballots in by election day and counted quickly. we heard issues about when can you begin counting absentee ballots, mail ballots. i you -- do favor being able to count them. there are some particular issues. but i do think moving towards a system where ballots would be in by election days would be a big difference. many states are dragging out the elections, we don't have 10% of the vote in, people are asking questions. where is that vote? we don't always know where they are coming from. being better about counting

quickly, getting things in, accounting for the ballots that are slightly counted after election day i think wouand addy did. there may be something going on. couple more things with counting. we have not mentioned audits here. i don't think that's going well. we have certainly move towards things like risk limiting audits. i think that is a good development. there is a specific type of audit. they should assess whether votes were counted as cast. broadly speaking, audits, or postelection looks, maybe a much more official way than we are seeing now. this would not affect election result could be a good thing. i will mention the point about election judges one more time because i do agree with him on this point. i believe our judges are not

election specialists. we have a lot of countries with election courts. states do that to some extent. more that would be helpful. states being able to train their judges to look at these things or do after looks that don't affect election results where judges could be more serious and trained and focused on these issues. i think that is very important. lastly, electoral college act, i am 12 think that things didn't go very well and haven't done well in a number of ways. the electoral college after electors cast their votes in december. i am not sure we can lock that all down with changes. i do think one big principle and this would apply to democrats who did it earlier and republicans it did in this election would be when the

electors of the electoral college meet in college to cast their vote, there was not much more to be said what happened in the state. the states get the result and pick that person. it doesn't mean that congress has a role in asking questions about their votes or some extreme cases, some difficult questions but for the most part, they need to resolve those quickly by the time electors vote. put them in place and those sort of results we should not be going behind when congress gets together to count them. >> thank you very much. let us move to the audience q and a portion of the program. we got about 20 minutes left here. there are a number of questions that came in. there any put this out there first.

if voting was in person with picture id at once designated present with paper bouts, during voting hours with counting beginning immediately and not stopping until completion. recounts would be easy and we could achieve the desired confidence and integrity in the voting process. what you like to take a crack at this one? >> i think that is an excellent way to yield much more distressed because what will happen is many more vote him's -- voters, there are some states where they have to vote by mail without an excuse. there are military and overseas ballots coming in weeks later. there are provisional ballots that 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 time. what we know is that the solution that works for the best integrity putting aside the legitimacy of an election is like what states like ohio and florida have done. they have implemented procedures under republican legislatures and secretaries of state to allow for voting through three different methods. early in person, male voting without excuse and election day, preprocessing a balance before election day. they had results almost immediately. the only reason georgia didn't is when you have a very close margin that the small number of ballots that need to be reviewed like provisional ballots, luke perry and overseas, that could lead to in extension of time.

overall, the way to maximize integrity is to spread it over more time than concentrated on a single 12 hour period. >> i agree with you a lot. i have been a critic of large-scale voting by mail for a long time. some states have pro -- probation of election and i think they're going that way. i think the trend has been away from voting on election day. i also don't think we will have a unitary system of voting. we will not have all states moving to vote by mail. i think david is right. i was a fan of in person voting. i think states could run good elections without having an enormous amount of voting by mail and still have polling voting. election day can be done well.

i don't think that's the future. i think were down to 6-7 states voting on election day. i do think the processes even for a state like ohio that does a lot of things like voting by mail, progressive and open things and yet trying to get in those ballots by election day. however they do it, i think that is important. they should come up with results pretty quickly. i think that is the key point. >> thank you. there are a number of questions on electoral colleges. improving public trust and understanding of the election. we will lump them altogether together. do these members have suggestions about how the electoral college could be performed without scrapping it

in a way that would make it more understandable for the public and bolster trust? who would like to start with that? >> i will take a crack at that. you have to say upfront that electoral college form will be different -- difficult. in the constitution -- [no audio] >> good evening and welcome to the reagan library. we reopened our doors and begin to invite people back to attend in person events just a few weeks ago. [applause] >>