mediacomm support c-span as a public service along with these other providers. >> next, and look at claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential elections. the american enterprise institute hosted the 90 minute >> good morning and welcome to this american enterprise institute event on election security. 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 hav >> after that, we will have an audience q&a. to get your question, email it toqueue, please either email ito

elaine or tweet us on twitter. you don't have to wait until after 11:00 to submit 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. with that, let me move us along to our program. the trust of the results of presidential elections has been intense in recent years. some democrats believe donald trump won the 2016 election through russian interference. more recently, an even larger percentage of republicans believe democrats stole the 2020 presidential contest. the political right's reaction to last year's contest was exceptionally intense. the sitting president who regularly complained that the

other party would steal the election, president and various individuals and groups filed dozens of lawsuits. come january 6, 2021, significant numbers of republican members of congress repeated allegations of voter fraud and they voted against accepting the electoral slates. disbelief then became action. action that resulted in protesters storming the u.s. capitol. six months later, the controversy continues and the reverberations continue. a recent blog post by aei shows only one quarter of republicans polled believe joe biden was legitimately elected president. in short, 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 to various

countries that have collapsed due to allegations of stolen elections. have i said my theory about why we are here? let me know introduce our panelists. first, david becker is the executive director and founder of the nonpartisan, nonprofit center for election innovation and research. he has helped elected officials from both parties to ensure all voters can vote conveniently in a system of maximum integrity. daniel cox is a resident scholar here at aei. he is the director of the survey center on american life. he specializes in survey research, politics, youth culture and identity, religion. john fortier is also a resident scholar here at aei. he is the author of three books. two of which are on elections. one is titled, after the people vote, a guide to the electoral college. the other is titled, absentee and early voting. justin grimmer is a professor at

stanford university. and a senior fellow at the hoover institution. his research focuses on congress, elections, social media, and data science. he also recently published a report on the allegations of election fraud in 2020 and has published peer-reviewed articles on voter id policies. last but certainly not least is kevin johnson, founder of an executive director of election reformers network. kevin has spent seven years at overseas democracy promotion, a decade on the board of common cause in massachusetts, and is on advisory bodies. let's move to our conversation with the panelists. let me pitch the first question to my colleague daniel cox. what does polling tell us about the long term and short term

trends in public trust of elections? daniel: thanks for the question, i appreciate the opportunity 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. over the past decades we have seen a number of americans that believes government does what is right has declined. we're looking at 50 year lows. the lowest reported score was in a poll conducted in october 19, 2011. it is widely known americans do not trust their government. there have been fluctuations. we have seen a reintegration of public confidence after the september 11 terrorist attacks. we are seeing resurgence now after the pandemic. there is a slight increase in

confidence in the u.s. government. but this nadir, 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 many americans have about the operation and function of government, americans have been remarkably upbeat about the functioning of the u.s. election system. for the past two decades, the majority of americans say they are at least somewhat confident votes will be cast and counted accurately. we have seen some fluctuations across elections. but the lowest support al up has reported -- the lowest support gallup has recorded is 59%. that is as recently as 2020. a couple caveats to this generally positive view is there is a significant decline over the 15 years of the poll.

we started with around three quarters of americans being confident in how elections are being administered. that is down to 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 really interesting thing about this and about what has happened recently is the differences in confidence in the administration's election did not used to be a partisan affair. there were not differences between what democrats and republicans thought until recently. again, looking at some 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 pacific 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. 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 signals there was something weird about this election. some kind of deviation from the past.

[indiscernible] 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 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. so perhaps the issue that comes up of the most when i discussed this with people, in fact i played poker on friday night with someone who is an election skeptic and this is the first thing he wanted to bring 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 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. now i will 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. we identified in the paper a number of statistical issues in the way that was done. 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 t hat 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 and predicted number of balance -- ballots. 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. distressed is high -- distrust i s 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 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 that is not to say i think there is some evidence and the reaction on the republican side has been stronger early on. to say it is a long-term trend. i do think it is a difficult problem to say, we have confidence in this, when the overall movement hasn't meant as much as the movement between parties.

elections have the loser -- i know we are going to get to potential solutions 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 we are going to debug election claims that are not true and everyone is going to believe them. i am all for debunking, i think that is a good enterprise across the political spectrum, some of it is not going well. the arizona audit by a lot of measures is not going to be helpful for the republicans, and certainly any postelection audit is going to be criticized by the other side. it is hard to imagine it

persuading a lot of people. 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, but i do think making elections somewhat more transparent, more clearly resolved at an earlier stage, and i can get to some of those things would be somewhat helpful. 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. that is true in many ways, certainly in a limited sense, but i think that claim gets expanded to say let's not think about election integrity issues.

let's not think about voting roles for the way we count or transparency of observers, or other things they do get at some of those issues. and have different of opinions. some of this feeds into that, 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. >> 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. complaints that the 2018 georgia gubernatorial election was stolen from stacey abrams. how widespread is election result in miles him 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 allowed 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 process the idea that their candidate might have lost in a country that is so closely divided. this is quite right, this is not something that is unique to the

right. there have been instances going back to 2005 allegations, completely unsupported that voting machines in ohio had flipped a 120,000 margin of victory for them president bush from john kerry. there were allegations in 2016 of voting machine issues that may be led to donald trump winning the election, and of course the jill stein campaign actually paid for recounts of michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania. there have been other instances where left-leaning or democratic candidates have denied they lost or somehow raised questions about it. i also want to state very importantly, this is not a moral equivalence. those efforts were generally not supported with rare exceptions by the candidates, john kerry

did not support the challenges to the election loss. in general, what we are seeing 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 claimant reading before the election happened. it goes back to august or even 2016 where he preceded 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.

of course, this is something that sometimes comes up in other elections. 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 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 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 alec -- ballot was to not be counted.

the biden campaign did not like that. ultimately, the biden campaign 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. 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, 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. 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 folk county, 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 came out and said this was the most secure election in american history, objectively speaking that is 100% accurate. we just want -- went through the most secure 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 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. it was the first election in two decades where they had paper valves. we saw more pre-election litigation than ever before the clarified rules, the rule of law one out. some things democrats liked, something republicans like. we saw most postelection than ever before. we were very successful in 2020, and that is why i think some of the election to nihilism 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. 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 counting is really only affecting republicans, not independents or democrats, we are seeing 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 then we did in democratic areas, because election denialidm 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 sq, this phenomenon of election results denialism, you think it is caused by teachers of american election systems? you have worked overseas. are there fees we do here? 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 i do want to echo what you said and what david mentioned, those

things don't really 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 level. that said, there are a couple of structural things to talk about. i think the key issue in comparison to other countries, how election results are resolved. 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 conditioned to weigh on this. our case is remarkably ambiguous.

what will happen if there is a close election? it's ambiguous. you all read 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 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. this shows up in public opinion. the question is, if the governor -- election was closely disputed, do you think it would be resolved fairly?

i'll be 38% said yes. 30% said they don't know. 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. the electoral college. a significant percentage of the a significant percentage of the population believes that they doubt the legitimacy of the electoral college. there is a book that is a fantastic example of the way in which americans have pointed out

the flaws in the electoral college, have tried to change 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. 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 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. john:

kevin k: thank you. we are the halfway point. email your questions 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 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. 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 they were allowed to

vote if they did not have a permanent address. ask 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. 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. another 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 rights reinstated. the majority of americans support that. the majority of americans support same-day registration. deal even automatic registration. these are largely policies with bipartisan support. making election day and national holiday, another policy that enjoys widespread bipartisan support. on the other site, government issued ids. mandatory for voting that actually enjoy support. it is a bipartisan support. the other thing i thought was really interesting is the idea of mandatory voting. i'm not saying there is any chance 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 and the u.k., but it is still pretty significant 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. 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. 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 there, test -- whether the contest was fair. 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 -- all indications are 2020. the last things i will say is

the importance of gracias 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. for both sides to say this is important. 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 so 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, friends and family, implements the information we have, what we know, and quite frankly what and who we trust. we are seeing an increasing number of folks that only 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 they are socially segregated, it becomes more easy to retain these false ideas because no one is challenging you. these other 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 not accepting the results. anyway. 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. give us your take on voter id. is a good policy, or should we would -- should we be looking to

something else? dan: the quick answer if that doesn't seem to be good evidence that imposing a voter id requirement leads to a subsequent boost in trust and elections. more generally, what it does, i can think of a policy with a bigger disconnect. if you look to the left and how people talk about voter id laws, it's going to create insurmountable hurdles and results in the limiting of voter turnout. 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.

in the 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. a massive number of votes cast in north carolina, these are a small number of voters. what is going on here? many people have identification. 97% to 90% have identification. a multiple -- multitude of people who don't turn out 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. on the other psych, -- 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 pump up in trust. i think we are left with policy discussion 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 idea. i guess i would say we should look elsewhere if we want to bolster trust. voter identification most are not where we are going to get people to buy into the veracity of elections. kevin k: thank you much. what policies would you favor to try and strengthen public trust in elections? >> first of all, 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. i am left optimistic. i am pretty pessimistic right now. as was mentioned, i am going to regret having coined this term. but this entire ecosystem whose livelihoods, they are not the best and the brightest but they have become wealthy. by pushing anger and division and laws. they are correcting 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. these are all republicans. they are being attacked, centered, threatened. we are seeing physical threats that is the place i am in. i think there are some potential solutions. so many palace have alluded to, for too long, the idea of increased access with something to be perceived on the left. integrity was perceived to be on

the right. for those that go out in the field, does 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 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 marked ballots cast early, by mail, the more they serve as an early warning system for potential malfunctions in 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. we had 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 pit 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. i also think there is an aspect of transparency that can be included in the floor. election officials like transparency. there were a lot of concerns about so-called observers not being allowed into locations to observe the counting of ballots. that is false, observers were in every location, the campaigns had every opportunity. we can intranet further into law, to make sure that poll watchers with the campaigns

should be allowed to 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. 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. of time. if someone move right now, the odds are they would not think of updating their voting registration. 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 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. 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. because of that. because of 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. 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, take perceived, to try and beverage 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 arta and george on the other is the outcome. that is why we are seeing attempts to leverage these perceived inferences 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. 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. that should be more money for election officials to support voter education about this. we need voters to understand how it works, how it happens. how it happens that the result is confirmed.

suggestion to -- 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 lot -- by law and the courts. candidates should be state -- 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 and is 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 is if we were talking in