you can have that added sense of security knowing that your ballot has been received and validated by election officials probably. but please, every election cycle, hundreds of thousands of people have the balance discarded because they didn't follow the procedures. if you're going to vote by mail, just be sure you are following all instructions properly. host: anyway because early votes get counted? do they start counting them as they can then, do they wait until election day? guest: by law the election officials can't count, actually physically count who voted for who until election day. but election officials can do some preparation. if a mail ballot comes in, usually there is an envelope and inside that envelope is another envelope we call a security

envelope. the mail sent from the bigger envelope, that will get separated. election officials may check it over, this piece of paper, that envelope, is that matching up as we expected? does other preparatory procedures. they can be done by election officials, it's just that the actual accounting of the ballot can be done until election day. host: michael mcdonald, political science professor at will take your calls until the end of the program at 10 a.m. eastern, but we are pausing right here to talk to ashley gold, tech and policy reporter at axios. guest: thanks for having me. host: we have you on to talk about the hearing from the d.c. court of appeals at 10 a.m. --

by the way, you can hear that over on c-span two at 10 a.m., it's about tiktok. they are taking the justice department to court about that legislation that passed requiring them to either sell to a u.s. based company or be banned. update us on what's happening today. guest: today we are seeing the doj and tiktok in court, arguing either side. the doj has repeatedly said tiktok being in the u.s. while being owned by bytedance, a chinese company, is a national security threat to the united states and that they have also allowed the content that comes out of tiktok to be manipulated in a certain way that sways public opinion. tiktok has repeatedly said is no validity to these claims.

that banning the app in the united states would not only violate the first amendment rights of tiktok itself, but the millions of users who use tiktok every day, and that banning a single social media app would be an unprecedented action by the u.s. government. tiktok had been working on a national security solution with the committee for foreign investment of the united states prior to this cell or band bill passing and they keep saying let's go back to that, we were willing to install a really serious data security program to show you that we were serious about american user data, but the effort was ultimately abandoned in favor of this bill and tiktok obviously doesn't want to be banned in the united states. host: what are the tiktok lawyers, what is the argument they are making? guest: the argument they are making is that not only is the law of violation of the first

amendment, it's an unprecedented use of government power to shut down a single app and that the government has not presented sufficient evidence that tiktok in the united states as it is structured now, bytedance being the ultimate owner, presents any kind of national security threat. they are also going to argue that lawmakers pass this bill -- passed this bill out of personal grievances over things they saw popping up on tiktok in that it is not based on any kind of real threat that would merit being banned from the united states. host: on the others, what's the argument the biden administration is expected to make? guest: that tiktok is useful, that creators can create a fortune or a career off of it. the biden campaign, as it was, now the harris campaign, they

used tiktok and saw the value in it. what they are going to say in court is that as far as bytedance owning it, the chinese communist party could get into the algorithm and manipulate what americans see. i'm hoping to see more sufficient evidence from the doj that tiktok is actually a national security problem. anything like that has been fairly thinly argue to the public or classified. we will see what they say, today. host: could this go to the supreme court? depending on what happens in the court of appeals? what role are they expected to play? guest: it definitely could. tiktok, if they lose, first they will ask for a temporary injunction, because the law -- if the law doesn't get put in place, then they will appeal to the supreme court so yes, we could see it go to the top if

tiktok loses today. host: i guess in the larger sense, what impact could the case have on the congressional ability and willingness to regulate social media? guest: i like to think of this case is a kind of one-off. the national security argument and the involvement of the spectrum of china here kind of made lawmakers uniquely motivated to do something, whereas when it comes to american companies, like meta, google, snapchat, they are a little bit more prone to protect the lobbyists in those companies. i think that it shows that when congress really wants to regulate, they can get it together and do it, but that it is still a little bit rare. and if this law is not upheld, it's not a great show of confidence that congress is passing great tech laws. host: finally, ashley, to what

extent are the candidates expressing any interest in this case? guest: when the biden campaign first joined, they said hey it's a useful tool for the campaign and continued to support the biden doj and what they were doing in court and they wanted to see it stay in the u.s. and just be owned by someone else. the harris campaign has not waited in. we have yet to hear what she has to say about that. host: >> the c-span book show podcast series makes it easy to feature new authors and ideas.

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