this sunday, vote watch. >> they're trying to steal the election from the republicans. >> with the pandemic leading to more people preparing to vote by mail than ever before -- >> you won't know the election result for weeks, months, maybe years after. >> president trump steps up his fight against mail-in balloting. >> the democrats are meddling by wanting and insisting on sending mail-in ballots where there's corruption all over the place. >> despite a lack of evidence. >> democrats have studied this, republicans have studied this, and no one can find any evidence of rampant voter fraud. >> still, many are concerned. >> if there's mail-in i don't at trust that at all.

>> do you have apprehensions about mail-in voting in particular? >> i do. >> plus worries over voter rights. >> when voter suppression happens, it happens disproportionately in minority communities. >> foreign meddling. >> the russians are not trying to interfere in the election of 2020, they are interfering. >> and a weakened postal service. >> the postal service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nation's ballots securely and on time. >> poll watchers, delayed results, and conspiracy theories. this morning, how safe is your vote? welcome to sunday and a special vote watch edition of "meet the press." >> announcer: from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, this is a special edition of "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning and a happy labor day weekend to everyone. not only may this actually be the most important election in our lifetime it certainly will be the most unusual or unlike any election in our lifetime. this year because of the covid-19 pandemic for the first time a majority of americans say

they plan to vote early, and that has huge consequences. according to this week's nbc news survey monkey poll 52% of americans say they plan to vote early, 33% by mail, 19% early in person. but there is a huge split between how democrats and republicans plan to vote. 54% of those who lean republican plan to vote on election day in person. while among those who lean democratic, 71% plan to vote by mail or early in person. that is all but certain to lead to an election night in which president trump may appear to be leading because those election day votes are counted first and are republican leaning, only to fall behind joe biden in the following days and weeks as mostly democratic mail-in votes are counted. there are so many questions surrounding this election. will president trump declare victory on election night and insist that mail-in ballots counted afterwards are fraudulent? will the postal service be able to get those ballots in on time?

will hurdles be put in place to make it more difficult for black and hispanic voters to get to the polls? how many mail-in ballots will be disqualified and why? and could weeks of legal challenges make 2000 and its hanging chads seem simple and quaint? those are just some of the issues we're trying to deal with all this week on vote watch on nbc news and msnbc starting with this special edition of "meet the press." we're going to begin with a crush of expected mail-in votes and an election, the likes of which we have never seen. >> it's my greatest concern, my single greatest concern. this president is going to try to steal this election. >> they're trying to steal the election from the republicans. >> the stakes could not be higher, as the two parties clash over how to conduct an election in the middle of a global health crisis. more than 190 million americans in 44 states are eligible to cast a vote by mail without an excuse beyond the coronavirus. in 2016, 33 million voters or about one-quarter voted by mail. this time, it could be more than twice that number.

for months the president has engaged in a campaign against mail-in voting, though he is voting by mail himself, to delegitimatize the results of the election if he loses. voting by mail is wrought with fraud and abuse. >> if you do universal mail-ins with millions and millions of ballots, you're never going to know what the real result of an election is. >> i don't like this mail-in ballot deal. >> a "washington post" analysis found 372 cases of voter fraud out of 14.6 million votes cast by mail in the 2016 and 2018 elections alone. >> academics have studied this, lawyers have studied this, the government has studied this, democrats have studied this, republicans have studied this and no one can find any evidence of rampant voter fraud. >> the president's fear of mail-in voting may be rooted in the 2016 election where he overperformed on election day in key battleground states. in florida, for instance, hillary clinton led before election day by 247,000 votes. trump won election day voters by

360,000 and won the state. in the fight over mail-in voting, the postal service has become a flash point. after an urgent warning last month to dozens of states that it cannot guarantee all mail-in ballots will be counted. postmaster general louis dejoy backtracked before congress. >> the postal service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nation's ballots securely and on time. >> will you put the high speed machines back? >> no, i will not. >> you will not. >> i will not. >> the chaotic primary cycle has exposed warning signs. >> it was a complete mess of a system. >> it took pennsylvania 28 days to count all of its primary votes. in new york, it was 42 days. states like wisconsin, georgia and texas were plagued by long lines at the polls, 11th hour court rulings and failing voting machines. >> it is pouring out here. how long have you been waiting? >> about three hours. >> you've been waiting here three hours?

>> we stood in line and kept hearing, you know, there's machines coming. we didn't know if things were broken. it made me think this is -- this must be what voter suppression looks like. >> if you have a 69, 70% voter turnout in our presidential election in november, that could take days. >> and experts worry a long timeline could erode voter confidence in the election and become fertile ground for disinformation campaigns. >> if the election results are close, will you trust them? >> if there's a mail-in, i don't trust that at all. >> i would like to say yes, but sometimes in the back of my mind i don't know. >> and joining me now are two men who have represented their respective parties for years and know as well as anyone what might -- what we might expect this november. it's mark elias and ben ginsberg. when we say recent with ben, we mean this past week recent.

ben, welcome to retirement, i guess, and welcome back to the show. >> thank you. >> mark elias, to both of you, let me start with just doing the landscape of lawsuits as we stand right now. more than we've ever seen for one election cycle. right now the rnc is involved in 41 lawsuits in 19 states. the democrats have 18 different lawsuits in 17 states. we know it's more than we've ever seen before. yes, some of this is covid-related. mark elias, since you're involved in many of these suits, let me start with you. of all of these lawsuits that are out there, what are the one or two that you think most urgently need to be decided and resolved for us to understand what's going to happen in november? >> well, first of all, thank you, chuck, for having me on. ben, congratulations on your retirement. i think that there are a few categories of lawsuits that need to be resolved and pretty quickly. the biggest ones have to do with the rules involving the

processing of absentee ballots. some states ballots have to be received by election day in order to count. some have to be postmarked by election day to count. late received absentee ballots is one of the biggest reasons for rejections that we see in elections. we've been litigating to try to move states to the postmarked by election day as a way to make sure that voters are not disenfranchised due to delays in the postal service and the like. so i would say that that's among those important cases that have to be resolved. >> you know, ben ginsberg, this is one of the phenomenons in that not every state has the same rule when it comes to a postmark. >> yes, it's one of the glories of the federalism that we practice here in the country. i mean what's true is a recognition that this is a different election because of covid, but also a recognition that states and counties which do administer elections have

safeguards in their laws to be sure that people can take credibility in the results of the election. and as your lead-in showed, there are questions about the credibility of the election results, which makes those safeguards in state laws important to be sure that they're in place and known. >> well, ben, let me ask you the reverse of the question i asked mark. what's the one or two lawsuits that you think, particularly from the republican side of the aisle, that you think are crucial? >> the results of absentee balloting and how those votes will be counted and a clear set of rules is right. so there are, again, the safeguards in state law to be sure that the person who casts the ballot really is the person who signed the envelope as well. it's important to have those rules down. the way ballots are going to be collected, absentee ballots will be collected, is very important to have down.

there's a phenomenon known as ballot harvesting. there's a case up before the supreme court, precisely who can get absentee ballots and turn them in needs to be known in each state. >> mark elias, that has been a touchstone here, who collects the ballots, where do they get dropped off. i know you're involved in a couple of these. what state or two do you believe this is most acute? >> yeah, so first of all, the case that ben mentioned is a case that i'm actually involved in litigating. it helps illustrate, i think, part of what's at stake for democracy this fall. the case in arizona, which is currently pending before the supreme court to see whether they'll hear the case, involved an arizona legislative enactment that was brought after shelby county, after the state was no longer subject to preclearance, in which the ninth circuit found that the state banned third-party ballot collection as a way to intentionally discriminate against latino voters.

it wasn't an accident, it wasn't happenstance. the legislature in arizona purposely passed a law to prevent third-party ballot collection to disenfranchise some voters. we know that native american tribes around the country have similar concerns about bans on thirds -- third-party ballot collection. but a lot of what we're seeing from the republicans don't deal with third-party ballot collections, it deals with states using drop boxes. president trump is suing pennsylvania over dropboxes. we've seen republican secretaries of state in various states prevent counties from trying to institute drop boxes. >> ben ginsberg, what is the concern on the drop box? is this just, look, let's find a technicality to complicate this process or is there real evidence of issues that your side is arguing? >> well, the evidence -- people have evidence of drop boxes being abused, then it should

come forward with real specific instances. the theoretical problem with drop boxes is they're boxes sitting out there in public. and if there is a problem with who's collecting the ballots and whether, in some states, there are blank absentee ballots going out that people can collect -- a person collect more than one and put in, that's a problem. but there are ways, we are fortunately on labor day weekend, and there are ways to get adequate security around drop boxes. >> well, and there's cameras. i know that in ohio they claim that they have 24-hour surveillance on that front. i want to shift to something that we may now see in north carolina, and that is an attempt at double voting. it may all be due to something the president said this week. take a listen. >> so let them send it in and let them go vote. and if their system is as good as they say it is, then

obviously they won't be able to vote. if it isn't tabulated, they'll be able to vote. so that's the way it is. and that's what they should do. i don't like the idea of these unsolicited votes. i never did. >> ben ginsberg, i want to start with you on this. as the president undermined his own argument here by essentially endorsing attempted voter fraud. >> well, the clip had some mangled syntax in it, but there are -- there are any number of states which do allow voters to vote absentee, to be able to track their ballots and see if they're received or not and if they're declared valid by the local jurisdiction. if they're not, those states do have ways for people to go in and cure whatever happened to their absentee ballot in arriving. you'll vote a provisional ballot or in some states you'll just void the absentee if it comes in, but there is a way to do

that perfectly legitimately if your absentee ballot is not received. >> you know, mark elias, could you see a scenario where essentially a state like north carolina is flooded with basically people that wanted to be sure their vote was counted, showed up twice and only lengthening the amount of time it takes to even find out whose votes are legit or not? >> well look, i hope the people of north carolina don't follow what is really irresponsible advice from the president and it's really shameful that he said what he did because the fact is it's a felony in north carolina to vote twice. you know, the attorney general said he needed to look up state law to see that. i'm here to tell him what the state law is. so it not only will slow up the process, because those second votes will get caught. there won't be people whose ballots are counted twice, but he's putting at jeopardy those individuals who may be listening

to him and following this really, really irresponsible statement. but it could also gum up the works. >> all right, let's talk about post election day and some of these nightmare scenarios. ben, i'll start with you. you were involved in 2000 and, mark, you've been involved in various recounts over the years, successful in most of them. so, ben, what is your nightmare scenario -- what are your nightmare scenarios here that you're most concerned about that you think viewers ought to be warned about? >> well, 2020 will not be 2000. 2000 was the recount of one state under very tight deadlines, but that was met. what's different about 2020 is the onslaught of absentee ballots and the number of states that have extended the deadline for when those ballots can come in. postmarked on election day, but when they can come in. that's putting a huge amount of faith in the postal service to deliver the ballot.

so i guess my nightmare nightmare scenario is there's a prolonged count because of all the absentee ballots. and then lo and behold after whatever that deadline is in the state, three days after the election, a week after the election, a bunch of ballots come in that the post office just kind of lost. and so it's not the fault of the voter that those votes weren't counted, what do you do then. that bumps into the electoral college deadline. >> mark elias, what are your various nightmare scenarios that you think we ought to be prepping for? >> so a couple of things. first, to ben's point, what he just described in fact a variant of that happened in 2018 in the senate -- close senate and gubernatorial elections in florida. you may remember that andrew gillum lost by 0.4 of a percent and senator nelson lost by 0.1 of a percent. part of that did deal with

delayed receipt of mail ballots due to a central sorting facility that had had a closure due to terrorist pipe bombs being mailed through it. what's instructive about that is how senator nelson and mayor gillum reacted, which is they didn't attack the process, they didn't accuse the election workers of bad faith, they didn't claim there was massive fraud. i represented senator nelson in that. we fought hard during the recount, but then we understood that the votes that had been cast had been counted. what i really worry about is a president that right now is laying seeds of doubt about democracy every day, and he is trying to undermine the u.s. postal service, confidence in it, confidence in mail balloting, and i hope that post election day he acts more responsibly, although i don't have high hopes for that. >> well, the reason we're dedicating a full hour to this is because of our concerns about how the vote will be counted, what will things be like after

election day, and, therefore, why we have two lawyers leading our show today. anyway, mark elias, ben ginsberg, ben, good luck with retirement. i see what you're trying to do. it will suck you back in, my friend. they will suck you back in. >> they may. >> congratulations, ben. >> anyway, thank you both. much appreciated. up next, we'll take you to one of the largest vote processing centers in the country and show you what happens to your ballot after you mail it in. stay with us. we made usaa insurance for veterans like liz and mike. when their growing family meant growing expenses, our agents helped make saving on insurance easy usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa find a stock basedtech. on your interests or what's trending.

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the big events are back. xfinity is your home for the return of live sports. learned a second languageument applied to college applied for a loan started a business started a blog shared a picture shared a moment turn your wish list into a checklist, with internet essentials from comcast. when you're connected, you're ready for anything. welcome back. with 190 million americans eligible to vote by mail, spurred by covid concerns, states are preparing for an unprecedented surge in mail-in ballots. so what happens to your ballot after you mail it? we asked my colleague, jo ling

kent, to take us to one of the largest and most prepared of all the processing centers in the country. it's in orange county, california, south of los angeles. >> reporter: in orange county, california, the final sprint to election day begins on october 5th. in a month all of these envelopes will be stuffed with ballots and sent out to voters. once they're returned here to the registrar, that's when the process kicks into high gear. orange county's nonpartisan chief elections official, neil kelly, oversees the fifth largest voting jurisdiction in the united states. he says he's running a military-style operation to handle what's likely to be the biggest mail-in vote ever. >> i think we're probably going to see upwards of 90% honestly for the november election. >> reporter: that could add up to 1.2 million in orange county. kelly has been anticipating the onslaught since the pandemic hit in march, investing more than a million dollars in new machinery and doing dry runs to prepare. >> you know, i lose sleep a lot at night. i think every election official does. one of the things that i lose

sleep over is making sure the voters understand their options. >> the options, mail in your ballot early, drop it off in one of these secure drop boxes or deliver it in person to a vote center starting four days before election day. you can, of course, always vote in person. >> so when your ballot arrives, the first thing it does is go into this piece of equipment. what this piece of equipment does at a very high speed, it's capturing an image of that signature in a split second. >> what happens if your signature is not legitimate? >> it goes to another tier for additional review. >> a human is comparing the signature here? >> correct. correct. a human being is comparing every single signature. so if it's a good ballot, these ballots come into this device right here and this piece of equipment splits the envelope open. this operator would pull out each individual ballot. >> reporter: is he able to see

the way i cast my ballot? >> no. the secrecy of the ballot remains because it stays folded until it goes to another team for opening. this is the moment of truth because now it comes in and we scan it and are capturing all the data where the voter voted. >> reporter: although orange county captures mail-in ballots as soon as they arrive, no actual votes are counted until election day. california allows ballots to arrive up to 17 days after election day as long as they're postmarked by november 3rd. kelly has 30 days by state law to count all the votes but believes they could finish in two weeks. as for the criticism from the white house -- >> mail-in ballots will lead to the greatest fraud. universal mail-in is a very dangerous thing. it's fraught with fraud and every other thing that can happen. >> i try and stay out of the political fray as an election official, right? but just in general when you talk about the security of mail-in voting in general, i think it has more secure aspects than in-person voting. >> reporter: what we saw is a situation where the county has the time, money and resources to handle the expected surge in mail-in voting but that's just not the case nationwide.

not all counties are this fortunate or prepared. chuck. >> jo ling kent with our report there in southern california. jo ling, thank you. as sophisticated, by the way, as the mail-in system is in california, it still takes quite a bit of time to get results. for instance, in 2018, 17 house races in california were called after election day. 12 of them more than a week later. when we come back, attorney general william barr last week said it is reckless and dangerous to shift to widespread mail-in voting. is that really true? coming up, how states are getting ready for election day. ♪ ♪

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welcome back. how you vote by mail depends on where you live. nine states and washington, d.c., automatically send ballots to voters. voters in another ten states automatically get an application for an absentee ballot sent to them. in half the states, 25, people are allowed to vote by mail without an excuse or with the coronavirus as their excuse. in six states, mostly in the south, require an excuse to vote absentee. by the way, 20 states have changed their rules due to the pandemic this calendar year. and joining me now are three state officials whose job it will be to oversee the voting in their respective states. republican secretary of state frank larose of ohio, democratic secretary of state jocelyn benson of michigan, and state board of elections director karen brinson bell of north carolina.

welcome all of you to "meet the press." karen brinson bell, i'm going to start with you. north carolina, friday absentee ballots went out. how would you say your level of -- where is your level of concern when it comes to preparedness for this election season? >> we have been optimistic the entire time. this is not the first time that north carolina has been 60 days out in delivering absentee by mail ballots. that's par for the course in our state. it's just that we're trying to get out more than we typically would. we were fortunate to have our primary as part of super tuesday, so we were ahead of the pandemic. we have had a small election in june that helped us to prepare. and i am so proud of the 100 county election directors and boards for the preparations and steps that they have been taking. >> frank larose, unlike karen mentioned that north carolina was on super tuesday so avoided a covid postponement, you guys

did postpone so you basically had to run the traps a couple of times. how important was that experience for you going into november? >> you know, ohio had a primary set for march 17th. the governor made the decision that it wouldn't be safe to go forward with in-person voting so our state legislature chose to conclude the election as an all postal primary. of course we carried that out. some of the lessons that we learned from that, though, is that our boards of elections are incredibly well positioned to handle high volumes of absentee voting. >> what concern right now do you have about november as far as ohio's preparations are concerned? >> chuck, the thing that we're thinking about more than anything right now is poll worker recruitment. it takes 35,000 ohioans to run in-person election day so we're doing all we can to recruit those poll workers. next we're making sure that we get accurate information out to ohio's voters. it's just crucial that people have reliable information. that's why your profession is protected by the very first amendment and that's why one of my most important jobs is being that source of accurate and trusted information for ohio's

voters. >> jocelyn benson, what did you learn from michigan's experience? you went with -- you ended up with a high volume of mail-in ballots, and obviously you've gone through a whole bunch of election changes since 2016 that you're going to be implementing for the first time. so give me your assessment of where you feel like michigan is right now. >> chuck, one of the silver linings of 2020 for us has been options for voters and opportunities to clarify those options. voters in michigan can vote early by mail, they can return ballots through a drop box. we placed close to a thousand secure drop boxes all around the state. they can vote early in person at their clerk's office and every precinct will be open on election day. we've been able to hone this plan for november through three successful elections that we've had already this year, where we've seen in every single one, turnout has doubled. putting us on track to have michigan's november election be the highest turnout ever in the

history of our state. >> i want to go to the postal service issue. you were pretty concerned about it at one time. where are you now? have you had reassurances from the postal service folks that you've dealt with since this kerfuffle began? >> yes. i have spoken directly with the postmaster general and we've been in near constant communication with our postal leaders on the ground here in michigan. we're approaching this from a two-pronged strategy. one is to make sure the system works, that citizens can receive their ballots and return them on time. we've created drop boxes as a work-around for citizens who may not feel comfortable or wait until the last minute to return their ballots. but we're now also facing a perception issue. the changes in the postal service if nothing else has created confusion and chaos where none existed prior. so the voter education and the confidence boosting we now have to do and will do to ensure voters feel confident their vote, if sent through the mail,

is counted is a key part of our work moving forward. >> frank larose, talk to me about security on your drop boxes in ohio. >> so we require that they be under 24-hour video surveillance. they are emptied every day by a bipartisan team at the county boards of elections, that's part of the security protocols. ohioans trust whether they mail in their absentee ballot or use the secure drop box at the board of elections that their voice will be heard because they can track their ballot by going to our website, voteohio.gov, just like you track a package. and i know that many other states offer that as well. so you can have that confidence that the board of elections has received your ballot. >> karen brinson bell, i'm curious, you're going to be dealing with more absentee ballots than ever before, and it is going to slow down the counting and the processing of this. walk me through what is -- how quickly can you verify mail-in ballots? and can you verify them before you count them in order to speed up the count? >> i think north carolina is uniquely positioned for this because we began sending out absentee by mail ballots on

september 4th to nearly 600,000 absentee requests that we had received. we are ahead of the game in sending out those ballots. that's more time for voters to return them. we also have had in place for a number of years now the ability to process absentee by mail ballots in advance of election day. we also tabulate on election day the results from our one-stop early voting, which we think will be about 50% of the ballots cast, we'll probably have 30% or 40% of the ballots cast absentee by mail. so even by the close of polls on election night, we may be reporting as much as 80% of our voter turnout and how they have chosen at the time that the polls close. >> so you may end up being a fast counting state with results quickly. i know ohio and, frank larose, i know you guys process early, which brings me to you, jocelyn benson.

you guys can't start processing until election day. it took a long time to get results during your primary. should we be prepared for thanksgiving and the michigan results to be coming together? >> no, but we should be prepared for this to be closer to an election week as opposed to an election day. the bottom line is we are not going to have the full results and a counting of all of our ballots on election night. we already know that. we've asked the legislature to make changes to the laws to give us more ability to be prepared and count those ballots more efficiently. they have not acted for reasons that i don't fully completely understand, but that said, we're increasing tabulators, we're increasing capacity to more efficiently and securely count those ballots, but i'm also laser focused on accuracy. if this takes a few extra days to ensure we have a full and accurate counting as a result of every race, that's what it's going to take. we're going to be transparent throughout that whole process to make sure every citizen knows where we are in the counting process and how many more

ballots we have to get through. >> are you concerned that people may take the delay in getting all the results in michigan to declare a phony winner? >> yes, but to me that's just going to be another example of the type of misinformation and disinformation that we're seeing multiple ways from multiple platforms and voices in this election cycle. so we are going to counter that misinformation with truth and accuracy. these are ballots that have been counted and reported, this is where the work is still happening and we'll continue to keep the public updated. being that source of trusted information of clear facts and data is going to be really important for every secretary of state this year as we seek to cut through lots of different rhetoric that's going to only be increasing in the weeks coming up to election day and beyond. >> frank larose, senator marco rubio of florida has actually got a bill that would change the day the electors meet from december 14th to january 2nd. essentially it's because he said, look, states may need more time.

they may need more time to certify, and don't -- it's an artificial date, december 14th. you can shift that around. would you like more time? >> chuck, we're certainly planning on having our electoral college meet on december 14th. we're preparing for that. of course we count the ballots on election night and always report that is unofficial tabulation. we know over the next ten days as long as those ballots were legally cast they can continue to be received at our board of elections, that's our law here in ohio. so we're making it clear that the numbers that you hear on election night are never the final result. that's going to be even more so the case this year as we rely on more and more absentee balloting. we're even changing the way the election night reporting is done on the website to make it clear that there may still be tens or hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots. we expect those to come back in. whether it's one of my former military teammates that's serving overseas or maybe someone who procrastinated and waited until the last minute. as long as they were cast, they deserve to be counted.

election date we'll give a snapshot of those results but the final result is what matters. >> jocelyn benson of michigan, i think we learned from you that it's election week, at a minimum, in michigan. frank larose, poll workers you brought up and karen brinson bell, be as prepared as you can be. i appreciate all of you. good luck. we're all counting on all three of you doing an outstanding job. this is one case where regardless of party, everybody wants all three of you to succeed. so thank you. >> thank you. when we come back, hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots were thrown out during this year's primaries. coming up we'll look at three battleground states where rejected ballots could make all the difference in the world. ♪ everyday it's a-getting closer♪

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welcome back. it is data download time. several different analysis including from "the washington post" and npr found roughly half a million mail-in ballots were rejected from states that held their primary elections during the pandemic. so we decided to dive into three of the states that had the closest margins in 2016 and look at how many ballots were thrown out, whose they were and why they got tossed.

by now you know the states by heart, wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. president trump won all three by razor-thin margins, taking the white house by their combined 77,000 total votes. all three allowed no excuse mail-in voting now. michigan and pennsylvania are doing it for the very first time. so let's start with wisconsin. more than 23,000 mail-in votes were cancelled in the state's primary earlier this year, and there were lots of reasons. many of them were different. some voters missed the deadline or had mail issues. but most were rejected because of certification issues like a problem with a witness signature. fewer ballots were rejected in michigan's spring primary, 10,694. the biggest culprit there, most arrived too late to be counted, followed by signature problems and mail issues. and finally in pennsylvania, where close to 27,000 ballots were thrown out this year. just as in michigan, the biggest issue there was the return deadline followed by mail issues like the ballot label being misplaced or damaged.

it also matters whose ballots get thrown out. pennsylvania tracks that as well. in that state, many of the rejected ballots came from philadelphia and suburban montgomery county that's right next door. crucial democratic counties. remember, the number of rejected ballots remains relatively small. but if 2020 looks anything like 2016, especially in pennsylvania, those rejected ballots could make a huge difference. when we come back, what changes are needed to reform the system? our panel is next. packages. and the peace of mind of knowing that important things like your prescriptions, and ballots, are on their way. every day, all across america, we'll keep delivering for you. ♪

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welcome back. all of us are used to knowing the winner of the presidential election on election night or sometimes the wee hours of the morning, 2000 an exception of course. but people who follow congressional races in some states are more accustomed to waiting a few days to finds out. this year with the rise in mail-in voting those places may offer a cautionary tale. take the u.s. senate race in 2018 in arizona between martha mcsally and kyrsten sinema. when most of us went to bed, on election night, 2018, mcsally was in the lead but 57% of the votes were accounted for. at that point there was still more than 600,000 mail-in votes that hadn't been processed yet so nobody declared any victory. two days later on november 8th, more processed mail-in ballots had given the tiniest of leads to sinema. one tenth of a point. with more votes still to be counted. again, no declarations. the next day friday, november 9th, the president decided to tweet. just out in arizona, signatures

don't match, electoral corruption, call for a new election? we must protect our democracy! the tweet coincidentally came after sinema took the lead. but she expanded her lead and on monday mcsally conceded the race. sinema won by just over two percentage points. not a landslide but usually a race you can decide on election night. with that i'd like to bring in this morning's panel. we have michael waldman, janai nelson and nbc news national security analyst clint watts. clint, it's on this topic right there that i want to begin. we don't have to speculate whether the president will mess around with the vote count. we have evidence that he did it once in 2018, during that arizona senate race, and that's why i wanted to start here. the issue of misinformation and disinformation, i heard it from the board of elections folks we've talked to, we heard it from the election lawyers. this seems to be the greatest concern of this election. >> chuck, it's called the liars dividend, right?

once you put the information out there, you set the agenda and then you drive people's perceptions around what reality is. you and i have talked on here a couple of different times. people tend to believe what they hear first and hear the most. you can bet in this campaign coming up on election night, they're going to be pushing a message of victory, a message of cementing what reality will be for them. and this is going to cause such chaos, such trouble, and my biggest worry on election night is that people will be mobilized at polling places or even advance to polling places leading to voter intimidation or belief that the thing is rigged even though you've had all these great experts on here today restoring faith in our democracy and trying to tell people how to trust the results of the vote. >> janai nelson, this is what you focus on in some ways. i mean the backbone of the naacp has been access to the polls, creating more access to it, and obviously the misinformation is of concern. what are your biggest concerns about this upcoming election,

and is it the access issue? >> well, at the naacp legal defense and educational fund we are deeply concerned about misinformation and disinformation, and of course about access to the ballot in light of the pandemic that has wrought havoc on the african-american and latinx community. as we know, african-americans are three times as likely to have been affected by covid than whites and two times as likely to have passed away as a result of the completely mishandled pandemic. and so that necessarily means that african-americans are more likely to have to rely on mail-in voting, and the misinformation that the president has disseminated about the reliability of mail-in voting is deeply concerning. so many people will need to rely on that method of voting in order to preserve their health, in order to exercise their constitutional right to vote, and to malign the very process

that he and attorney general barr and so many in his cabinet use as their method of voting and so many americans have successfully used over time is such a hypocritical move and is a clear and present danger to our democracy. >> michael waldman, one of the things that we also featured in our data download has to do with spoiled ballots and how -- if you look at the state of pennsylvania, it's pretty clear that it looks like that the votes of people that live in philadelphia, and you can check the census and decide if that's going to end up impacting more voters of color, but it sure looks like more voters of color saw their ballots thrown out. let me ask you the question this way, michael waldman, what is the best way to guarantee that your vote counts? >> well, the best way for anybody to guarantee that their vote counts is this year it's an unusual year vote early, whether you vote by mail early, whether you vote in person early,

whether you use drop boxes, which is actually how most people who vote by mail vote. and that is something we as citizens can do. states need money, congress passed some, but it's all in the negotiations over the stimulus. more money will help the states count the ballots better. the private sector can step in. but i do think you've hit on something else, which is all of us need to understand that every vote should count, whether it's voted by mail or voted in person. every vote should count. and this idea that there is something wrong with vote by mail in the middle of a pandemic, that's not a charge, that's a lie. and that is -- it's extraordinary to have the president of the united states going out of his way to try to undermine faith in american democracy in the middle of a crisis like this. so, you know, we all need to be patient and understand as you've said it's not going to be election night. we're not going to have the announcement at 11:00 on the

east coast probably the way we have other years. but that doesn't mean there's a problem, it just means people are carefully counting the votes. >> clint watts, facebook announced that it was going to not allow new political advertising in the final week of the election for fear of this manipulation of voting access and things like this. it looked like a nice press release, but boy it certainly looked like a lot of loopholes to this announcement to me. did facebook really do anything and is advertising really the best way to stop misinformation? >> yeah, chuck, it's a great point. look, i'm glad facebook did something, but it's pretty late in the game. one week out. as we just heard, the best thing you can do is vote early. if there's misperceptions about when and how and where you vote, they'll be coming out way before seven days. and they probably won't be ads. it's mostly individuals that are doing this. the question is twofold, i think. one, how do we tag that content, regardless of platform.

all these platforms are being used to try and sow disinformation or misinformation into the public. the second part is what i've really seen over the last two weeks is calls for mobilization, whether it's protests, and this is only going to converge. we've got covid-19, racial justice protests and election night all coming up at the same time and they all compound on each other. there have been mobilizations, calls to mobilization on social media that i've seen across the country that has brought tons of people to local municipalities and absolutely overwhelmed law enforcement, kenosha being one example. so i think that's the other phase. yeah, i'm worried about misinformation regarding the election and voting. i'm really worried about mobilizations and how the social media companies can try and quell that as well. >> janai, i want to talk about voter suppression issues. look, it was a huge -- it was a huge issue in the state of georgia. i think stacey abrams believes various tactics, whether it's voter roll purging did cost her

that election, she believes. what states are you most focused on this cycle where you're most concerned about those issues? >> well, we're focused on a number of states, we're a nonpartisan organization, so our foremost concern is to ensure that every voter has an opportunity to cast an equal ballot, regardless of any party affiliation. so we're focused on states that have a majority african-american population, regardless of, again, whether they're considered swing states or not because we believe that the right to vote is fundamental and must be protected at all costs. so we have operations in a number of states through a prepare to vote campaign where we're educating voters about all of the options that they have to cast a ballot, to ensure that it is ultimately counted. you've already noted that there is a disparity in terms of what ballots get thrown out, what ballots get counted. there are disparities in early voting. there are disparities on a

number of fronts that make equal access to the ballot unequal throughout our country, and that falls largely on the shoulders of african-americans and latinx voters. what we are most concerned about, though, this particular election cycle is the misinformation that can mislead voters about where and when to vote and we are calling upon social media platform leaders, the silicon valley leadership, to ensure that there are clear rules around voting and that disinformation is identified and flagged and removed from those platforms immediately. >> you know, michael waldman, one of the things that supposedly makes our election so secure is that we have so many different rules and regulations, depending on state, voter registration deadlines, but it does feel as if this year that it's leading to more confusion than it does security. >> well, you know, we don't have one national election, we don't even have 50 state elections, we

have hundreds and thousands of elections run by counties. that's the legacy of our system as we've had it. really there's a great benefit to having some national standards and some national expectations. there should be access to vote by mail for everybody who wants to do it. there should be early voting opportunities and safe in-person voting opportunities everywhere. and if we have those kinds of national expectations, the kind of crazy profusion of rules won't matter quite as much. but this should be an impetus to us to understand we need to upgrade, modernize and fix our ramshackle system of running things. >> and hopefully that is yet another thing this pandemic has exposed in all of us here. michael waldman, janai nelson, clint watts, really appreciate all three of you bringing your expertise to this panel. if you haven't figured it out yet, it is more important than ever to know your state's rules and to plan your vote. so please check out our interactive guide that has all you need to know about casting a ballot.

look for it at nbcnews.com/planyourvote to learn more. and remember, there will be vote watch segments all this week. so thank you for watching. enjoy the rest of your labor day weekend. stay safe, and we'll see you next week. because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." welcome to a special prerecorded edition of "morning joe," it is monday, september 7th, labor day. we have a great show on tap for you this morning, including some of the biggest political moments over the past few months and how they shape the state of the race. now with just weeks left until the november election, of course, nothing will define the end of 2020 more than the coronavirus. and the trump administration's mishandling of the deadly pandemic right from the start. back in april, "the washington post" examined how the u.s. government was beset by denial and dysfunction.