Proposal, calling on the increased role the federal government and the National Election process. Good morning welcome to washington journal. Its a great pleasure to be with you thisfo morning. See him before he gets your proposal and me ask about the election itself. Nahor jumped four weeks hence, record turnout and by the federal governments on statement a secure election, the most secure election in u. S. History. What are some of your observations. Things that you found surprising in this years election . Guest the election was a very secure election b all standards. But, and weeks and months leading up to the election there was a tremendous amount of litigation and dispute over how mail in ballots would be counted and other issues of electioneering. And followinghe election, as everyone is aware a terminus amount ofitigation. A fair amount of uncertainty as to how and when results could be certified. So i think it has certainly been a secure election. But it isn election and which there h been a tremendous amount ofow votes to be counted who and whe votes of the counts. All that has treated tremendous fodder from all kinds of conspiracy theories out the electnel itself. Through in your proposal with new america foundation, the headline on the peace that new america. Org says America Needs a new federal Elections Agency. Part of what you write is this, boating in america is a mess. Its unfair, insecure and too complicated paired as a rest most americans distrust our elections and uortunately have had some reasons for their skepticism. They are, secure, straightforward voting is a undation of a functioning democracy. What a lethal combination of longstanding neglect and sheer cheap has caused the electoral system to fall into disrepair. To fix that we need to give america democracy infrastructurehe same atteion and resources we give to other national priorities. So give us an idea about what you arean talking about in terms of a federal agency that wld oversee t elections. Guest we have to understand first how election operates in the uted states. Which is that every state and localurisdiction sets their own rules for who can register, when theyhe can register. This year we saw that highlighted with all the arguments abo when mail ballots could be counted, who should get a mail ballots. What happenss that depending on where you live, you have different voting rules. And in a country where we have National Election that depend on we all end up sharing theame presidency and congress and the sene, yet depending on where you live. May be hard to vot it may be easy to bout you may live and a competitive district, y may live under independent restricting commissions. We may live in a place where it is easy to get paper ballots. Wey may live in a place where the election trail is not as clear and secure. Nde idea is basically we are in one country and we should all vote under theame rules. Everything should be fair and equal. Were all americans and should be created eally. All voters are not equal. Votings too complicated, and federal oversight is sevely lackin lets talk about that. We have the Election Assistance Commission as a federal agency, a commission, what isheir role . So their role is ptty limited. At this point it is mostly just to administer funds to help local administratorso make sure everyone can vote. It is a two two commission. It is been pretty dead locke for a while. It doesnt really do a that much. It has a pretty minimal role in forcing violations. And the fundamental problem is theres no baseline standard for how people should vote in is country. Which is why there been so manyights over voter suppression, voter fraud, early voting, mai and voting. We are living in a country in which we all depend on a safe and fair nationa election. Ye where we vote very much determines how hard it is for us to vote. And creates tremendous uncertain gre area of litigation. Men and a sense if our side wins is becau the rules were unfair or somebody at a local precinct or state legislature to helpheir party win. Just makes aremendous amount of it opportunity f grievance and for legitimacy. And the foundation of any democracy is that we have elections that are created fair and equal. And that is sometng that it seems that we dont have so much here in the united ates. Do you see this proposed federal agency on elections as beingore of an agency that provides assistance for states to vote . Ro but actually helps them with the process of voting . Do some of the securit by other agencies vector certainly an issue of Election Security. Theres a lot of things going on here. We have the patchwork of federal agencies that deal with different presses of elections. Theres an Administration Commission theres also federal Electional Commission which really mostly regulates campaignfinance. And the Election Assistance Commission is an equal number of republicans and democrats. Which means its deadlocked and does nothing. Its basically a totally ineffectual agency at this point. Theres some aspect of Election Security thats overseen by some different agencies. And there is the Voting Rights violations that are enforced by the department of justice. Its a patchwork of federal agencies, state and local jurisdictions. What it means is there is no one clear set of rules across all states as i said. But also at the federal level there is no one place that kind of oversees the entire election t process. As well as just we are lacking which congress would need to have. I think the useful analogy here is to the Environmental Protection agency which Richard Nixon put in place in 1970 when the environment with clear segregation of the environment as various jurisdictions over the parts of theouov environment. What nixon did as he put them allne under one agency with a Clear Mission to protect our environment. And then over thend Years Congress threatened that agencyco by giving them particular powers and putting in place particular national standards. I think the analogy works. Because what we are seeing, and what we have been seeing really over the last several decades is the degradation of our electoral process. A point of partisanship are seeing more legislatures trying to shift to the rules to benefit their party. Moreve seen more and litigation undermining the consistency in our National System of elections. And we have more and more opportunistic political actors trying to say that any results that dont help them are illegitimate. And there are so many different rules. In such incoherent enforcement. It is easy to find imbalances and inconsistencies. And that really undermines our ability to run elections that are widely seen as fair and free. Which again the foundation of democracy. Are guesses lee frydman he is advocating for increased federal role in running u. S. Elections. What are your thoughts do you support that . If youou do to 027848000 pretty few oppose at 2028001. That is a text with your thoughts makes you tell us your name and where you are texting from. You mentioned, you pointed out the ineffectiveness of the Election Assistance Commission. And you write a little bit more about potential criticism and he wrote this. Critics could also point out that this Elections Agency can be used for partisan advantage. Thats why the agency must have a strong mandate based on widely supported principles ofwi rndemocratic fairness as well as empowered Inspector General to monitor abuses of that power. We propose an extensive vetting process for agency appointees. A bipartisan Blueribbon Commission could put forth a short list of names and nominees would be confirmed at the of representatives. A more broadly representative body than the senate. That is a twist right there having the house approve that. Nonetheless in these times its hard to agree on who a is. Artisan person i agree thats whyee think it is important to ground this agency and principles that we can all agree on. A fair, free election in which all voters are treated equally. The process is e straightforwar. I think a strong Inspector General is extremely important. Certainly critics have pointed out that such an agency does put a largef amount of power and federal government. Which is why the agency is important. I think a lot of lawyers and other folks who are really committed to enjoy we have an election every time we vote that is fair, free and treats all people equally. And what we see, what we have seen for many yearsrs for this country is that there plenty of local jurisdictions that have not treated all voters fair, fairly and equally. There are a lot of states that have done tremendous amounts of gerrymandering. It treats some party voters that are than others for theres a lot who made it harder to vote because of what party they tend to support. And these behaviors and actions really undermine our collective data in our democracy. It is certainly challenging to find people who are seen as nonpartisan. But i think there are principles that we all agree on as the foundation of a fair and free democracy. And having consistent standards everywhere is really essential to having elections that we can all agree are legitimate. See when you mention the Environmental Protection agency. Give us an estimate of how big you think thisow sort of federal agency on elections could be . How big . The number personnel . The buet . What you think . Guest it depends on how ambitious we want to make it. I dont want to put a firm number on it. I think at least a few hundred staff people probably to oversee everything, it depends on how much Congress Wants to allocate for security. But the important, the end of the day it might actually save taxpayers money. Because a lot of money is spent in duplicate to purchasing of Election Security across the whole range of state and local jurisdictions we can streamline that process and make it more efficient. And also think about all of the money that spent on litigation to pay for that litigation. As lawyers at various juriiction host so how the democrats have proposed hr1, election reform some of the ideas be included in that package . One way is its an addon to hr1. In a very important baseline for fair standards, treating all states equally, independent redistricting commissions everywhere basic standards for voter registration. And what the agency does, it creates one central hub for enforcing those rules. Also helping local administrators who are really the heroes of thislp election. To run smoothly and fairly often they are attacked by their own state legislature and state governors were trying to do partisan work we should see this agency as helping those local Election Administrators also helping to share best practices i absolutely support hr1 what should be a p floor on standard democratic practice. Host lee is with this with the new American Foundation federal elections we ask if you support or oppose that. Hes also the author of a new book, breaking to partyhich is Multi Party Democracy incr america. Weve got calls awaiting. Well hear from immanuel in maryland supporting them, idea. Good morning immanuel. Yes thank you for taking my calls, thank you for cspan. I think this isnt too important for us to take a hodgepodge approach across the nation. I think its like the highway signs are green and stop signs are read throughout the nation that our Voting System should be one way. Not done here differently than somewhere else. Because it does allow for things that have happened recently to come into play. I think its too important to not consider that. I know its going to be difficult to do Something Like that. So i would take it even a step further. Not just offering help, but really consider us all getting on one page. I dont see why that would be problematic because again we all want to be able to stay by the same rules. And for those who dont it causes you to raise an eyebrow as you want openings for confusion. I like your remarks off the air have a great day. Art thank you immanuel. I like your analogy to highway signs. Another way to think about this is as after world war ii we built the interstate highway system to standardize travel across the country. Which was both good for the economy because we had a one set of roads that was consistent everywhere. And it was also a National Security issue that we had a clear set of roads in the case of aso National Emergency it would be easy to move resources. And other equipment around the country. You could certainly draw parallel to thele election system that given the patchwork nature of so many links in the fence its easy to find a hole somewhere. We did not see any of that in this election. But we have seen numerous examples as far as enemies getting into our election system and changing registration information. And so is a National Security issue it makes sense to have one secure National System. Just because this election went off smoothly does not mean the next election will. Im no Election Security expert,ex they been worried about vulnerabilities in our system. You look at the election, biden one. And it really came down to five states that were reasonably closelyly decided. And you can imagine just aim few jurisdictions being hacked. And the results could have gone a different way. So you know, because we have this closely divided electorate and a lot comeor down to very small number of seats. When the georges special election which have control of the senate. That will be very close is going to come down to a j few jurisdictions. For the security of our nation we put in Place International highway system. It will look bad for our economy if we have electionav uncertainty. It creates a tremendous uncertainty for investment and for business. So if you care about the economy, if you care about National Security you should care about having a clear set of standards for our elections. Host letter from lonnie and washington that opposes the increasing federal role. Boie go ahe. Caller so im a cold war soldier, 63 years old who fought against commusm. Im going to put it like this. I was a missile tech radar communications, a computer whiz. Im the guy resnsible 1985 for setting multiple pkets over the mail to the pentagon. Okay . This computer situation has gotten off track. My son is a computer it engineer pete i know what he do and i knew who he works for. And im not goingo say. But you guys in your computers each gobu away. We need to make this a manual system, yes. We all nee to get up off our butts. Go somewhere and ve. If its a kiosk or its liv where everybody can see it and no need to beetting into the system with a thumb dve or a disc or anything else. And the mess everyone in the country outside our cntry was to be in our system. Get them out. Sorry, goodbye. So what are rightly any respons response . Guest lonnie is right and one important respect for this should be paper trail for alllo ballots. That is a way of providing an opportunity to check ifhings are uncertain. Ihink this agency would require all electio jurisdiction t have paper ballots. Which is an imptant security backup. So yes, i agree that we shoul not require or wee should not pretend everything should be electronic paper ballots are really essential. Its rlly important to have a federal agency in charge that every jurisdiction has a paper trail. Because without it, things could get screwy. She want to in his interview prcribes the foreigner Security Administration from homeland surity mentioned paper trails that increase from 2016 of aut 80 of vote cast had a paper trail to this year that had 95 wit a paper trail regardless of how the vote was cast. Is this a federal agency, word isav asleeptates in terms of states setting, whats going to be left forhe states to do in terms of setting their election laws, rules and policy . How did they run their elections . There are two, there many levels of election in the united states. The federal agency would only have jurisdiction overou federal elections to house senate, president. Now states have a lot of local elections for governors for their own state legislature, secretaries of state, cities run their own elections. Cities and states can still run their own elections. However they want this would only concern federal because its only constitutional power that congress would have to enable such an agency. You can name this agency is setting a floor a baseline standard of what constitutes a free and fair election. If states want to do more, above that they could totally be free to do that. But if you really set the baseline of how you ensure free and Fair Elections so that everybodys vote is counted equally regardls of where they live. Host lets hear from willie i jackson, missisppi. Go ahe. Caller thank you for taking m call, thank you cspan. First vume supporting this for the first thing i likeo say is due away with t Electoral College. People t know this would notffect, i whoever he was, i bet she wouldot volunteer to count those votes. I vote for 26 years. And every election, as an election every year end im vote in every election. Ive use that over 25 times. So i know the early vote is bidden for that long. Thats not going to change that. That is not what this is all about. Its all about people being on the same track. My state, dueo a lot of suppression of t vote. We only have about three weeks earlyote. In some states they have a whole entire month to early vote. The vote on weekends andot stuf. A lot of things are done up in those five states you have sameday registratio you have sameday voting. People go down to register to te and ty can both that same day becauseheyve got thin to do. I just want people t understand, people have things to do. If i had to diver your food at your favorite restaurant getyour food did not ther if you was mad because i had to go vote howd you feel . Thanksor taking my cal sue andhanks willie. Solely on t idea here that the federal government, thi agency would say okay, heres what you need to do for ely voting. You need to have sameday registration. That is part of your proposal . Guest that would require an act ofongress to empower that agency to make the rule. So the idea, you mention hr1. There would be an enabling peac of legislation tha congress would have, that was set these baseline standards. In the agency would help state to implement that. And also make sure state follow the standard rules so that if you are boating in mississippi or if you are voting i california you get treated equally in your count is the same. Host were in texas also supporting thiser idea. Caller goo morning to everyone at cspan team and the speakers. I wanted to ask a quick question. The previous gentlem and made a comment about not being so gung ho abouthe Electoral College. I myself, happened to kind of have thatame energy. Buty. I actually wanted to ask a very specific question as it pertains to gerrymandering. I pretty much politically consider myself to be a pretty bipartisan person. What i wanted to ask as it pertains to germandering, do you believe that the process is maybe a little t maybe its a little too, this is for k lack of a better word, but it does a little too uncontrolled . Doou really believe that gerrymandering should be something that is sort of everchanging . Or should that beomething that is much more a v consistencyns so that little pieces of the chess game cant just be redistributed and manipulated to be in favor of a specific party the next go around. Once again thank you f everyone. Have a blessed day. Guest thank you. So on the topic of gerrymandering what some states do is they he independent redistricting commission. Which areot partisan. They are not o party trying draw its districts in ord to advantage itself. There are a number of competing considerations in drawing districts that are fair. But independent redistricting commissions a prett goodon b. Canada which also uses Single Member dtricts hasnt National Independent redistricting commission. The uk, also has National Independent redistricting commison. So the ideaa is that we should not let partin legislatures draw districts in a way that unfairly advantages their party in the next election. Thats like playing a game of foball. Whoever scoresor a touchdown gets to decide on what rules theyant to plan for the rest of the game. If as a teen thats good at alright, you have three of the four downs. The team is good at running. We playports we have a consisnt set of rules and it doest matter if youet win, it doest change the rule. But i politics, if you win the election you are now empowered and nded to change the rules to benefit your side. That has been going on for a long timen this country. And we put stop to it. For the Electoral College, two folks have mentioned this in a rote. I look i think the eleoral college makes no sense. It nevereally serve the role that the framers expected it to. It w sort of a late summer compromise and the framers re exhausted and could not agree on how to ele the president. And no other country in the d world h ever looked at it andgo said thats a good idea, thats how we wt to elect our president. So absolutely i say we suld get rid of it. The problem is a requires a constitutional amendnt. And throughout the history of th united states, w have had numerous debates aut getting rid of the Electoral College an going right back to a tree and, 220 years of arguments. There have been four times in which onehamber did pass a constutional amendment to alter the Elector College to only see the other chamb not approve it. So weve been trying too get rid of in se formr another for long time. Its in o of the two chambers theres at leastne third of the representates o think that it benefits their party to keep the Electoral College. Or they worried abo something happening. So yes. It makes no sense. So when i give you the two minu response. You talked about thebo parties, your new book is about the twoparty system. The case for a multipay democracy in america. Quickly, why do you think the country, the democracy of the u. S. Would be served by having atmore parties rather than what we have now, essentially two ruling parties in congress anyway. If you look at what has been going on in partisanship. You can look at it in terms of this election issue, which we have been discussing is that whenen you have two parties competing for a narrow majority, every little thing that you can do to rig the vote in your favor gets that much more important. Once the other side starts doing that you feel justified in doing it. And that escalating hyper partisan warfare has been going on in a number of areas. Including elections. And it is destroying our faith in democracy. And our shared sense that we are in one country it is become red versus blue america. When you think that half of americas evil or dangerous because they support different parties, that creates a sense that we cannot come together that we need to solve. No multiparty democracy is an alternative vision in which there are numerous parties. In the coalitions are little bit more flexible. Instead of democrats trying to crush the republicans are the republicans trying to crush the democrats, what you see is different parties forming different coalitions. If only i could rig the vote in my favor and get a permanent majority. There are no permanent majorities in a multiparty system. Ne theres just different governing coalitions. Also a twoparty system forces us into these two identities. And we know from a lot of Group Psychology that when you divide people into two teams, they tend to see the other team dangerous. Especially when you have highstakes battle. Now some people might be out there watching this and saying how we always had awa twoparty system . Why is it a problem now . Think theres a couple of reasons why it has become a real problem now. One is that even though weve had a twoparty system and namely that for long time to very loose overlapping different state and local parties. That created some loose jointed nest in our party system where theyre willing across the aisle because they did not really have strong identities for democrats or republicans. Really there were liberal republicans and conservative democrats. It was a four party system with conservative republican and liberal democrats rounding that system out. In his politics nationalize in the 80s and 90s and became more and more oriented around issues of culture and identity, that four Party System Collapse into a twoparty system. So now politicians its nationalized very closely divided. And it is divided over this question ofwe who are we as americans . What is our National Identity . And now the Multiethnic Society, the most dangerous way to divide a Multiethnic Society is to have one party for diversity. And that should bee a multicultural society. And another party arguing that we need to go back to a more traditional values. And we should have more of a single identity. That creates a binary highstakes its incredibly dangerous. I think anybody, one of the narratives coming out of this election as hate latino voters are not a monolith. Better party system makes them into one. It centralizes them for the most part as democrats. I think multiparty system wouldul allow many communities to express their diversity of their within community views. It would create a space which not everything is zerosum. Thats really destroying our democracy. That is in many ways the core of these problems. So, i hope people engage with that idea that maybe we ought to be multiparty democracy. Pretty much almost all of the worlds democracy are multiparty democracies. The u. S. Is a really a true outlier and having a twoparty system. Sue beckett would require reforms the way we vote in order t d that. Were going to go back to calls with lee prosing more of a federal role in elections. Dell isn warwick, new york opposing that idea. Go ahead. Caller hi good morning. What did you think of trump firing chris krebs . And the only one putting doubt on this election is trumped. And his cronies and fox news. We dont need more federal role in elections. Craig said that it was great, we did a good job. It was trumped. I have republican friends and ive been a democrat my entire life, i am 85 years old. I have been voting since i was 21. We never had problems. We can discuss anything. It is this peace of work from who should be tried for treason. Because he swore, putting up his right hand to uphold the constitution. Now look what he is doing now. Select okay dell in new york. Your thoughts on you mentioned chris krebs and his statement about the security of the ection . Guest certainly trump is taken a very strange by american standards approach to power, that is putting i generously. But i think one of the reasons like tru has been able to have so much in doubt on the electoral process is going on two decades now t republicans have been casting doubt on the vario electoral process andlected officials. Youll g trust and election among republicans and its plummeted also to be equal opportunity lot of democrats are going eres been tremendous voter suppression. Andhat may be even cost democrats election in 2016. And had demrats lost this election thered be a lot of arguments. Some unfair processes im not really sure and pretty sure biden would have conceded. Is aot of teddy on the left suggesting fraud. He think if you look at polling numbers and the statements o political theaters, over my years you will see there is a lotf doubt being cast on the system. And the reason for that doubt is because as i have said, there are differe rules everywhere. And a lot of those rules are putn place bipartisan legislaturesrying to advantage their own pty. And there is also tremendous litigation actity around all of those rules. Im not going t defend trump anyway. He think he is a tremendous threat to oed democracy. But trump did n come out of nowher we talk about traumas a supply of misinformation and conspiracy theory. Theres also a market for that. In that market has been created over many years. I dont just say hey will get trump out of there and this unrtainty and illegitimacy will go away. Stuart and the president keeping up h efforts to challenge the Election Results with a tweet this rcm not fighting for me, im fighting for the 74 million people, not including the me trump ballots their quote tossed. A record foritting president who voted for me. Let hear from carmen in california. Good morning, go ahead. Caller good morning. I am for more federal restrictions. There is so much room for interpretation for each date and each county in return. So as we are seeing, we need clarity because it is causing a lota of confusion. We need to standardize each of the elections how they should be run. For example people talked about the early voting. This affects a lot of poor folk folks. They need the early voting to be open onen sundays. A lot of people work six days a week. These are very small ways of manipulation. The repercussions are just not even able to be counted. One of the things that laws and manipulation for example, people are very naive in thinking there isnt manipulation. Because politics is about power. And when that comes in, pretty much anything goes. I like to give an example of florida where the citizens voted to have the able to vote in elections. It is term by trump appointed judges. That is manipulation of the law. And the repercussions i think, florida would have gone to democrats, no doubt about it. Suet a let you go there carmen thank you for the call. Lee as we wrap up here any further also much she had to say . Or thoughts in yourosos proposa . Carmen is correct, the floridians voted overwhelmingly to giv them e right to vote in the state gislature overturned that. At something that federal standards could clarify is that ex fons have a right to vote. They served their time. And that is the staard in most states. But again, if you live in florida and arent fell in the ar disenfranchised. If you live in most states and serve your time then youre allowed to vote. That is something clearly done bipartisan state legisture. Because the republicans in flora thought that helped demoats if more ex felons of voted. And this is the kind of funny business and shenanigans that dermines our sense that our elections are on the level. And carmens sentiments exactly echohe conrns that a lot of people in this country which is that the rules are rigged against them. If we are going to live in democracy, we shouldnt feel that somehow the rules are rigged against us. Whh of feel the rules are fair and everyone is treated free and equally. She went lee we appreciate the conversation. Thanks for being here. Guest thanks for having me, i enjoyed this conversation a well. Tonight on the communicators, netflix founder and Ceo Reed Hastings and business professor erin meyer discussed the unorthodox Workplace Culture about one of the high tech in the world. Rules and rules netflix and the culture of reinvention. You have to do what you think is right to help the customer pretty cant be trying to please your boss. Youre not allowed to let me drive the bus off the cliff. You have to fight for the benefit of the company. In general we say dont seek to please your boss. Seek to please the customers and grow the company. We want people to think at sibley independently not just implement their bosses wishes. Watch the communicator tonight at eight eastern on cspan2. Tuesday trucker terry Steve Mnuchin that our reserve chair testify before the Senate Banking committee. Theyll provide an update on emergency measures to provide relief from the economic downturn with the coronavirus pandemic but watch what of the on. [inaudible] listen wherever you are in the cspan radio app. Back earlier today the white house unveiled its 2020 Christmas Decorations themed america the beautiful. Heres a look
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