Host with us, currently the senior fellow at the American Enterprise institute. He is here this morning to talk about confidence in elections and about a couple of pieces of legislation introduced in the house on election law reform. We want to start with a recent poll done by the Associated Press and north on the confidence in the 2024 elections. Only 44 of all adults have a high confidence, highly confident the votes will be counted accurately. That is 71 . Democrats believe that. Independent, much lower, to any percent. And 22 . If you look at the past elections, there has been very little proven fraud. What is behind the confidence lack of confidence . Guest we all wish we had more confidence. There is a good system that we should be more confident in. One thing to watch in those numbers that reflects who is in power is when you win in an election, the party in power tends to be more confident and when they lose their less. Publicans could say it is worry about fraud, but they are also out of the white house. It is not always the best measure. I do think we are polarized, more than ever on the types of voting we want to do. And there are some worries out there. We should address those worries but also i think we should tell the American People there is a pretty good system. Maybe we could make it better but it runs reasonably well. Host every election is run by states and localities. What are some worries in your research and reporting that you hear from americans from localities and states about elections . Guest the divide between parties is a big divide between excess and integrity. Emigrants worry about issues of access. Times when it may be harder to vote and people dont have all of the options they might have. Publicans worry more about the integrity, perhaps people are voting that should not or that the system is not very good at being able to catch people who would get into those. Some specific issues sometimes you find are less than you think. Like voter identification, which is very polarized at the elite level. It tends to not be quite as polarized on the popular level. There are some issues you might not think fall into that dichotomy. But certainly big issues between access and integrity really drive this. Host the issue of voter id. You said there is a disconnect between your average democratic voter and the way the party generally views states and localities who use voter id. Why is there a disconnect . Guest the big picture is they might be an obstacle to people voting. As reflected in some views of the democrat party, the losses are doing that point. Republicans think it is a needed security measure. They show it in the airport and daily life. You may think even though i am a democrat and believe in access, maybe this one is not quite in my thinking as to what access integrity, but this issue is not as big of a divide as you think. Host former president and his supporters, the most prominent politician questioning the very nature of how elections are run in this country. Has that become increasingly more of a problem over the last few years . Guest the temperature has been raised significantly by the arguments of the former president. 2020 election, we ran under very different conditions where both sides the way we run, the middle of the game, there are very different. I think the temperature has been raised significant a. We see the debates in the states. But again, we can have some confidence that historically, how we prove since the elections, we have generally improved across the board. They may disagree from one policy to the other. The ark of where we are going has been good. Host the settlement and the dominion case against fox. Is that something that will increase confidence in elections, that was a defamation lawsuit. But a lot was on the line with dominions performance. Guest we have heard worries from electronic Voting Machines, sometimes not from republicans and more regionally from her publicans. We have moved away from Voting Machines that dont have paper. Spike the heat on this issue, the fact that we have paper ballots in almost all of the jurisdictions and most of the places where you vote, they are a backup. It is not rely similar on technology. That was not the case 20 years ago and it is something they can give people confidence that even if you dont completely trust the machines, we have a backup that people can look at and confirm. Host john fortier is with us, talking about confidence in voting particularly in 2024. Would love to hear your thoughts, 202 7488000 is the line for democrats. 202 7488001 four republicans, and 202 7488002 four independents and others. If you have concerns, what are they . What have you seen at your polling places . What are those concerns . We are going to talk about legislation introduced by republicans and soon to be by democrats as well. The headline from the hill, republicans, conservative electric bill, it heads to the house floor. The confidence in voting act, republicans, american confidence in ectns act, a bill that would get state and county Election Officials access to Social Security death lis to aid in the purging of voter rolls. It would require voters to present id before casting a ballot. Including one that incded. C. Elections. And it would prevent the irs from what is your view of that legislation . Guest you will remember that our primary legislation on federal elections is at the state level. So we have differences in every place and that is historically in the constitution that that is the first place to go. The constitution also allows the federal government to provide a national standard. We have done that, Voting Rights legislation, after the major reform. Sometimes more recently in covid, overseas and military voting. We have reached some consensus. But most things are done at the state level and we have significant differences. This reminds us of the Democrat Bill that they brought forth and after the 2020 elections, there are a month of priorities that are probably conservative being done in some red states. But there unlikely on the federal level. But to divide the government with the senate and more than a 50 vote 50 vote threshold, i dont see this as it stands being able to proceed just as democrats were not able to proceed with their very large set of priorities. Host which changes in states and how they run their elections, mailin voting, additional days to vote which have proven that continue on, into the 2022 elections and likely in 2024, in which have been tossed out . Guest the issues whether you vote by mail or early on election day, we saw a trend of increases. The number of people voting by mail and going down on election day. We saw increases of voting by mail and election day going down. What we are starting to see in 2022 and probably in 2024 is some pulling back from that. But higher numbers than we would have had before 2020. Some states, democratic states especially, some of them were more oldschool. Theyre probably going to keep that. But you see republican states and in person and early voting. The trend is still up but we will probably not hit that high watermark of 2020 issues of where you vote and how. Host georgia change their election law for the 2020 vote. But the turnout, particularly in 2020, turned out to be higher. A change in 2018 and the turnout in 2020 was higher than ever. What did critics get wrong about georges attempt at election reform . Guest if you step back and look at the data, there may be differences about particular practices. Should we vote by mail, open up the cactus . Both parties tend to exaggerate the effect it will have on voter turnout. Democrats think it will lead to many more people voting and republican think the opposite. Or it turns out the effects are not as great as you think. We should not have expected some of the restrictions in the georgia elections. It was not particularly strict or going back. It took back some of the things he did in the 2020 election, the urgency, but they were not looking to go back to district rules. Host we look at the House Republicans legislation. The democrats are planning to reintroduce the bill. There is the counterpoint to the republican plan. The freedom to vote act, it was extending voting by mail, it would increase Cyber Security measures for Voting Machines, provide more money for additional poll workers and introduce nonpartisan postelection audits and strengthen donor Disclosure Requirements for super pac. Guest similar to what they have introduced in the last couple congress is. Republicans have a large set of priorities. But it is unlikely to go anywhere. If the bill could not pass when democrats were in charge of the house, the senate and the presidency, it is unlikely to pass now in the biden government. These are happening at the state level. In many states, these are reforms that democratically led states are doing. Some republican reforms are being done in republican states but the idea that we are going to see federal legislation setting a standard on all of these issues is very unlikely. Host i want to get to a text, a question from randy in michigan. Would you ask your guest how we had Fair Elections for the first 150 years when there were not drivers licenses . When i first voted i only had to show an electric bill or a phone bill with my address on it. The photo id aspect, even though we talked about polling, is one hot button issue that people often see. One thing that we said it was that in those earlier days, if you really want to go back, we tend to people no people at the polling place. When you shut up, your community would know you. So there are a Great Variety of ways that would show who you are. Others state their name and address. There is a debate about what we should do. I do think it is kind of a hot button issue. But it is probably not as significant in either direction as some of the other things. If you have phone or the voter id, it might be helpful showing who showing up. But if you want to get it, more than cleaning up of the election, you look at the voter rolls and make sure theyre clean and people underlying those ideas are who they say they are. I think those types of reforms, improving the Voter Registration system would make it more comprehensive and more active. That is a better set of reforms to hang your hat on and voter id. It can work if done right but it is not likely to have a huge effect. Host and the processing of the voter rolls, part of the republican legislation to allow access to your death rolls. Lets go to the independent line. Caller i am concerned about the validity of real id. I have heard the crack house have false real id. And i also think we are losing the privacy of the voting booth. Mailin voting. Anybody can be looking over your shoulder and when youre at home or wherever, that is why you should have the privacy and the voting booth and one day voting only. That is my opinion. Host john fortier. Guest viewers may have noticed that when you get your license renewed, you have to do a new process. It is to show that you are a citizen and for some of us it is hard to do that. Not primarily related to the voting process, but many believe it will have an effect that will help clear up to some extent and make sure that you have only u. S. Citizens on the voting rolls and not people who are not u. S. Citizens. Whether it can be fixed as the caller suggested, i have not heard that. But generally speaking, over time it will help improve the accuracy. On the second question, i wrote a book on absentee voting 50 years ago which was more historical. It was back to the early days. That was a great concern in the 19th century. That voting was more public and the city bosses and others would watch how you voted. That is one of the reasons we adopted the socalled australian privacy booth, the simile are things were saying. You can argue whether you like that or not. There are states that try to do the best at trying to preserve privacy. There are other procedures and i do think in a polling place, occasionally you see places that dont have the curtain. There something we said about the voter having that privacy. We are tracking a balance with all of the voting we are doing right now. Host to baltimore. Bob on the line, republican. Welcome. Caller thank you for your commentary. You mentioned about voter ids and presented it in a way where it is a nonissue or passe. But if you look at that history and talk about the history of voting in this country, certain groups of people have been restricting people, they are subject to the barriers to keep them from voting. You think of those Southern States in many states pushing for these voter id laws, they are doing it for a good reason. It might be misleading to people. It is really a gateway to suppression. Once they passed voter id laws, there will be some restrictions within those states, and you can only have this type of id, if you travel to this one location to get that thing on a certain day at a certain time. And you have to not have this. And youve gotten the report card and they high school. This is a gateway to suppression. It sounds reasonable on the surface. But when you look at the history, this is something that voter id, the Voting Rights act law tried to keep in check. They are currently from under the requirement. These states are closing polling statements and limiting mailin voting. Host a response from john fortier. Host theres a history guest hes right. There is a history of restrictions to keep people from voting and some of them have been benign. Alliteration tax put in place, seemingly control but really it has the effect of putting black voters off. But i will say in our jurisprudence on the voter id laws, we cannot require their be we can require their be free ids. Often states have many options of how they present the types of ids you can present, whether an older id, expired, other state id. And often there are other failsafes that you can have an affidavit that you will get one, if you forgot your id, a provided process to get one on the spot. Im not saying we should not look at this and figure out some of the details. But i think that broad direction is to allow people to get ideas in a way that will make this too much of a hassle. Host matthew in new york, democrat line. Caller mr. Fortier, i have to ask you, do you believe that the last president ial election was fair and honest daca could you answer that . Honest . Could you answer that . Guest i believe the result of the election was that President Biden won the election and President Trump lost. We can argue about a little thing in the election, but the broad results were consistent with a wellrun election. Caller which party do think is trying to expand Voting Rights and which one is trying to curtail Voting Rights . I have never had to show my id, a paper bill or anything to vote. Open their books, i signed my name, i vote. It is simple. There has not been any problem in regard to that. So im trying to find, why are we beating this dead horse . It is over. Look at michigan. Can you tell the audience about michigan and what they have just implemented . Host thank you. Guest as i mentioned, i do think the parties have different broad views and how to run the elections. And underlying this, i think each state has come to a set of rules and laws. Generally speaking, they provide a lot of options to people and they have some security measures. We can argue about how far each side goes but i dont think we are in a place where either we are limiting the vote by the practices we have or limiting it. We are not seeing a lot of voter fraud, the types of fraud that sometimes people claim is widespread. That does not mean these issues are not important. There are issues that are important as to how we run elections well. There are significant issues you can point to on the integrity side that might not go as far as you want as far as fraud, but you have the not as good Voter Registration. We have questions about who handles the absentee ballots and i think there is reasonable rules for this. It is reasonable to have the conversation and the states are doing it. Host what do you think of this story of texas, the headline from politico that says the texas bipartisan voter list, they say texas is leaving the electronic information center, and leaving the bipartisan program, they are saying the second most popular state is expected for months. And just five republican leading leading states are still members. Guest after the 2000 election, we were required states to update their lists. We dont really have a great way for arizona to talk to colorado and figure out whether they are people who move from one state to another, whether they can update each others information. There been voluntary programs and the most prominent and most of his ticketed one divides data to help people get registered. Here are names of people not on the list who eligible, as well as some questions about whether people have moved, change their address, people have died at should be taken off the list. It is a good source of information and has been very helpful to the country. We see a number of republican states pulling out of this program now. Their argument is that the Program Means to heavily on the seeking out voters part. They spend a lot of money mailing and others. There was the most efficient way, more voting integrity measures, checking databases. And democratic states did not want to change the program. Republican states have pulled up. The republican states that have pulled out will lose some of the information they have gotten about voters who have died or moved across states. I think the program did some good but i do have an argument about what the balance of that program do that would have republican states pull out of the program. Host on the independent line, from minnesota, john. Whatcom. Welcome. Caller thank you. I agree with the voting rolls and your contributor, john. There are ways at least in wisconsin, they have like 40 extra residents on the voter rolls then there are in wisconsin. That sounds weird. Two, the 2020 election was a debacle. But we have never had drop boxes. They were not passed by the state legislatures and people just put them there. There is proof, ive seen in the news in arizona and detroit of people pulling out ballots from under tables. There are affidavits from poll workers. So to say there is no proof is an incorrect statement. It is all your opinion of whether it is enough to return collection or anything. There is proof. I live in minnesota. We have valid collection ballot collection in minneapolis. It has been reported many times that they collect eyelets. There are a lot of irregularities that are white people are unhappy with the voter integrity. The question is, how many extra votes r. O. K. . Extra votes are ok . Guest you mentioned wisconsin had more people on the registration list then eligible voters. Roughly speaking, we have improved the registration lists a lot. The bush election, we had a very few states with strong statewide Election Voter rolls. They tended to have lots of little lists. But there are rules and regulations as to how you can take people off the rolls even if you know they are not eligible. You have moved away, they have not said they wanted to be taken off the list and you need a couple of elections of them not responding to take them off the list. A state like wisconsin, which has sameday registration, that can lead to people who show up an old name or address might be floating around on the list as well. There are some things we can do Going Forward to improve the quality of those lists but we have made a lot of progress in the last 20 plus years. This is something that became a hot button issue in the last president ial election. There are places that a voter can take a mailin ballot and rather than put them into the mail system, i think it can work and they have done quite well. But i think the voter is right. In some states, this was done an emergency basis without a law being passed. There is worry this is done on partisan basis. States are going to do much more in person early voting, election day voting. These types of options are not as necessary or you would need fewer of them. Finally on ballot collection, there is another issue with voting by mail which became partisan in the 2020 election. Republicans are more skeptical. It is an issue. There are ballots out there. There are rules for reasonable regulation as to how those ballots might be collected. There is a limit on how many an individual can collect. Someone point for that need for a Family Member or someone to help them, that is also a factor one should way. There is regulation that balances those priorities of ballot collection and it is an issue that regulation might take care of. Host on the issue of election confidence in elections, 202 7488000 free democrats, 202 7488001 for republicans. For independents and others, 202 7488002. Yorktown, virginia, the republican line. Good morning. Caller there are so many issues, it is hard to know where to start. I would like to correct the impression that might have been given that the real id is exclusive to citizens. It is not. Its an plea verifies that you are who you say you are and is given to all types of noncitizens in the united states. The second thing i would like to say is that there is a nonprofit that lacked transparency. It also allowed another nonprofit, the statement, access to the voter role, unbeknownst to many citizens in the state. And there are data breaches. We would not be notified. When this was released into the michigan what is later, it was a data breach. I bet you that nobody in michigan knows that there voter in frustration voter information and anything out that was given to eric was released. Republicans are just jumping out willynilly, there is a reason for that. I could go on but i wont. The last point i would like to try and bring up is that section 611 of usc eight requires citizenship in federal elections. But this goes out of their way to contradict the law in that it restricts the from requiring document terry proof of evidence at time of registration. This belief down the road of the debate, if they would allow proof of citizenship and registration, then the id issue would not be so critical. So until this is fixed at a federal level, until they address with legislation, efforts to help people who may have a problem obtaining a proof of their citizenship, because it is quite costly to do so if you have lost all of your document asian in a fire. I agree with that. But no stomach for trying to help people get their proof of citizenship but rather throwing the baby out with the bathwater and saying because it is difficult for some people, nobody needs to provide it. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. Post thank you. Host thank you. Guest youre right about this. While it is true you are not required to be a citizen in all states to get forms of id, youre often showing documentation that shows whether you are a citizen or not. Some states are using it and collecting it like the new voters, those who have registered before, to include the records and have some evidence that they are citizens. While it is not comprehensive, states go out on the information for many who go through the process and might be voters. Second, i think you are right that there were other concerns republican states had. The big one though is that they do not believe that the program had enough of a focus on the cleaning up of the list. And the money they had to spend was primarily in the area of sending mailing to people that were not that efficient not in terms of getting them to register to vote. There were concerns about the republicans. But it is a loss for losing some of those, but data that helps republican states determine whether they are in a state, died, or they can clean this up. There is a balance between this information and things they may have wanted. Finally, the question of citizenship data. I dont think that is going to be done at a federal level. There is the mixing and mismatch of various laws. There are some ability of states to address these issues. But some points in the republican bill are asking for use of the federal databases. I dont think were there the federal level. We do not have agreement from both parties to move in that direction. Host from delaware, kathleen, mccright line. Democrat line. Caller good morning. When it comes to Voter Registration and id, it seems simpleminded. But it seems to me that a picture id card with your address or something legitimate on it and a handprint, they have Little Silver boxes with a screen that all you do is lay your hand down on it and recorded. Kids can get this, i find it hard to duplicate a handprint. When it comes to the means, so many states have a different ballot. I have been in delaware and they vote on a piece of paper and you write your exes on those. You put it in a box. I forget what george bush, florida had something called hanging chads. No one knows what those were. Finally, in new york state when i voted there, they had a machine. And he walked up to the machine, stepped in, pulled the lever that closed the curtain behind you. And there was a name board. Each competitions name and party was right there. All you have to do is reach over and push down the lever and you get the names you want, you push the lever down, when youre done you pull it back. The curtains open up. Host we are having a throwback moment. Recalling the voter boots like that. But we talked with the privacy. What else would you like to respond to our color on . Guest they talked about other forms of id, handprint, retinal scan. We have not figured out the way to implement them and the privacy concerns, we are looking at other forms of id for the near future. In the voting booth, you are right. You mentioned several forms of voting which had disappeared after the 2000 election. It was the first time after which we provided federal money to all of the states and ate a lot of that went to voting technology. To eliminate the socalled undercover ballots. Also those machines when i cast my first vote. Those were not a secure is today. Today we had pretty much filling out the piece of paper, something that scanned, and we had fewer and fewer but other machines. Most of us have the paper backup a few dont. We moved to a few technologies. One other thing to note is compared to other countries in the world, there are more complex. Have a long ballot and you might enter many ballot questions. Sometimes it goes on several pages. Other countries tend to have a simple one office per election by hand. And what our complicated elections means is that we need this technology and it breaks up some other issues. Host our guest has written three books, two of which deal with election processes. If you were to write a book about elections today, what area would you focus on . Guest i did write about voting absentee and early, which was an issue back into thousand six and it is still important. But i think i would look back to that 2000 election that we had. It was controversial and some of the changes we have made since then. There are a lot of things we argued about. There has been notable progress. We have had elections in the voter turnout that has followed from that. Looking at the course of history in the last 23 years or so, marie made some improvements, would be something we get. Host do you think voter turnout will be as strong as it was in 2020 for 2024 . Guest despite these questions of how you vote and voting technology, the real driver is intensity, polarization, 2020 was under very strange conditions and elevated detentions. I expect a high turnout election, is highstakes. It is a little bit of a fall back from 2018. We might not have quite the levels we saw in 2020, but maybe the second highest. Wobbly not as high as 2020. Probably not as high as 2020. Host john fortier