>> president biden speaks today at emery university in atlanta following this week's shootings in georgia. the president will be joined by vice president kamala harris. we'll have live coverage at 4:40 eastern here on c-span. "washin" continues. host: our guest is adam brandon, president of freedomworks. thank you for joining us. remind viewers what freedomworks is and what its mission is. guest: it is a national grassroots group. we work with activists across the country on economic issues. you mentioned we are engaging on election integrity. host: how are you folks funded? guest: we have over 50,000 funders last year and we are structured as a 501 c3, 501(c)4, and we also have a pac. host: you have a push for what you are calling election integrity. you have a website. what are you proposing, and why are you doing it? ? guest: it wasn't just reaction to the last election. if you go back to 2016 65% of democrats did not believe the election was fear. -- was fair. this cycle, the same number of republicans. 65%. we have a crisis in believing that our system is accurately counting the votes. i believe both parties, everyone should take the rhetoric down a little bit, and what are the commonsense sense reforms that we can have that no matter the result people believe that the process was free and fair. host: what do you see? tell us about the forms that you see in in -- see in play? guest: 67% of americans believe you should have voter id. another 18%, while not thinking that you should absolutely have it, think that it's a good idea. that is 85%. this may be the one issue that americans agree on most. that we should have voter id so that people understand when the ballots go to the ballot box that these are ballots illegally cast by real american -- legally cast by real american citizens. host: democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001.we s the country on economic issues. house and is coming up in the senate. what is your critique of this bill? guest: as i was saying before i cut out, i would like to have a bipartisan approach. you start with issues you all agree on. how about voter id? try to make reforms that encourage people to vote in person on election day. there was something about when i was a little boy the first time that i went into an election booth with my mom i remember that she shut the curtain behind her, and it was her and her ballot. you further -- the further you remove us from that process, it opens us up to questions. a real issue, and i heard the last few callers, was republicans are about voter fraud. no, democrats are about voter fraud. if we both feel that way we won't get anywhere. we need a system we can both agree upon. host: before we go to calls let me get you to react something written by sylvia albert, the director of voting and elections at common cause. we will get your reaction. from cutting early voting to increasing purges of voter registration lists to limiting absentee voting options, these bills are shameless. talking about the various bills in the country right now. shameless, partisan attempts to silence us. it is not a coincidence these bills are being introduced after a free, fair, and secure election with record turnout. voters exercise the right to vote and politicians responded, we don't want you to vote. many of these bills target voters of color and young voters who already face many barriers to the ballot box. they have nothing to do with election integrity and are simply an attack on our integrity to vote. guest: i think that is kind of silly. this has nothing to do with race. this is about making sure that everyone's ballot is treated the same. everyone goes through the same process, has the same access, voting on the same day, hopefully. that is what you're really looking for. host: taking calls for mr. brandon. john, brooklyn, new york, democratic caller. caller: thank you, c-span. i am going back to what you said about 65% of republicans this time and 65% of democrats last time did not trust these elections. but, i go back to the most recent time, and how much of the distrust of the elections was from the person in the election months before saying that the elections were not going to be fair? and then from month after not admitting -- for months after not admitting that the elections were correct. when his own justice department said they were the safest -- they were the most secure elections ever. it is kind of weird to draw that difference between 2016 and 2020 when you have one person who was actually undermining the trust in the elections before the elections even take place. also, in terms of your suggestions, what part of for an interference do you propose is a problem in our elections? like russia, or other people hacking into our election? guest: that's a great point about foreign interference. i can guarantee that every election we've had in the last decade foreign countries have tried to interfere. that is why common sense reforms we should have, like a paper back up, so that when someone casts their vote on a machine they can look at the vote and say, yes this is how i voted. it also provides an audit trail. this is things we all agree on. voter id, moving things to a process everyone can agree upon. with the rhetoric today, if you drop ballots in the middle of the street and you say that's not a good idea, you get called someone who is trying to fight for voter suppression. we need to figure out what areas we agree on, what makes a good, clean ballot, what systems are reported to work? this isn't hard. i look around the world and people are doing a pretty fine job. the netherlands are going to open their elections this someone who is elderly to vote absentee for the first time. i was reading how the netherlands were approaching things, and it is about the sanctity. it is a safer process when you get people to the ballot box and we have lists we can agree on. i am big fan of having the results of the elections that night, not waiting for weeks and weeks for voters to figure out if this is legal or not. rules that everyone can abide by. one of the questions the caller brought up about the last election, a lot of gop concerns was about covid. we started changing election law in the middle of the election. votes were being cast at the same time that courts were getting involved saying this was a ballot and this wasn't. maybe you need a signature, maybe you don't. there was confusion in the system. moving forward we can do better as a country. host: stephen, new york. welcome. caller: my thing is if we do work the h.r.1, it says you can have plane loads of people come from china and russia and actually be able to vote in our elections, which undermines the entire process. we may as well open our elections to the entire world and let them tell us what to do. we are saying we want the rest of the world to tell america what to do and our presidents are not our leaders. this is why we need some sort of voter id law, whether we like it or not. otherwise the question should be do you want your vote account or not? i leave it with that. host: adam brandon, aside from coming on programs like this, how does freedomworks plan to push this issue? how much money will you spend? who will you be meeting with in the weeks and months to come? guest: we will look at different legislation to see if there are things that we can support. there is also basic education. what are some of these issues? we have been doing polling showing things like 85 percent of americans support voter id in some way. what else do americans agree on 85 percent these days? let's take those steps so both republicans and democrats can agree on the sanctity of our elections. let's start with those reforms to bring us together, not the ones that people will say that is a partisan attack. this will be a massive education effort. $2 million to $3 million is what we have budgeted to this point. it will be on the ground in different states. we will be training people to get involved in the election process so they can be a part of the count and watching what is going on so there's more trust and transparency. finally, we will register people to vote. how can you do anything voter integrity and not to get people involved in the process? host: from michigan, democratic caller for adam brandon. caller: how are you doing? i just want to say in my eyes every election in this country, it only makes sense really to have uniform voting laws to call the election process. host: in a reaction? guest: i am a federalist. i grew up thinking that states should administer their own elections. i mentioned earlier paper ballot backing. i believe there are things the federal government can do to help local officials make sure that they have the best technology available. i believe it's pretty hard for a local board of elections to fight back against russian and chinese interference. there are things the federal government can do that way, but overall it should be up to the states. this is me and my understanding as we live in a republic and not a direct democracy. in the republic you trust states to get these things done. host: the 2020 election, something i was looking to ask you earlier, what do you see at the national level and around the country that leads into the efforts you are putting out now? guest: i grew up in ohio, and i thought ohio did an excellent job in the elections. you didn't have that much controversy. they had their vote tallied quickly. there weren't a lot of questions going back and forth of who should vote and who shouldn't. our next-door neighbor, pennsylvania, it was unclear what a ballot was, when it should be counted, if it was mailed the day of, does that count? it is such a stark contrast between elections to me. we should have known when we went to bed who won the election. knowing that the washington post said there are only 90,000 votes that were cast differently the republicans would have the house, the senate, and the white house. that is how closely divided the united states are. there was one processed by the end of the evening we knew with the results were. i would rather going forward as part of bringing the country together we have a clear process similar to ohio we should look at at the end of the day and say this is our result. i believe with h.r.1 and some other changes future elections will get murkier. weeks and months afterwards we will be figuring out who won, and i don't think that is healthy for our system. host: harvey, south carolina, democrats line. caller: how are you doing? i want to point this out. between 1865 when the emancipation took place until 1960, large numbers of african-americans left the south and moved to new york in pennsylvania and ohio. a lot of them went to connecticut. in recent years those people have moved back to the south with their children, their grandchildren. they have reversed the number of voters, african-americans, in the south. that trend is changing the demographic nationally. that is why you see so many states who are trying to go back to the jim crow era of denying african-americans the opportunity to vote. clearly, we recognize and listen to your guest talk about one day voting the way we used to do things. things can be done the way we use to. in south africa they bowed over several days to make sure every vote is counted. if we cannot count every vote we are not living in a democratic society. guest: i agree 100%. you need a system where every single person who is eligible to vote, it can be very easy for them to register to vote and cast a vote. my concern about when you start moving to a system where people are voting in august and september, the election has not played itself out yet. i also don't like that that derives partisanship. you are not getting to know the candidates, you're picking the ticket to go straight republican or straight to mccracken. i don't -- straight republican or straight democrat. if you have an issue come your elderly or can't get to the ballot on election day, we should be making accommodations. if we make accommodations for everyone makes the system murkier and murkier. south africa's different than the united states. i think it is one thing we can all agree on, no one wants to come close to returning to the jim crow era. going forward one way you look at that is let's find basic things we agree on, like voter id. it's have voter rules we can all agree on when it comes to the concept of purging. if you are dead, you should not be on a voting roll.let's make sure there's a clear process so someone knows someone has passed, they are off the voting roll. i think these are reforms we can all agree on. host: your group has been active on the topic of the filibuster in the senate. you wrote a piece on realclearpolitics.com saying there is no mandate for democrats to new the filibuster. what are you saying come and why do you feel the way you do? guest: i feel strongly. this goes back to the 90,000 votes that could have flipped the outcome of the entire election. this is not a mandate to blow up our entire system. we were set out to be a republic.we are not a democracy. a democracy is 51% says and go es. if you are in the minority you still have rights and privileges. the senate is part of that. the idea that you would have the house, the people's body, and the senate that would represent the states. we change how the senate works, but the filibuster is to push debate. we have the filibuster so we make sure even if you are in the minority party you still acquire a lot of protections in the senate. if you do away with that you end up with two houses of representatives. without the filibuster there is no reason to have the senate. i think we should pause and have a long think for we do away with the branch of our government. host: auburn, washington, good morning. caller: good morning. my question regarding the state voting, is there a way that automatically when a person does die we automatically put it in social security -- is there a way to find out if they have been taken off the registration on voting? guest: this is up to the states to figure out. what i don't like about h.r.1 is six months before an election you cannot challenge any voter on the roll. six months before an election, if you know people should not be on the ballot because they moved, because they passed away -- for whatever reason you can't remove them. i think that is a major problem with h.r.1. i think it is basic common sense. if you are not eligible to vote, you shouldn't be on the voting roll. host: democrat, new york. caller: what a coincidence. two auburns. i have to disagree with this guy 100%. i'm a veteran. i voted absentee when i was a veteran. i don't believe you should count the vote the night of the election. it should be a week long process. it is not certified until december. secondly, at least one third of the eligible voters did not vote. trump got less than 33% and biden got 34%. we are ruling with a minority majority. i think you should be required to vote by law and fined for not voting, and everyone should be registered at birth. my final point is poll workers are background checked. they have to go through a criminal background check as if you're going to be a civil servant. we are not committing fraud. one man, one vote. thank you very much. guest: i agree, one man, one vote. i think that's the system are looking for. where i disagree, to me what's most important is you have a voting system where everyone agrees, but i don't believe the state should have the power to say you have to vote. i don't think that's healthy. i think people that want to vote should have zero barriers for going to vote. they should have a clean system. we play by the same rules and i'm for that. am i for making it by penalty if you don't vote? i think that's a massive overreach. i used to live in eastern europe and they were required to vote. it is an authoritarian thing when the state tells you what your behavior should be. host: freedomworks [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2021] >> president biden is speaking today. he will be joined by vice president kamala harris. we'll have live coverage at 4:40 eastern here on c-span. >> women and girls are hungry for role models. we keep hearing representation is important and that really is so true. the amount of emails and other messages that we get from very, very young girls and/or their mothers saying how either the subject that we cover or just the very fact that they hear two women speaking in that format, how it has really affected them. >> all throughout history women have typically been the woman behind the man and what we get to do here is we get to talk about the men behind the woman, but focus on her life and tell the story from her point of view. so, fact that we get to do that , like beckett said, hope it inspires people to do the same. and we know it does. >> the history chicks sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. you can also listen to q&a as a podcast where you get your podcasts.