Information. Only at cspan do you get it straight from the source. No matter where you are from or where you stand on the issues, cspan is americas network. Unfiltered, unbiased, word for word, if it happens here or here or here or anywhere that matters , america is watching on cspan. Powered by cable. Rachel is with us this morning, the election president associate director at the center here to talk about a new report, poll workers and Election Security. I want to read the title fortifying Election Security through poll worker policy. Why this title . Why did you do this report . Guest thank you for having me. We wrote this report because, over the last couple of weeks and months, there has been so much controversy around the people in place running our elections. It is easy for us to feel doubtful when we have these reports being made that the poll workers and Election Officials are somehow being infiltrated by election deniers. We wanted to show all of the protections in place protecting our system against Insider Threats. Those are certainly real but we wanted to bring to light why americans should still trust the voting process. Host what are some of the protections in place . Guest a couple of the key ones we tracked were training requirements for poll workers. Many states require training for all temporary election workers. Those that dont either dont have traditional polling sites and have different requirements or others delegated to the local level. But the vast majority of states have these protections in place. Also, codes of conduct and make sure they know what is allowed to be done. If a poll worker violates current standing policy or regulation, they would be removed from the post. The vast majority of states require state and local election offices strive for balance in the political makeup of the poll workers. This allows accountability. Host let me show the states you were talking about. 42 states and d. C. Require election worker training. This is what the map looks like. 42 states and d. C. Require temporary election workers to take oaths of office and 47 states strive for parity of office. Why and what are these election workers doing . What did they get to do . Guest it is a little bit elusive. We discussed it in terms of poll workers because that is when people talk about they are thinking about the people checking you in, helping you scan your ballot, those types of things. Temporary election workers work throughout the process. They do voter checkin, they assist in registration, they sometimes assist in counting votes. They support all aspects of Election Administration because it is a cyclical endeavor. Every election we have about 750,000 temporary election workers. This is a huge endeavor. Adding in that partisan balance helps make sure those parties feel they have a voice and transparency into how elections work. As americans segregate themselves into political geographies, it is increasingly difficult for Election Officials to achieve partisan balance in their election workers. That has been getting easier since the 2020 election. We have seen more involvement from local republican parties in helping election offices recruit temporary election workers, sometimes for better or worse. It helps us maintain partisan parity. On the other hand, it creates an opening for when there are sponsored trainings that exist outside of state or local official training, they get different information. Going into the michigan primary, we saw gop training for poll watchers directing them to sneak cell phones in or violate existing law for that state. Host i want our viewers to join in on the conversation. If you have volunteered to work this election cycle, we want to hear from you. What are your state laws that dictate this . If you have questions about poll workers, dial in as well. Democrats 202 7488000, republicans 202 7488001, and independents 202 7488002. Text with your first name, city and state to 202 7488003. Rachel orey, did you say threats are real . If so, what are they . Guest a lot of the threats that have been discussed lately are the risk we see organizations like the Election Integrity network, vigorously espousing lies of the 2020 election, we have seen them trying to recruit and train temporary election workers with the explicit aim of trying to on earth fraud une arth fraud. We have seen poll workers at the end of the day saying they are not good to tabulate the machine, that they are going to hand count. Thankfully because of bipartisan efforts those have been thwarted. In the michigan primary, one poll worker was charged with tampering with election equipment. He inserted a personal flash drive into the poll book. Thankfully, that does not interact with tabulation equipment and that instance was quickly identified and addressed and he was charged. There is that ongoing risk that as we have the people who are interacting with voters or interacting with voting equipment, not believing the results of the election, there is valid concern those folks might undermine election results. At the same time, we have not seen other than that one instance, have seen no whites but indication this is happening. We have seen these 750,000 temporary workers are responsible and committed to preserving american democracy. Host and they received training. What kind of training do they get . How long does it last . Guest it depends by the state and even locality. Some go through two days of training, which is amazing. That is the gold standard. They learn everything from how polling places work, where equipment needs to be put, how to check in voters and depending on what they are assisting with they will get the technical background. Just in michigan, the county clerk is a member of our task force on elections which is a group of state and local Election Officials from around the country. He is increasingly discussing some of these Insider Threats in his poll worker training, helping poll workers know what they need to do to support elections and democracy and identify any risk of Insider Threats. One concern is resources are at the heart of a lot of Administration Problems we have. When states are not paying for and supporting training for election workers and it goes down to the local county or jurisdiction, they are sometimes disincentivized. If they have to pay workers to attend training and if it is long, they might have to pay more and they have no resources. There is discrepancy in terms of how training takes place that we can address in the longerterm. Host what about early voting and mail in, absentee votes . Are there election workers that deal with the opening of those ballots or the counting of those ballots . Guest yes, there are temporary election workers that assist in verifying the identity of the male in voters. Typically, that is done by verifying the signature on the envelope. States do have vigorous training for those individuals and it is almost always done by a Bipartisan Group of individuals. When it comes to actually interacting with the ballots there is a higher standard for training and vetting for those workers. Early voting, it depends. The training would be more similar to the election day style or mail voting. Host and there are dismissal policies. If they were to violate their oath, there is dismissal that can happen. What sort of punishments . Guest it depends what they have done. In the michigan primary when someone was tampering with voting equipment, they were charged with a penalty for committing an act against the government. But in other cases, when it is something more smaller scale, they will be removed from their role, which is the most important. Part if someone is doing something the most important part. The challenge we have seen as many states and local jurisdictions lack clarity on how dismissal should take place. For a long time, temporary election workers were taken for granted and we thought, these are Community Members here to support the polling locations. We never thought about, what happens if they are trying to interfere with the results . It is not always clear who is responsible for dismissing a poll worker. If it is on election day and the roles are not clear, that creates the opportunity for conflict. If someone is asked to leave and they say, you dont have jurisdiction, we could see some conflict playing out. Host rachel orey with us talking about the latest report by the Bipartisan Policy Center on poll workers and Election Security. Lets hear from ida in new york city, democratic caller. Caller i am a democratic caller and i am 96 years old. It has been a few years since i have been able to be anything other than helping in any minor way. All of my childhood and all of my mothers adulthood we were involved with the vote. There is no way you can train people to really care about something. We all are enforced by how we think or feel. If we are a democrat, we feel we are the top people. There are people that are going to try to sway the vote. I happen to be a democrat, thats true, and i dont think i have ever been swayed by anything or anybody to do anything other than what was right. Right to me is right. I think most republicans are the same way, right is right, and they not going to screw around trying to get someone to vote a way they did not vote. Host she was talking about she used to do poll working and she was there to do the right thing, she felt the republicans were too. And they have to take an oath. Talk about why that matters. Guest i think it means something when you commit to serving your community and you take an oath that says, i commit to uphold the state constitution or i commit to upholding our elections. That means something to voters and i think the caller was right, republicans and democrats are both committed in many ways to supporting our democracy. We did polling with Morning Consult and found the vast majority, Something Like 76 of voters nationally, believe their votes will be counted accurately. There is more doubt when it comes to whether they would be counted nationally, but there is more than meets the eye. It is so easy to cast dispersions against people who might not believe the results of an election. But i believe they are victims of a broader misinformation machine. Host one about what is happening in arizona by those going to the ballot box to vote early and there are ballot box watchers and the intimidation factor . Guest intimidation should never be tolerated. It is unfortunate what is happening with drop boxes. It very clearly tracks to mixed truths about how drop boxes work. It is our opinion drop boxes are more secure than usps post boxes. It has to go through a lot of steps before it makes it back to the election office. When you are putting it into a dropbox, youre putting it in the hands of that election office. They are still verified. Those return methods can be trusted and they should be trusted. This is one instance in which we are seeing misinformation turn into concrete threats of violence. Election offices are preparing aggressively to respond to this. Voters should feel safe knowing we have been preparing for months for this to happen. Again, it comes down to a longerterm cultivation of trust in the democratic process. Host larry in alexandria, virginia, you are retired from poll working . Caller i do not know if retired is the weight word. I just do not have the heart to do it. Im looking for other ways to make things better. I did it for many years, coming from the heart, and poll workers do not make a lot of money but that is not what it is about. Any time you work for the federal government, that is not what it is about. My experiences started in 2008 working in alexandria, Fairfax County where i noticed the poll workers, the people coming in to vote, people were not polite. You can get over some things i remember one guy, some big shot in Fairfax County. It was terrible. I noted deterioration in conditions and the quality and the way we vote. I noticed there were more arguments amongst the poll workers who may or may not be allowed to vote. The last election i did was in 2018 in mclean, virginia. I noticed an increase of Police Presence and that was a turnoff for me. America needs to grow up or these people out there trying to destroy our process need to grow up and find some thing else to do. At the end of the day, im going to do like everybody else, i will write a book and people will buy it. Host rachel orey. Guest i completely agree that the temperature of elections has changed the last couple of years. That is why our report tried to instill trust in temporary election workers. It is so easy to cast dispersion. I see there being two classes. The individuals knowingly perpetrating mistruths for their own political gain and then there are those who are victims to it. Our recent polling suggests those that do not believe their votes will be counted accurately tend to be lower education and lower income. We see lower records of trust and Democratic Institutions and people feel ostracized and separated from their communities which creates an opening for this fiery rhetoric to take place. We really are trying to encourage voters to have more trust in their communities, in their election offices to turn down that temperature and bring back bring people back to what matters about america and why we care about our democracy. Host what are states doing to protect these workers . Guest since the 2020 election we have seen record levels of threats and harassment being leveraged against fulltime election workers, Election Officials and temporary election workers. It is creating a really tense environment for Election Officials trying to run an election while under intense public scrutiny, while having their lives regularly threatened by the constituents they are trying to serve. The federal government and department of justice recently created an Election Threats Task force to investigate and prosecute threats being made against Election Officials. But prosecutions are incredibly low compared to the threats being made. I think they have prosecuted five or fewer total cases amidst the thousands of threats reported. In that absence, states like colorado and maine have stepped up to fill the gap. Colorado has made it unlawful for anyone to threaten, harass or intimidate election workers. They also instituted steps to protect election workers from docs inc. , which is when doxing, which is when personal information is shared online to undermine safety. We believe more states should take the steps as motivated violence increases. Host mark is in fort lauderdale, florida, democratic caller. Caller good morning. I took my poll watchers class last night online and i am waiting to get my assignment for tomorrow. It was like a 90 minute one of those things where there is a bunch of people being schooled online. I will say this, they made a very big deal about staying away from people, dont bother people, dont get in no ones face which i found reassuring. But the reason i got into this class was because i did vote through a dropbox several days ago and i can tell we have an efficient system. It tells me my vote was counted. Going back to the guy earlier when people were complaining about things take all day, all night for the votes to get counted, in pennsylvania, they dont let them start counting until the morning of the election. That is why that takes long and that is done by a republican state congress. I am going to get my assignment and i am going to go through a poll watch. My plan was to watch and see what other people are doing. I dont know if i have the guts to tell somebody you need to leave them alone or dont bother them or even complained to an official, that guy is doing this or that. But i am looking forward to the experience and participating in our election system. Host rachel orey, is mark one of the many or are we facing a shortage in this election cycle . Guest we have faced shortages of temporary election workers for decades and this is nothing new. Election offices are well prepared to handle that shortage and are always trying new recruitment techniques. What mark got at is the importance of preprocessing rules. Pennsylvania does not allow election offices to tabular ballots until election day. When we have more individuals voting early and voting by mail this creates a burden on the election offices. On election day they are trying to run in person voters and prepare for tabulation. Florida had several weeks before the election in which offices can do those steps. When the polls close on election day the unofficial results are very quick and we think this is one of the most important steps in rebuilding public trust in the democratic process. If there is a long gap between the polls closing and the release of unofficial result, it is a window in which a lot of misinformation can take place. Host what are the recommendations of the Bipartisan Policy Center . Guest we have made a series of recommendations about all parts of the process, specifically on temporary election workers. We think training and codes of conduct, clear rules for dismissal are all good ideas. When it comes to tabulating ballots, the task force of Election Officials recommended minimum of seven days in which offices nationwide should be able to begin processing and tabulating ballots. In states that have a lot of mailin voting, like colorado and washington, they should have more. Host martha in illinois, poll worker. Caller hi. I am going to be an election judge on the 8th and i think it is my fourth time. I wanted to make little comments. In illinois, we compare the signature to the voter. We do not have picture id. When i was an election judge for obama a lot of voters yelled at me because they wanted to know how come they did not have to show their picture id . During trump people were very angry. I am working tuesday. We will see what people will be like. Host she called herself an election judge. Guest the words vary by state. Some places they are called poll workers, election judges, precinct officials, but the heart of it is they are supporting inperson voting on el