Inside the 2024 Elections: Security, Voter ID, and Biden w/Jessica Huseman

**We recorded this episode on Friday, July 19th prior to President Biden making his decision to drop out of the race. We were expecting the announcement hence the reason we asked Jessica Huseman to come the show and discuss what the impact might mean for voters.**


In this episode of Faithful Politics, hosts Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram welcome back election expert Jessica Huseman, the editorial director for VoteBeat and former lead elections reporter for ProPublica. Jessica, an award-winning educator with extensive experience in teaching FOIA classes, brings her wealth of knowledge to discuss the current landscape of voting and elections in the United States.

Key topics include the logistics and implications of President Biden potentially stepping down before the convention, the challenges and misconceptions around voter ID laws, and the real issues facing election security in the U.S.

Jessica provides a detailed analysis of the current state of election security, emphasizing that voting technology is more advanced and reliable than ever. She also addresses the persistent myths about non-citizen voting, explaining the legal and practical realities that make such claims largely unfounded. The conversation touches on the importance of local reporting on election issues and the invaluable work done by VoteBeat in providing informed, local perspectives on voting and election integrity.

Make sure you check out all the great content Votebeat provides and sign up for their newsletter: https://www.votebeat.org/

Guest Bio:
Jessica Huseman was previously the lead elections reporter for ProPublica, and helped manage the Electionland project for three federal election cycles, sharing information and tips with hundreds of newsrooms across the United States. She is an award-winning educator, and has taught at Columbia Journalism School, New York University, and wrote a high school investigative journalism curriculum in use by more than 200 high schools. Jessica is a graduate of Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she graduated with honors.

Transcript

0:01

Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers. If you're watching us on our YouTube channel, I am your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Blurry Josh Bertram. Hi, I'm Will. And we have with us returning probably one of our favorite election expert guests. think you're, yeah, you're one of our favorite, because we've had other election guests on, but you're by far our favorite. it's Jessica Heusman, who is the editorial director for Vote Beat and was previously the lead elections reporter for ProPublica. She's an award -winning educator and has taught at Columbia journalism school in New York. and she also offers a whole bunch of like FOIA classes, which I've yet to take. Like I, I see you post they're fun. They're fun. I've got one. Yeah, I had one last Saturday. It was hilarious. I loved it. There was like, it always blows my mind, the people who show up to these public records classes, cause it'll be like half journalists, a couple of academic researchers, and then like a guy who's really pissed off at his local fire department. And it's the best. Like they are always the most engaged ones. I had a, like, air traffic controller that was convinced his local air traffic thing was completely corrupt. don't know if these people ever prove these things, but I'm glad to help them. that's awesome. Come to think of it, I have a few corruptions I'd like to figure out around here. Yeah, no, no, is it is it like is it like Jason Leopold level like investigating FOIA stuff? No, it's like FOIA for the everyday FOIA person, right? So like, it's like, you need a thing from the government, here's how you get it. It's like, the FOIA for the rest of us, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. like how's Walter? write that book. I, well, listen. If any publishers are listening, I'm available. my goodness, my little dog Walter. He is fabulous. He is taking a nap right next to me, actually. That's where he usually is. He's got, he has a variety of beds around the house, which he rotates through throughout the day. And it is his, I'm gonna be right under mom's feet time. So that's where he Well, yeah, so we wanted to have you on because there's a lot going on with regards to elections, voting, you know, kind of seems like, you know, we see each other every four years kind of thing. And, you know, the primary sort of, I think, focus epicenter of what we're going to be talking about is like, well, one, the Biden election changing candidates sort of thing. And then then sort of later in the episode, we'll talk a little bit about our voting systems, election systems, stuff like that. So I think maybe like the high level kind of question to start off with is like, the heck is going on with Biden? And can he even like not be president and choose somebody else, if that makes sense? Yes, I don't know that I can be particularly helpful in answering the first question because I have no idea. I am as baffled as everyone else. But I can answer the second question, which is he can do it. And in reality, this is not a political answer to the question. This is a logistical answer to the question. As long as they sort this out by the time the convention is over, which is not for another month, right? It starts one month from today, the day that we are filming this, which is Friday the 19th. And so, you know, it will be over a month from like around now. And like in a month, we will have an answer to this question. As long as Biden makes the choice he's going to make before the end of the convention, there's nothing stopping him from changing. There are campaign finance limitations to him sort of like taking the pot of money he has raised and giving it to another candidate. There are fewer of those of Kamala Harris as the choice, but logistically it is possible for the next four weeks. Now does Kamala have to be at the top of the ticket or she just has to be on the ticket? That is actually not clear to me. I am not a campaign finance expert myself. It is my understanding that it would have to be her. Like she would have to remain the nominee and it would have to go to her and it would have to come up. who knows? mean, like the Democratic Party has gotten itself out of strange issues in the past. This is admittedly unprecedented. And I think It's pretty dangerous for party morale overall, and I think it has been for quite a long time, but they do have a couple of weeks to figure this So would it, could it ever be like she is running for like president and Biden is the vice president? I don't know. mean, that's be a fascinating strategy. I'm not sure. Just swap them. You can keep the signs and everything, right? You just turn them upside down. So that would be an interesting money saving strategy. I do not know, but. Yeah, I mean, I think that they have gotten themselves into a bit of a pickle and the assassination attempt on Donald Trump made this a more urgent question and not a less urgent question. And so. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. you know, I guess when I'm looking at this, help us for kind of like the average listener who maybe isn't as tuned into politics as you might be and will. is, know, wills up at like 2 a .m. like researching like congressional budgets and things like that. So none of us are at that level quite. I don't even think the Congress is at that level. The will is that. But for like the normal person, like what is going on and why did it take so long for the. For the like for pressure from key Democrats to come for Biden to step aside? Like what's going on You know, I think that there are a lot of dynamics at play. I think that Biden came into the election of 2020 pretty late and sort of surprised everybody by how quickly he was able to unite the Democrats. And I think that there became this false sense that he did that because he uniquely could. Like you hear that same sort of mythologizing around Trump, like it has in fact come out of Trump's own mouth, right? Like I am the one, I am the only one who can do these things, right? And it started to sort of, I think, rise in that way in the Democratic Party. And so they're just, when it became clear that he wasn't going to step down, no one became the obvious choice to sort of rally the same. groups that Biden did. Because I think that there's been a little bit of a move away from the hype of sentiment that Biden made popular. You remember in 2020 when it was clear that he was becoming the candidate, progressives were really upset about that. But they didn't meaningfully mount a challenge to him in any capacity in the four years after that. And then no one rose up to take that mantle from And so I think it is the party's fault that there is not a standard bearer that is younger than 81 years old. That's just true. And I've been really frustrated with the conversations about... how damaging it is that the media is talking about Biden's age. But the reality, and I think you probably both know this because you talk to normal people every day, is that normal people have been worried about this for four years. It was a risk they were willing to take in 2020 and they sort of ate it. But now four years have passed and I think that just shoving it down, you the tubes and being like, no, nobody's having this conversation doesn't actually mean nobody's having it. Like my neighbors come up to my door and they're like, so can we replace Biden on the ticket? Like my neighbors, I didn't even know that they knew what I did for a living. the, you know, I am frustrated by that, but that was a really long answer to your question. I hope it actually answered It was a great answer. Thank you. think a lot of voters are like thinking, you know, back in 2016 and you see just Bernie Sanders out there, you know, with the myths and everything, just like, you know, just killing it on the campaign trail. And you're like, that dude's got got some pep in a step, you know, like whatever I'll have, whatever he's having kind of thing. So I think we just sort of convinced ourselves, well, if Bernie can do it, you know, I mean, you know, I think that like Biden has always in comparison to Trump with sort of like presentation ability. And that was really on display in that debate. And I keep thinking about this quote that Bill Clinton of all people said, I don't even remember on what occasion he said it, but it is like specifically true here, which is that, loud and wrong beats quiet and right every time. Every time. so, you know, debates, we all know this, right? Like not substantive ever at all for any reason. They are about presentation. They are about your ability to convey your message clearly and your ability to sort of like sell yourself as a candidate and That was a huge fail. I think that Nancy Pelosi coming out the next day and saying, we need to understand if this was an episode or a condition was so emblematic of how people were really feeling. Because she said it has to be one or the other. It is either an episode or it is a condition. Condition is obviously worse, but an episode is bad. That's not great language. And so I think that the White House has really not put Biden on the forefront of a lot of things. They did the State of the Union address. It was teleprompter with a few interesting and quite good, at least candid moments. But in terms of putting him out in front of the media to answer questions of his own accord or putting him out in front of the public in sort of an unscripted environment. That was the first time we'd seen him do that in a long time. And I think that the difference between, let's say, the State of the Union and his performance in that debate was really palpable. Yeah, you said that if they're going to replace him, they have to do it before the end of the convention. Can you talk about why the convention is sort of the place, the time for those tough decisions to be made? Yeah, so I think it's important for people to understand that the the primaries that they have all voted in are not democratic processes at all. They are private party functions for the party to choose the candidate. There's nothing in law that says that the person chosen via that party function must be the candidate the party selects. So this is just the way that we pick like that our party sorts out who is at the top of the ticket. And so there's nothing stopping Biden right now from not being on the ticket and for the delegates that are gonna come together at that convention to appoint somebody else, right? There's nothing stopping that from happening. It's a private function. Groups like the Heritage Foundation have said like, we would make it really difficult to replace Biden on the ticket, but that's fake. Like that's a fake thing. And if the media is buying that, the media is gullible. There's nothing anybody can do. But the conventions themselves are really important because they kick off in state law some things that need to happen before November, before the election can take place. So most states have some deadline. And sometimes that's written into law. Sometimes that's in a state election handbook, in which the like candidate's name must be on the ballot and the ballots have to be printed and they have to go out. The like full hard deadline for the whole country, that's like a hard stop for everybody, is that overseas and military ballots must be mailed under federal law on September 21st, everywhere. They have to go out by September 21st. Some states send them before, but they must go out by that date. And so, In order for that to happen and to make sure that the ballots are proofread and to make sure that the printers have the capacity to print all of those ballots, they can't print, they can't hit print on, you know, September 20th. They need a couple of weeks for that. And so we're really looking at like a hard deadline in not only state law, but like practically and logistically at the end of August to clear up who the candidate is. And then after that, right, it just becomes a logistical impossibility to replace a on a presidential ticket, like a presidential ticket name. Like some states will be able to pull it off, but not all states will, and it will be very chaotic. And so the convention really is the kickoff date for all of those dominoes that need to fall in that order on the right time. Otherwise, the election just doesn't So, you know, we hear a lot about the primaries and the big deal about the primaries, right? I even went in and I voted for who I thought should be on the ticket, right, in the primary and like in Virginia. So what's the point? Kind of help me understand what the point of the primaries are if it can be shifted or what maybe what point yeah what function do they play what role do they play if it can be shifted so late in the game just at the convention like the delegates can say hey you know what you know can they do this anytime i mean you know i mean obviously if someone dies but that's a very extreme circumstance and you might say this is an extreme circumstance if he's not mentally capable but no one has actually said that or have they? I... Nobody, I don't think anybody has come out and outright said that. I think that the thing about the primaries and the way that they work today is that this is not how they used to work. The primaries used to very much be a intra-party decision. They themselves decided who the candidate was. They ran that candidate and you voted for them or you voted for the other guy. There wasn't this sort of like, I'm a member of the party. Like there were ways that the party sort of like, sort of in a fair way, sort of like, I guess, sorted out who the candidate would be. But this sort of primary and caucus system that we have formalized into like a political calendar and into like a specific fundraising cycle is tradition and not rule. Right. And so I think, but that doesn't, like, that doesn't mean that people aren't going to be bothered by this. Right. I think that, like, a lot of people would say like, yeah, well, it's better now. Like it is, it is fairer to select the candidate for the party with the at least offered participation of all of the party members. Right. And if it's just the elite choosing, then like, how is that fair? That's a different question from like whether or not they technically can do And they technically can. And it seems at this moment in time that I am speaking, that that is where the momentum is sort of heading, but they're running out of Now, there's like some reporting that says, I guess that... DNC is moving up the virtual, I don't know if it was a roll call or if it was a vote or something. They're moving that up. Like number one, people are voting virtually for the nominee. Maybe you can kind of talk about that and then what advantage does moving it up have, especially for President Biden? Yeah, this is sort of a weird conversation and I'm not sure where they're gonna land on this, but the reason they were gonna do this virtual roll call is because as I mentioned, right, the conventions are what kick off sort of things happen in state law at this time. Ohio had in its state law that they needed the names, the official candidate names. before the Democratic convention was scheduled. And so the initial solution for this before the Ohio legislature got it together and passed a law extending that date was that they would, in addition to the convention, which is basically just like a show anyway, they would have a formal roll call vote making Biden the formal candidate prior to the convention ever happening. And so that is no longer as necessary because Ohio the date back in law. So they have until the end of their convention now to nominate someone else. And so the virtual roll call is not hugely necessary. I mean, I think now it's being seen in a bit of a different light. Like, is this the opportunity to reinforce our support for Biden and say that publicly? Maybe. Is this our opportunity to? vote for somebody else and establish that before the convention so that the convention isn't like cuckoo banana pants. Maybe that too, I don't know. But that's sort of the origin of it. And I think now it's just taken on a bit of a different hue, if you will. Yeah, so, you know, we just had the RNC convention and Trump had right now has chosen JD Vance. Was the scheduling of this convention? Do you think, it always been that the Republican one is first and then the Democrat, or have they scheduled this to maybe look like they got their act together more than the Democrats based on the party kind of, like based on the current atmosphere? If they were playing that game, they were playing a heck of a long game because I think this is, I don't know. These dates have been announced for quite some time because they have to pick the locations well in advance, both for security reasons and because they tend to be in cities that are not typically hosting events of this nature. And so they have to pick them pretty far in advance. Maybe there was some strategy like we'll have it first, we'll have it last, but I don't really know. You know, this would be a good segue to our next topic, but also with all the uncertainty going on with whose name is going to be on the ballot in November, what effect does this have on election workers? Or does it have an effect at this point? Maybe that's something that'll happen down the road. You know what, that's a really interesting question. So we actually did some reporting on this this week. And what's interesting about election officials is that I think that they, more than any other like facet of the government, were already feeling this sort of like rise in political anger. I'm not gonna call it political violence, but I will call it anger, right? And like sort of a pressure to sort of change their policies and procedures around security. And so when all of this happened, they were just sort of like, yeah, welcome right? Like, we've been prepared for this forever, right? So this coming week, or clip that out, I guess, this week is the National Association of Secretaries. No, I'm sorry. There are two, and that one just happened. It's the National Association of State Elections Directors Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. so, listen, I'm gonna tell you what, it's pretty fun. And this will be my 13th Mass Ed, which is, that's how much fun I am at parties. And so I am hanging out with like vote beat themed stress balls and stuff for the stressed out election administrator, which I'm pretty excited about. But the point is, Nice. This conference has been bananas ramped up on security for years. I came in 2022, which was a midterm, and it was in Wisconsin. This year it's in Minnesota. It was in Wisconsin in 2022. Wisconsin was and still is a crazy place to be an election administrator. And they were doing daily bomb sweeps of the hotel. my goodness. They had private security doing laps around all of the rooms constantly, like someone was always moving. It was an entire regime that they set up, like in coordination with DHS and the FBI. And so like these groups, because this is where most of the anger has been sort of concentrated for so long, are so prepared for this moment in a way that is sad, but I think ultimately good for democracy, right? These people are not going to, what happened is not going to significantly impact their sort of willingness or ability to do their job going forward, as far as I can sense. So they're ramped up at the conferences. Now when I listen to the debate or the highlights of the debate, you know, they asked Trump, former President Trump several times, know, will you, you know, concede the election if you lose, you know, accept the results. And he didn't answer. And then he said, if it's a fair election, right? Same kind of. So what is going to be different in terms of like, could he do the same thing? I mean, I guess in theory he could, but have they ramped up? how has, what's changed or has anything changed in the voting process and security? that would even make that less likely that he could bring similar kinds of arguments against the system. yeah, like the parameters of reality have never really been an impediment to Trump saying things, you know what I mean? And so I think like the answer is yes, like our system is more secure than it was two years ago or four years ago or 60 years ago and certainly eight years ago. But none of that matters, right? Like he's gone on a rampage around non-citizen voting, which is exactly not a problem, right? But Republicans have been talking about it in some form or fashion for a really long time. And they've sort of ignored reality the whole way through. I think Trump has decided that election integrity is a good rallying cry for him. And so I think regardless time. Yeah, I mean it did, right? like, I mean, you know what, we say that it did, right? But he technically lost the election, right? Like, and we had this horrible thing happen afterwards. But I think that, you know, the RNC was really interesting to sort of pay attention to. Because unless you were like me, like really listening for flicks at election integrity or mentions of January 6th or mentions of 2020 being stolen, they were not really at the forefront, right? Like I think that there is some recognition that the absolute insanity over 2020 has turned off a lot of Republicans. And so there was like less of a focus on that sort of stuff at the convention than I thought there might be. That said. all of the conspiracy theory media people were just hanging out outside. There's a very good New York Times article about this, just sort of waiting in the wings until they need to pounce, and then they will, right? So I think that there is every chance that Donald Trump sort of talks about it when forced and brings it up for seasoning here and there in the next couple of months, but basically, as much as he can, keep tamp down, and if, in the event that he loses, ramp it back up. Because what's he going to say if he wins, right? And he has been saying the election is rigged the whole time. Like, you can only say that so many times before your supporters are just like, why would I waste my day voting for you if you're telling me the election is rigged? Like, he has to roll that back. And so I think. He's not going to dispel any of those rumors. He's just not going to talk about them. And he is going to let other people do that. And then if he loses, then I think we really have a problem on our hands. Because the parties, both parties, but most notably, and I think most substantially, the Republican Party, have ramped up their spending and their money allocation for litigation. And so we are, like, to answer the question you asked initially, once the election is over and the election is certified, it's sort of out of the hands of election officials, right? It becomes, at that point, a matter of law. And so it may be that they are having to justify everything that they did. But like, in both, 2016 and 2020 and 2022, right? Like in all of these times, election administrators by and large pulled the election off without a lot of chaos and without a ton of mistakes, got the election certified without a problem. And then the candidates went about and sort of like went at each other in court and on television and on cable and all of this. But I think election administrators feel like if they can just get the country through to local certification of the election, then it's out of their hands. And whatever happens after that is a matter for the courts, a matter of law, and a matter for the future of American democracy, but not really one that they can do anything about. I think the one big change I have seen election administrators make in the last four years to account for that and account for concerns and doubts is that they're investing way more time and energy into communications strategy and to voter education than they used to. I think that they used to take sort of for granted the fact that voting is complicated and it's not something people do with any regularity and maybe they do need a little bit more sort of guidance on the way that the back end of the system works in order for them to trust it. That's something, like we never used to hear about like how audits worked or how certification worked or what the mechanics of like this voting machine or that voting machine were, but now we do. And there's a reason for that. And I think part of the reason is that election administrators are trying to sort of like flood the zone with correct information so that on the back end there might be less of a backlash. And I think this year will be really good. evidence as to whether or not that tactic has worked. You know, it's interesting like you bring up the point of flooding the zone with truth bombs basically. But like the House, I think the House just passed a bill that won't go anywhere, know, it's a virtue signal bill about non-citizens voting. you talked a little bit about it and I want to see if you can maybe expand on that because, I I don't think it's that big of a problem, but then again, it's like if you were sort of an outside observer and you're like, well, they passed a bill, you know, there's no way Congress would pass a bill if it wasn't a real problem, you know? like, educate us. Congress passes stupid laws. It's true. let's just get that on the board first. you know, I think this has actually been a talking point of the Republican Party way before Trump was ever even publicly considering a run for president. When Greg Abbott, who is the current governor of Texas, was running for attorney general in 2008. He ran a televised ad in which like vague brown people were scrambling over a wall and then voting, right? Like this has been part of the Republican, like nighttime, scare your kids, like roster forever. And so I think Trump is seeing this as something that unites two sort of disparate parts of his base, which is like election integrity. and immigration, we're just talking about them at the same time, right? Like it's, that's what it is. And I think that there's like, there is a real vein of that and like needing to unite these two things. And what's interesting and like the reason that I know that this is not a problem is because this has been like fully litigated. So like first, before I say any of this, I will say. It is already illegal in every single state for non -citizens to cast a ballot at the federal level. It is already illegal. So the reason the law was stupid is because they basically made something illegal, quote unquote, that was already illegal. Like it's hugely redundant and totally pointless. Super, yeah, now it's super duper illegal and really bad guys. And so that's not great. Like if a non -citizen votes, they can get deported. have been deported for voting, right? But the OG dude on this Venn diagram of immigration and election integrity circle is Chris Kobach, who is currently the attorney general for Kansas. was formerly the Kansas Secretary of State and got the state to pass a whole law like mandating that in order to register to vote, you had to present documentary proof of citizenship, like show up with your birth certificate, show up with your passport. Like I cannot tell you the number of people I've been like, where is my passport or my birth certificate? I don't know. Like it's a pretty big barrier to registering to vote for a lot of people, especially people who move a lot or are poor. The point is, He passes this law, he enforces it. 30 ,000 people have their voter registrations held in limbo because they don't come to the DMV with a birth certificate, because who does that? And then somebody sues and takes him to court, goes all the way up to the federal court, and he has to, in court, present proof of some mass problem of non -citizen registration. in order to justify this law. And he can't. He cannot. He finds a clerk, who I've since spoken to, and was like, I don't know why I did that. Finds a clerk to document every tiny instance of any non -citizen accidentally or otherwise registering to vote in one county, in Sedgwick County. He finds 30. 25 of whom had done so accidentally and it was the fault of the DMV and only one who'd ever even attempted to cast a ballot and it didn't go through, right? So the point is, right, even when somebody incredibly determined to find this has attempted to find this and has an entire state of county clerks at his disposal in order to find this. could not find this. And I think the, you know, Occam's razor suggests not that like they're really good at hiding, but it's just, this is just not happening. And so all of this effort at sort of like non -citizen voting is really allowing us to sort of skate over real problems in elections that could use some legislation or some funding. But instead we're focused on this stuff. It's very silly. Isn't isn't Chris Cobock the guy that led the Trump election whatever thing early in his presidency? Yes, he is. And he was on the shortlist the first time Trump got elected for a cabinet position. I imagine we would hear a of that, like talk of that in a Trump 2 .0. And so, you you should expect to hear his name again. So there's obviously, that was a huge issue that so many people brought up, the idea of voting security and reliability in our system. And I'm hearing from you that our system is better than than it has maybe ever has been in terms of accurately accounting for the voting of the populace. Would you say that's correct? that... Okay, that's awesome. I'm glad to hear that. Actually, I would actually love to hear your reasoning for that. I was going to ask a question about cybersecurity, but I'm much more interested in the reasoning that you have about this. But the succinct reason is that I think that voting technology is better than it's ever been in terms of its ability to efficiently and accurately count ballots in a reproducible way. And that's key. So our previous voting machines really weren't auditable. They just sort of like tallied a vote, and that was it. Now we have paper ballots, paper backups. the vast majority of Americans are voting on a paper ballot, whether they are marking that paper themselves or they are using a ballot marking device. Ballot marking devices have a lot of advantages. And I think there has been this huge pushback against them because of the Trump dominion narrative. But really, I think that as long as these results are auditable, that we're moving in the right direction. And there are a lot of drawbacks to hand-marked ballots, right? I have seen people do strange things to ballots. Like, you should talk to any state that does all mail ballots and sends ballots into people's homes and the things that you get back. Like, people are like, well, how will we know if we're counting what the voter intended if they're voting on a machine? How do you know if they're voting what they're intended if they do it with their hands? People write diatribes around these ballots. People don't understand the ballot instructions, and so they vote in the wrong place. You can't do that on a voting machine because it doesn't let you go to the next page unless you've done everything you need to do. It is basically voting for dummies. And let me tell you something, as a voter, voters are dumb. And it's not because voting is Rocket science, it's just because it's a little bit different every time you do it, right? And it's not like you are like, let me just, like, you don't do a vote, you don't vote every day. Like you might at best vote two times, like every four years, right? And so this is not a habitual thing. And then, you know, the machines also have some benefits in terms of like the ability to translate the ballot on demand into multiple languages. the ability for people with disabilities to plug in their own software, their own hardware and use the machines without assistance so that they can also cast a ballot like that. And so I think that like we've really painted voting technology in a terrible light when in fact it has made voting much more accessible to a large group of people. And it has also meant that we can count the ballots much more quickly. and recount them as many times as we want because we've got those backups. And so I think in that environment, and given that, and given how sort of quickly the country has moved towards that in the last 10 years, I think that if there is a contested election somewhere, the good news is In the vast majority of states, the ballots are going to be there for you to recount as many times as you want. Georgia had to do it three times after 2020. That was really frustrating for everybody involved and seemed unnecessary to me. But they did it because they could, because they had paper backups. And in 2016, they didn't. And now, they know how to use them. So I think it's really good. That's awesome. So cybersecurity, how concerned should we be about Russia or China coming in and changing my votes? Even when I put it on a paper ballot or whatever it is, how concerned should I be that my vote is actually going to be counted and that it's going to be counted in the right way? Yeah and and can I can ask a follow -up to that question is what setting on my nest thermometer do I need to have it set to to ensure my vote is counted properly? I cannot advise you on this. On the first, so you should feel very confident that you go into a polling location, you select the candidate and this candidate you selected is your vote and that vote counts in all of the ways that you anticipate. That should not be a concern. But that's not really the actual goal of the disinformation and the hacking stuff foreign adversaries like Russia or China or North Korea are doing, right? It's very difficult because of the very diffuse nature of like, could like in theory, could I change your vote? Yes, but it would take a long time and I would affect a single machine maybe, right? And so it's a lot of effort to not have a ton of like end result. And so, and it would also take like a lot of organization and a lot of infiltration into like actual county governments, which let me tell you something, as someone who reports on county governments, they are terrible at keeping secrets. Like we would know about it immediately. But like neither here nor there, it's very difficult to actually change a vote. What it is not difficult to do is make it look kind of like you did and then let the chaos erupt on its And so it may not be possible to change your vote, but it might be possible to get into your county's results web page and change that result. And then which one do you believe? It might not be possible to hack all of the voting machines in Arizona, but what if I hack the Associated Press and then just start sending the diff, like making the wrong calls in the wrong states. Like that is much, it's not easy to do. Like nobody's ever done it. Nobody's gonna do it. The AP is excellent cybersecurity. the point is, there are lots of lower hanging fruit than changing votes that have a much bigger impact. And that like probably the system is not set up to catch us quickly. So. There's like so many quality checks in the way that counties sort of like think about precinct results and then add those results together and then add those results together that if there is a problem at any stage, it can pretty well be isolated into that place, into that precinct and they can shut it down and like they might have to figure out what to do with a couple hundred ballots, but it's not gonna throw off the entire election. If. The Associated Press or your local county is saying somebody won who literally didn't, that's chaos. And so that's really, I think, where we should be concerned about foreign intervention. It's not anything that's actually going to happen, but things that we might perceive are happening because of the way that information is being presented to us. And so that's, I think, what people need to be on alert for. And the good news is that our communication systems for these things are a lot better, right? So DHS has an organization dedicated to cyber infrastructure and security. They have an alert system of their own, right? There are trusted sources of information that we can go to and I think trust, as implied. to say, no, this is happening or this is not happening. It's just that the website is wrong. But we have to have enough trust in our institutions in order to make that leap. Are there any states that change laws that you feel might, one, make it harder for people to vote, voter suppression, and or states that have changed their election process that's making it less safe? Yeah, mean, so I think that sort of the reactionary response from Republicans to Trump, like the variety of Trump's claims around 2020 was first to target vote by mail. And so there's been a real rollback of vote by mail availability, not in huge ways, like no state has banned vote by mail entirely. But there are a couple of states that used to put you on a permanent vote by mail list and I have to re -register, request one specifically every time. There are a couple of states that have of limited the category of people who qualify for mail ballots. There are people like, and then also, you it used to be basically not controversial that if your ballot was postmarked by election day but arrived a couple of days after because the post office is of mixed use. then they would still count it. Like that's not your fault that the post office didn't deliver your ballot. But now in a lot of states, if it is not in the hands of election officials on election day, that ballot's not counting, right in the trash. So there have been sort of changes on the margins. There is not like one law in any one state that I think is like hugely detrimental in like a profound way. I think that it's sort of a death by a thousand cuts scenario, right? Texas, which is where I am, for example, not any one thing that they did made a radical change, but it's just like little tiny things around the margin of everything that has made voting in a state where it's already frustrating to vote just a little bit harder. so election officials are really feeling it in the sort of number of logistics that they now have to do. So another like overcorrection from 2020 was, all right, we're gonna make our election officials record everything. We're gonna make them prove everything. We're gonna make them write down everything and release a report after everything. They're gonna testify all the time. We're gonna let observers get way closer to them and that will increase confidence in elections. What that actually did was just let all of these people who are really intense ruin their jobs. And these people are being paid like $18 an hour, right? And so like they are not being paid enough for that. And so like in Texas and in other places that have done that, we have seen like a mass exodus of election officials. And so, you know, I think that a lot of the laws that are going to sort of have a downstream negative effect on voters are not things that when passed, people thought would have impacts on voters, right? Because we've set up so many barriers to registration and to people acting as volunteer registrars, because we've made it so much easier for election officials to get harassed and they're leaving their jobs. There are openings in all of these places. There is just an incredible number of people who are running for office on the November ballot. to run elections in this country uncontested because they could only find one person that was even willing to put their name on the ballot, right? Like we are facing massive brain drain as a result of sort of all of these laws. And I think that it may not be super obvious in 2024 because a lot of these people are sort of hanging on and have like announced their retirement effective after that. But after 2024, we're gonna like, the whole knowledge base is basically turning Man, that is unbelievable. Like, just thinking about that and the amount of unintended consequences that all this has produced. Yeah, yeah. And you know, when I think that if people stop to sort of think about the long -term impacts of the changes, you know, like, let's take Kerr County, Texas, as an example. It's in Hill Country in central Texas. They are currently on their third elections director in the last year and a half because the activists in that county, despite no evidence of problems whatsoever, have made that each person in succession's life so difficult. And that's happening around the country. I published a story a couple of weeks ago about Shasta County, California. The election administrator there, who'd been in office for 20 years, went on medical retirement because she's been diagnosed with heart failure due to stress because of the way that she's partly because of the way that she's been treated in office. Like, she's been accused of Satanism and witchcraft. And so, you know, it's weird out there for election administrators, and I think voters may not have felt the impact of I mean, that's a great, great point. You know, one of the things I hear a lot is, you know, from a lot of my conservative people I have on Facebook that I'm friends with and everything is the issues with voter ID and why, what's the big deal about just making someone show proof of, you know, an idea of some kind in order to vote. What... I'd love for you to just kind of talk about that I always have to show an ID when I vote, where I'm at. me what state you're in. Virginia. and then Henrico County, then we'll, well, I guess I shouldn't say all too much about where we live. But we are in a, especially with all the crazy people about this voting stuff. They're gonna come on and they're gonna say we're satanic and we're sacrificing children in the back and all that stuff. And then they're gonna, you know how that goes. I mean, and it doesn't help that we actually had Lucian Greaves on the show, you know, the co -founder of the Satanic Temple. So people will be able to draw those dots, know, draw those lines. yes, we're making it really easy for them. So, but what is it about the voter ID? Like, is that difficult to do? Do most states already have that in law? Kind of just expel the kind of typical myths or mistruths or half -truths that you kind have seen in your experience. I mean, this is such an interesting issue and it's one that I have, like I've been covering election integrity and voting since 2016 and it's one I've seen even evolve in that time. Most people have no problem with voter ID and I think that that has sort of become less controversial as sort of time has gone on. And so I think that there is much less pushback even Even when, so especially at the beginning of the Biden administration, there was a lot of talk around a federal voting rights law. And part of what they were considering as a compromise was allowing for voter ID in order to get some of these other concessions. I think that that's really changing. That said though, I think that what people don't understand and they sort of, there are a couple of ways that people do this in the United States where they sort of assume like, if Mexico does it, if France does it, if India does it, why couldn't we pull it off? And the answer and the reason truly that it is so difficult to institute voter ID in the United States is because the United States does not issue a photo identification by default to anyone. So in India, in Mexico, in the UK, you get a national identification card with your photo on it that is issued to you free of charge by virtue of you being a citizen there. And so it's very easy to say, hey, this thing everybody has, bring it with you to the polls, right? Like that's reasonable. In the United States, the IDs that we have are things that you have to like work to get. Like, sure, we have a social security card. that's not a photo identification, right? In order to get a passport, you gotta do some stuff. In order to get a driver's license, you gotta do some stuff. no, and like there are states do give photo identification and you can go get one, but nobody is just giving you that by like virtue of you having been born like they are in other countries. Republicans have also been very resistant to the idea of instituting such a thing because it would. create like a register of all of the people, right? And so there's lots of different contradictory problems that happen in this space. Like I think people think that Democrats are way more opposed to voter ID than they are, and I think that Republicans think that voter ID would be a lot easier to implement than it actually would be logistically because of the way that the United States works. Like there isn't even a state that is issuing photo identifications to people on like point of birth. Like there's no one does that in the United States and we've never done it. And we don't have national programs like other countries that would, you know, encourage people to get a national ID, right? Like we don't have a national health program that would require you to go sign up for benefits in the Canadian. health office and get your picture taken and there's your government ID. That infrastructure just doesn't exist here. so while it is true that not as many people as you might assume are opposed to voter ID, it is also true that voter ID is practically pretty difficult to implement consistently across the country, which means that we have wound up with this weird patchwork identification requirements. Some states don't require identification at all. They are in the minority. Most states do require some form of identification. Sometimes that has to be a photo ID. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it has to be a photo ID unless you've got two non -photo IDs. Like there are a lot of different iterations. And there are a lot of states where if you get to the voting location, you don't have an ID. you can attest that you do not have one and that you are the person you say that you are and you can vote anyway. So there's lots of different machinations of voter ID laws. And the reason that that's true is because the legislature, the legislators who write the laws do what they can do with the technology at the time. So that's part of the limitation and that's part of the reason that they're all different across. the states, and then also sort of like the political reality of those states. Like some people are going to be totally fine with having a strict photo identification law. Some states aren't. But most states do at this point have some identification requirements. This is really, really informative, Jessica. And I want to give you a second to just talk a little bit more about VoteBeat and what you all are doing. before we do that, I want to give sort of my own personal pitch that like, I think VoteBeat is just a phenomenal organization. It's out of all the different, I don't know, like... magazine subscriptions, whatever sub stacks I subscribe to like yours is the one that I read pretty faithfully every Saturday. especially when you write them because you always are pretty seem like you're pretty adamant about including the word y 'all. I I'm very consistent on the branding. It's true. Yeah. So it's like, I just think it's a phenomenal organization. And what's funny is I remember when you all launched, I donated as part of the launch. Now it was $10. I'm not a rich man. know, so like, give me what I can and then I get this email for like sort of the kickoff virtual party. I think I was during I can't remember exactly, I remember, I forgot who was speaking, and they were giving a lot of thanks for the donations. I felt kind of small because I'm like, I bet you some of these people gave a lot more than $10. But it was important because we had already talked before, I think you jumped on the vote beat beat. Yeah, so great work you guys are doing, that's my plug for VoteBeat. What's your plug for that's so nice. I'm so glad to hear all of that. You know, I think my plug for VoteBeat is that we are doing locally rooted reporting on voting. think that a lot of news organizations who have decided in the last few years that they need like a democracy reporter, even though they have like poorly defined what that means, right? or they need like a person who's covering elections and demographics and redistricting, right? Like those places have sort of popped up and they're usually national news organizations. But the problem is that those, all of the policies that those people are reporting on are not national policies. Like these are all things being worked out at the state and county level. And so in order for a national news organization to send their people, to these places, they've got to like parachute somebody who does not live in the state into this place. And that person sometimes, often, honestly, does a pretty good job. spending the time and the effort that they need to do that. But that is a resource intensive thing. Like when I went to Shasta County, I went two times and for several days each time. It took me six months to write the story and I probably spent hundreds of hours on the phone with people in Shasta County. That is an incredible amount of time. Not every news organization is going to give that amount of time and care to a place that they're not in. Our reporters are in their states. They live there. They have lived there. They are all but one of them. are native to there and she's been there forever. So like, I think she would probably get miffed if I was mentioning she wasn't a Michigan native. But the point is, right, like we have reporters covering the states in those states and not only are they covering those states, they're covering just voting and elections in those states. And so you can trust that like those people know down to maybe the digit, their election code and how all of the machines work. And if something happens, they know how the state's going to respond or not respond to it. And so if disaster strikes in one of our five states, which are Texas, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and they're all hot button states, then we're going to have really sort of informed, immediate responses. that are not sort of like gut reactions or like a reporter who's never called the county clerk before trying to figure out how a voting machine printer works, right? Like, our people know what they're talking about. So I think that like that's my biggest sell. And I also think that like because we only have one person in every state, necessarily we are writing less and we are writing slower. We like, we don't have the people to sort of reactionarily write immediate takes on this or that or the effective voter turnout on this or that. Like we've got one person in Arizona. We have one person in the entire state. Texas. We've got to really pick our shots responsibly. And so I think that the quality to article. ratio is good, if that makes sense. that's our pitch we always give. All of these people have to go through so much training before we let them write one article. And this is all they write about all the time. So they just know it so well. And a lot of newsrooms are covering elections with general assignment reporters or people who cover the entire county government, right? So they're covering the school board and also the election department. It just doesn't work as well, I don't think. Yeah, so how can people connect with you, find out more about VoteBeat? I noticed you're back on Twitter, by the way. I am lightly on Twitter. Not to say that I am back. I'm withholding pictures of Walter on that platform as protest. But I am back. So you can go to voteb .org. We have a little tab at the top that says newsletters. And that's the easiest way to keep in touch with us. We send out a national newsletter every Saturday morning. then we send out local newsletters for all five of our states every other week. So if you sign up for one of the state newsletters and the national newsletter, you are not going to be getting a vote email every day. You're going be getting one like once. a week at like most. So we're not a huge commitment and we'll just deliver all of our content right to Awesome. That's really cool. Well, thank you so much, Jessica. It so good to see you again, catch up and just learn from you as always. And hopefully, it won't be another four years before I get a chance to talk again. Anytime, guys. You all just let me know. All right. And to our Faithful Politics audience, hey, thanks for stopping by. And remember, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. And we'll see you next time. Take care.