The Problem With Jon Stewart - Election 2024: How Secure is Your Vote?

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

In the aftermath of 2020, and with 2024 voting already underway, election integrity remains a pivotal issue in our political discourse. Joining us this week for a bipartisan breakdown of election security myths vs. facts are Stacey Abrams, voting rights activist and host of "Assembly Required," and Matt Masterson, Senior Director of Microsoft's Democracy Forward Program. Together, they lay bare the real vulnerabilities and safeguards of our voting system. Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more:  > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast > TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast  > X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer – James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic Video Editor & Engineer – Rob Vitolo Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Researcher & Associate Producer – Gillian Spear Music by Hansdle Hsu — This podcast is brought to you by: ZipRecruiter Try it for free at this exclusive web address: ziprecruiter.com/ZipWeekly Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, John Stewart here. Welcome to the weekly show podcast, which is, I do want to clarify for people who are like, oh, you know, you host the daily show once a week and then you host the podcast once a week. So aren't they both weekly shows? And I just want to say to the people out there go, shut up. You don't know me. You don't know what I've been through. But yes, that is probably the case. We have a fabulous program for you today on election integrity and debunking. some of the things. But first I want to do, obviously, and I don't know exactly when this is coming out, but we are, Florida right now is staring down just an absolute catastrophe. And I just wanted to make sure, and I know everybody understands the, you know, Red Cross and all the different places that they can send money to for Helene and for Milton and for whatever else is coming that way. These areas are truly going to, they're going through it. And if there's any way for you to do it, But I wanted to just point out just a couple of other avenues by which you may consider donating, which may be something that can help.

There's World Central Kitchen, which is Jose Andrus, who goes into these areas and just starts feeding people, the people that are suffering down there, the people that are there to help. And he just does such an unbelievably beautiful job and is an unbelievably beautiful person, World Central Kitchen. There's also Team Rubicon, which is a veterans-led organization. they'll deploy directly into these worst hit areas where it's really difficult to get things through, where areas have to be cleared and open. These are folks that have been in war zones that have served,

and they go down into these disaster-stricken areas and really help stabilize the area and start to help bring it back. That's team Rubicon. Obviously, all the states have disaster relief funds, so you can always go to it. a Florida disaster relief fund or a North Carolina disaster relief fund and then obviously care, which is another organization that does that. So I just want to, I know everybody's on top of it and figuring out ways to help and doing all those different things, but those are just four that in case you were looking for a way to get in there. And the show today, quite frankly, we'll talk to

Lauren and Brittany a little bit later, but I am excited because I'm so fucking sick of turning on the news and it's all amplification of conspiracy theories about elections and, you know, will you certify? And they'll say, well, it depends on, but they never get into the actual logistics and mechanics of elections that do safeguard them, that there are incredibly talented, diligent, hardworking, faceless, anonymous individuals working tirelessly to make sure that these elections are administered fairly and justly and legally. And I'm so fucking sick of it. And we have on today two individuals that can really walk through some of the ways that we actually safeguard our elections and the things that we need to make it even better and even more secure.

So we're going to get to those guys now because I'm just very hopeful that they've, will help uplift this conversation and not continue to put it in the sewer eddy that is the 24-hour news system these days. All right. So let's get to them. All right. So right now, we are absolutely thrilled. Stacey Abrams, voting rights activists, host of assembly required. Matt Masterson, senior director, Microsoft Democracy Forward program. They are joining us. Stacey and Matt, Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having us. Thanks for having us.

So I don't know if you have checked your calendar this Rocktober, but we are four weeks. Is it for, what days? Less than four weeks. Is that possible? Yeah. Feels very possible. From this election, the two of you spend your lives working on election, working on election integrity, working on making sure.

that we have these free and fair elections that we have, by the way, heard so much about. I've heard wonderful things about these free and fair elections. So today I thought we would kind of run through a list. There are concerns about elections, some of them legitimate, some of them weaponized by partisans. I wanted to get a sense from the two of you with your experience, both Stacey, obviously, running in elections and now fighting to get access to these free and fair elections. And Matt, with, you know, always working on the administration of elections and how to keep things safe. What are the areas that you think are of, let's start with legitimate concern for people?

Let's start with the concerns that people might express for elections. And Stacey, I'll start with you. What in your mind is a legitimate concern. about either election access or integrity? So the way I frame it is voter suppression, which is when the state or an actor of the state tries to block your ability to participate in free and fair elections, that's voter suppression. There are three ways to measure it. Can you register and stay on the rolls? Can you cast your ballot and does that ballot get counted?

And over the last 200 plus years, we have found remarkable ways to interfere with voter. doing those three things. Oh, 200 years. Oh, 200 plus. Stasia, that might encompass the whole damn thing, the whole enchilada here. It's been pretty much from inception. I mean, you got to remember, when we first started this process, only white men who owned land could cast ballots. Yes. And as a nation, we've done a good job of expanding the ambit, letting more people in, but then we get really concerned because they actually use the process and then we try to take it back. And so my focus is on how do we make certain that rules aren't put in place, that interoperating, that interfere with your ability to register. So for example, Wisconsin is going through a conversation

about who gets, it's called voter maintenance of the roles, which Matt can tell you is necessary. You need to maintain accurate roles. The question is, what's the filter that you use to take someone off of the rolls? When you deny someone the right to vote, how narrow, how tight is that filter? Then there's, how do you cast a ballot? We talk about voter ID laws, which people think, why wouldn't you have ID? No one disputes you should have ID. The question is, how hard? hard is it to get that ID? For example, if you are a student in the state of Texas, you can use your gun license, but you cannot use your student ID. And there are states that have removed the right, Idaho recently, removed the right to use state issued student IDs to vote, which has a disproportionate

effect on younger voters who may vote in ways you don't like. Then you get to the, does your ballot get counted? And that's where Georgia shines. So we currently have a state election board that is taking great pains to make it difficult for those ballots to get counted by changing the rules, by saying that votes can be decertified by one member, one election official in a county, requiring a hand count of millions of ballots that will be cast and it may just take too long. It's like sometimes counting grains of sand. You may not get it done in time. And so what's most important is for people to remember, we've got 50 different democracies operating at any one time in this country.

There is no single set of rules. We use the same language, but we're not talking about the same thing. These are fiefdoms you're saying, Stacey, that each one has its own constitution and its own administration. Basically, I mean, we don't have a constitutional right to vote. What we have is a state-granted authority over the administration of elections that's in the constitution, and you have constitutional changes that allowed more and more people to participate. But ultimately, it's up to 3,000 counties, 50 states plus territories, and individuals to actually make democracy work. And that's why it gets both confused and contentious. And the last thing I'll say is this. We've got to remember that the act of casting about the process is nonpartisan. You may be partisan in who you pick,

but the process should be neutral as to who is casting the ballot. And our concerns, the concerns I think Matt and I share, it's about how do we make it more difficult? or more importantly, how do we make it easier for eligible voters to cast those ballots without having to cross those three hurdles I mentioned? That's a wonderful encapsulation, I think, Stacey. Thank you so much. And Matt, well, I want to talk to you. So let's try and break that down a little bit, kind of put it into digestible.

You know, what you seem to have is this incredibly complex, non-standardized process that allows, I guess, more local control of elections, but all. also allows, I think Stacey brought up something really interesting there, which is the elections should be nonpartisan. Obviously, partisans, they're generally run by political parties, a Democratic Party, a Republican Party, or boards that have Democrats and Republicans. The administration of elections, you imagine to be partisan, but not necessarily ideological. In other words, it's not ideologues. In these last few elections, it's shown that it's exposed some vulnerability in the administration of elections, that if you could put ideologues into what are generally

administrative positions, you can twist these levers. Is that the experience that you're seeing, Matt, that some of these more administrative positions are now being taken over by real ideolog, zealots? Yeah, so first of all, thank you for the time and for this conversation. I think it's critically important. No, that's not the experience. I mean, actually seeing. I think that's a risk. I think that's a conversation that we need to continue to have and guard against. I think Stacey has flagged some very legitimate concerns there. But my experience with state and local election officials, and just to make it more complicated for all of us, there's about there's about 8,800, 800 local election jurisdictions across the United States.

To give you an idea, in Wisconsin, there's more than 1,800 local election offices across the state of Wisconsin. They're incredibly decent. centralized in Wisconsin. Here in Ohio, there's 88, right? It's run by the county. My experience with state and local election officials is that they may run as partisans. They may even have ideas about what they believe should be done as partisans. But when they get into office and when they take the position, they quickly realize that their best both administrative choice and political choice is to run really good elections and to be transparent and to invite in the public and and welcome the scrutiny that goes on. And there's examples from Georgia with Secretary Rathensberger.

He's elected as a Republican, but I think we could all recognize that what he did in 2020 in response to attempts to get him to sway the election, he rejected them, right? He knew his role. He knew that his job was not to serve as a partisan official, but in fact to administer the election according to the state laws, the Constitution. Otherwise, Stephen Richard in Maricopa County, Arizona, a Republican ran the election in Maricopa County and stood up and fought against attempts to, again, influence the election. By the way, at great personal cost. I don't know if you saw there was a 60-minute piece of Stephen Richard where you're like,

oh, my God, this guy's had death threats for running an election. And that's a theme that not only sadly for Stephen, but for Secretary Rathesberger and election officials across the country in Democrat and Republican counties, large, small, rural, urban, they are being targeted. And I hope we can discuss a little bit about what the impact of that is, which is critical. But my experience with the election officials themselves is one in which they view their job as to administer elections per the laws to run them in a transparent bipartisan way. And I'll flag, there's, you know, this decentralized nature allows election officials to embrace sort of what best serves their voters, right? So here in Ohio, we have a long history.

though, not any more of close elections. And so we have what we affectionately refer to as our detente structure. We're literally a Democrat or Republican watch each other do everything at the local board of elections, right? Whether it's registration, whether it's ballot processing, some counties, you know, we'll have a DNR go run the flag up the flagpole in the morning and take it down in the evening, right? And that's part of our culture because of the close elections. In other states, they handle that differently. But in every state, there's bipartisan participation in the process, right? Observers, whole workers, whatever the case may be. And there's transparency to the process across all 50

states. It may vary what that looks like in those 50 states, but there's an ability for the public to see and understand the process. Just this week, Maricopa County did pre-election testing of the voting systems. It's not the most interesting thing to go watch, but the public is invited and welcome to go watch the testing of the voting systems, right? Oh, they should, they should be doing that at the sphere in Las Vegas. They should, they should be promoting that. I want to ask Stacy, though, you know, so Matt, you brought it an interesting point, which is, you know, there's a concern that it's partisan but not ideological. Stacey, the thing that I worry about, and it's something Matt brought up, you know, he talked about 2020 and sort of how the guardrails on the electoral process kind of

held. But it seems pretty clear, especially in places like Arizona or other places that were swing states, that people who believe that the 2020 election was rigged against any, any possible evidence that has been seen to the contrary, about nothing that has held up in court, about no real statistical or mathematical or any kind of evidence to the contrary, believing it to be rigged, have now inserted themselves into the administration of these elections,

that there are election deniers that are now embedded in that very system that I think Matt is talking about. I think he talked about in 2020, You really found that it held, but haven't inroads been made into the administration of these elections from these ideologs who don't believe that these elections were run correctly? So I think what Matt's saying is absolutely important, which is that the vast majority of election officials, regardless of partisanship, want the process to hold. The challenge and what you're identifying and where I spend a lot of my time is that not

everyone is in the vast majority. And so you do have ideologues. For example, you have ideologues in Georgia who have been touted for their willingness to insert chaos into the system. And the problem is, and this is why I want to acknowledge that we have people who can take good actions, but aren't always doing the right things. So in the state of Georgia, for example, I applaud Governor Kemp and Secretary Rafenberg. I'm sorry. I I just, no, no, my headphones went out. I just heard I applaud Governor Kemp, and I just want to make sure that that's going in. I don't get this in stereo. I appreciate the fact that they refused to break the law in 2020. But what they then did, what both of them supported in 2021 and in 2023 were new laws that actually gave more power to those ideologues to insert themselves into the system. because it's not just about those who deny the elections.

And that's why I talk about all three phases. If you can't enter the process, having your vote denied is irrelevant if you never got a chance to cast it in the first place. Right. And so we've become so fixated on the spectacle of election deniers, we're ignoring the fact that in 28 states, more than 100 laws passed between the 2020 election and today to make it harder for people to vote. Harder to vote in what ways, Stacey?

So if you're a disabled voter in Georgia, it is now harder to use the absentee ballot system, not because anything was done wrong, not because there was fraud, but because too many people used it. And so across the country, we are seeing constraints placed on who can access the ballot. And that is a problem because, yes, we are all focused on the election denial process, but we also need to focus on the partisans who are indeed engaged in behavior that's making it harder for average people to vote. In the state of North Carolina, a strict ID law that's making it harder for older people who do not have access, don't have the resources or the

capacity to get IDs, will now find it harder to vote than they have in 20 years. Stacey, let me talk you about that, especially you brought up North Carolina. We did a story on the Daily Show, I don't know, maybe 15 years ago in North Carolina. How much of this is they're trying to make the administration of these elections easier or more How much of it is weaponizing the process of elections against certain groups? And the reason why I bring it up is this guy in North Carolina, and I can't remember what exactly was the thing that it was proposed, but it was the North Carolina Republican Party. And they were very clearly trying to make it harder for college students and people of color

because they felt that those people voted too often as Democrats. Yes. And he, in his bountiful wisdom, thought it was a smart idea to state that explicitly on air with us was immediately fired. But he kind of gave away the game. Okay, we'll be right back. Look, you know, the holidays are over. Let's face facts. Christmas gifts, you got crushed.

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in order to block people who look like me from participating. Both parties have engaged in this behavior. And that's the crux of voter suppression. When you weaponize democracy to stop yourself from losing power, no matter who you target, you hit everybody. And that's the problem. And that's where Matt and the work that he does comes in. Because you've got partisans who are making rules because they don't like losing close elections. They don't like not being able to control who makes decisions.

And so in New Hampshire, they changed the laws explicitly to stop college students who they thought were too liberal from participating in elections. I've never thought of Dartmouth as a hotbed of liberalism, but they targeted Dartmouth. We know that in Georgia, in Florida, in Ohio, we have seen changes made to the process that have a disproportionate effect on certain communities. And the way we should think about this, giving the greatest benefit of the doubt that you didn't know what you were doing, doing, when you know better, you should do better. And we know that there are certain rules that are put in place that explicitly and exclusively harm communities of color, young people, and poor people. And when we know that to be true, we should take every action possible to expand the aperture of voting so that eligible people can participate. Because otherwise, what we are doing is weaponizing

elections to hold power and not to hear from people. And that is wrong. Matt, now tell me, Stacey brought up, you know, that's kind of the work that you're doing. How does that, how do you manifest your work to open that aperture for Stacey? And let's be clear, Matt, you've worked mostly for Republicans. You were appointed by Obama, but you're a Republican. So this is, we are having, I think, in this moment, in this moment right now, we are having a kumbaya bipartisan discussion about opening the aperture of voting and making it less vulnerable to this kind of what we're doing God's work. Look, I'm sorry. I promise. myself, I wouldn't tear up. Matt, what, what are the things that you're doing that Stacey is

describing are necessary to be done? Yeah, I appreciate it. And I mean, just, I was appointed by President Obama, but, but recommended by John Boehner, which is a real throwback to a bygone era. Yeah. With Speaker Boehner. And, you know, this conversation's important in part because state local election officials are going to implement the laws that are passed, right? And, There's also a role, which I'm sure we'll talk about, for courts to be involved, as suits undoubtedly are and will continue to be brought against some of these laws. And the election officials wait and sort of implement and find out. But a few items that I think are important on the election administration front, taking a step back. All of the things that Stacey just described are

critical issues and particularly critical to those voters impacted, right? And so those battles need to be had in conversations. But just to put in perspective since 2000, so I started in elections right after Bush v. Gore, to those that remember Bush v. Gore, and there's lots of conversations about election administration, voting technology, and otherwise. Since that time, we now are at a point where 97% of voters have access to some form of early voting across the states, right? Notably, states like Mississippi, Alabama, New Hampshire do not, and that's a conversation we should be having. No excuse absenteeer by mail voting is available in 36 of the states, right? And so there's been continued expansion. And this is not just good for voters. I think it is good for voters. And

we've seen Republicans embrace it. For instance, Secretary of State Michael Adams and Kentucky has supported expanded early voting, not just because it serves voters well, but it also improves the integrity of the elections. And I think sometimes this gets missed in the conversation with some of these reforms. Early voting, absentee by mail voting, having more voters vote before election day. One is a service to the voters. Two, has more voters vote before election day, which helps to manage things like lines. Election officials can identify and deploy resources where they know voters have voted versus haven't voted to better serve voters. And we see that. We see improvements since the Presidential Commission on Election Administration that President Obama created that election

officials have implemented a number of practices to try to use that data to improve services to voters. And then perhaps most importantly, what it does is serves as an early warning sign if there's something wrong with registration lists, voting systems, things like that, right? Election officials then begin to get little hints of, oh, we may have a problem here and begin to be able to action that so that as we built towards Election Day, they've ironed out some of the challenges, responded to some of the issues that may be experienced, the smoother election day, and then post-election count can take place. And so the reason I think we continue to see online voter registration, early voting, no-excuse absentee voting expanded in many of these places is because they not only

serve as a proper service to voters, but they improve the security. and integrity of the election, and Republican and Democrat election officials recognize that. So it's a great point that you're bringing up now. So let's dig into that a little bit because every single thing that you mentioned is something that, from what I've seen, Donald Trump is against and has spoken out very clearly and the larger apparatus of the top levels of the Republican Party. When you talk about mail in voting, when you talk about early voting, you're talking about these are processes that improve our ability to run these elections.

So why in God's name, other than they think that it's their people that aren't utilizing it, would they be against it? And so the question is, what are the safeguards? When someone says, mail-in voting is a recipe for fraud, early voting is a way for illegals to register, like, let's go through some of those complaints and figure out a way to explain. what are the safeguards that make these things not a threat to our election? So let's just

start with mail and voting. They're against mail and voting because they think it's a more open invitation to fraud. So what is a safeguard? How do these local areas safeguard mail and voting? Yeah. So first, I just note sort of that conversation continues to evolve that the Republican chair of Arizona yesterday encouraged Republican voters in Arizona to get their votes in early, right? I'm sure yesterday. Yeah. But I don't know if you know this.

The guy at the top of the ticket has had seemingly a problem with it other than the fact that he himself does it. But very clearly, they thought mail in voting is what allowed the Chinese to put bamboo in the voting things. And like, who the hell knows what they think? But so how does a mail-in ballot, how is that safeguarded? Yeah. So there's, with any elections process, and I'll talk specifically about mail-in voting, there's layers of safeguards. So there's what we would call defense in depth to prevent fraudulent activity to be

able to verify the voter. So it starts with registration, right? Ensuring that registration information is up to date is correct so that when you're mailing the ballot out, you're mailing it to the proper person. They're receiving their ballot, which is good for access. And lying on your registration is a fact. It's a felony. You have to attest to the facts in your registration, including providing identification information, name, first name, last name, date of birth, last four, social security

number or driver's license number. And I will note that the majority of people that register to vote put their driver's license number on there, which is important because there are checks that you can run through the BNV. Even if they don't, election officials have the ability to work with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to get that information to validate. You can't register to vote unless you have a social security number or a driver's license. You can't, or a state ID number. Or a state ID, but something recognized as, so we already have in a large extent, voter ID. Generally, you may not present it, but we have it.

Yeah. And in fact, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 coming out of Bush v. Gore requires all first-time registrants to provide ID in order to register to vote. That's in federal law after the Bush v. Gore. So there, Stacey, is that something that people break? I don't understand that. So that goes back to my point of we use the same language. We're talking about different things.

When people oppose voter ID, they are not opposing identifying yourself. Hava, the Help America Vote Act says you have to prove who you are. To register. It's how hard is it to do so? And what they've done is they've eliminated the ways people can prove who they are. If you are indigent, you may not have a license because you don't have a place to live that does not deny your citizenship and your right to participate in elections. If you are a student who doesn't drive, like most people who apparently live in New York,

then you might. That's hurt. That's hurtful, Stacey. But point well taken. Point well taken. So the issue is how, and this goes to your weaponization point, election officials have to deal with the laws they're given. Politicians are picking laws that make it harder for people to participate. and we've seen this constraint since the 2020 election. And it's not just because of who lost. It was because of who voted. We had the highest participation level in the century in 2020

because people got to vote by mail, because they had time to actually read the ballot and figure out who in the world they were voting for. More people did it. And because more people did it, there are now more rules to stop them from doing it again. That's the issue. But going back to voter ID, voter identification, yes,

you have to identify yourself. It's how hard is it? And I'm giving you one last quick example. In South Dakota, the Sioux Standing Rock Sioux, that tribe participated aggressively in elections. They then changed the law to say that they had to have a street address, a residential address on their licenses in order to vote. The problem is the county was responsible for allocating the addresses and refused to do so. And so you had an entire population that was denied the right to vote because, because they could not meet the new voter ID law standards. And the Supreme Court said, well, it's a de minimis population. You don't outnumber everyone else.

So if it disproportionately affects you, oh, well. So you had a weaponized voter ID law that targeted specifically a Native American population because they were the tipping point in a Senate election in 2016. And Matt, getting back to what you're talking about. And thank you, Stacey. That's fabulous context. It's so when you think about that, the reason, reason those laws were passed was there is a population that has been rabble-rous to believe that

mail-in voting or opening it up or those types of things that allow people to prove who they are were fraudulent. And so they pass all these laws that actually end up disenfranchising real voters as opposed to protecting us from fraud that is not significant. So you know, you talk about the idea of voter ID, and that's been a big thing of you got to have voter ID. I didn't realize that you obviously have to do that when you register. So once that's done and we're with a mail-in ballot where you're not going to be there so you can't present an ID, what are the safeguards of how they go back and cross-check? And can that be done. Yeah, it absolutely can and is done, which is the most important part. And so when voters return mail-in ballots, and let's keep in mind, again, that the

transparent and bipartisan nature, each one of these steps I'm going to describe involves transparency, the public, the public can observe things like signature verification in many places, can observe the processing of mail ballots. But they can also protest it. Can they not? They can stand there if they are a partisan and say, I challenge that guy. I challenge that. Yeah, those rules depend state by state, but there's very clear sort of rules around that and that's got to be managed by. And typically the way that's done for what it's worth gets to point too, which is that that the parties, party representatives that are there are participating in the process. And at times that means that they may have observers or challengers depending on state law. But it's important for people

to know that their team is a part of the process if they view it that way, right? That we have the parties involved and that there's transparency behind it. That's critically important. And then the professionals that run elections, these aren't just folks that wake up some Tuesday in November and decide, well, that would be a good time. Let's run some elections, right? Well, they certainly wouldn't say that would be a good time. Not currently. Not currently. I think that would not be a good time. Yeah, and they spend all their time thinking about the minutia of this process. How can it be improved? How can we better serve voters and maintain the integrity of the process?

So the ballot gets back. They check the identification information on the outside of the envelope. They say, is this the person that we said? They check the signature that's provided on the back of the envelope. And signature checking while present for many years in elections has continued to improve as we've sort of understood how to use signatures. So for instance, previously, you only looked at the prior signature that was provided. Now election officials typically have access to several generations of your signature,

which is really important as adults age, their signature changes, right? Right. It's like a passport. You get a new passport. Exactly. And so their ability to check that and escalate and say, I don't think this matches. There's an escalation process that often involves those bipartisan observers.

Like they'll sit at tables across from each other and look and evaluate it. And they can go back and check if they have to or, you know, go to the people. Yes. Yes. In some states, in some states, there's this opportunity. Yeah, opportunity to cure. If there's an issue, if your ballots rejected, in some states, there's an opportunity to go back in other states. There isn't. But this all shows sort of this thorough level of the process that goes through. On top of this, there's the physical security that's critical to this, right? So the ballots come back. There's a chain of custody that identifies who had access to what ballots when, when they move through the process, who then, you know, move them

through the process all the way through until they're counted so that you could recreate and say, okay, who had access to this? Was it appropriate for them to have access? So when they're redoing, when they're, you know, when they say like, oh, Georgia's going to have a recount and they're going to redo and these have been challenged, they're walking back through that chain of custody. And they have to prove it. And if you go to court, like, they would have to present an evidentiary chain of custody. They would have to be able to present an evidentiary signature lineage. And they would, and they would. And they would. And, that's how they prove it. So when they say, uh, we, we went back and we found no evidence of

wide, you know, we found three, uh, ballots that were fraudulent or whatever it is. That's what they're doing. Yes. The, the, the canvassing process. So there's the, the initial count on election night. And then what election officials are doing while, well, all of us are arguing about politics is going from the, the, the initial count to the canvassing process towards final certification. And And that's exactly what final certification is. It says, okay, these are the number of voters that voted. This is how they voted. This is how we checked their identification, verified them, whether they voted in person or by

mail. This matches up. This is what the voting machine count said. So it's why none of these accusations in any way ended up holding up in court. Yeah. Okay. We'll be right back. Okay, we're back.

Stacey, I want to ask you. So very clearly, we have a very robust, very particular, not necessarily. necessarily standardized process by which all of these issues of fraud are adjudicated. It doesn't sound to me like we have in any way that kind of really robust process when it comes to purging voter rolls or when it comes to access to ballots or when it comes to access to voting places. Is that where we need to step up our game so that access is given the same consideration that chain of custody and those kinds of things are given? So I know Matt's going to point out that there are voter maintenance role rules. The issue is in 2013, when the Supreme Court basically gutted the Voting Rights Act.

Oh, they said it was all done now. I think they said bigotry was over. Yeah. I didn't get that memo. But it's in there. So when they gutted the voting rights act, what they said was under Section 5, you had to preclear things that were going to make it hard. harder for people to participate in elections if you lived in a jurisdiction that had a habit of doing so. So most states in the South and then different jurisdictions across the country. When that went away, the floodgates opened. So states like Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, but also places in Wisconsin, other parts of the country started making it harder and harder to have access. And there is no blocking because you do not have the Voting Rights Act in full effect. And so we have

have seen since 2013, it has become harder and harder for certain communities to access the vote, but it's also become harder and harder to stop it because when you go to court, you can't say, well, you can't do it because of the Voting Rights Act because you don't have the power of the law behind you in that. You don't have the power. Exactly. You know, it's really interesting. And this is, man, I wish we had way more time.

I want to get into one other aspect that people talk about a lot. And it's one that I don't quite understand either, which is these electronic voting machines. So we talked about mail in and we talked about access and those things. But you also have this idea that, yeah, you press a button and it goes into a computer. I am not a tech savvy in any way. I just assume inside a voting machine are just eight really smart gerbils who are typing very quickly to make everything go down there. You know, how secure is that process?

And what should we be worried about? And how do they safeguard that? Yeah. So I started my career testing and certifying voting systems. systems. So I have a deep knowledge and the improvements that's been made around security. The first and most important part of this discussion is that 95% or more of ballots cast in this upcoming election will have a corresponding auditable paper record. This means that this is a either handmarked paper ballot or record of the vote that the voter could verify before casting their ballot that

could go back and be checked or audited, not one to one, right? We have secrecy of the ballot. And we saw this play out in 2020. Georgia went back and hand recounted the ballots. Antrim County, Michigan, which even the ones that are cast electronically. Yes, yes, because there's that corresponding auditable paper record. What is the other 5%, Matt? Because that's a significant number. Yeah. So the other 5%, one is, the good news is across the swing states, all of them use audible paper records. The 5% is a mixture of accessibility devices in a handful of states for voters with disabilities. As you can imagine, handmarking a paper ballot is not reasonable or accessible for many voters with disabilities. And so these are in large part legacy touchscreen systems

that are used for accessibility purposes with voters with disabilities in a handful of states. Again, the swing states will have audible paper. And by the way, you were in charge in 2020. Didn't you work for the guy who was kind of in charge of ensuring that the digital or electronic voting systems were up to snuff. And he said it was the most secure election that we had seen. And Trump, I believe, fired him immediately. Yeah. So I led the election security work under Chris Krebs. And the state and local officials are the ones that secure the systems. But our job was to help support them. And you've raised it really important. The reason that statement could be made, and it wasn't Chris Krebs saying that. It was DHS, with election officials, with election vendors,

is because we knew from working with state local officials every single day the steps they were taking to secure those systems. We knew the chain of custody procedures, the cybersecurity protections, the auditing, the tabletop exercises to go through. Okay, if someone did hack the systems, how would we recover? And, you know, Director Krebs used to say that the elections process is a little bit like the Mitch Headberg joke about an escalator to stairs. the ability that if something happens, you can recover and keep going is critical. It's critical. Right. And that's what election officials spent.

So there are chain of custody procedures, access controls, a Democrat and a Republican in the state of Ohio have to be present together to access the voting machines. One person doesn't get to just walk in to the warehouse and access the machines, right? Right, right. Well, one person did and ended up going to jail for nine years. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And not to dwell on the Tina Peters, but. The Tina Peters point is important. That's, you know, the election official in Colorado that was just sentenced to nine years.

She was just sent in nine years for allowing somebody to go in and access the electronic voting records without any kind of telling anybody. And the reason she was able to be prosecuted is because of the documentation and access controls, the badge, and otherwise to prove she accessed her computer. She gave a badge to someone so that they could badge in to get access to the systems. There was that chain of custody so you could prove. that she did these things and be prosecuted. And then Democrat and Republican clerks in Colorado together denounced her and said, this is not who we are. If you're a Democrat or a Republican, we do not behave in this partisan way and break the law like this. And that's, that is the

guardrails held. They held. And she was held accountable, which is the most important part, that she didn't get to get away with it was critical. And it's in was the most important part there. Right. It's in part because the security controls and because the Colorado clerks called her out and said that's not who we are. Stead up to it. Right. Stacey, let me ask you. So we have all these robust things there, but it doesn't explain, you know, look, voting access is also going to reflect the inequalities, socioeconomic and otherwise in our system. And, you know, there was a point where I read that there was a gigantic area of Houston that had one ballot drop box for a million people. How do you also go about kind of, kind of. of you can't obviously fix all the inequalities in an area, but how do we fix it for the vote? How does that happen? And that's why I think it's so important that we're having all of these conversations at once, but that we learn to pull them apart.

There is the dumpster fire of the specter of voter fraud that does not exist because of people like Matt. That's an important piece. But we've got to think about all of the steps that lead to trying to prove what happened. If you can knock off voters along the way, you have less to do at the very end. And that's where we are responsible for telling the partisans to do a better job about accessing the process. That's why I talk about, can you register?

We've seen states make it harder to register. We've seen states that have made it easier to kick you off of the voter rolls. Or remove even voting booths, correct? Yes. Then there's can you cast a ballot? When you have no polling place, when you are disabled and, they remove your ability to vote by mail by making it harder and you don't have someone who can assist you and they've made the ease of voting more difficult.

We've got to think about all of the people who get impacted by rights that are taken away or things that are made harder. And that's what we should also be asking about, not just what happens at the very end, but what are all the steps along the way and what are all the communities that are impacted. And that is, those are decisions that your local elections officials have to live with, but you've got to help them get their resources. Because at the same time, we saw this dumpster fire. We also saw cuts to local election officials and their budgets and their ability to help voters.

And there's intimidation of these same people that administer these things. They face death threats. The people with guns. Exactly. You make it hard for them to do their job. You take the money away. And then you say, well, why didn't you do this job better? We've got to hold the system accountable.

And the system has faces and names. And we know the names because they're on the ballot. So whoever wins the election, they're now responsible for making the next election better. And that's your state legislator, your governor, your secretary of state, it's your county commissioners. If you're in Wisconsin, apparently it's your next door neighbor. It's everyone who has a hand in this. Is there a correlation, Stacey, between the partisan, how partisan the split is, and let's say, you know, Texas is a super majority for that? Is there a correlation between that and how unequal access is to the system for voting?

Absolutely. It is a one-to-one correlation. And when you look at states where you've seen a change in demography and a change in the body of communities participating in elections, you will see a constraint by the people in power who risk losing power to this community, making it harder to vote. That said, that's how politics has always worked. So I don't want people to think it's only the Republicans. They're just the ones doing it now.

Democrats tried to gerrymander in New York and ended up losing five seats. Exactly. And so the reality is whoever has power, who tries to keep that power by keeping you silent, should not get to hold that power. We have the responsibility to tell our elected officials to do better. But we also cannot be so focused on the headlines that we miss the details. and democracy dies in the details. That's what's happening with voter suppression, and that's where I'm the most concerned.

Bars. That should be the masthead on the Washington Post. Democracy dies in details. And I so appreciate just how well and how accessible you've both explained kind of the challenges and the safeguards that have put through here. The last thing I'll say is, and I'll get your opinions on it, because I'm not quite sure where you go with it. But I've watched this sort of electoral media political complex grow, right? It's kind of the, you know, the military industrial complex, but it's kind of an electoral

industrial complex. And the billions and billions of dollars that we now spend by the candidates, right, through super PACs and all this, I'm wondering how it is that we begin to spend so much more money on electioneering, but so much less money on elections. And is there a way, can we levy, I don't know, an electioneering tax that for all the super PACs and all the PACs, 2% of all that money must be funneled into the administration of elections because we're getting our asses kicked on the back end. Yeah, I appreciate this question so much because, uh, In the faces, so 2016, we see a nation-state target election systems, right? Russia targeted election systems on top of the other activity that took place.

Targeted it digitally, you mean? Digally, yeah, through cyber actions. They gained access to voter registration data and websites across the states. And so that puts this question squarely in a question of national security. This is not just a question of state and local funding of elections, which is critically important part of this, but that we need to invest in our democracy in a way to recognize that our adversaries are actively targeting our elections. And Cheryl Browning and Jackson County, Ohio, cannot be asked to defend herself against the Russians without support from the federal government, which is happening

through DHS, SISA, and the Election Assistance Commission, support from the state and counties, but also funding. And so what I've proposed in the past, so that, not to get too wonky, but there's there's something called a chargeback in elections where, for instance, in Ohio, if a locality has a mayor's race on the ballot, you charge that locality for the cost of running that mayoral's race if you're the local election office. And same with the state offices, things like, we should have chargebacks that go up to the federal level as well that say, hey, the cost of running a presidential election is more expensive. Can you just please regularly put money in? And the federal government has, through COVID and the aftermath of the Russian interference, put some money,

which has been helpful to election officials, but what they really need is consistent and steady funding from local, state, and federal levels so that they can budget appropriately and begin to plan a long-term strategy to secure their systems, their people, and their processes. And that physical threat, I know we didn't get to it, that physical threat that is happening to state and local election officials, intimidate. It's worse. It's death threats. My friend Tina Barton just saw a man go to jail for threatening her and her family's lives. And there's good work being done that the committee for safe and secure elections are working with local law enforcement to not just help secure those people, but talk publicly to voters about the security of the process and the people that run it. And so

we need to continue to invest in those people. Yeah, that's a great point. And I got to say, I am so damn tired of watching billionaires, influencing our elections through hundreds of millions of dollars and all these things and doing nothing to bulk of up the infrastructure and the safeguarding and the integrity of those same elections. It's outrageous. But I will say this. They tried. Some of them tried.

So in 2020, there were billionaires who, through foundations, gave money to Democratic and Republican-run counties. That was the Zuckerbach. Yes. No strings attached. Just said, we want to help pay for better elections. So you do what you need to do. State after state, conservative states,

made it illegal to accept the money. Refuse to replace the money. So they cut the budgets, but also said, you can't go and raise the money elsewhere. So you can't say, we don't, yeah. So Georgia is one of those states where we, Democrat and Republicans, and, you know, it was a close race. And you could tell that the money actually helped. But they've now made it illegal in several states to accept those dollars.

And so. So they're saying that that influences elections, but, super packed money and advertise and all those other things have at it. And that goes to Matt's point. The problem is that unless there is a system to fund it, the local election officials have to figure it out for themselves. You cannot tell them you have to do this gargantuan job at personal risk. We won't pay for it and we won't let you find the money to pay for it. And therefore, we have to, I don't think billionaires should be funding. our election system. I don't think that's the answer. But my point is, you cannot say it's broken,

but we are not going to let you fix it. All of that is correct and true. We shouldn't have to turn to private funding of elections. This is an inherent government function in a matter of national security. Let's just support it. I'm just dealing with the reality as it is, which is they're not going to prioritize it. I vehemently agree. Yeah. And the problem is the people who don't want to prioritize it, will continue to be in power until we find a way to either hold them accountable or change it. The last thing I'll say is this. Every person listening to this has the ability, the authority, and the capacity to be engaged. You can volunteer during this election. You can call your state and local elected officials and ask them, because even

though we're focusing on swing states and the limits that we see that are there, across this country, elections can be better everywhere. I think maybe Washington state, there's. they're like show offs, but pretty much everywhere else. I mean, look, they like send you an engraved invitation. There's like a booklet. I mean, it's pretty robust. But everywhere else, we should be demanding better of the people who get to make our decisions. They should be accountable once they get the job.

And every single person has the authority as a citizen to demand better. It's not just Congress. It's not just the presidency. It's every state and local elected official who has a voice. who should be talking about the elections that got them into office, they should be responsible for helping make sure those elections are as secure as safe and as accessible as they can be. Just to build on that, I know we're at time,

but in 2040 percent of voters had access to early voting or vote by mail without an excuse. We're at 97 percent. That doesn't mean we don't have challenges. But 97 percent of voters now have access to those options, and that's how their voice gets heard in that way. And so making sure that they're aware of their options that we're out supporting the state, local election officials sharing accurate, truthful, factual information about the process is critical so that they feel empowered to go vote and have confidence that their vote is counted as cast. Fantastic, guys. Thank you so much for the explanations. I find myself inspired by the two of you. I find myself actually uplifted. So I thank you for that because I was not feeling that way prior because it seems like there's a really. clear path forward. Stacey Abrams, voting rights activist, host of assembly required. Please listen to that.

Matt Masterson, senior director of Microsoft Democracy Forward Program and also was the Jebbyty Chief of Staff, Chief Information Officer for the Ohio Secretary of Strait, who is a Republican, before obviously joining Obama with the election commissions. You guys are doing God's work and really terrific stuff. And thank you both so much for joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. I am shot out of a cannon by those two. I'm fired up. I'm going to go administer some fucking elections. That's what I'm going to do.

Brittany Mehmedevic, Lauren Walker, our erstwhile producers. What did you, what did you think when you were listening to that? What was the feeling? I wish I saw this on the Newsmore. Amen. Amen, sister friend. You're in there with a run. I got to tell you, you know, and they came at it from such different areas.

I thought Matt, you know, much more. more about like, these are the ways that they're administered. But I thought Stacey's point about the importance of accessibility as well, it's not just what happens after you vote, but all the things that go into the accessibility before you vote, those two things are so crucial. And it was a Republican and a Democrat coming together, agreeing on the administration of our elections. Like, Lauren, how dare you?

History. A detaunt of all those things. And you know, it was crazy. Like we could have kept going. Like Lauren was in the chat, which by the way, so for those you don't may not know on the pod, we have a chat. And there was one, I'm just going to read you this. Lauren throws in there.

Topics we can still explore. Intimidation of voter workers, certification, lawsuits. And then directly underneath that, she writes, five minutes left. I was trying to emphasize the point that we could still touch those things. But it was great because I see it and I'm like, oh yeah, there's all that stuff. That's great. I'm not sure how long we've been doing this. And then right away, she pops in five minutes left.

And I'm like, but fantastic, man. I really, I thought they were fantastic. Before we go, anything from the viewers this week, anything we need to. Oh, do we? Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. Here we go. All right.

So this is the first one. Oh, yeah. As in they used to be my producers. Surely this isn't the case. Oh, no. Is that true? Perhaps you mean steadfast, resolute, unfeltering. May I also suggest talented, dazzling, indispensable?

So this question is from Lauren and I. Can I tell you something? Have we been slowly getting fired? Dead. I thought erstwhile meant that. I thought erstwhile meant like solid and dependent. and all that. I didn't know that it meant, oh my God. You know what other word always screws me is sanguine? Because I always think it's something different than it is, but I like the way it sounds.

And so I'll misuse it all the time. I have a word like that that always has trouble in my mind iterate and reiterate. I don't understand why if you repeat something, you have to re-repeat it. but that's an extra so i think reiterate feels like the more common usage but i wonder if iterate like regardless and irregardless like i wonder if iterate is actually the the one you're supposed to use i don't know i don't know either me either i'm just happy i'm not getting fired yeah not only are you're not getting fired it was meant as laudatory it was it was it was was meant as laudatory. And yet, oh, thank God for listeners.

Fantastic. And we do appreciate Brittany. How can they continue to send us these correctives? Because we do need them. I need them. Absolutely. On Twitter, we are weekly show pod. Instagram, threads, and TikTok, we are weekly show podcast.

And please like and subscribe our YouTube channel, the weekly show with John Stewart. Yeah, you should do all that. As always, I want to thank my talented. hardworking, job secure, lead producer Lauren Morker, producer for Brittany Memevick. Unfortunately, our erstwhile video editor and engineer Rob Vatolo. No, that's not. He's also talented and steadfast. Steadfast is the better one.

Because I do like a good, erstwhile just feels so good in your mouth. It's got good mouth feel, but fuck it. That's gone. Video editor and engineer Rob Vitolo, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, researcher, and associate producer Jillian Speer and our executive producers. Chris McShane, Katie Gray.

My God. Thank you all for joining us. We shall see you next week. The weekly show with John Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bus Boy Productions. Podcasts.