November 2, 2022 • 31 mins
Bedrock, USA returns with an interview about election security. New hosts Kathleen Quillian and Samantha Storey talk to the editorial director of VoteBeat, Jessica Huseman, about what to expect at the polls. Going into the midterms, cybersecurity is top of mind, so is physical security for both the paper ballots and the people handling them. Huseman breaks down why the American election system is one of the most secure in the world, but with misinformation running rampant across the internet, will it stay that way?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome back to bed Rock USA. I'm Kathleen Coullian and
I'm Samantha Story. We're your new hosts. Hello. Hello, So
Laura Bliss, our previous host, who you're familiar with, is
on a fellowship at M I T where she's studying
the science of cities. But we have five more episodes
to go before we close out our first season, and
(00:30):
we have so much to unpack. But if you're new here,
our show, bed Rock USA is about how the right
wing is making inroads into local governments. For the first
part of the season, we focused on two small communities
in Squim, Washington and Shasta County, California, So please feel
free to go back and listen to that story. We're
(00:50):
leaving Squim and Shasta and if you're joining us now,
you won't be lost. We promise, Yes, we promise, because
we're taking you on a new journey. We're going to
focus on election security and the craziness around nick school boards.
We'll be heading to Florida for our story on school boards,
but first let's start with election security. When we asked
(01:12):
you to send in your questions and concerns, many of
you wanted to know are we still vulnerable to cyber attacks.
Some of you were concerned about safety at the polls.
I knew the perfect person to call. Her name's Jessica Housman.
She knows elections at the back of her hand. Mostly,
we wanted to understand how concerned should we really be.
(01:39):
I'm Jessica Husman. I am the editorial director of vote Beat,
which is a nonprofit newsroom covering elections and voting rights
in right now for states Texas, Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Why those four states in particular. Yeah, so vote beat
really tries to cover the mechanics of voting rather than campaigns. UM.
(02:01):
So we don't really care who you vote for. We
just would prefer that you do uh, and and make
that possible through explanatory journalism and investigative journalism about the
process of voting UM and the equipment and technology used,
and the processes and procedures that govern it. And we
started in these four states simultaneously because we are under
(02:22):
the impression that those four states will be pretty critical
to the upcoming election, not necessarily from a they have
a ton of Electoral College votes, but because they're voting
systems and their elections systems are of particular interest, um,
for for lots of different reasons. Um. You know, in
Texas and Arizona there are a lot of extremist candidates here. Um.
(02:45):
And in Michigan and Pennsylvania there's a lot of extremism
generally floating around and it's and it's voting population. So
you know, we we picked these states because we thought
we could do the most good in them and make
the most impact because they the local media there was
(03:06):
not necessarily struggling to cover the topic, but just didn't
have enough resources to cover it as fully as as
we like. And so we're going to help them do that. Okay,
got it. I know midterms are top of mind, and
we'll delve into that in a bit, but we're here
to talk about election security. What was it like most recently,
like in Oh good lord? Um, you know, I think
(03:30):
that the mid terms this year are going to be
really interesting because and I know that people have a
variety of reactions to this statement. Truly, was the best
election in terms of an administration security perspective, that has
ever happened in the United States. Huh. I don't know why,
(03:50):
but I'm surprised by that. I just remember everything feeling
really chaotic because of the pandemic. What do you think
this year will be like now that there's US COVID restrictions.
There will be much more in person voting, There will
be much more people going to the polls for a
variety of reasons, not just to vote, but also to
be poll watchers. And so the problems we might see
(04:13):
this year are going to be very different from the
problems in which, again I think puts us on a
little bit of an un charted path because we had
vote by mail and we had this incredible amount of
election denialism. But ultimately these people were limited in certain
respects to go out and do anything. They don't have
(04:37):
that limitation this year, and in many ways, the opposition
to the electoral process is a lot more organized than
it was in and certainly has quite a bit more
money behind it. Um. So in previous years I have
not been as worried. Actually I haven't really been worried
at all that there would be problems at the polls.
There there are always isolated incidents of raucous pulling environments.
(05:01):
But um but this year I'm I'm concerned that we
might see more of it. I'm I'm not convinced we'll
see a lot of it, but I think we'll see
more of it. Okay, so you're not too concerned. So
let's take a step back. What exactly is election security?
I mean, it's a relatively new term. It's not something
we've really heard before. Now. Yeah, so you know, voting
(05:23):
is is the process that involves a lot of technology
and and also a lot of people. And so there
are two aspects to election security. Right, You've got cybersecurity,
but you also have physical security, and in a lot
of respects, these are equally as important as the other
in elections. UM. So, voting machines obviously need to be secure.
They also have to comport with federal guidelines around accessibility,
(05:47):
UM and operability. But also, you know, they have to
make sure that they are storing the ballots themselves in
a secure location and making sure that the people who
have access to the machine have a limited access. There's
a lot of things that go into thinking about election security.
UM And depending on who you talk to, they will
tell you that that one thing or the other is
(06:08):
the most important. But in my mind, I think it's
a it's a balance. Yeah, point of view is everything.
What do you think the balance is going to be
like this year? What is new this year is is
I think what people would think of as personal security, right,
the environment around voting has become so heated that election
(06:31):
administrators across the country or receiving death threats. Several people
have been arrested for threatening election officials across the country. UM.
But they're also being cooming aggressive and and sort of
physically intimidating poll workers at the polling location. Um. Either
while voting is happening, which is less common. The more
(06:53):
common thing is that when ballots are being counted, it
is legal for poll watchers to be there. Different states
have different requirements for how they have to register or
announce themselves as poll watchers, but every state allows poll
watchers and they can also be present while the ballots
are tabulated. And that is what we're seeing now is
(07:15):
that people are very much attempting to disrupt that process
by either yelling things that are fueled by misinformation at
the people doing accounting, or trying to physically insert themselves
into the accounting process or stop it all together. And
so you know, we've heard a lot this year about
pole workers and election administrators going through sort of de
(07:39):
escalation training to deal with these scenarios. And that makes
me really sad, you know. I mean, I think it's
upsetting that that voting has fallen into this partisan hell
whole look everything else as Wow, I've never heard of
de escalation training when it comes to election work. What's
(07:59):
that like? Okay, yeah, I mean I think that that
phrase is most often used in the context of law enforcement,
where if you show up to a very tense situation,
you can sort of diffuse it um without violence erupting um.
And we're now training poll workers and county election officials
to do that type of work so that they can
(08:22):
diffuse tense situations at polling locations and at and at
counting stations. And you know, something that I think people
should be aware of is that in a lot of states,
um poll workers and especially the lead poll worker and
whatever location you may be talking about. These these have
(08:44):
a lot of different names, but most commonly precinct captain's
uh typically have the power of a judge on the
day that they serve as a poll worker, so they
can have people arrested. And I don't know that that's
common knowledge but that polling location is seen as pretty
sacrisanct under every state law that I'm aware of, and
(09:08):
and so there are additional abilities to to sort of
maintain order in those spaces. Then I then I think
people realize, which I think is frankly comforting to me,
um that poll workers have the authority to take care
of those situations and now have pretty robust training. So
I think that I think that our poll workers are
(09:30):
prepared for what's coming in November. Wow. I usually associate
the police and fire departments with crowd control, definitely not
poll workers. I wonder if that's scaring them away. I mean,
we've been hearing a lot about poll worker shortages. More
on that after the break. Okay, so where are you
(09:51):
seeing the highest number of pull worker shortages. I have
spoken a hundreds of election officials. I've only spoken to
two that weren't having a poll worker shortage at any time,
and they are uh Omaha, Nebraska. Nebraska has a law
on the books that you can make people serve as
poll workers in the same way that they're sort of
(10:13):
compelled to serve as jurors. It's the only state in
the country that has that, and the only county that
actually uses it is Douglas County, which is where Omaha is,
so they don't have a pull worker shortage ever by law.
And I'm sure that there are other counties that have
sort of creative solutions to this. But the biggest success
story that I can think of as Hamilton County, Ohio,
(10:34):
where for years the county has recruited high school seniors
to be poll workers, and they have an agreement with
the local school district that, like, the kids get an
excused day off school and also get extra credit, and
then the school that gets the most poll workers gets
(10:55):
a pizza party from the county. And so they're just
like growling with teens who, for a lot of reasons,
are excellent poll workers. And so there are counties that
do really creative things like that, but that takes, you know,
either the force of law or very very coherent organization
UM and and counties just don't have the resources usually
(11:16):
to pull off programs like that. What a brilliant idea.
I would have killed for this in high school. Okay,
let's get back to election security. Why is it such
a big thing this year. I hate when people say
this to me, but it's the best way to describe this,
which is that there are more threat vectors present this
year than any year I'm aware of in in the
(11:37):
modern time period. And by threat vector, I mean, right,
like something that is a specific sort of cause for
alarm or something that could bring direct chaos to do
the situation is like the most I guess basic way
to explain that. So we've got all of the problems
that existed before, right, We've got basic issue of cybersecurity
(12:01):
counties have. It's a mixed bag at best at the
county level in terms of information security and network security. Um.
Voting machines are more or less fine, but voting machine
companies mess something up every single year. Usually it's resolvable,
but it still causes a lot of chaos. But now
(12:23):
we have a couple of more things that are much
more pronounced than they were in the past, which is
misinformation specifically about the election system, not about can't like
I'm not talking about misinformation circulating about candidates or anything
like that, which has existed forever. But you know, more
people are plugged in in a way that is inaccurate
to the election system than than they ever have before.
(12:46):
I cannot tell you how many questions I get from
just random people about very specific voting systems, and this
is new. Um and Then also, I think the fervor
around being willing to volunteer to do things other than
being a poll worker is a lot more pronounced than
I've ever seen. Um So, we we are going to
see more poll watchers. I I can't tell at this
(13:08):
point if it's going to be problematic, but there will
certainly just be more people. Um and and so we're
coming into a time where we have We've addressed a
lot of the cybersecurity concerns that that cropped up between
two thowy, but it's not perfect. And on top of that,
we have these physical and personal security concerns that are
(13:30):
that are largely new for this space. You know, election
administrators aren't used to getting death threats. This is this
is a new development. Gosh, that sounds terrible. Yeah, it's
just honestly, it's just awful. Is this problem pervasive? Like,
is it happening everywhere? I have only spoken to a
very small handful of election officials in the last two
(13:53):
years that have not been subjective to this kind of treatment.
Um So, I would say that is it is far
more common than it is uncommon, if that makes sense. Um.
You know, I think that Congress has in the last
couple of years held an incredible number of Senate and
(14:14):
House Committee hearings on the safety of election workers and
the threats against them. There's an entire sort of project
at the d o J too investigate these threats. They've
made a couple of arrests, and there is a nonprofit
consortium of lawyers doing pro bono legal help for election
(14:39):
administrators who find themselves the targets of this kind of treatment. Um.
And and so I mean, we've really seen this. I
think it hit really hard in in a way that
the industry as a whole was really just not prepared for.
I don't think the media was prepared for it. I
don't think election administrators are prepared for it. Um. And
in the last two years they've had to create a
(15:01):
lot of that architecture to deal with these issues from scratch,
because you know, I think that people assume that election
administration is this really professionalized space, right that that like
the people who do it have some sort of relevant degree,
and there's like a there's like a trajectory where you
like start as an assistant elections person, and then you
(15:24):
are a key elections person, and then you are the
election This is not the thing, right, Like, these offices
are not professionalized. There is no degree at a college
that you can get for election administration. Every county runs
this differently, And in the last few weeks I've spoken
to election administrators who one who did have a background
(15:46):
in election administration. He'd worked for a voting machine vendor
before becoming a county official. Another was a stay at
home mom prior to getting elected as county clerk. Another
had joined the county as a secretary when she was
sixteen and found herself being the county clerk thirty years later.
Another one was a baker until she took a job
(16:08):
at the county and all of a sudden she was
managing elections, right, Like, these are the people who manage
our elections. And so these are people who are neither
professional communicators nor professional technologists, and we have put them
at the biggest story in the country and asked them
to face down hostile foreign enemies Like this is sort
(16:33):
of like asking your county sheriff to go to war
with Russia. Like that, that's what we're doing. Here. Um.
And I don't think that people take election administration seriously
enough to realize that, you know, how it's a federal
crime for like assaulting a bus driver. I wonder, are
there similar consequences for harassing a poll worker? Right? I
(16:54):
mean the easy answer is no, right there there is
no federal law that designates election official as a particular
category of people. UM that would you know, the the
assault of which would would get you a bigger punishment. Um.
That that has not happened. There are certain states that
have increased protection for municipal employees, UM. But if you're,
(17:19):
say a volunteer poll worker, that might not apply to you. UM.
And so that's really the reason that you see I
think the the focus on this that we have seen
because they're they're simply are not really solutions to this
right now. There is no you know the I was
(17:40):
so frustrated when I was listening to the hearing in
the Senate which happened most recently about election security. UM.
And you know, Ted Cruz was looking at these election
administrators and saying like they're just threats. Nobody's died, um.
And I think that it it takes a sir and
(18:00):
level of lack of awareness to say something like that
to a group of people who have far fewer resources
than you do. Right, Like, I am, I'm sure that
Ted Cruz gets um all of the vitriol that that
any of the people sitting before him do. Um. I'm
perfectly willing to believe that. But you know what, He's
(18:20):
also got staff, lots of them. He's got a huge budget.
He has the federal government's information technology and technology infrastructure
to back him up and investigate when and if threats
become uncomfortable or untenable. These people don't have that. They
barely even have spam filters on their emails. Um. And
(18:42):
and so sure it's like not alarming for Ted Cruz
to get a threat because he has the protection of
the federal government around him. These people don't. Yeah, totally,
are there any organizations helping protect election workers? You know?
I have seen local law enforcement agencies across the country
(19:03):
respond to this in much more organized and systematic ways
than they used to. And so I think that just
by virtue of time and learning how to deal with
what candidly was just like a very new and almost
sudden problem two years ago. Um, the landscape is better now,
(19:25):
And are there any places in particular that stand out
for you? You know, I think that I think that
there are more counties that are prepared to deal with
this than that are unprepared. I think that there are
a couple of counties that I'm concerned about because they've
done really interesting things to um, to change the way
(19:48):
that vote tabulation happens, and that leaves a lot of
room for error. So, like Otaro County, New Mexico went
through this entire thing where they have decided to hand
count their ballots, there are a couple of other small
jurisdictions across the country that have decided to do this.
That takes forever. It takes a ton of people, and
when you introduce that much time and personnel into the equation,
(20:12):
security just goes right out the window, right. I mean,
like you can't protect the ballots if that many people
are touching them in a really a meaningful way. Um
And And so you know, there are counties that I'm
particularly concerned about from from a security perspective and an
accuracy perspective. I think that we've kind of identified some
themes across the country that we're that we're pretty honed into.
(20:37):
So in Pennsylvania we're going to be focusing on ideological extremism. Um.
I you know, I think that it is had is.
It has been the case historically that Philadelphia has a
lot of problems in terms of rowdiness and violence at
the polls for very specific reasons that get back at
(21:00):
sort of like the very specific and often racist role
that Philadelphia is said to play in our space. Right.
The same is true for Chicago, the same is true
for Detroit. Right, these these urban centers that have that
hold this place of like mythical illegality in the minds
(21:21):
of right wing voters. They just think that voter fraud
is flowing in and out of the precincts there. That
always causes problems there. And and given the organization around
those groups that tend to cause those issues, you know,
if if you were to ask me to guess where
we would see those issues, and I'm not saying violence, right,
it could we could just be talking about like a
particularly annoying protest um that those big urban areas that
(21:44):
have been used as a bit of a proxy for
for race or class. Um. I think we'll see some
problems there. Um. And I think elsewhere around the country.
You know, We've got in Arizona, we have a couple
of statewide can that it's who are flagrant election denihilist
and also sort of open Q and on followers. And
(22:08):
so I'm I'm concerned at that that that group of
people in that state will feel particularly emboldened. And and
there are a couple of other candidates like that in
in bits and places around the country, um and and
so I you know, I think that that's what worries me,
is that these that the organization of these groups could
(22:29):
result in in in person chaos in a way that
we've not seen in modern history. Yeah, I think that
potential for chaos is on a lot of people's minds
more after the break. So, I just read this report
from eight It looked at how many people were running
(22:51):
for office who are still denying the election results, and
it's really high. Like people on the ballot, what's going
to happen if they lose their election bids. I think
that there their points hit less hard if they lose
by a pretty healthy majority. UM. So, for example, Tina Peters,
(23:14):
a clerk in Mason County, Colorado, who sort of like
fell in with the Mike Lendale, the my pellow Man
conspiracy crowd pretty heavy, gave access to county equipment away,
logged into the system when she wasn't supposed to, like,
did all of this illegal stuff, got herself kicked out
(23:35):
of office, and then decided to run for the Republican
nomination for secretary of State. She came in third um
and leveled those claims. Right, this was stolen from me.
There was voter fraud, but the fact that she'd lost
so resoundingly sort of didn't help that at all. Right,
where we're going to see that be particularly effective is
(23:58):
in races that are close. Um. And and so if
these folks lose and the margin is small, um, then
I think that they make the claims and people are
more likely to believe them. Okay, So here we are,
just days away from the mid terms. What's the general
mood among election workers today. You know, it makes me
(24:20):
really sad, and I've been I've been covering this for
a long time, and I know a lot of state
and local election administrators really really well. And so at
this point in my career, like I have election administrators
that will call me just event right, because for better
or worse, I know way more about what they're about
to talk about than their spouse or something. Right at
(24:43):
least understand the vocabulary, and so I'm sort of a
default therapist for a few of these folks, which is fine,
um and was really hard, and going into this year
has been really hard as well, because people would call
and they would be like, I got this email and
it says this, and I don't know what to do
about it. Or I had to send a voicemail I
(25:06):
got this morning to the police because they threatened me.
Or oh, the Secretary of State has a state police
officer parked outside of his house and will for the
next three weeks. Like these are really awful things. I mean,
I went to woo uh the National Association of State
(25:27):
Elections Directors conference and Madison, Wisconsin a couple of months ago,
and I have been to that conference, and I know
how this sounds. I've been to the NASAD conference ten times.
That was my tenth, and I have never seen that
amount of security. In ten years. They had FBI and SISSA,
(25:51):
which is the cyber intelligence agency for the federal government
under DHS, had trained their security guards specifically how to
monitor the did bomb sweeps every morning, they you had
to be wearing your name tag, even if they knew
exactly who you were um to enter any of the rooms,
and they encouraged people not to wear their name tags
(26:11):
off the conference floor. Um. It was a it was
not a great environment. Um. And it made me really
sad that this conference that is usually casual and helpful
to these people who get to see each other and
learn from each other, became you know, a daily like
necessitated a daily bomb sweep. Its insane. Wow, that's that's heartbreaking. Yeah,
(26:40):
it is. It's heartbreaking, and you know, like it is
an incredibly frightening and frustrating time for election officials who
really believe in the work that they're doing and don't
understand the misinformation that's being directed at them. And they
and you, I mean, they're not communications experts, right, they're
(27:02):
not media experts, they're not cybersecurity experts. They don't have
a fantastically detailed understanding of the right wing social media
networks that that come for them sometimes and and we're
asking them to deal with this largely alone. It just
seems really unfair. I mean, the reality is, and in
(27:22):
all likelihood, most elections are probably going to happen without
any hitches. Right, So despite all these challenges, is there
anything we can be optimistic about? Yes, So let's talk
about the voters, right, Like, of voters, I would even say,
like ninety nine five percent of voters are going to
go to the polls. They're going to vote, and it's
(27:43):
going to be a totally unmemorable experience, which is what
we want, right, Like we want you to go and vote,
we want you to leave the polling place, and for
that to have been absolutely normal. Um. I think that
that is less true for election administrators, but they are
operating now in a new normal, right They they are
used to this treatment by now have created procedures for
(28:07):
how to deal with it. UM. And I think that
because they did so much work in the last year
and a half, two years, even three years to deal
with this sort of escalating tension. UM, I don't think
that it's going to be as bad as we predict.
And I and I keep saying this, and you know what,
(28:28):
maybe I'll be wrong, and I hope that I'm not,
but like, I'll leave that possibility open. There were organized
UM efforts to recruit pole watchers and do crazy things
at the polls in and they do not pan out. Like,
we're not talking about people who can play three dimensional
(28:48):
chess here, we're talking about Michael Flynn, who was fired
from two different presidential administrations, right, Like, operational groundwork is
not his specialty at this juncture, and so I don't
think that these efforts are going to materialize in an organized,
systematic way across the country. I think that there will
(29:10):
be a few hot spots. I think that those hot
spots will be dealt with pretty swiftly given the responses
and the training that is now in place. Um, but
I do think that they'll happen. And I think that
the question is just sort of like whether it's five
places or fifty. Right, there are ten thousand election jurisdictions
(29:32):
in the country, and so that's still a pretty small
margin either way, just as unacceptable. But still I think
most counties will be just fine. That's all from us today.
Next week we'll be talking all about school boards, and
(29:53):
don't worry, we promise you there will be no screaming
audio from out of control of school board meetings, but
we will talk to someone who can give us a
bit more insight into why school boards are making headlines nationally,
but it's kind of the first time that the issues
have had something to do with education. You know, all
(30:14):
these things race and education, um mass requirements, sex and
gender in schools. They all are grounded in what's happening
in schools, but they also seemed to be conversations about
things that are bigger than schools themselves. That's next time
on bed Rock USA. This episode was reported, produced and
(30:35):
hosted by us Samantha Story and Kathleen Quilliam. Original music
and scoring by Zachary Walter and audio engineering by Blake Maples.
An additional editing help from Jennifer Sondag, head of Bloomberg
City Lab. Thank you again to Jessica Housman from vote
Beat for taking so much time to speak with us.
Bed Rock USA is a production of Bloomberg City Lab
(30:55):
and I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome back to bed Rock USA. I'm Kathleen Coullian and
I'm Samantha Story. We're your new hosts. Hello. Hello, So
Laura Bliss, our previous host, who you're familiar with, is
on a fellowship at M I T where she's studying
the science of cities. But we have five more episodes
to go before we close out our first season, and
(00:30):
we have so much to unpack. But if you're new here,
our show, bed Rock USA is about how the right
wing is making inroads into local governments. For the first
part of the season, we focused on two small communities
in Squim, Washington and Shasta County, California, So please feel
free to go back and listen to that story. We're
(00:50):
leaving Squim and Shasta and if you're joining us now,
you won't be lost. We promise, Yes, we promise, because
we're taking you on a new journey. We're going to
focus on election security and the craziness around nick school boards.
We'll be heading to Florida for our story on school boards,
but first let's start with election security. When we asked
(01:12):
you to send in your questions and concerns, many of
you wanted to know are we still vulnerable to cyber attacks.
Some of you were concerned about safety at the polls.
I knew the perfect person to call. Her name's Jessica Housman.
She knows elections at the back of her hand. Mostly,
we wanted to understand how concerned should we really be.
(01:39):
I'm Jessica Husman. I am the editorial director of vote Beat,
which is a nonprofit newsroom covering elections and voting rights
in right now for states Texas, Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Why those four states in particular. Yeah, so vote beat
really tries to cover the mechanics of voting rather than campaigns. UM.
(02:01):
So we don't really care who you vote for. We
just would prefer that you do uh, and and make
that possible through explanatory journalism and investigative journalism about the
process of voting UM and the equipment and technology used,
and the processes and procedures that govern it. And we
started in these four states simultaneously because we are under
(02:22):
the impression that those four states will be pretty critical
to the upcoming election, not necessarily from a they have
a ton of Electoral College votes, but because they're voting
systems and their elections systems are of particular interest, um,
for for lots of different reasons. Um. You know, in
Texas and Arizona there are a lot of extremist candidates here. Um.
(02:45):
And in Michigan and Pennsylvania there's a lot of extremism
generally floating around and it's and it's voting population. So
you know, we we picked these states because we thought
we could do the most good in them and make
the most impact because they the local media there was
(03:06):
not necessarily struggling to cover the topic, but just didn't
have enough resources to cover it as fully as as
we like. And so we're going to help them do that. Okay,
got it. I know midterms are top of mind, and
we'll delve into that in a bit, but we're here
to talk about election security. What was it like most recently,
like in Oh good lord? Um, you know, I think
(03:30):
that the mid terms this year are going to be
really interesting because and I know that people have a
variety of reactions to this statement. Truly, was the best
election in terms of an administration security perspective, that has
ever happened in the United States. Huh. I don't know why,
(03:50):
but I'm surprised by that. I just remember everything feeling
really chaotic because of the pandemic. What do you think
this year will be like now that there's US COVID restrictions.
There will be much more in person voting, There will
be much more people going to the polls for a
variety of reasons, not just to vote, but also to
be poll watchers. And so the problems we might see
(04:13):
this year are going to be very different from the
problems in which, again I think puts us on a
little bit of an un charted path because we had
vote by mail and we had this incredible amount of
election denialism. But ultimately these people were limited in certain
respects to go out and do anything. They don't have
(04:37):
that limitation this year, and in many ways, the opposition
to the electoral process is a lot more organized than
it was in and certainly has quite a bit more
money behind it. Um. So in previous years I have
not been as worried. Actually I haven't really been worried
at all that there would be problems at the polls.
There there are always isolated incidents of raucous pulling environments.
(05:01):
But um but this year I'm I'm concerned that we
might see more of it. I'm I'm not convinced we'll
see a lot of it, but I think we'll see
more of it. Okay, so you're not too concerned. So
let's take a step back. What exactly is election security?
I mean, it's a relatively new term. It's not something
we've really heard before. Now. Yeah, so you know, voting
(05:23):
is is the process that involves a lot of technology
and and also a lot of people. And so there
are two aspects to election security. Right, You've got cybersecurity,
but you also have physical security, and in a lot
of respects, these are equally as important as the other
in elections. UM. So, voting machines obviously need to be secure.
They also have to comport with federal guidelines around accessibility,
(05:47):
UM and operability. But also, you know, they have to
make sure that they are storing the ballots themselves in
a secure location and making sure that the people who
have access to the machine have a limited access. There's
a lot of things that go into thinking about election security.
UM And depending on who you talk to, they will
tell you that that one thing or the other is
(06:08):
the most important. But in my mind, I think it's
a it's a balance. Yeah, point of view is everything.
What do you think the balance is going to be
like this year? What is new this year is is
I think what people would think of as personal security, right,
the environment around voting has become so heated that election
(06:31):
administrators across the country or receiving death threats. Several people
have been arrested for threatening election officials across the country. UM.
But they're also being cooming aggressive and and sort of
physically intimidating poll workers at the polling location. Um. Either
while voting is happening, which is less common. The more
(06:53):
common thing is that when ballots are being counted, it
is legal for poll watchers to be there. Different states
have different requirements for how they have to register or
announce themselves as poll watchers, but every state allows poll
watchers and they can also be present while the ballots
are tabulated. And that is what we're seeing now is
(07:15):
that people are very much attempting to disrupt that process
by either yelling things that are fueled by misinformation at
the people doing accounting, or trying to physically insert themselves
into the accounting process or stop it all together. And
so you know, we've heard a lot this year about
pole workers and election administrators going through sort of de
(07:39):
escalation training to deal with these scenarios. And that makes
me really sad, you know. I mean, I think it's
upsetting that that voting has fallen into this partisan hell
whole look everything else as Wow, I've never heard of
de escalation training when it comes to election work. What's
(07:59):
that like? Okay, yeah, I mean I think that that
phrase is most often used in the context of law enforcement,
where if you show up to a very tense situation,
you can sort of diffuse it um without violence erupting um.
And we're now training poll workers and county election officials
to do that type of work so that they can
(08:22):
diffuse tense situations at polling locations and at and at
counting stations. And you know, something that I think people
should be aware of is that in a lot of states,
um poll workers and especially the lead poll worker and
whatever location you may be talking about. These these have
(08:44):
a lot of different names, but most commonly precinct captain's
uh typically have the power of a judge on the
day that they serve as a poll worker, so they
can have people arrested. And I don't know that that's
common knowledge but that polling location is seen as pretty
sacrisanct under every state law that I'm aware of, and
(09:08):
and so there are additional abilities to to sort of
maintain order in those spaces. Then I then I think
people realize, which I think is frankly comforting to me,
um that poll workers have the authority to take care
of those situations and now have pretty robust training. So
I think that I think that our poll workers are
(09:30):
prepared for what's coming in November. Wow. I usually associate
the police and fire departments with crowd control, definitely not
poll workers. I wonder if that's scaring them away. I mean,
we've been hearing a lot about poll worker shortages. More
on that after the break. Okay, so where are you
(09:51):
seeing the highest number of pull worker shortages. I have
spoken a hundreds of election officials. I've only spoken to
two that weren't having a poll worker shortage at any time,
and they are uh Omaha, Nebraska. Nebraska has a law
on the books that you can make people serve as
poll workers in the same way that they're sort of
(10:13):
compelled to serve as jurors. It's the only state in
the country that has that, and the only county that
actually uses it is Douglas County, which is where Omaha is,
so they don't have a pull worker shortage ever by law.
And I'm sure that there are other counties that have
sort of creative solutions to this. But the biggest success
story that I can think of as Hamilton County, Ohio,
(10:34):
where for years the county has recruited high school seniors
to be poll workers, and they have an agreement with
the local school district that, like, the kids get an
excused day off school and also get extra credit, and
then the school that gets the most poll workers gets
(10:55):
a pizza party from the county. And so they're just
like growling with teens who, for a lot of reasons,
are excellent poll workers. And so there are counties that
do really creative things like that, but that takes, you know,
either the force of law or very very coherent organization
UM and and counties just don't have the resources usually
(11:16):
to pull off programs like that. What a brilliant idea.
I would have killed for this in high school. Okay,
let's get back to election security. Why is it such
a big thing this year. I hate when people say
this to me, but it's the best way to describe this,
which is that there are more threat vectors present this
year than any year I'm aware of in in the
(11:37):
modern time period. And by threat vector, I mean, right,
like something that is a specific sort of cause for
alarm or something that could bring direct chaos to do
the situation is like the most I guess basic way
to explain that. So we've got all of the problems
that existed before, right, We've got basic issue of cybersecurity
(12:01):
counties have. It's a mixed bag at best at the
county level in terms of information security and network security. Um.
Voting machines are more or less fine, but voting machine
companies mess something up every single year. Usually it's resolvable,
but it still causes a lot of chaos. But now
(12:23):
we have a couple of more things that are much
more pronounced than they were in the past, which is
misinformation specifically about the election system, not about can't like
I'm not talking about misinformation circulating about candidates or anything
like that, which has existed forever. But you know, more
people are plugged in in a way that is inaccurate
to the election system than than they ever have before.
(12:46):
I cannot tell you how many questions I get from
just random people about very specific voting systems, and this
is new. Um and Then also, I think the fervor
around being willing to volunteer to do things other than
being a poll worker is a lot more pronounced than
I've ever seen. Um So, we we are going to
see more poll watchers. I I can't tell at this
(13:08):
point if it's going to be problematic, but there will
certainly just be more people. Um and and so we're
coming into a time where we have We've addressed a
lot of the cybersecurity concerns that that cropped up between
two thowy, but it's not perfect. And on top of that,
we have these physical and personal security concerns that are
(13:30):
that are largely new for this space. You know, election
administrators aren't used to getting death threats. This is this
is a new development. Gosh, that sounds terrible. Yeah, it's
just honestly, it's just awful. Is this problem pervasive? Like,
is it happening everywhere? I have only spoken to a
very small handful of election officials in the last two
(13:53):
years that have not been subjective to this kind of treatment.
Um So, I would say that is it is far
more common than it is uncommon, if that makes sense. Um.
You know, I think that Congress has in the last
couple of years held an incredible number of Senate and
(14:14):
House Committee hearings on the safety of election workers and
the threats against them. There's an entire sort of project
at the d o J too investigate these threats. They've
made a couple of arrests, and there is a nonprofit
consortium of lawyers doing pro bono legal help for election
(14:39):
administrators who find themselves the targets of this kind of treatment. Um.
And and so I mean, we've really seen this. I
think it hit really hard in in a way that
the industry as a whole was really just not prepared for.
I don't think the media was prepared for it. I
don't think election administrators are prepared for it. Um. And
in the last two years they've had to create a
(15:01):
lot of that architecture to deal with these issues from scratch,
because you know, I think that people assume that election
administration is this really professionalized space, right that that like
the people who do it have some sort of relevant degree,
and there's like a there's like a trajectory where you
like start as an assistant elections person, and then you
(15:24):
are a key elections person, and then you are the
election This is not the thing, right, Like, these offices
are not professionalized. There is no degree at a college
that you can get for election administration. Every county runs
this differently, And in the last few weeks I've spoken
to election administrators who one who did have a background
(15:46):
in election administration. He'd worked for a voting machine vendor
before becoming a county official. Another was a stay at
home mom prior to getting elected as county clerk. Another
had joined the county as a secretary when she was
sixteen and found herself being the county clerk thirty years later.
Another one was a baker until she took a job
(16:08):
at the county and all of a sudden she was
managing elections, right, Like, these are the people who manage
our elections. And so these are people who are neither
professional communicators nor professional technologists, and we have put them
at the biggest story in the country and asked them
to face down hostile foreign enemies Like this is sort
(16:33):
of like asking your county sheriff to go to war
with Russia. Like that, that's what we're doing. Here. Um.
And I don't think that people take election administration seriously
enough to realize that, you know, how it's a federal
crime for like assaulting a bus driver. I wonder, are
there similar consequences for harassing a poll worker? Right? I
(16:54):
mean the easy answer is no, right there there is
no federal law that designates election official as a particular
category of people. UM that would you know, the the
assault of which would would get you a bigger punishment. Um.
That that has not happened. There are certain states that
have increased protection for municipal employees, UM. But if you're,
(17:19):
say a volunteer poll worker, that might not apply to you. UM.
And so that's really the reason that you see I
think the the focus on this that we have seen
because they're they're simply are not really solutions to this
right now. There is no you know the I was
(17:40):
so frustrated when I was listening to the hearing in
the Senate which happened most recently about election security. UM.
And you know, Ted Cruz was looking at these election
administrators and saying like they're just threats. Nobody's died, um.
And I think that it it takes a sir and
(18:00):
level of lack of awareness to say something like that
to a group of people who have far fewer resources
than you do. Right, Like, I am, I'm sure that
Ted Cruz gets um all of the vitriol that that
any of the people sitting before him do. Um. I'm
perfectly willing to believe that. But you know what, He's
(18:20):
also got staff, lots of them. He's got a huge budget.
He has the federal government's information technology and technology infrastructure
to back him up and investigate when and if threats
become uncomfortable or untenable. These people don't have that. They
barely even have spam filters on their emails. Um. And
(18:42):
and so sure it's like not alarming for Ted Cruz
to get a threat because he has the protection of
the federal government around him. These people don't. Yeah, totally,
are there any organizations helping protect election workers? You know?
I have seen local law enforcement agencies across the country
(19:03):
respond to this in much more organized and systematic ways
than they used to. And so I think that just
by virtue of time and learning how to deal with
what candidly was just like a very new and almost
sudden problem two years ago. Um, the landscape is better now,
(19:25):
And are there any places in particular that stand out
for you? You know, I think that I think that
there are more counties that are prepared to deal with
this than that are unprepared. I think that there are
a couple of counties that I'm concerned about because they've
done really interesting things to um, to change the way
(19:48):
that vote tabulation happens, and that leaves a lot of
room for error. So, like Otaro County, New Mexico went
through this entire thing where they have decided to hand
count their ballots, there are a couple of other small
jurisdictions across the country that have decided to do this.
That takes forever. It takes a ton of people, and
when you introduce that much time and personnel into the equation,
(20:12):
security just goes right out the window, right. I mean,
like you can't protect the ballots if that many people
are touching them in a really a meaningful way. Um
And And so you know, there are counties that I'm
particularly concerned about from from a security perspective and an
accuracy perspective. I think that we've kind of identified some
themes across the country that we're that we're pretty honed into.
(20:37):
So in Pennsylvania we're going to be focusing on ideological extremism. Um.
I you know, I think that it is had is.
It has been the case historically that Philadelphia has a
lot of problems in terms of rowdiness and violence at
the polls for very specific reasons that get back at
(21:00):
sort of like the very specific and often racist role
that Philadelphia is said to play in our space. Right.
The same is true for Chicago, the same is true
for Detroit. Right, these these urban centers that have that
hold this place of like mythical illegality in the minds
(21:21):
of right wing voters. They just think that voter fraud
is flowing in and out of the precincts there. That
always causes problems there. And and given the organization around
those groups that tend to cause those issues, you know,
if if you were to ask me to guess where
we would see those issues, and I'm not saying violence, right,
it could we could just be talking about like a
particularly annoying protest um that those big urban areas that
(21:44):
have been used as a bit of a proxy for
for race or class. Um. I think we'll see some
problems there. Um. And I think elsewhere around the country.
You know, We've got in Arizona, we have a couple
of statewide can that it's who are flagrant election denihilist
and also sort of open Q and on followers. And
(22:08):
so I'm I'm concerned at that that that group of
people in that state will feel particularly emboldened. And and
there are a couple of other candidates like that in
in bits and places around the country, um and and
so I you know, I think that that's what worries me,
is that these that the organization of these groups could
(22:29):
result in in in person chaos in a way that
we've not seen in modern history. Yeah, I think that
potential for chaos is on a lot of people's minds
more after the break. So, I just read this report
from eight It looked at how many people were running
(22:51):
for office who are still denying the election results, and
it's really high. Like people on the ballot, what's going
to happen if they lose their election bids. I think
that there their points hit less hard if they lose
by a pretty healthy majority. UM. So, for example, Tina Peters,
(23:14):
a clerk in Mason County, Colorado, who sort of like
fell in with the Mike Lendale, the my pellow Man
conspiracy crowd pretty heavy, gave access to county equipment away,
logged into the system when she wasn't supposed to, like,
did all of this illegal stuff, got herself kicked out
(23:35):
of office, and then decided to run for the Republican
nomination for secretary of State. She came in third um
and leveled those claims. Right, this was stolen from me.
There was voter fraud, but the fact that she'd lost
so resoundingly sort of didn't help that at all. Right,
where we're going to see that be particularly effective is
(23:58):
in races that are close. Um. And and so if
these folks lose and the margin is small, um, then
I think that they make the claims and people are
more likely to believe them. Okay, So here we are,
just days away from the mid terms. What's the general
mood among election workers today. You know, it makes me
(24:20):
really sad, and I've been I've been covering this for
a long time, and I know a lot of state
and local election administrators really really well. And so at
this point in my career, like I have election administrators
that will call me just event right, because for better
or worse, I know way more about what they're about
to talk about than their spouse or something. Right at
(24:43):
least understand the vocabulary, and so I'm sort of a
default therapist for a few of these folks, which is fine,
um and was really hard, and going into this year
has been really hard as well, because people would call
and they would be like, I got this email and
it says this, and I don't know what to do
about it. Or I had to send a voicemail I
(25:06):
got this morning to the police because they threatened me.
Or oh, the Secretary of State has a state police
officer parked outside of his house and will for the
next three weeks. Like these are really awful things. I mean,
I went to woo uh the National Association of State
(25:27):
Elections Directors conference and Madison, Wisconsin a couple of months ago,
and I have been to that conference, and I know
how this sounds. I've been to the NASAD conference ten times.
That was my tenth, and I have never seen that
amount of security. In ten years. They had FBI and SISSA,
(25:51):
which is the cyber intelligence agency for the federal government
under DHS, had trained their security guards specifically how to
monitor the did bomb sweeps every morning, they you had
to be wearing your name tag, even if they knew
exactly who you were um to enter any of the rooms,
and they encouraged people not to wear their name tags
(26:11):
off the conference floor. Um. It was a it was
not a great environment. Um. And it made me really
sad that this conference that is usually casual and helpful
to these people who get to see each other and
learn from each other, became you know, a daily like
necessitated a daily bomb sweep. Its insane. Wow, that's that's heartbreaking. Yeah,
(26:40):
it is. It's heartbreaking, and you know, like it is
an incredibly frightening and frustrating time for election officials who
really believe in the work that they're doing and don't
understand the misinformation that's being directed at them. And they
and you, I mean, they're not communications experts, right, they're
(27:02):
not media experts, they're not cybersecurity experts. They don't have
a fantastically detailed understanding of the right wing social media
networks that that come for them sometimes and and we're
asking them to deal with this largely alone. It just
seems really unfair. I mean, the reality is, and in
(27:22):
all likelihood, most elections are probably going to happen without
any hitches. Right, So despite all these challenges, is there
anything we can be optimistic about? Yes, So let's talk
about the voters, right, Like, of voters, I would even say,
like ninety nine five percent of voters are going to
go to the polls. They're going to vote, and it's
(27:43):
going to be a totally unmemorable experience, which is what
we want, right, Like we want you to go and vote,
we want you to leave the polling place, and for
that to have been absolutely normal. Um. I think that
that is less true for election administrators, but they are
operating now in a new normal, right They they are
used to this treatment by now have created procedures for
(28:07):
how to deal with it. UM. And I think that
because they did so much work in the last year
and a half, two years, even three years to deal
with this sort of escalating tension. UM, I don't think
that it's going to be as bad as we predict.
And I and I keep saying this, and you know what,
(28:28):
maybe I'll be wrong, and I hope that I'm not,
but like, I'll leave that possibility open. There were organized
UM efforts to recruit pole watchers and do crazy things
at the polls in and they do not pan out. Like,
we're not talking about people who can play three dimensional
(28:48):
chess here, we're talking about Michael Flynn, who was fired
from two different presidential administrations, right, Like, operational groundwork is
not his specialty at this juncture, and so I don't
think that these efforts are going to materialize in an organized,
systematic way across the country. I think that there will
(29:10):
be a few hot spots. I think that those hot
spots will be dealt with pretty swiftly given the responses
and the training that is now in place. Um, but
I do think that they'll happen. And I think that
the question is just sort of like whether it's five
places or fifty. Right, there are ten thousand election jurisdictions
(29:32):
in the country, and so that's still a pretty small
margin either way, just as unacceptable. But still I think
most counties will be just fine. That's all from us today.
Next week we'll be talking all about school boards, and
(29:53):
don't worry, we promise you there will be no screaming
audio from out of control of school board meetings, but
we will talk to someone who can give us a
bit more insight into why school boards are making headlines nationally,
but it's kind of the first time that the issues
have had something to do with education. You know, all
(30:14):
these things race and education, um mass requirements, sex and
gender in schools. They all are grounded in what's happening
in schools, but they also seemed to be conversations about
things that are bigger than schools themselves. That's next time
on bed Rock USA. This episode was reported, produced and
(30:35):
hosted by us Samantha Story and Kathleen Quilliam. Original music
and scoring by Zachary Walter and audio engineering by Blake Maples.
An additional editing help from Jennifer Sondag, head of Bloomberg
City Lab. Thank you again to Jessica Housman from vote
Beat for taking so much time to speak with us.
Bed Rock USA is a production of Bloomberg City Lab
(30:55):
and I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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