Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Hoover Institution | Stanford University
The Hoover Institution Center for Revitalizing American Institutions webinar series features speakers who are developing innovative ideas, conducting groundbreaking research, and taking important actions to improve trust and efficacy in American institutions. Speaker expertise and topics span governmental institutions, civic organizations and practice, and the role of public opinion and culture in shaping our democracy. The webinar series builds awareness about how we can individually and collectively revitalize American institutions to ensure our country’s democracy delivers on its promise.
The fourth session discusses Restoring Trust in American Elections: Challenges and Opportunities with Benjamin Ginsberg, Justin Grimmer, and Brandice Canes-Wrone on Tuesday, January 14, 2025, from 10:00 - 11:00 am PT.
Public faith in the reliability of American elections has been eroding for decades with both political parties voicing concerns at times since the 1980s. Democrats have often pointed to issues like voter suppression and systemic inequities, while many Republicans have embraced claims of widespread fraud. Since 2016, and particularly following the 2020 election, polls have shown a more precipitous drop in the public’s trust in elections. These divisions have raised critical questions: Are election results reliable? Is distrust in elections now an enduring feature of American political campaigns and does that impact the democracy? Are we destined to cycle through accusations of fraud and suppression with every contested result? What have we learned from the 2024 election process?
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Episode Transcript
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[MUSIC]
>> Erin Tillman (00:07):
Good morning.
My name is Erin Tillman, an AssociateDirector at the Hoover Institution,
and we'd like to welcomeyou to today's webinar
organized by the Hoover Institution Centerfor Revitalizing American Institutions,
also known as RAI.
Today's session will consist of a briefopening remarks from our panelists and
a facilitated discussion with ourmoderator, followed by a period where our
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panelists will respond toquestions from audience members.
To submit a question, please use the Q and
A feature located at the bottomof your zoom screen.
We will do our best to respondas many questions as possible.
A recording of this webinar will beavailable @ hoover.org/rai within
the next few days.
The Center for Revitalizing AmericanInstitutions is a testament to
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the Hoover Institution's motto,Ideas to Advancing Freedom.
The Center for Revitalizing AmericanInstitutions was established to study
the reasons behind the crisis intrust facing American institutions.
Analyze how they are operatingin practice, and
consider policy recommendations to rebuildtrust and increase their effectiveness.
RAI works with and supports Hoover Fellowsas well as faculty, practitioners, and
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policymakers from across the countryto pursue evidence based reforms that
impact trust and efficacy in a widerange of American institutions.
Today's topic is extraordinarilytimely and important.
The past week saw the certification ofour most recent national elections, and
our panelists will discuss factors thathave conspired to undermine trust in
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American elections andthe impact that misinformation and
polarization have on voter confidence,
as well as efforts underway to rebuildpublic confidence in these processes.
It gives me great pleasure to introducetoday's moderator, Brandice Canes-Wrone.
Brandice is the Maurice R Greenberg SeniorFellow and Director of the Center for
Revitalizing American Institutionsat the Hoover Institution.
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She's also professor of Political Scienceand Professor by courtesy of
Political Economics atthe Graduate School of Business.
She served on faculty at mit,Northwestern, and Princeton until several
years ago when we were able toentice her to return to the farm.
I will hand you over to BrandiceCanes-Wrone to introduce our guests.
We have two today,Ben Ginsberg and Justin Grimmer.
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Ben has been having a littlebit of technical difficulty,
so we will start with Justinuntil Ben is able to join us.
Brandice, over to you.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (02:30):
Thanks so much, Erin.
So I'd like to introduce Ben andJustin, but
I'm going to actually hold off onBen's introduction until he's on air.
I'm delighted to alreadyhave Justin with me.
Justin Grimmer is the Morris M DoyleCentennial professor in Public Policy in
Stanford's Department ofPolitical Science and
a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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Justin's also the co directorof the Democracy and
Polarization Lab at Stanford.
His research focuses on Congress,election, social media and data science.
Currently he's working on projectsinvolving American political institutions,
elections and developing newmachine learning methods for
the study of politics.
Justin's also co leading with Bena project at RAI on improving
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American elections.
Very relevant today.
Aaron noted that each of the panelistswill be giving some introductory remarks
before we have a moderated panel,hopefully with Ben as well.
But Justin, you're here.
Could you lead us off?
>> Justin Grimmer (03:35):
Yeah, sure.
I'm happy to do that and thank you forhaving me, Brandice, and
very happy to be onhaving this conversation.
So I just wanted to sort ofset the stage a little bit and
talk about what I view as some of thethreats to trust in American elections.
And the way I see it is that there's tworeal broad threats to current trust in
American elections in the public.
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One threat to the public perceivingelections as trustworthy are claims
made that US elections are subjectto substantial voter suppression.
That is that as these claims go,there are parties or
political actors who go out oftheir way to erect barriers
to exclude certain kinds of votersfrom participating in elections.
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This would obviously, if true, would bevery bad because it would indicate that
the results of elections didn'treflect the will of the electorate,
but rather the selectedset of individuals.
But across a wide range of studies,some of which are my own,
what we consistently find is thatthere's just no evidence to support
claims of broad voter suppressionin American politics.
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So take, for example, the controversyaround voter identification.
Many individuals on the left haveargued that voter identification laws
are a means to exclude particular kinds ofvoters from participating in elections.
But study after study,including some of my own,
have found that voter ID laws reallyhave a minuscule effect on turnout and
essentially no effect onwho's in the electorate.
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We actually see a similar patternif we take a step back and
look more generally at laws.
In 2013, the Supreme Court issueda landmark ruling, Shelby v.
Holder.
That ruling ruled unconstitutional thecriteria used to decide which states would
be subject to pre clearance from theJustice Department, that is which states
would have to clear how they run theirelections with the Justice Department.
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Again, the concerns from many on the leftwas that this would lead to a flood of
voter suppressing policies and excludingparticular kinds of voters from the polls.
And yet, again,what we find time, and again,
is that there's effectively no differencein turnout rates across states that were
formerly covered by section five of theVoting Rights act and states that weren't.
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So those concerns didn't manifest,in fact, in research we're finishing now,
what we find is that in many instancesindividuals will assert that a policy
increases cost.
And really what they mean by that isthat the policy deviates from their own
personal normative view abouthow elections should be run,
rather than the than that statement beingthe result of some empirical assessment of
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how hard it is to cast ballots.
Nevertheless, we seethat these myths persist.
In fact, there are prominent lawyers for
the Democratic Party who daily willdeclare that the goal of much policymaking
is to insulate Republican majoritiesthrough election administration policies.
Now, there's a parallel claim lately inUS politics, primarily made on the right,
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though it is not a claim only on theright, that US elections are besieged with
manipulation, manipulation,fraud and illegal votes.
And here again, if this claim were true,we could see how it would be so
toxic to American democracy.
If true, this claim would imply that theresults of elections reflect who who was
better at manipulating the results of thevote or who was better at eliciting these
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illegal votes, rather than again, the sortof true preferences of the electorate.
And again, fortunately,what we've found is that time and
again these claims simply justdon't stand up to scrutiny.
So take for example the claims that weremade in the run-up to the 2024 election.
There's sort of three broad claims.
First, that voter fileswere filled with errors and
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enabling people to doublevote across different states.
Second, that there were many undocumentedor other non citizens registered to vote,
perhaps casting ballot.
And third, there were claims made thatvoter identification, that presence or
absence would significantlyaffect election results.
And just like the claimswith voter suppression,
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these claims reallylack empirical backing.
Having done a very extensive scrutiny ofclaims about double voting, what we found
was that in many instances individualswho were thought to be double voting were
actually just individuals who the analystgrouped together inappropriately.
It was basically a data analysis error.
Rather than the result of someoneactually casting two votes.
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Second, when we we did an extensiveanalysis of claims about non citizens
being registered to vote, and here againwe simply just did not find evidence.
One reason for
that is that many of the claims werebased on discredited survey methods.
Another more affirmative piece ofevidence, though, is that many states
conducted audits of their voter rolls tosee how many non citizens were on them.
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And time and again what those statesfind is that there's only a very small
number of non citizens, many of whomare registered to vote because of an error
from the state, not from the individual.
And this is important.
The final number that results fromthe audit is almost always substantially
smaller than an initial headline claimabout individuals who could potentially be
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non citizens.
And finally, on voter identification,those same results I mentioned before that
voter identification laws don't have a bigeffect cut the same way to undermine
claims that voter ID laws are reallyimportant or the lack of voter ID laws
are really important forDemocrats in order to conduct fraud.
We know that voter ID lawsdon't have a big effect, so
we know they're not suppressing votes.
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But we also know that the absence ofvoter ID laws do not enable Democrats or
individuals who want to takeadvantage of the system to conduct
wide amounts of voter fraud.
Okay, so where are we at the moment?
And then I'll turn it back over.
I think on the whole,I'm optimistic about American elections.
I think on the whole,American elections perform well.
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But that does not mean that it isnot the case that we need reform.
The reason that I think that we needreform is not that there are big problems
with voter suppression orthat there's lots of voter fraud, but
rather the challenge for policymakersis going to be to design an electoral
system to convince the public thatthese empirical patterns are true,
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that their elections are accessible, andthat they're not subject to manipulation.
And thinking through exactly what thatpolicy looks like, I think is a big
challenge and hopefully one we can takeon an REI over the next couple of years.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (10:10):
Great. Thanks so much, Justin.
I'm delighted that Ben Ginsburg,the technical difficulties are done.
Someone commented recently at apresentation they just wish the challenges
were the same each year becauseyou learn how to solve them.
And I guess that's true with elections andbuilding election systems as well.
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But I'm glad we solved this one.
Ben Ginsberg is the Volcker DistinguishedVisiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
He's a nationally known political lawadvocate representing participants in
the political process.
His clients have included presidentialcandidates political parties,
political campaigns,
members of Congress as well as manyother types of political organizations.
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Ben served as National Counselto the 2000 and
2004 Bush Cheney presidential campaigns.
He played a central role in the wellknown 2000 Florida recount as well.
In 2012 and 2008 he was the NationalCounsel to Romney for President.
Ben was a partner at Jones Dayfrom 2014 to 2020 and
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before that at Patton Boggs for 23 years.
Ben, we're delighted you're part of REIas well as here today on this webinar.
So we're in the point of the webinar ofopening remarks, so I want to open it up
to you and then we'll bring Justinback for the panel discussion.
>> Ben Ginsberg (11:35):
Great. Well, thank you Brandice, thank you for
having me.
Thank you for putting on a discussionof this really important topic.
And thank you for all the workthat Reai was able to do during
this past election to try andbolster confidence in American
elections through work with state andlocal election officials.
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And I'll talk about that a little bit.
Let me agree with Justin's comment aboutthe institution itself is basically sound,
but there is sort of a crisisof confidence in it right now
that will require policymakersto think through both what's
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been happening to the institutionover the past couple of decades and
really longer, as well as kindof what to do in the future
to strengthen the institution andmake it really more credible.
And we may well be at a magic moment forthat at this point in time.
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The reality is that publicfaith in elections has
taken some hits for a number of years.
This is not really a new phenomenon.
There were vote buying instances in theTammany Hall and Big City machine days.
There have been more recent votingwars between the two political parties
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on whether there's fraud,where there's suppression.
And that goes back and
forth in sort of the get outthe vote mechanisms of the parties.
But that can damage really has damagedpublic confidence in the system.
Certainly Bush versus Gore wasan example of a really close
election where the systemitself came under stress.
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But as it came under stress therewere improvements that were made
that has stuck with us today andform of the Help America Vote act,
but also other infusions ofdollars to make the system better.
And of course now we've been ina recent period really since
20002016 election wherethe reliability of elections
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has been sort of a central tenetof political campaigns and
that is a significant difference forfrom where we've been before.
So that there really has beenunprecedented scrutiny and
attack on the election system since 2016.
Obviously those charges grew in intensity,he said in a massive
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understatement with the November2020 election and its aftermath.
Remember that it was four years agothat the country was processing
the events of January 6,2021, which of course is like
the ultimate challenge tothe reliability of elections and
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the peaceful transfer of powerthat elections provide us.
In the run up to this mostrecent the 2024 elections,
their reliability wasquestioned in well over 100
lawsuits filed more byRepublicans than Democrats, but
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by both parties talking about eitherflaws in the system itself or
unfairness in the laws thatsort of govern the system.
All those suits challenged various aspectsof the accuracy and fairness of elections.
And there was an awful lot ofrhetoric to go around it about
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elections being rigged or stolen.
Now, given the closeness ofthe polls pre election in the seven
key battleground states,it was not crazy to expect an all out
assault on the institution ofAmerican elections in 2024.
But then the election itself happened andthe Election Administrator's Prayer
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please Lord, don't let this bea close election was in fact answered.
And miraculously,all those challenges to the election
system that we've been worrying about andHearing went away.
It is important to notethat in all those 100,
more than 100 cases presented in 2024,
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there was actually no found evidenceof any illegal voters casting
ballots of non citizens voting,of absentee ballot fraud or anything else.
So the results themselveswere not challenged.
The cases did not go forwardto make a finding like that.
The question for us now,and we'll be discussing,
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is the institution of Americanelections now universally loved and
admired, never again to besubject to challenge or question.
Let me echo what Justin said,which is that's real unlikely.
The way to deal with the situation is Ithink, both short term and long term.
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The short term suggests that allthe litigation challenges at least,
were more tactical.
And it is not surprising thatthose cases did not go forward.
After all, if the results are clear,and especially if you're a candidate,
one, you're not going to shake upthe apple cart by continuing to challenge
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a particular election result.
But that does not mean that there isn'tstill a sizable segment of the population
who has real questions about electionssystems in the way they run.
And so the magic moment isin this moment where there
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aren't challenges tothe results of the election,
to really study what people thinkthe flaws in the system are and
really take the administrative weaknessesand try and get the evidence for
them on the table to deal withfixing those problems at a time
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where it's not going to impactany particular election result.
That's a short term process becausepolling shows that there are still
a number of people who don't havefaith in the reliability of elections.
The longer term issue is that,truth be told, and
I say this as someone who'sdone recounts and contests,
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where you really do kick openthe hood of election systems,
is that our system is not built forprecision.
We made a policy decisionas a country over 200
years ago to have very localcontrol of our elections.
We determined it was best forour friends and
neighbors to run the electionsin their communities.
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The result of that today is thatthere are over 10,000 different
jurisdictions responsible for the casting,counting and certification of votes.
In 10,000 of anything,there are bound to be inconsistencies.
And sothere is a way to look at the system.
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It is perhaps a time to reimaginewhat our election system would be,
because as a matter of institutionaldesign, it would not be this.
We have challenges with technology,we have challenges with consistency.
We need to keep improving asthe systems themselves can be improved.
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So with that, I think rai'scommitment to the Institution
of American elections will really,I hope, take both the short term.
Let's look at the problems on the tablethat people say were wrong with
the system in the short term, butalso long term to reimagine what a system,
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if we were designing ittoday would look like.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (19:59):
Great. Thanks so much, Ben, for those comments.
I wondered if you andJustin could say a bit more.
You've had several convenings andsome here, some in Michigan
about the how to prepare electionofficials, you know, in the short term.
If you could say a bit moreabout what you've done there and
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what you think the right strategies are toprepare, say for the, you know, next
congressional elections or for states thathave off year state elections next year.
>> Ben Ginsberg (20:30):
Sure, well, I mean the heroes in this election were really
the local and state electionadministrators who conducted
the elections under unprecedentedchallenges and assault.
And really adopted a strategy ofbeing very transparent about systems.
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Like people didn't really much carebefore 2020 how votes were processed.
And election administratorsreally uniformly
decided that the best way todeal with that was transparency.
To aid that, we held two conferencesat Hoover over the course
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of the cycle with electionofficials from around the country,
the real sort of boots on the groundpeople to talk about, first of all,
best practices forrestoring public faith in elections and
transparency was the tactic, and
also to talk about the safeguardsin the election process.
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There are 11 stages ofthe election process.
Each has really great checks andbalances in it that
is not terribly well understoodby the public at large.
And sothose two conferences helped with that.
In September, we held a conferencein Ann Arbor, Michigan with
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a number of our fellow groups that broughttogether the Secretaries of State as
well as the key election officialsfrom six battleground states before
an audience of national media folksto describe the safeguards so
that their reporting duringthe course of the election would
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point out all those safeguardsthat are in the system.
And so that was,that was a very interesting and
I think helpful conference in termsof the way the battleground state
election officials were able to meetthe challenges presented to them.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (22:40):
Thanks, Justin.
Did you want to.
>> Justin Grimmer (22:42):
Yeah, yeah, just a slightly different tactic.
So I've spent a lot of time evaluating andthen engaging with people
who believe that electionsare being manipulated in some way.
And that's resulted in also me spendinga lot of time with evaluating these very
fringe theories that every electioneverywhere in America is being
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manipulated.
On its face, it sounds a little crazy, butthere is a dedicated group of activists,
particularly in deep redconservative counties, who,
who spend a lot of time advancing thesetheories, trying to gather evidence.
And I think this sort of interactionreally speaks to some of the challenges in
designing an electoral system.
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Individuals who are propagatingthese theories make them very vague.
Anything really could count asevidence that their theory is correct.
And so what you see in these smalllocalities is that a population gets very
motivated so to gather more evidence.
They gather whatever evidence they thinkis gonna be consistent with the theory,
and then that leads them to distrusttheir local officials more and
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then gather more evidence.
It's a real cycle of distrust.
So I've spent some time trying tointervene in those situations,
including spending time in Coos County,Oregon, where I testified before a.
County commission meeting facingoff against a particularly
prominent conspiracytheorist in the space.
>> Ben Ginsberg (24:07):
Justin deserves a huge amount of credit and
a lot of questions forhis work in really listening on a granular
level to the complaintsabout the election system.
And then presenting really terrific
evidence to show that thosefears were not realistic.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (24:32):
Agreed, [LAUGH] yeah, agreed.
So, in addition to the short termchallenges that each of you has
been doing so much to try to address andsuccessfully address.
There are also some longer termrecommendations about the laws, or
let's be optimistic and call themmedium term recommendations about
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the laws that states localities andwhere it's relevant.
Maybe perhaps the federal government,
though maybe it should allbe done at the state and
local level that might enact aboutthe election process to minimize distrust.
Could you say a bit about which sort ofprocedures in which states seem to work
better and have less distrustdue to these procedures?
>> Ben Ginsberg (25:21):
Sure, you wanna go first Justin, or you want me to?
>> Justin Grimmer (25:23):
Yeah, go ahead, Ben.
>> Ben Ginsberg (25:25):
Well, look, the, the complaints about the election
system fall into really three categories.
The first is clean voter rules.
Are there ineligible people voting eitherbecause they moved out of state or
they died or there are non-citizens?
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So being able to clean up the votingrolls is really, really important.
You can do that by a number of measures,
including figuring out better absenteeballot verification processes.
Maybe use digital signatures asopposed to wet ink signatures.
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For example, there can be programsbetween states that have been reduced
in recent years to cross check acrosstheir voter registration databases so
people aren't voting inmore than one place.
Another reform is prompt reporting.
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I mean the 50 states are reallylaboratories for the way you do things.
And some states, like Florida andGeorgia this year,
can report results really, really quickly.
Yet here in California and in New Yorkstate it takes a really long time and
they may still be someraces in California.
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So there are ways to look at differentstate laws to get prompt reporting.
The prompter the reporting, the moreconfidence people have in the results.
A whole lot of time has been shown to sortof be a petri dish of conspiracy ideas.
So really important to get results.
There are a certain number ofchecks that have been shown
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really through polling to provideincreased confidence in elections.
Voter ID is one of them.
It is a red hot partisan issue, butnonetheless it is, for example,
something that polls indicate thatthat gives voters more confidence.
So it really is a question ofbest practices among states and
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then political will in states.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (27:38):
Justin, >> Justin Grimmer
I think there is an inclination to havethis run at the states in particular
because that's what the Constitutionsays about where our elections
will be run if we sort of stack up.
A lot of the complaints though, we seethat there's an impulse, I think, from
both parties to want to have more federalcontrol over elections, which is a.
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What I would suggest is a surprising fact.
I think that's pretty obvious fromthe Democratic side with the bill that had
been HR1 under recent Democraticmajorities which proposed a variety
of reforms.
But many of the complaints that we sawin the run up to the 2024 election from
Republicans would be solved with morefederal intervention into the election
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system.
For example, if people are worried aboutdouble voting or individuals registered to
vote across multiple states,there's systems to deal with this.
Ben mentioned your crosscheck or Eric.
But a federal voter registration listseems like the most obvious way in which
one would manage that.
There's obviously a huge number ofproblems with trying to do that, but
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that would be one way toaddress that problem.
A second, you know, just basicthing that we could imagine from
the federal governmentwould be a requirement for
voter identification lawsacross the states, which so
Republicans were very worried aboutthe absence of voter identification laws.
So in fact.
And also on the registration listthinking about not having non citizens on
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the registration list, obviously they'renot allowed to vote in federal elections.
I think there's an opportunity for
a pretty grand bargain here ifthe two sides are willing to deal.
I think the Democratic Party would besilly to not accept a bargain that said
something like we'll impose voteridentification for all federal elections
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across the United States, allowing forindividuals to have a variety of ways to
show that identification and enablingpeople to get access identification.
And by the way, we're also going to createa federal registration list where we're
going to make it relatively easy forcitizens to register to vote.
That's a trade off that I thinkthe Democratic Party should make.
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And I think if that reform were made,
it would go a long way to improvingtrust in American elections.
Interesting.
Yeah.I don't know how politically.
>> Justin Grimmer (30:00):
Yeah, I think dead on arrival, but I think they should.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (30:05):
Interesting, yeah, but
sometimes these ideas after years.
Yeah, yeah, you gotta get them out there.
Okay, shifting gears just a little bit,
cuz we have some greataudience questions coming in.
So if you are waiting, go ahead andstart writing those in.
Other audience members havealready started doing so.
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Okay, the 2024 elections.
Ben, your comments in particularmentioned some of the lawsuits, but
each of you alluded to them.
So they didn't have the same level ofcontestation as recent elections, but
there's still stuff happening, right?
I've been seeing headlines.
The North Carolina Supreme Court recentlyblocked the seating of a Supreme Court
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justice.
I realize that's a state level election,but still,
that's an election challengeby one of the candidates.
Some of these others, quite a down.
But in Pennsylvania, right,there were these disputes about
the counting of ballots withundated envelopes, right, and
kind of tight race between McCormick andCasey.
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That has settled down.
But I mean, how should we thinkabout these constitutions?
Are they sort of just par for the course?
Is this just kind of where we are?
Is there something distinctive,you know, about our current politics
that makes them more prominent now thanthey were, say, 30 or 40 years ago?
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Or do they just seem more prominent?
>> Ben Ginsberg (31:35):
I think they just seem more prominent.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (31:37):
Okay.
>> Ben Ginsberg (31:38):
There have been a standard number of recounts in every
cycle since, I think,the beginning of time.
And when there are tight contests,lawyers being lawyers and
candidates being candidates,there is contestation.
I don't think there wasmore contestation in 2024.
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For than there has been in previous ones.
In fact, less really just by the numbers.
But I think whenever you have a tightelection, people are going to try and
find an advantage.
I think what has changed is sort of thenational awareness of election challenges,
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starting with Bush versus Gore,but certainly the 2020 election,
so that we do pay more attention to it in.
And the marvels of thoseInternet tubes get information
around to us in much more heated andsort of diffuse ways.
So it can seem a lot hotter baseline,it seems higher and
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maybe in some level weare getting the information.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (32:48):
Yeah, the information environment is distinctive.
Since this information, both of youreferred to the fact that trust has
declined, perhaps due to the accumulation,right?
Over time and then due to recentvery high profile situations.
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What can we as citizens do totry to help build this trust?
Are there things, is this somethingthat has to happen kind of from elites,
from academic organizations such as ours,or
are there things that everyone in theaudience could be doing to play a role?
>> Justin Grimmer (33:28):
So I, I do think there's a big role for
political candidates insecuring trust in elections.
So when candidates recognizeresults as legitimate,
that's going to go a long wayto restoring trust for citizens.
There's a number of thingsI think people can do.
If someone is suspicious about elections.
I would encourage them to gowork as an election official,
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go volunteer on election day, learnabout what, what is actually happening.
I want to offer a little bit ofa caveat there because time and again,
what we see across many of these smallcounties is that people will volunteer.
They'll go in looking foran investigation, and
they will look for something thatthey perceive to be anomalous.
And therefore evidence of fraud,when the anomaly is that the individual
(34:11):
volunteering just doesn'tunderstand how elections work.
So, for example, in Coos County,there were people who were volunteering.
They noticed there was a particularbarcode on the envelope for
primary ballots that indicatedwhich party a person belonged to.
This was quite a controversy inthe county because they said,
you could figure out my partyfrom my ballot from my envelope.
(34:32):
But it was a primary.
So, it's not all that, not all thatinformation deal that's public.
>> [LAUGH]>> Justin Grimmer: So going in and
volunteering and having this sort ofopen mind I think is really important.
The other thing I think that's a bitof a syndrome that happens when people
talk about elections and politics moregenerally is that they accept a sort of
(34:54):
received wisdom, sometimes uncritically.
So I see this time and again, maybeit's just the people I interact with,
where people will say something aboutthe extent of voter suppression to me,
and I'll say, well, how do you know that?
What is that based on?
What is that assessment?
And then it quickly becomes clear thatthey're sort of summarizing a headline
(35:15):
that they heard on Rachel Maddow ratherthan having deeply read about a law or
the consequences orwhat they think the problem is.
And so I think taking a bit of a criticaleye to statements made about any policy,
but elections in particular is reallyimportant, whether it be assertions that
people are being excluded or assertionsthat in elections being subject to
manipulation, knowing where thatevidence comes from, its reliability.
(35:39):
Who's saying, it is critically important?
>> Ben Ginsberg (35:42):
Yeah, let me echo what Justin said.
Look, one of the positives thatcame out of the 2020 election was
election administrators recognizing theneed for transparency of their process so
that if you have doubts about the electionsystem, it is far easier to go in and
(36:04):
actually kick the tires yourself,as opposed to sort of parroting
what you do here in either onthe Internet or even worse, cable tv.
The other thing that's true, andthis sort of relates to the overall
nature of the country,how polarized we are, is that there is not
(36:27):
nearly enough talking to people whohold different views from your own.
And elections is one of those areasbecause of the increased transparency,
where there are opportunities tomeet with people who do not agree
with you on the soundnessof the election system.
(36:48):
I was part of a nonprofit calledPillars of the Community that went into
the most contentious electionjurisdictions this cycle to recruit people
all across the political spectrumto meet with election officials and
kick the tires and engage withpeople who didn't agree with them.
RAI was very helpful in termsof amplifying that program.
(37:12):
But it is opportunities like that in anyjurisdiction to talk to the people on
the other side of the political aisle andsort of burst those bubbles that are so
harmful not only in elections butin other aspects of the community.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (37:29):
Excellent.
Thanks for those insights.
I want to turn to some of our audiencequestions to make sure we get a chance to
bring those in.
I have a host of otherquestions of my own, but
let's I can always talkto you a little offline.
So let's go to the audience questions now.
(37:50):
So one of the questions that'scome in is about mail ballots,
which of course on the one hand are notnew in that we've had absentee ballots for
a long time, but on the other handare newish in the sense that the extent
of mail voting has and the ways inwhich those procedures have changed in
(38:10):
the states has obviously acceleratedthe level of mail ballot voting.
Are they at the question from the audiencemember is, are they ever audited?
Can they be audited?
How can they be audited?
So what's the role of auditingmail ballots particularly?
I'm going to add my own.
That's the general question whichI think is the most important.
(38:31):
And then we have these states,like California,
where everybody gets the mail ballot,right?
So, this is sort ofcentral in certain states.
>> Ben Ginsberg (38:42):
Well, this goes to the kick the tires aspect of things.
I mean, all mail ballots that come in arefirst of all verified under a system where
they're both participants from all partiesinvolved in verifying those ballots.
There are also post electionaudits of all votes cast.
So in a state like California,that's virtually an all male ballot state,
(39:07):
all of the risk limiting audits that dotake place, I believe as a matter of law
in California, but as a matter of law inmany states do include absentee ballots.
It is also interesting tonote what happened with mail
balloting in this campaign.
Why they may be regardeda little more reliably.
(39:29):
There's a report in the New York Timesover the weekend showing how much
better Republicans did on mailballoting in 2024 than in 2020.
Of course,in 2020 the Republican Party was by and
large very critical ofthe accuracy of mail ballots.
And in 2024, recognizing the politicalpower of mail balloting and actually
(39:54):
Republicans traditional superiority inmail balloting programs, things shift.
It around andthe results demonstrated that.
So there may be more bipartisan faith inmail ballots even while there are a number
of safeguards and procedures that statescould impose to improve it even more.
>> Justin Grimmer (40:17):
Yeah, I'll just take up a little bit on those safeguards.
So I think there's just a number ofinteresting issues with mail ballots
that's worth thinking about going forward.
We know, just sort of setting the stage.
Before I talk about this, we know fromgreat research by Hoover senior fellow
Andy hall that there's maybe a smallturnout increase from all mail
(40:37):
ballot elections, but there's noconsistent partisan effect from all mail
ballot elections both in 2020 andelections before 2020.
There are still a number of issues thatI think we need to sort out with mail
ballots, one of which is how to dealwith the lack of privacy in voting and
how do we ensure that the individualrecording the votes is actually
(41:00):
the person who shouldbe casting the ballot.
None of these are goingto be systematic issues.
But on a local level, like local,I mean like in your house,
you could imagine someone feelingpressured to vote a particular way.
Certainly my wife put pressure onme to vote a particular way in
the presidential election.
And you could, you know, sothat's, that's humorous.
(41:22):
But there's other versions of that thatare much less funny about of imposition.
Also, without naming how I know thisperson, in a conversation with someone,
they reported that while their daughteris not particularly interested in voting,
it doesn't matter,he'll just fill out the ballot for her.
In this all election state, I suspectthe person who reported that to me is not
(41:43):
the only person who engagesin that sort of behavior.
That is highly illegal behavior.
Again, not going to be systematic, butit certainly is a thing to think about.
One other big issue with all male votingthat we're going to have to figure out is
that young people don'tlearn cursive anymore and
therefore cannot consistentlysign their names.
And so in California there was a hugeissue among voters 18 to 25 having many of
(42:07):
their ballots rejected because thesignature on their ballot did not match
the signature on file.
Likely what they recorded when theyreceived their driver's license.
This led to the need to do a lot ofcuring or going in after the fact and
proving that the person whocast the ballot is, you know,
the sort of real personwho should be casting it.
But that's going to be a big issue.
(42:28):
It seems to me this is a great examplewhere actually requiring something
like an ID number, the last foursocial would make things much easier,
it's more objective.
So I think these sorts of issues are gonnabe big as we're thinking about how to
implement and continue implementingclose to all mail elections.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (42:47):
Following up on that question,
we have one from the audienceabout ballot harvesting,
which obviously relatesto the mail ballots.
And we do read about the concerns aboutballot harvesting, at least in the news.
I mean, to what extent is it a threatto the integrity of elections?
Should we be concerned about it?
(43:10):
Are there ways this is from the audiencemember in which how the ballot harvesting
is conducted, you know,
matters in terms of the extent to whichit's a threat to election integrity?
>> Justin Grimmer (43:22):
Yeah, I think the real place that's entered into the conversation
in a prominent way is with thisunfortunate movie 2000 Mules,
where in the movie they used or claimedto have used cell phone data to track
individuals that weremoving close to dropboxes.
And so just to back up, ballot harvestingis generally understood to be the process
(43:44):
whereby political actors willcollect ballots from individuals and
then return them for those individuals.
So in 2000 mules, the allegationwas that there were nonprofits or
other sort of NGOs going out inthe world collecting these ballots and
returning them to particular dropboxes.
Now, even as stated, that didn't reallymake a lot of sense in the movie.
Like why use a dropbox and not a mailbox?
(44:05):
Subsequently, the person who createdthe movie, Dinesh D'Souza, has pointed out
that he didn't really have the evidenceto make the claims in that and
offered an apology.
Nevertheless, concerns aboutballot harvesting persist.
It's a very difficult thing to studybecause we don't have a lot of
markers of it when a ballot's returned.
So it's not something that'srecorded officially in survey data.
(44:28):
It looks like ballot harvesting in thesense that someone is giving their ballot
to someone else to turn in fromthem that's not a family member.
It looks like it's fairly rare.
There are still some concerns there that Ithink we want to think about that are sort
of like the all male election.
Even if it's not a big prominent thing,
we still want to think abouthow the elections are run.
So there's really an opportunity forcoercion.
(44:48):
If someone's being hired asan operative to go collect a ballot,
there's a concern that someonewho might be elderly or
otherwise in a position tonot really assert themselves,
that interaction might be induced tovote in some way they may not want to.
And a state may have some skepticismabout that, but in separate from
ballot harvesting, there's this otherbig issue that goes along with groups
(45:09):
effectively trying to blanket a statewith things like applications.
And what, what I found across a number ofstates is that there are often errors in
the numbers of hundreds of thousandsof names put incorrectly on absentee
ballot applications.
This leads to a lot of confusion.
People think that their petreceived an absentee ballot because
they don't know the differencebetween absentee ballot,
(45:32):
absentee ballot application, andthe proprietor at a bad list.
So to circle back, give a concise answer,
it doesn't seem like ballot harvesting ishaving a massive effect on any election.
Nevertheless, we could enactbetter policies to deal with,
I think a small number of instanceswhere there could be coercion.
>> Ben Ginsberg (45:50):
The states are all over the map on the legality of ballot
harvesting.
And so some states prohibit, some states,like California, almost encourage it.
I do think in terms ofconfidence in elections,
there is a special challenge forthe states like California,
(46:12):
the nine states that send outuniversal ballots to people.
So in other words, there are liveballots going out in households.
That is a greater risk ofpeople claiming manipulation
with live ballots as opposedto the states that require
(46:34):
absentee ballot applications andthen sending out ballots.
So I do think California andthe eight other states with universal
live ballots going out face moreof a challenge in confidence
than the other states whorequire applications first.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (46:55):
Okay, so
we're gonna go to another question aboutconfidence in the election process.
And we've each of you hasmentioned 2020 and Trump,
and this question wants to kindof dive into that a little more,
which is that their sense isthat the loss of confidence
(47:17):
is largely due to the Trump campaign.
They note the 2000 Florida recount and
2004 sort of Iowa controversy, but
think that those didn'treally have the same effect.
And they note that they believethe 2024 Trump campaign
(47:38):
would have repeatedthe effort had Trump lost.
So they'd like to know what's the solutionto this kind of systematic and
using their language based onthe 2020 outcome, unfounded
effort to discredit the electoralprocess by one kind of candidate.
But I think here they mean one national.
(48:00):
Candidate, you know, not statesupreme court justice in one state,
but a national candidate andnational party.
And how do you combat that?
Which is kind of, you know,let's say, less typical.
>> Ben Ginsberg (48:17):
Well, that's why I do think we're at a magic moment here
after the 2024 results to beable to address that issue.
There were a hundred lawsuits filedbefore this election by Trump supporters.
There was, you know, they got overthe threshold of presenting charges for
(48:39):
which they would eventuallyhave to have evidence.
I think it is sort of a time for
groups interested inelections to get together.
I would personally like to hearthe evidence from the lawyers who filed
those 100 cases.
And let's see if there are reallyproblems with the system.
(49:04):
And if there are, there should beuniversal agreement that you have to
fix problems that you can prove exist.
Again, the lawsuits didn'tproduce that evidence.
But this is a different time,and I think it is a positive for
groups across the politicalspectrum who have questions about
(49:26):
the reliability of the electionsystems to get together and
put it all out on the table andsee where it can lead.
>> Justin Grimmer (49:36):
Yeah, I think it's certainly a matter of scale.
So we've seen other people try to dosimilar efforts post election to say
that these ballots were castin some inappropriate way.
And usually what we find in thoseinstances we're able to push back using
some, some facts.
The key, I think, going forward is ifthere's an election system that both
(49:59):
sides can agree to that's functioningwell, that's making it possible for
the, for everyone to participatewhile maintaining security,
the better we can push on that frontier,the, you know, security access frontier,
I think it'll be less likely toget a repeat of the Trump efforts.
It's very difficult to insulate from that,taking it very seriously.
(50:22):
It's very difficult to say that wehave a perfect way to keep a candidate
from going on a sort of two monthrage campaign, from losing the rates.
There's not a lot that can be doneto stop that particular instance,
except having a system that works well,
where we can point to the manyways in which it works well.
And that's a lot of what we saw in the2020 election, was that in court cases or
(50:46):
when evidence was presented,individuals could point to the fact that
the claims being brought up did not havean evidentiary basis and that the election
could produce data that would refutethe claims, which I think is useful.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (51:03):
We have a related question which is about the fact that
the losing party, basically whetherit's national or more local or
State basically has an incentiveto sort of do this and that.
The voters have an incentive and sothey're wondering what can be done.
(51:25):
And I'll add to that.
I know you've mentioned proactivethings if you have suggestions of
what should election officialsdo when these claims emerge.
Right.Because you can do a lot of, you know,
probably the most important is whatyou do proactively and preemptively.
But then the claims still emerge.
(51:46):
It was a close election, somebody lost.
What should election officials do andhow can those efforts be successful?
Ex post well,when there are complaints about elections
because of the direct results of anelection, there are recounts and contests.
>> Ben Ginsberg (52:06):
And I think election officials will tell you they want to be
very open and transparent in thoseprocesses to allow the public to look at.
But if anyone has a specific complaintabout a specific close election,
then you really do get to kick openthe hood of the election machine and
(52:30):
take a look at all the records.
To Justin's point, it doesn'talways guarantee that a losing can.
An embittered losing candidateis going to accept the result
of that recount or contest orlitigation or even audit.
But nonetheless, in an objective sense,
(52:52):
election officials willmake that process open.
Do make that process open for.
For.For people to be able to see.
>> Justin Grimmer (53:02):
Yeah, I think there's couple reactions that can happen.
Sometimes you see election officialswho are under a lot of stress and
they hear something, a claim being made,it's very clearly a sour grapes kind of
claim, and they respond very dismissivelyand say, well, that's impossible or
that can't happen.
I think that that's an unfortunateresponse from an election official,
even though I'm very sympathetic tothe energy and that would lead them to,
(53:26):
to have that sort of response.
People are raising complaints andyou know, they want to be heard and
they want to understand.
And I think offering, you know,clear explanations based on the facts and
how elections are run isgoing to be very important.
But you know, for example, Stacey Abramsafter the 2018 election raised
(53:46):
a series of objections, not really any ofwhich were based on any sort of facts.
I think that that responding to thoseclaims did make election officials in
Georgia enable them to communicate moreclearly about some challenges they
would then face in 2020.
So I do think there'ssome practice involved.
But again, it's just really hard to designa system to say if a candidate is going to
(54:11):
be quite embittered that we canguarantee they won't erode trust.
That's going to be very hard to do.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (54:19):
We have a question A different angle on the mail in
ballots, which is from someone whomoved from Florida to Washington and
had been an election, you know,volunteered as a poll worker in Florida.
But then of course, in Washington, whereit's all mail in, they're not doing that.
(54:41):
And their experience as a poll worker wasthat there was a lot of excitement from
people who showed up at the polls andthat and participated in that way.
And, and they're wondering if there'sthoughts on whether, you know,
this sort of, that loss of real timephysical involvement in the election
process and seeing the poll workers and
(55:02):
the process firsthand maycontribute to a loss of confidence.
>> Justin Grimmer (55:06):
Just to take that very briefly.
So I personally always vote on electionday because I also like the excitement of
going to the polls.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (55:13):
I do too.
Voting here on campus.
>> Justin Grimmer (55:15):
Yeah.
And I, you know,I like seeing the democracy in action.
I like being able to thankthe election workers.
I have a.
Our colleague, Emily Booth Chapman,
who is a philosopher inthe political science department,
has a wonderful book where she makes anaffirmative case for election day voting.
Not based on skepticism about the securityof absentee voting, but that in her view,
(55:38):
it encourages a sort of civic performancetogether as people are going out to vote.
So I think, you know,that's certainly part of it.
Among the things that lead to skepticismfrom all mail ballots, I don't know how
much it is about going in that wouldbe a very hard thing to get data on.
I think the, you know, the thing thatprobably leads to the most distrust from
all male elections isthat it's very hard to.
(55:59):
To maintain a registration rolethat is exactly calibrated
to people who are currentlyeligible to vote in the state.
So by definition you're propagatingballots to people who cannot cast those
ballots.
I don't think those ballotsget returned very often, but
people think that they will,which leads to the crisis of confidence.
>> Ben Ginsberg (56:18):
Just to agree with that.
I mean, I think that the excitement and
being able to touch the electionsystem by going in to vote in person,
actually, whether it's election Day oreven early voting.
I live in Washington, D.C., which is farfrom a typical election jurisdiction,
but a lot of people do vote early, andthat sense of excitement is there as well.
(56:43):
It's a little less personalwith mail in voting, but
rates of participation in mail inballot states are certainly as high,
if not higher than in other states.
So it is hard, hard to make the argumentthat it actually hurts participation.
The sort of not having trust by not seeingthe system is a more interesting argument.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (57:09):
Hey, thanks so much.
I want to extend a great thankyou to both Justin and Ben for
their sharing all their insights anddescription of all they've been doing.
And especially thank you for
all you have been doing to buildconfidence in our election process.
Special thank you to our audience members.
(57:30):
We regret we can't get to everyquestion since we're out of time,
unfortunately, butwe do hope you'll join us again.
And I'm going to turn this overto Erin to say a few words about
our next webinar and the like.
>> Erin Tillman (57:46):
Thank you Brandice.
Thank you Ben and Justin.
Great conversation to echo Brandice,
we really appreciate your audiencequestions and your participation and
a special thanks to our events team formaking sure things run smoothly.
We just want to remind you that thisrecording will be available on the hoover
event webpage hoover.org in the nextthree to four business days.
(58:07):
Our next webinar will take placeon Wednesday, February 19,
2025 from 10 to 11am andwill feature a discussion with
Princeton University Associate ResearchScholar and Lecturer Lauren Wright on why
conservative students get the mostout of liberal education.
We'd like to encourage you to visitour series webpage and to sign up for
the next session.
(58:28):
You can access recordingsof previous webinars and
subscribe to the RAI Newsletterto receive updates and events.
You can find that in the chat andit's also at
www.hoover.org/reimagining-american-insti-tutions.
Have a wonderful rest of the day andthank you for join.
[MUSIC]
>> Erin Tillman (00:07):
Good morning.
My name is Erin Tillman, an AssociateDirector at the Hoover Institution,
and we'd like to welcomeyou to today's webinar
organized by the Hoover Institution Centerfor Revitalizing American Institutions,
also known as RAI.
Today's session will consist of a briefopening remarks from our panelists and
a facilitated discussion with ourmoderator, followed by a period where our
(00:28):
panelists will respond toquestions from audience members.
To submit a question, please use the Q and
A feature located at the bottomof your zoom screen.
We will do our best to respondas many questions as possible.
A recording of this webinar will beavailable @ hoover.org/rai within
the next few days.
The Center for Revitalizing AmericanInstitutions is a testament to
(00:49):
the Hoover Institution's motto,Ideas to Advancing Freedom.
The Center for Revitalizing AmericanInstitutions was established to study
the reasons behind the crisis intrust facing American institutions.
Analyze how they are operatingin practice, and
consider policy recommendations to rebuildtrust and increase their effectiveness.
RAI works with and supports Hoover Fellowsas well as faculty, practitioners, and
(01:13):
policymakers from across the countryto pursue evidence based reforms that
impact trust and efficacy in a widerange of American institutions.
Today's topic is extraordinarilytimely and important.
The past week saw the certification ofour most recent national elections, and
our panelists will discuss factors thathave conspired to undermine trust in
(01:35):
American elections andthe impact that misinformation and
polarization have on voter confidence,
as well as efforts underway to rebuildpublic confidence in these processes.
It gives me great pleasure to introducetoday's moderator, Brandice Canes-Wrone.
Brandice is the Maurice R Greenberg SeniorFellow and Director of the Center for
Revitalizing American Institutionsat the Hoover Institution.
(01:57):
She's also professor of Political Scienceand Professor by courtesy of
Political Economics atthe Graduate School of Business.
She served on faculty at mit,Northwestern, and Princeton until several
years ago when we were able toentice her to return to the farm.
I will hand you over to BrandiceCanes-Wrone to introduce our guests.
We have two today,Ben Ginsberg and Justin Grimmer.
(02:21):
Ben has been having a littlebit of technical difficulty,
so we will start with Justinuntil Ben is able to join us.
Brandice, over to you.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (02:30):
Thanks so much, Erin.
So I'd like to introduce Ben andJustin, but
I'm going to actually hold off onBen's introduction until he's on air.
I'm delighted to alreadyhave Justin with me.
Justin Grimmer is the Morris M DoyleCentennial professor in Public Policy in
Stanford's Department ofPolitical Science and
a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
(02:52):
Justin's also the co directorof the Democracy and
Polarization Lab at Stanford.
His research focuses on Congress,election, social media and data science.
Currently he's working on projectsinvolving American political institutions,
elections and developing newmachine learning methods for
the study of politics.
Justin's also co leading with Bena project at RAI on improving
(03:16):
American elections.
Very relevant today.
Aaron noted that each of the panelistswill be giving some introductory remarks
before we have a moderated panel,hopefully with Ben as well.
But Justin, you're here.
Could you lead us off?
>> Justin Grimmer (03:35):
Yeah, sure.
I'm happy to do that and thank you forhaving me, Brandice, and
very happy to be onhaving this conversation.
So I just wanted to sort ofset the stage a little bit and
talk about what I view as some of thethreats to trust in American elections.
And the way I see it is that there's tworeal broad threats to current trust in
American elections in the public.
(03:56):
One threat to the public perceivingelections as trustworthy are claims
made that US elections are subjectto substantial voter suppression.
That is that as these claims go,there are parties or
political actors who go out oftheir way to erect barriers
to exclude certain kinds of votersfrom participating in elections.
(04:19):
This would obviously, if true, would bevery bad because it would indicate that
the results of elections didn'treflect the will of the electorate,
but rather the selectedset of individuals.
But across a wide range of studies,some of which are my own,
what we consistently find is thatthere's just no evidence to support
claims of broad voter suppressionin American politics.
(04:40):
So take, for example, the controversyaround voter identification.
Many individuals on the left haveargued that voter identification laws
are a means to exclude particular kinds ofvoters from participating in elections.
But study after study,including some of my own,
have found that voter ID laws reallyhave a minuscule effect on turnout and
essentially no effect onwho's in the electorate.
(05:03):
We actually see a similar patternif we take a step back and
look more generally at laws.
In 2013, the Supreme Court issueda landmark ruling, Shelby v.
Holder.
That ruling ruled unconstitutional thecriteria used to decide which states would
be subject to pre clearance from theJustice Department, that is which states
would have to clear how they run theirelections with the Justice Department.
(05:27):
Again, the concerns from many on the leftwas that this would lead to a flood of
voter suppressing policies and excludingparticular kinds of voters from the polls.
And yet, again,what we find time, and again,
is that there's effectively no differencein turnout rates across states that were
formerly covered by section five of theVoting Rights act and states that weren't.
(05:50):
So those concerns didn't manifest,in fact, in research we're finishing now,
what we find is that in many instancesindividuals will assert that a policy
increases cost.
And really what they mean by that isthat the policy deviates from their own
personal normative view abouthow elections should be run,
rather than the than that statement beingthe result of some empirical assessment of
(06:12):
how hard it is to cast ballots.
Nevertheless, we seethat these myths persist.
In fact, there are prominent lawyers for
the Democratic Party who daily willdeclare that the goal of much policymaking
is to insulate Republican majoritiesthrough election administration policies.
Now, there's a parallel claim lately inUS politics, primarily made on the right,
(06:36):
though it is not a claim only on theright, that US elections are besieged with
manipulation, manipulation,fraud and illegal votes.
And here again, if this claim were true,we could see how it would be so
toxic to American democracy.
If true, this claim would imply that theresults of elections reflect who who was
better at manipulating the results of thevote or who was better at eliciting these
(06:58):
illegal votes, rather than again, the sortof true preferences of the electorate.
And again, fortunately,what we've found is that time and
again these claims simply justdon't stand up to scrutiny.
So take for example the claims that weremade in the run-up to the 2024 election.
There's sort of three broad claims.
First, that voter fileswere filled with errors and
(07:19):
enabling people to doublevote across different states.
Second, that there were many undocumentedor other non citizens registered to vote,
perhaps casting ballot.
And third, there were claims made thatvoter identification, that presence or
absence would significantlyaffect election results.
And just like the claimswith voter suppression,
(07:40):
these claims reallylack empirical backing.
Having done a very extensive scrutiny ofclaims about double voting, what we found
was that in many instances individualswho were thought to be double voting were
actually just individuals who the analystgrouped together inappropriately.
It was basically a data analysis error.
Rather than the result of someoneactually casting two votes.
(08:03):
Second, when we we did an extensiveanalysis of claims about non citizens
being registered to vote, and here againwe simply just did not find evidence.
One reason for
that is that many of the claims werebased on discredited survey methods.
Another more affirmative piece ofevidence, though, is that many states
conducted audits of their voter rolls tosee how many non citizens were on them.
(08:27):
And time and again what those statesfind is that there's only a very small
number of non citizens, many of whomare registered to vote because of an error
from the state, not from the individual.
And this is important.
The final number that results fromthe audit is almost always substantially
smaller than an initial headline claimabout individuals who could potentially be
(08:48):
non citizens.
And finally, on voter identification,those same results I mentioned before that
voter identification laws don't have a bigeffect cut the same way to undermine
claims that voter ID laws are reallyimportant or the lack of voter ID laws
are really important forDemocrats in order to conduct fraud.
We know that voter ID lawsdon't have a big effect, so
we know they're not suppressing votes.
(09:09):
But we also know that the absence ofvoter ID laws do not enable Democrats or
individuals who want to takeadvantage of the system to conduct
wide amounts of voter fraud.
Okay, so where are we at the moment?
And then I'll turn it back over.
I think on the whole,I'm optimistic about American elections.
I think on the whole,American elections perform well.
(09:32):
But that does not mean that it isnot the case that we need reform.
The reason that I think that we needreform is not that there are big problems
with voter suppression orthat there's lots of voter fraud, but
rather the challenge for policymakersis going to be to design an electoral
system to convince the public thatthese empirical patterns are true,
(09:56):
that their elections are accessible, andthat they're not subject to manipulation.
And thinking through exactly what thatpolicy looks like, I think is a big
challenge and hopefully one we can takeon an REI over the next couple of years.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (10:10):
Great. Thanks so much, Justin.
I'm delighted that Ben Ginsburg,the technical difficulties are done.
Someone commented recently at apresentation they just wish the challenges
were the same each year becauseyou learn how to solve them.
And I guess that's true with elections andbuilding election systems as well.
(10:31):
But I'm glad we solved this one.
Ben Ginsberg is the Volcker DistinguishedVisiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
He's a nationally known political lawadvocate representing participants in
the political process.
His clients have included presidentialcandidates political parties,
political campaigns,
members of Congress as well as manyother types of political organizations.
(10:54):
Ben served as National Counselto the 2000 and
2004 Bush Cheney presidential campaigns.
He played a central role in the wellknown 2000 Florida recount as well.
In 2012 and 2008 he was the NationalCounsel to Romney for President.
Ben was a partner at Jones Dayfrom 2014 to 2020 and
(11:17):
before that at Patton Boggs for 23 years.
Ben, we're delighted you're part of REIas well as here today on this webinar.
So we're in the point of the webinar ofopening remarks, so I want to open it up
to you and then we'll bring Justinback for the panel discussion.
>> Ben Ginsberg (11:35):
Great. Well, thank you Brandice, thank you for
having me.
Thank you for putting on a discussionof this really important topic.
And thank you for all the workthat Reai was able to do during
this past election to try andbolster confidence in American
elections through work with state andlocal election officials.
(11:58):
And I'll talk about that a little bit.
Let me agree with Justin's comment aboutthe institution itself is basically sound,
but there is sort of a crisisof confidence in it right now
that will require policymakersto think through both what's
(12:19):
been happening to the institutionover the past couple of decades and
really longer, as well as kindof what to do in the future
to strengthen the institution andmake it really more credible.
And we may well be at a magic moment forthat at this point in time.
(12:42):
The reality is that publicfaith in elections has
taken some hits for a number of years.
This is not really a new phenomenon.
There were vote buying instances in theTammany Hall and Big City machine days.
There have been more recent votingwars between the two political parties
(13:04):
on whether there's fraud,where there's suppression.
And that goes back and
forth in sort of the get outthe vote mechanisms of the parties.
But that can damage really has damagedpublic confidence in the system.
Certainly Bush versus Gore wasan example of a really close
election where the systemitself came under stress.
(13:29):
But as it came under stress therewere improvements that were made
that has stuck with us today andform of the Help America Vote act,
but also other infusions ofdollars to make the system better.
And of course now we've been ina recent period really since
20002016 election wherethe reliability of elections
(13:52):
has been sort of a central tenetof political campaigns and
that is a significant difference forfrom where we've been before.
So that there really has beenunprecedented scrutiny and
attack on the election system since 2016.
Obviously those charges grew in intensity,he said in a massive
(14:17):
understatement with the November2020 election and its aftermath.
Remember that it was four years agothat the country was processing
the events of January 6,2021, which of course is like
the ultimate challenge tothe reliability of elections and
(14:39):
the peaceful transfer of powerthat elections provide us.
In the run up to this mostrecent the 2024 elections,
their reliability wasquestioned in well over 100
lawsuits filed more byRepublicans than Democrats, but
(14:59):
by both parties talking about eitherflaws in the system itself or
unfairness in the laws thatsort of govern the system.
All those suits challenged various aspectsof the accuracy and fairness of elections.
And there was an awful lot ofrhetoric to go around it about
(15:22):
elections being rigged or stolen.
Now, given the closeness ofthe polls pre election in the seven
key battleground states,it was not crazy to expect an all out
assault on the institution ofAmerican elections in 2024.
But then the election itself happened andthe Election Administrator's Prayer
(15:47):
please Lord, don't let this bea close election was in fact answered.
And miraculously,all those challenges to the election
system that we've been worrying about andHearing went away.
It is important to notethat in all those 100,
more than 100 cases presented in 2024,
(16:10):
there was actually no found evidenceof any illegal voters casting
ballots of non citizens voting,of absentee ballot fraud or anything else.
So the results themselveswere not challenged.
The cases did not go forwardto make a finding like that.
The question for us now,and we'll be discussing,
(16:32):
is the institution of Americanelections now universally loved and
admired, never again to besubject to challenge or question.
Let me echo what Justin said,which is that's real unlikely.
The way to deal with the situation is Ithink, both short term and long term.
(16:54):
The short term suggests that allthe litigation challenges at least,
were more tactical.
And it is not surprising thatthose cases did not go forward.
After all, if the results are clear,and especially if you're a candidate,
one, you're not going to shake upthe apple cart by continuing to challenge
(17:16):
a particular election result.
But that does not mean that there isn'tstill a sizable segment of the population
who has real questions about electionssystems in the way they run.
And so the magic moment isin this moment where there
(17:37):
aren't challenges tothe results of the election,
to really study what people thinkthe flaws in the system are and
really take the administrative weaknessesand try and get the evidence for
them on the table to deal withfixing those problems at a time
(17:59):
where it's not going to impactany particular election result.
That's a short term process becausepolling shows that there are still
a number of people who don't havefaith in the reliability of elections.
The longer term issue is that,truth be told, and
I say this as someone who'sdone recounts and contests,
(18:22):
where you really do kick openthe hood of election systems,
is that our system is not built forprecision.
We made a policy decisionas a country over 200
years ago to have very localcontrol of our elections.
We determined it was best forour friends and
neighbors to run the electionsin their communities.
(18:45):
The result of that today is thatthere are over 10,000 different
jurisdictions responsible for the casting,counting and certification of votes.
In 10,000 of anything,there are bound to be inconsistencies.
And sothere is a way to look at the system.
(19:08):
It is perhaps a time to reimaginewhat our election system would be,
because as a matter of institutionaldesign, it would not be this.
We have challenges with technology,we have challenges with consistency.
We need to keep improving asthe systems themselves can be improved.
(19:30):
So with that, I think rai'scommitment to the Institution
of American elections will really,I hope, take both the short term.
Let's look at the problems on the tablethat people say were wrong with
the system in the short term, butalso long term to reimagine what a system,
(19:54):
if we were designing ittoday would look like.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (19:59):
Great. Thanks so much, Ben, for those comments.
I wondered if you andJustin could say a bit more.
You've had several convenings andsome here, some in Michigan
about the how to prepare electionofficials, you know, in the short term.
If you could say a bit moreabout what you've done there and
(20:19):
what you think the right strategies are toprepare, say for the, you know, next
congressional elections or for states thathave off year state elections next year.
>> Ben Ginsberg (20:30):
Sure, well, I mean the heroes in this election were really
the local and state electionadministrators who conducted
the elections under unprecedentedchallenges and assault.
And really adopted a strategy ofbeing very transparent about systems.
(20:53):
Like people didn't really much carebefore 2020 how votes were processed.
And election administratorsreally uniformly
decided that the best way todeal with that was transparency.
To aid that, we held two conferencesat Hoover over the course
(21:13):
of the cycle with electionofficials from around the country,
the real sort of boots on the groundpeople to talk about, first of all,
best practices forrestoring public faith in elections and
transparency was the tactic, and
also to talk about the safeguardsin the election process.
(21:35):
There are 11 stages ofthe election process.
Each has really great checks andbalances in it that
is not terribly well understoodby the public at large.
And sothose two conferences helped with that.
In September, we held a conferencein Ann Arbor, Michigan with
(21:59):
a number of our fellow groups that broughttogether the Secretaries of State as
well as the key election officialsfrom six battleground states before
an audience of national media folksto describe the safeguards so
that their reporting duringthe course of the election would
(22:21):
point out all those safeguardsthat are in the system.
And so that was,that was a very interesting and
I think helpful conference in termsof the way the battleground state
election officials were able to meetthe challenges presented to them.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (22:40):
Thanks, Justin.
Did you want to.
>> Justin Grimmer (22:42):
Yeah, yeah, just a slightly different tactic.
So I've spent a lot of time evaluating andthen engaging with people
who believe that electionsare being manipulated in some way.
And that's resulted in also me spendinga lot of time with evaluating these very
fringe theories that every electioneverywhere in America is being
(23:05):
manipulated.
On its face, it sounds a little crazy, butthere is a dedicated group of activists,
particularly in deep redconservative counties, who,
who spend a lot of time advancing thesetheories, trying to gather evidence.
And I think this sort of interactionreally speaks to some of the challenges in
designing an electoral system.
(23:26):
Individuals who are propagatingthese theories make them very vague.
Anything really could count asevidence that their theory is correct.
And so what you see in these smalllocalities is that a population gets very
motivated so to gather more evidence.
They gather whatever evidence they thinkis gonna be consistent with the theory,
and then that leads them to distrusttheir local officials more and
(23:47):
then gather more evidence.
It's a real cycle of distrust.
So I've spent some time trying tointervene in those situations,
including spending time in Coos County,Oregon, where I testified before a.
County commission meeting facingoff against a particularly
prominent conspiracytheorist in the space.
>> Ben Ginsberg (24:07):
Justin deserves a huge amount of credit and
a lot of questions forhis work in really listening on a granular
level to the complaintsabout the election system.
And then presenting really terrific
evidence to show that thosefears were not realistic.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (24:32):
Agreed, [LAUGH] yeah, agreed.
So, in addition to the short termchallenges that each of you has
been doing so much to try to address andsuccessfully address.
There are also some longer termrecommendations about the laws, or
let's be optimistic and call themmedium term recommendations about
(24:56):
the laws that states localities andwhere it's relevant.
Maybe perhaps the federal government,
though maybe it should allbe done at the state and
local level that might enact aboutthe election process to minimize distrust.
Could you say a bit about which sort ofprocedures in which states seem to work
better and have less distrustdue to these procedures?
>> Ben Ginsberg (25:21):
Sure, you wanna go first Justin, or you want me to?
>> Justin Grimmer (25:23):
Yeah, go ahead, Ben.
>> Ben Ginsberg (25:25):
Well, look, the, the complaints about the election
system fall into really three categories.
The first is clean voter rules.
Are there ineligible people voting eitherbecause they moved out of state or
they died or there are non-citizens?
(25:45):
So being able to clean up the votingrolls is really, really important.
You can do that by a number of measures,
including figuring out better absenteeballot verification processes.
Maybe use digital signatures asopposed to wet ink signatures.
(26:05):
For example, there can be programsbetween states that have been reduced
in recent years to cross check acrosstheir voter registration databases so
people aren't voting inmore than one place.
Another reform is prompt reporting.
(26:25):
I mean the 50 states are reallylaboratories for the way you do things.
And some states, like Florida andGeorgia this year,
can report results really, really quickly.
Yet here in California and in New Yorkstate it takes a really long time and
they may still be someraces in California.
(26:49):
So there are ways to look at differentstate laws to get prompt reporting.
The prompter the reporting, the moreconfidence people have in the results.
A whole lot of time has been shown to sortof be a petri dish of conspiracy ideas.
So really important to get results.
There are a certain number ofchecks that have been shown
(27:13):
really through polling to provideincreased confidence in elections.
Voter ID is one of them.
It is a red hot partisan issue, butnonetheless it is, for example,
something that polls indicate thatthat gives voters more confidence.
So it really is a question ofbest practices among states and
(27:36):
then political will in states.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (27:38):
Justin, >> Justin Grimmer
I think there is an inclination to havethis run at the states in particular
because that's what the Constitutionsays about where our elections
will be run if we sort of stack up.
A lot of the complaints though, we seethat there's an impulse, I think, from
both parties to want to have more federalcontrol over elections, which is a.
(27:59):
What I would suggest is a surprising fact.
I think that's pretty obvious fromthe Democratic side with the bill that had
been HR1 under recent Democraticmajorities which proposed a variety
of reforms.
But many of the complaints that we sawin the run up to the 2024 election from
Republicans would be solved with morefederal intervention into the election
(28:19):
system.
For example, if people are worried aboutdouble voting or individuals registered to
vote across multiple states,there's systems to deal with this.
Ben mentioned your crosscheck or Eric.
But a federal voter registration listseems like the most obvious way in which
one would manage that.
There's obviously a huge number ofproblems with trying to do that, but
(28:40):
that would be one way toaddress that problem.
A second, you know, just basicthing that we could imagine from
the federal governmentwould be a requirement for
voter identification lawsacross the states, which so
Republicans were very worried aboutthe absence of voter identification laws.
So in fact.
And also on the registration listthinking about not having non citizens on
(29:04):
the registration list, obviously they'renot allowed to vote in federal elections.
I think there's an opportunity for
a pretty grand bargain here ifthe two sides are willing to deal.
I think the Democratic Party would besilly to not accept a bargain that said
something like we'll impose voteridentification for all federal elections
(29:26):
across the United States, allowing forindividuals to have a variety of ways to
show that identification and enablingpeople to get access identification.
And by the way, we're also going to createa federal registration list where we're
going to make it relatively easy forcitizens to register to vote.
That's a trade off that I thinkthe Democratic Party should make.
(29:48):
And I think if that reform were made,
it would go a long way to improvingtrust in American elections.
Interesting.
Yeah.I don't know how politically.
>> Justin Grimmer (30:00):
Yeah, I think dead on arrival, but I think they should.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (30:05):
Interesting, yeah, but
sometimes these ideas after years.
Yeah, yeah, you gotta get them out there.
Okay, shifting gears just a little bit,
cuz we have some greataudience questions coming in.
So if you are waiting, go ahead andstart writing those in.
Other audience members havealready started doing so.
(30:27):
Okay, the 2024 elections.
Ben, your comments in particularmentioned some of the lawsuits, but
each of you alluded to them.
So they didn't have the same level ofcontestation as recent elections, but
there's still stuff happening, right?
I've been seeing headlines.
The North Carolina Supreme Court recentlyblocked the seating of a Supreme Court
(30:49):
justice.
I realize that's a state level election,but still,
that's an election challengeby one of the candidates.
Some of these others, quite a down.
But in Pennsylvania, right,there were these disputes about
the counting of ballots withundated envelopes, right, and
kind of tight race between McCormick andCasey.
(31:11):
That has settled down.
But I mean, how should we thinkabout these constitutions?
Are they sort of just par for the course?
Is this just kind of where we are?
Is there something distinctive,you know, about our current politics
that makes them more prominent now thanthey were, say, 30 or 40 years ago?
(31:31):
Or do they just seem more prominent?
>> Ben Ginsberg (31:35):
I think they just seem more prominent.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (31:37):
Okay.
>> Ben Ginsberg (31:38):
There have been a standard number of recounts in every
cycle since, I think,the beginning of time.
And when there are tight contests,lawyers being lawyers and
candidates being candidates,there is contestation.
I don't think there wasmore contestation in 2024.
(31:59):
For than there has been in previous ones.
In fact, less really just by the numbers.
But I think whenever you have a tightelection, people are going to try and
find an advantage.
I think what has changed is sort of thenational awareness of election challenges,
(32:21):
starting with Bush versus Gore,but certainly the 2020 election,
so that we do pay more attention to it in.
And the marvels of thoseInternet tubes get information
around to us in much more heated andsort of diffuse ways.
So it can seem a lot hotter baseline,it seems higher and
(32:44):
maybe in some level weare getting the information.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (32:48):
Yeah, the information environment is distinctive.
Since this information, both of youreferred to the fact that trust has
declined, perhaps due to the accumulation,right?
Over time and then due to recentvery high profile situations.
(33:08):
What can we as citizens do totry to help build this trust?
Are there things, is this somethingthat has to happen kind of from elites,
from academic organizations such as ours,or
are there things that everyone in theaudience could be doing to play a role?
>> Justin Grimmer (33:28):
So I, I do think there's a big role for
political candidates insecuring trust in elections.
So when candidates recognizeresults as legitimate,
that's going to go a long wayto restoring trust for citizens.
There's a number of thingsI think people can do.
If someone is suspicious about elections.
I would encourage them to gowork as an election official,
(33:49):
go volunteer on election day, learnabout what, what is actually happening.
I want to offer a little bit ofa caveat there because time and again,
what we see across many of these smallcounties is that people will volunteer.
They'll go in looking foran investigation, and
they will look for something thatthey perceive to be anomalous.
And therefore evidence of fraud,when the anomaly is that the individual
(34:11):
volunteering just doesn'tunderstand how elections work.
So, for example, in Coos County,there were people who were volunteering.
They noticed there was a particularbarcode on the envelope for
primary ballots that indicatedwhich party a person belonged to.
This was quite a controversy inthe county because they said,
you could figure out my partyfrom my ballot from my envelope.
(34:32):
But it was a primary.
So, it's not all that, not all thatinformation deal that's public.
>> [LAUGH]>> Justin Grimmer: So going in and
volunteering and having this sort ofopen mind I think is really important.
The other thing I think that's a bitof a syndrome that happens when people
talk about elections and politics moregenerally is that they accept a sort of
(34:54):
received wisdom, sometimes uncritically.
So I see this time and again, maybeit's just the people I interact with,
where people will say something aboutthe extent of voter suppression to me,
and I'll say, well, how do you know that?
What is that based on?
What is that assessment?
And then it quickly becomes clear thatthey're sort of summarizing a headline
(35:15):
that they heard on Rachel Maddow ratherthan having deeply read about a law or
the consequences orwhat they think the problem is.
And so I think taking a bit of a criticaleye to statements made about any policy,
but elections in particular is reallyimportant, whether it be assertions that
people are being excluded or assertionsthat in elections being subject to
manipulation, knowing where thatevidence comes from, its reliability.
(35:39):
Who's saying, it is critically important?
>> Ben Ginsberg (35:42):
Yeah, let me echo what Justin said.
Look, one of the positives thatcame out of the 2020 election was
election administrators recognizing theneed for transparency of their process so
that if you have doubts about the electionsystem, it is far easier to go in and
(36:04):
actually kick the tires yourself,as opposed to sort of parroting
what you do here in either onthe Internet or even worse, cable tv.
The other thing that's true, andthis sort of relates to the overall
nature of the country,how polarized we are, is that there is not
(36:27):
nearly enough talking to people whohold different views from your own.
And elections is one of those areasbecause of the increased transparency,
where there are opportunities tomeet with people who do not agree
with you on the soundnessof the election system.
(36:48):
I was part of a nonprofit calledPillars of the Community that went into
the most contentious electionjurisdictions this cycle to recruit people
all across the political spectrumto meet with election officials and
kick the tires and engage withpeople who didn't agree with them.
RAI was very helpful in termsof amplifying that program.
(37:12):
But it is opportunities like that in anyjurisdiction to talk to the people on
the other side of the political aisle andsort of burst those bubbles that are so
harmful not only in elections butin other aspects of the community.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (37:29):
Excellent.
Thanks for those insights.
I want to turn to some of our audiencequestions to make sure we get a chance to
bring those in.
I have a host of otherquestions of my own, but
let's I can always talkto you a little offline.
So let's go to the audience questions now.
(37:50):
So one of the questions that'scome in is about mail ballots,
which of course on the one hand are notnew in that we've had absentee ballots for
a long time, but on the other handare newish in the sense that the extent
of mail voting has and the ways inwhich those procedures have changed in
(38:10):
the states has obviously acceleratedthe level of mail ballot voting.
Are they at the question from the audiencemember is, are they ever audited?
Can they be audited?
How can they be audited?
So what's the role of auditingmail ballots particularly?
I'm going to add my own.
That's the general question whichI think is the most important.
(38:31):
And then we have these states,like California,
where everybody gets the mail ballot,right?
So, this is sort ofcentral in certain states.
>> Ben Ginsberg (38:42):
Well, this goes to the kick the tires aspect of things.
I mean, all mail ballots that come in arefirst of all verified under a system where
they're both participants from all partiesinvolved in verifying those ballots.
There are also post electionaudits of all votes cast.
So in a state like California,that's virtually an all male ballot state,
(39:07):
all of the risk limiting audits that dotake place, I believe as a matter of law
in California, but as a matter of law inmany states do include absentee ballots.
It is also interesting tonote what happened with mail
balloting in this campaign.
Why they may be regardeda little more reliably.
(39:29):
There's a report in the New York Timesover the weekend showing how much
better Republicans did on mailballoting in 2024 than in 2020.
Of course,in 2020 the Republican Party was by and
large very critical ofthe accuracy of mail ballots.
And in 2024, recognizing the politicalpower of mail balloting and actually
(39:54):
Republicans traditional superiority inmail balloting programs, things shift.
It around andthe results demonstrated that.
So there may be more bipartisan faith inmail ballots even while there are a number
of safeguards and procedures that statescould impose to improve it even more.
>> Justin Grimmer (40:17):
Yeah, I'll just take up a little bit on those safeguards.
So I think there's just a number ofinteresting issues with mail ballots
that's worth thinking about going forward.
We know, just sort of setting the stage.
Before I talk about this, we know fromgreat research by Hoover senior fellow
Andy hall that there's maybe a smallturnout increase from all mail
(40:37):
ballot elections, but there's noconsistent partisan effect from all mail
ballot elections both in 2020 andelections before 2020.
There are still a number of issues thatI think we need to sort out with mail
ballots, one of which is how to dealwith the lack of privacy in voting and
how do we ensure that the individualrecording the votes is actually
(41:00):
the person who shouldbe casting the ballot.
None of these are goingto be systematic issues.
But on a local level, like local,I mean like in your house,
you could imagine someone feelingpressured to vote a particular way.
Certainly my wife put pressure onme to vote a particular way in
the presidential election.
And you could, you know, sothat's, that's humorous.
(41:22):
But there's other versions of that thatare much less funny about of imposition.
Also, without naming how I know thisperson, in a conversation with someone,
they reported that while their daughteris not particularly interested in voting,
it doesn't matter,he'll just fill out the ballot for her.
In this all election state, I suspectthe person who reported that to me is not
(41:43):
the only person who engagesin that sort of behavior.
That is highly illegal behavior.
Again, not going to be systematic, butit certainly is a thing to think about.
One other big issue with all male votingthat we're going to have to figure out is
that young people don'tlearn cursive anymore and
therefore cannot consistentlysign their names.
And so in California there was a hugeissue among voters 18 to 25 having many of
(42:07):
their ballots rejected because thesignature on their ballot did not match
the signature on file.
Likely what they recorded when theyreceived their driver's license.
This led to the need to do a lot ofcuring or going in after the fact and
proving that the person whocast the ballot is, you know,
the sort of real personwho should be casting it.
But that's going to be a big issue.
(42:28):
It seems to me this is a great examplewhere actually requiring something
like an ID number, the last foursocial would make things much easier,
it's more objective.
So I think these sorts of issues are gonnabe big as we're thinking about how to
implement and continue implementingclose to all mail elections.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (42:47):
Following up on that question,
we have one from the audienceabout ballot harvesting,
which obviously relatesto the mail ballots.
And we do read about the concerns aboutballot harvesting, at least in the news.
I mean, to what extent is it a threatto the integrity of elections?
Should we be concerned about it?
(43:10):
Are there ways this is from the audiencemember in which how the ballot harvesting
is conducted, you know,
matters in terms of the extent to whichit's a threat to election integrity?
>> Justin Grimmer (43:22):
Yeah, I think the real place that's entered into the conversation
in a prominent way is with thisunfortunate movie 2000 Mules,
where in the movie they used or claimedto have used cell phone data to track
individuals that weremoving close to dropboxes.
And so just to back up, ballot harvestingis generally understood to be the process
(43:44):
whereby political actors willcollect ballots from individuals and
then return them for those individuals.
So in 2000 mules, the allegationwas that there were nonprofits or
other sort of NGOs going out inthe world collecting these ballots and
returning them to particular dropboxes.
Now, even as stated, that didn't reallymake a lot of sense in the movie.
Like why use a dropbox and not a mailbox?
(44:05):
Subsequently, the person who createdthe movie, Dinesh D'Souza, has pointed out
that he didn't really have the evidenceto make the claims in that and
offered an apology.
Nevertheless, concerns aboutballot harvesting persist.
It's a very difficult thing to studybecause we don't have a lot of
markers of it when a ballot's returned.
So it's not something that'srecorded officially in survey data.
(44:28):
It looks like ballot harvesting in thesense that someone is giving their ballot
to someone else to turn in fromthem that's not a family member.
It looks like it's fairly rare.
There are still some concerns there that Ithink we want to think about that are sort
of like the all male election.
Even if it's not a big prominent thing,
we still want to think abouthow the elections are run.
So there's really an opportunity forcoercion.
(44:48):
If someone's being hired asan operative to go collect a ballot,
there's a concern that someonewho might be elderly or
otherwise in a position tonot really assert themselves,
that interaction might be induced tovote in some way they may not want to.
And a state may have some skepticismabout that, but in separate from
ballot harvesting, there's this otherbig issue that goes along with groups
(45:09):
effectively trying to blanket a statewith things like applications.
And what, what I found across a number ofstates is that there are often errors in
the numbers of hundreds of thousandsof names put incorrectly on absentee
ballot applications.
This leads to a lot of confusion.
People think that their petreceived an absentee ballot because
they don't know the differencebetween absentee ballot,
(45:32):
absentee ballot application, andthe proprietor at a bad list.
So to circle back, give a concise answer,
it doesn't seem like ballot harvesting ishaving a massive effect on any election.
Nevertheless, we could enactbetter policies to deal with,
I think a small number of instanceswhere there could be coercion.
>> Ben Ginsberg (45:50):
The states are all over the map on the legality of ballot
harvesting.
And so some states prohibit, some states,like California, almost encourage it.
I do think in terms ofconfidence in elections,
there is a special challenge forthe states like California,
(46:12):
the nine states that send outuniversal ballots to people.
So in other words, there are liveballots going out in households.
That is a greater risk ofpeople claiming manipulation
with live ballots as opposedto the states that require
(46:34):
absentee ballot applications andthen sending out ballots.
So I do think California andthe eight other states with universal
live ballots going out face moreof a challenge in confidence
than the other states whorequire applications first.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (46:55):
Okay, so
we're gonna go to another question aboutconfidence in the election process.
And we've each of you hasmentioned 2020 and Trump,
and this question wants to kindof dive into that a little more,
which is that their sense isthat the loss of confidence
(47:17):
is largely due to the Trump campaign.
They note the 2000 Florida recount and
2004 sort of Iowa controversy, but
think that those didn'treally have the same effect.
And they note that they believethe 2024 Trump campaign
(47:38):
would have repeatedthe effort had Trump lost.
So they'd like to know what's the solutionto this kind of systematic and
using their language based onthe 2020 outcome, unfounded
effort to discredit the electoralprocess by one kind of candidate.
But I think here they mean one national.
(48:00):
Candidate, you know, not statesupreme court justice in one state,
but a national candidate andnational party.
And how do you combat that?
Which is kind of, you know,let's say, less typical.
>> Ben Ginsberg (48:17):
Well, that's why I do think we're at a magic moment here
after the 2024 results to beable to address that issue.
There were a hundred lawsuits filedbefore this election by Trump supporters.
There was, you know, they got overthe threshold of presenting charges for
(48:39):
which they would eventuallyhave to have evidence.
I think it is sort of a time for
groups interested inelections to get together.
I would personally like to hearthe evidence from the lawyers who filed
those 100 cases.
And let's see if there are reallyproblems with the system.
(49:04):
And if there are, there should beuniversal agreement that you have to
fix problems that you can prove exist.
Again, the lawsuits didn'tproduce that evidence.
But this is a different time,and I think it is a positive for
groups across the politicalspectrum who have questions about
(49:26):
the reliability of the electionsystems to get together and
put it all out on the table andsee where it can lead.
>> Justin Grimmer (49:36):
Yeah, I think it's certainly a matter of scale.
So we've seen other people try to dosimilar efforts post election to say
that these ballots were castin some inappropriate way.
And usually what we find in thoseinstances we're able to push back using
some, some facts.
The key, I think, going forward is ifthere's an election system that both
(49:59):
sides can agree to that's functioningwell, that's making it possible for
the, for everyone to participatewhile maintaining security,
the better we can push on that frontier,the, you know, security access frontier,
I think it'll be less likely toget a repeat of the Trump efforts.
It's very difficult to insulate from that,taking it very seriously.
(50:22):
It's very difficult to say that wehave a perfect way to keep a candidate
from going on a sort of two monthrage campaign, from losing the rates.
There's not a lot that can be doneto stop that particular instance,
except having a system that works well,
where we can point to the manyways in which it works well.
And that's a lot of what we saw in the2020 election, was that in court cases or
(50:46):
when evidence was presented,individuals could point to the fact that
the claims being brought up did not havean evidentiary basis and that the election
could produce data that would refutethe claims, which I think is useful.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (51:03):
We have a related question which is about the fact that
the losing party, basically whetherit's national or more local or
State basically has an incentiveto sort of do this and that.
The voters have an incentive and sothey're wondering what can be done.
(51:25):
And I'll add to that.
I know you've mentioned proactivethings if you have suggestions of
what should election officialsdo when these claims emerge.
Right.Because you can do a lot of, you know,
probably the most important is whatyou do proactively and preemptively.
But then the claims still emerge.
(51:46):
It was a close election, somebody lost.
What should election officials do andhow can those efforts be successful?
Ex post well,when there are complaints about elections
because of the direct results of anelection, there are recounts and contests.
>> Ben Ginsberg (52:06):
And I think election officials will tell you they want to be
very open and transparent in thoseprocesses to allow the public to look at.
But if anyone has a specific complaintabout a specific close election,
then you really do get to kick openthe hood of the election machine and
(52:30):
take a look at all the records.
To Justin's point, it doesn'talways guarantee that a losing can.
An embittered losing candidateis going to accept the result
of that recount or contest orlitigation or even audit.
But nonetheless, in an objective sense,
(52:52):
election officials willmake that process open.
Do make that process open for.
For.For people to be able to see.
>> Justin Grimmer (53:02):
Yeah, I think there's couple reactions that can happen.
Sometimes you see election officialswho are under a lot of stress and
they hear something, a claim being made,it's very clearly a sour grapes kind of
claim, and they respond very dismissivelyand say, well, that's impossible or
that can't happen.
I think that that's an unfortunateresponse from an election official,
even though I'm very sympathetic tothe energy and that would lead them to,
(53:26):
to have that sort of response.
People are raising complaints andyou know, they want to be heard and
they want to understand.
And I think offering, you know,clear explanations based on the facts and
how elections are run isgoing to be very important.
But you know, for example, Stacey Abramsafter the 2018 election raised
(53:46):
a series of objections, not really any ofwhich were based on any sort of facts.
I think that that responding to thoseclaims did make election officials in
Georgia enable them to communicate moreclearly about some challenges they
would then face in 2020.
So I do think there'ssome practice involved.
But again, it's just really hard to designa system to say if a candidate is going to
(54:11):
be quite embittered that we canguarantee they won't erode trust.
That's going to be very hard to do.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (54:19):
We have a question A different angle on the mail in
ballots, which is from someone whomoved from Florida to Washington and
had been an election, you know,volunteered as a poll worker in Florida.
But then of course, in Washington, whereit's all mail in, they're not doing that.
(54:41):
And their experience as a poll worker wasthat there was a lot of excitement from
people who showed up at the polls andthat and participated in that way.
And, and they're wondering if there'sthoughts on whether, you know,
this sort of, that loss of real timephysical involvement in the election
process and seeing the poll workers and
(55:02):
the process firsthand maycontribute to a loss of confidence.
>> Justin Grimmer (55:06):
Just to take that very briefly.
So I personally always vote on electionday because I also like the excitement of
going to the polls.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (55:13):
I do too.
Voting here on campus.
>> Justin Grimmer (55:15):
Yeah.
And I, you know,I like seeing the democracy in action.
I like being able to thankthe election workers.
I have a.
Our colleague, Emily Booth Chapman,
who is a philosopher inthe political science department,
has a wonderful book where she makes anaffirmative case for election day voting.
Not based on skepticism about the securityof absentee voting, but that in her view,
(55:38):
it encourages a sort of civic performancetogether as people are going out to vote.
So I think, you know,that's certainly part of it.
Among the things that lead to skepticismfrom all mail ballots, I don't know how
much it is about going in that wouldbe a very hard thing to get data on.
I think the, you know, the thing thatprobably leads to the most distrust from
all male elections isthat it's very hard to.
(55:59):
To maintain a registration rolethat is exactly calibrated
to people who are currentlyeligible to vote in the state.
So by definition you're propagatingballots to people who cannot cast those
ballots.
I don't think those ballotsget returned very often, but
people think that they will,which leads to the crisis of confidence.
>> Ben Ginsberg (56:18):
Just to agree with that.
I mean, I think that the excitement and
being able to touch the electionsystem by going in to vote in person,
actually, whether it's election Day oreven early voting.
I live in Washington, D.C., which is farfrom a typical election jurisdiction,
but a lot of people do vote early, andthat sense of excitement is there as well.
(56:43):
It's a little less personalwith mail in voting, but
rates of participation in mail inballot states are certainly as high,
if not higher than in other states.
So it is hard, hard to make the argumentthat it actually hurts participation.
The sort of not having trust by not seeingthe system is a more interesting argument.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (57:09):
Hey, thanks so much.
I want to extend a great thankyou to both Justin and Ben for
their sharing all their insights anddescription of all they've been doing.
And especially thank you for
all you have been doing to buildconfidence in our election process.
Special thank you to our audience members.
(57:30):
We regret we can't get to everyquestion since we're out of time,
unfortunately, butwe do hope you'll join us again.
And I'm going to turn this overto Erin to say a few words about
our next webinar and the like.
>> Erin Tillman (57:46):
Thank you Brandice.
Thank you Ben and Justin.
Great conversation to echo Brandice,
we really appreciate your audiencequestions and your participation and
a special thanks to our events team formaking sure things run smoothly.
We just want to remind you that thisrecording will be available on the hoover
event webpage hoover.org in the nextthree to four business days.
(58:07):
Our next webinar will take placeon Wednesday, February 19,
2025 from 10 to 11am andwill feature a discussion with
Princeton University Associate ResearchScholar and Lecturer Lauren Wright on why
conservative students get the mostout of liberal education.
We'd like to encourage you to visitour series webpage and to sign up for
the next session.
(58:28):
You can access recordingsof previous webinars and
subscribe to the RAI Newsletterto receive updates and events.
You can find that in the chat andit's also at
www.hoover.org/reimagining-american-insti-tutions.
Have a wonderful rest of the day andthank you for join.
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