Can Trump steal the midterms?

These days, Election Day isn't really a thing. It's more like Election Month. But here's a question. How secure is our voting system? Especially considering that the president has spent the last several years explicitly attacking its integrity. The president wants to use the post office to control who does and does not get mail ballots. This morning, with the midterms fast approaching, President Trump attempting to crack down on mail-in ballots. We'll never have an honest election if you have mail in it. And it's time that the Republicans get tough and stop it. He repeated unsupported claims of fraud. He accused China of obtaining thousands of voter rolls. Trump has challenged state's authority on their voting rolls, raised fears about foreign interference, tried to change the rules on mail-in ballots, and basically just confused the hell out of everybody. But it's worth asking, has it worked? To some degree, I think the administration has succeeded in creating some rules and created some confusion about the rules or a lack of confidence. But the only way that that campaign to undermine our confidence and to sow distrust actually works is if voters stay home. Eliza Swearenbecker is the deputy director for the Voting Rights Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. And this week on America Actually, we ask her, how safe is our vote? And what happens if Donald Trump tries to pull some shenanigans come election day? Let's dig in. Are you a pet owner? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. Always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats. According to consumeradvocate.org, you get paid back up to 90% of vet bills. At any vet in the U.S. and Canada. With claims paid back in as little as two days. Go to FetchPet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's FetchPet.com slash save. Support for the show today comes from Bill. When it comes to managing money, forget the hype and look at results. Bill boasts a trillion dollars of secure payment transactions. One trillion dollars. And that powers their BillPay tools. Instead of just moving money, Bill is powering the financial operations of nearly a half million customers. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit Bill.com slash proven to get started and grab a $150 gift card as a thank you. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details. Thank you. The Trump administration has spent a ton of time in the lead up to these midterms attacking your right to vote. And while it's unclear just how successful those efforts have been, one thing is clear. People are freaked out. When we did our midterm study guide episode in the fall, concerns about voter integrity and the state of our democratic system were top of the list. I really have an existential fear that in the end, the Supreme Court might rule that it's okay to suppress vote by mail and the U.S. Postal Service will just not deliver our ballot. People didn't just seem concerned about who was going to win in November. They seemed even more concerned about whether the vote was going to win and whether the vote would be fair in the first place. So with Election Day just around the corner, I wanted to bring in an expert that could help us separate fact from fiction. What are the threats to our voting system? Is there anything fishy going on? Or is this all just hype? Here's my conversation with Eliza. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I wanted to start kind of with just an overall kind of takeaway. If you could rank from one on the scale of one to 10, how concerned should people be about the concept of free and fair elections this November? I think the risk to free and fair elections this November is at this point relatively low. And that's because we, the Brennan Center and our allies across the voting rights field have been fighting fairly successfully against the Trump administration's campaign to meddle in elections. We're on a winning streak. Voters are on a winning streak. And the administration is losing in its effort, its campaign to undermine election administration. So are we talking about legal victories? Lay out the winning streak that voting rights advocates have been on. Absolutely. Many legal victories. So the president over the last two years issued two executive orders that attempted to meddle with the way that states run elections. First, by trying to change the federal voter registration form to require something like a passport to register to vote with that form. And in the end, in the second executive order, he attempted to meddle with the way that voters cast their ballots by mail. For both of those executive orders, courts have halted them because they are unlawful. The president does not have a role in administering elections or setting the rules for elections. Similarly, the Department of Justice, pursuant to the president's directive, asked states for their unredacted voter files. I remember that. Dozens of states refused to comply. And so the Department of Justice sued 30 states and Washington, D.C. So far, DOJ is on a 26-case losing streak. All 26 courts have decided that the Department of Justice is not entitled to those records. So voters continue to win repeatedly on the basis that this administration really has no business meddling with elections. But as we know, Donald Trump has continued, at least rhetorically, to push some of these claims. I mean, it kind of stands at odds with one another, the 26-case losing streak, as he's continuing to use his bully pulpit to further undermine confidence in our elections. But let's stick with the substance right now. Like, am I hearing that the threats that we were most concerned about, maybe at the beginning of this year, are kind of over? I think the threats that we were most concerned about have been contained. OK. And that voters should know that they can go out and cast their ballots with confidence, regardless of the method of voting that they want to use. So that includes mail-in ballots? Absolutely. OK. And I think the other kind of concern was about counts and folks feeling a little maybe nervous about the federal government's ability to meddle in local election control of counting the ballots. That's also seemed to have been rebuffed, too? Yes. One of the strengths of our election system across this country is actually its decentralization. Yeah. The fact that elections really are a local enterprise. Local and state election officials work super hard to prepare for and run elections month after month. They didn't just start in October. They've been doing this all year. And they're in charge of how elections run in their localities, and in their states. The president, the executive branch, doesn't have a role in setting the rules for elections. And when they've attempted to interfere in those rules, they've been rebuffed by the courts. OK. In July, Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Civil Rights Division in the DOJ, threatened state officials with criminal prosecution if any non-citizens cast a ballot in their state. Secretary of Homeland Security Mark Wayne Mullen also threatened election officials with criminal prosecution if they did not put Trump's election changes into effect. I'm hearing that states have rebuffed those efforts in the courts. But have those threats had any material effect? Certainly, state and local election officials continue to face attacks and threats from this administration, which is admittedly on a campaign to intimidate those election officials. They made it really obvious. Yes. The thing is, the administration doesn't have that authority. And voterless maintenance, which is the crux of what the administration is talking to state and local election officials about, who is on the voter rolls, that is the purview of state and local election officials. Federal law, federal statute, Congress has said that's state's job. And it's not the job of the executive branch to meddle with that. And they don't get to tell states what to do in terms of how they do voterless maintenance. DHS Secretary Mullen, though, did say that they found 250,000 plus non-citizens registered in a handful of states. Do we know the accuracy of those claims? Is that true? We know that those claims are not accurate based on the administration's own data when it's otherwise been reporting its investigations into whether there are ineligible people on the rolls, specifically non-citizens. For example, Louisiana or the state of Utah has run their voter rolls against federal data related to citizenship. And both of the chief election officials of those states have said, essentially, we don't have a problem with non-citizens on our voter rolls and our voterless maintenance is working well. This is confirmed by national study after national study, state investigation and audits of their own rolls. We know that in this country, only U.S. citizens vote with vanishingly rare exceptions. And to the extent that there have been those extraordinarily rare exceptions, they are basically a statistical nullity. They are not affecting elections in this country. And if you think about it, why would a single person jeopardize their liberty, their ability to stay in this country, to intentionally improperly cast a ballot if they know they shouldn't? In the very rare circumstances when this happens, it's typically a mistake. But I wanted to ask about one of them. There's been a couple, including in Democratic states, earlier this summer, New Jersey Governor Mikey Scherer announced that more than 6,500 non-citizens were added to the state voter rolls because of a software error at the DMV. Obviously, Trump had used that to try to say that this problem was more widespread and that his claims had more accuracy than we have given them. So should I hear that 6,500 non-citizens 500 as a statistical anomaly, like, or does Trump have a point? Well, first, I think you need to consider a bunch of things. That's out of the scope of millions of voters in New Jersey. And also, it's not clear that all of those people, if they are non-citizens, have even voted. But looking beyond that, as we talked about the decentralization of the way elections are run, it's a complicated process. And election officials are hardworking folks who have layers of safeguards that help them identify people who are ineligible on the rolls and they go through the proper legal process to remove them. The fact that folks were identified because of an error at the DMV shows the system working, that when there are people who are not eligible, who mistakenly end up on the rolls, election officials are working hard to remove them. Voterless maintenance is a year-round process in the year and years leading up to elections. And these election officials are working hard to, if they find a mistake, fix them and keep their voter rolls clean all year round. I mean, I should say, though, the governor did mention in that announcement that 400. Of those non-citizens did end up voting. Is there anything that does need to be done? We can take it out of what the White House says need to be done. Is there anything that needs to be done to shore up the security of those voter rolls, considering, as the governor stated, 400 non-citizens did illegally participate in the democratic process? I think voterless maintenance can always be tuned up because it is complicated and difficult to do. And if we learn that there are better reliable sources that election officials can use or if there are additional processes. That they can run to identify people who may not be eligible and then they can reach out to those folks with proper notice and an opportunity to respond. We welcome states and localities trying to improve their voterless maintenance. What we should not do is impose policies that make it harder for every American citizen to be able to register, stay on the rolls and cast their ballots. I hear you. Trump made the Save America Act his top legislative priority, but he wasn't able to get Republicans to push it through Congress. Can you just lay out, though, what the stakes were on that legislation? What is the Save America Act and why did the Brennan Center call it the most restrictive voting bill ever? The Save Act is a bill that would require all American citizens to produce something like a passport or a birth certificate when they register to vote, every time they register and when they re-register. Is that so bad? The core of this policy is a show your papers policy and to demonstrate how bad it is. We have done research. We have done research showing that more than 21 million Americans do not have ready access to those documents, which means that if the Save Act were law, which to be clear, it is not, it would block millions of American voters from participating in our elections because they don't have ready access to those documents, perhaps because their current name does not match the name on those documents, and because they may be students or rural voters or they may work multiple jobs that it would make it virtually impossible for them to obtain access to those documents, which are expensive. Yeah. By the way. Yeah. I mean, at this point, we got to have a passport to fly if you don't have that real ID. I guess what you're saying is, though, that this impacts more than just the targeted population of non-citizens. There's a lot of American citizens who don't have access to those documents who will be the bigger group impacted by the Save Act. Yes. Again, tens of millions of Americans don't have ready access to the documents that the Save Act would require. And the reason why it has not passed the Senate is because so many Americans made their voices heard and spoke directly. With their representatives and their senators and their staffs and told them that they do not want a show your papers policy that is going to block millions of Americans from participating. Yeah, it's one of the few instances we've seen congressional Republicans stand up to a Donald Trump legislative priority. And I think to your point, that speaks to just how widespread unpopular this provision was. I was thinking about our conversation today and it reminded me of how Democrats failed to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act in the Biden administration. And I remember the debate at the time. I remember talking to people like, Now, was that a little overkill? I mean, what has been the impact of Democrats not pushing through their own voting rights legislation? I think we've seen the impact of not passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act over the last several years. First, we've seen states continue to pass wave after wave of restrictive voting rights. First, we've seen states continue to pass wave after wave of restrictive voting legislation that impacts voters and puts hurdles in their way when they're headed to the ballot box. Not allowing student IDs to qualify for the voter ID policy in New Hampshire, for example. Things that make it harder for eligible Americans to participate. We have also seen this Supreme Court continue to hack away at the Voting Rights Act and allow completely unmitigated partisan gerrymanders that make it harder for voters of color to elect candidates. Of their choice under the court's blessing of partisan gerrymanders. That would have been addressed in the Freedom to Vote Act. And it also would have been further addressed in the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. So we continue to see policies in place in states that make it harder for all voters and particularly voters of color to cast ballots and to have fair representation. And those policies would have, and I think still would, have a huge impact in making voting and representation fairer and more effective. And more accessible for all Americans. If I hear you right, you're saying those policies would have made a kind of federal standard around things like gerrymandering or access to voting. And because that has not been there, it's allowed some states to create a sort of patchwork. And in many states, that patchwork has been more restrictive. I guess I do also want to ask, you mentioned chipping away at the Voting Rights Act driven by the Supreme Court. Are we talking about the Calais decision that happened this year? What is the threat, particularly to those voters of color, black voting districts? In the South that that decision represents? So, yes, we're talking about the Calais decision, but that decision comes on the heels of a series of decisions starting in 2013 when the court gutted the preclearance regime of the Voting Rights Act, which was a provision that said that states and localities with a history of race discrimination in voting had to clear changes to their voting policies with DOJ or a federal court. Then later in 2021, we saw Brnovich, which made it harder for voters to get a remedy in court when their rights to vote have been burdened. The Supreme Court has chipped away at the Voting Rights Act to the point where it is sort of barely a husk of itself. And the Calais decision is just the latest, essentially blessing partisan gerrymandering, not just saying that the court doesn't have the authority to stop it, which is what they did in a 2019 case called Rucho, but now essentially saying that partisan gerrymandering is a reasonable basis or principle by which state legislatures should draw their lines. And now you have states like Texas and California essentially making it the policy of the state that they want to send members of one particular party to Congress. Yeah. That doesn't lend itself to fair representation and voters being able to have representatives that hear their voices. Yeah, I mean, I think this point is important because we've been tracking some of the gerrymandering fights throughout the year. And you're right to mention both Texas and California. Democrats responded to some of the Republican efforts to draw partisan maps by matching them with their own. But the impact has been, I would say, democracy itself. Like, it seems as if we're sort of in this race to the bottom where states are looking at each other and saying, wait, how can we actually construct a certain number of Democrats and Republicans coming out of our state to Congress outside of voter concerns? Is that fair description? Yeah, it's looking more like elected representatives are choosing their voters rather than voters are choosing their elected representatives. And that's really not the way. Our democracy or any democracy is supposed to work. Up next, what to expect on election day. If you're looking to hire, you need Indeed. With Indeed sponsored jobs, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Ask yourself, what are your best people spending their time on right now? Expense reports. Receipt chasing. Month-end close that takes weeks. You become what you spend on. And that's not what you're building toward. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that eliminates that work before it starts. AI agents that handle the manual stuff automatically so your team can spend their time on what actually compounds. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at brex.com slash AF. Support for the show comes from InGen. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard. But if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. InGen is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes. Earn up to 10% back on hotels. And in 2020. Engine customers save more than $300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join Enjin every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at enjin.com slash Vox. Let me ask about Election Day specifically. 14 states counting late arriving ballots. You know, should we be expecting one of those early lead, late reversal scenarios? Donald Trump used that as a kind of pretense to further his own election interference claims. How prepared should folks be about the timing of it all in November and how that could impact confidence in the results? You're absolutely right that we may get results out of states or in certain races in the days following Election Day and that voters should not expect to have the final results on Election Day. And when you hear reporting on the news that somebody's ahead or somebody's behind, they haven't counted all the votes yet. The important part is like 3% counted at the bottom of CNN. And really the critical thing is we need to count every vote and every person's vote needs to be counted. And so while it is true that some states allow ballots to arrive after Election Day, they all have to be cast by Election Day. And the Supreme Court just this year said that it's totally appropriate for states to set their own ballot receipt deadlines. So it is only fair that ballots that are cast in time by Election Day ought to be counted. And we have to be patient as an American electorate to get the proper results to count every ballot and make sure all the voices are heard. Yeah. Do we have to be patient though? I mean, like a part of me does feel like isn't it kind of wild that we can't get results on election night? I mean, I saw Donald Trump cite, you know, Brazilian presidential election. And you know why I know he's doing that in a self-interested place. I did have a second to think like, why does it take so long for us to kind of put these results together? You mentioned how, you know, these are fundamentally state and local enterprises. And that's part of the reason we have this diffused system. But is that contributing at this point to a lack of confidence, frankly, because I do think that some folks, even in good faith, would prefer the results a little faster. Sure. I could totally understand why people would prefer the results faster. And candidly, could states do better at preparing, and counting faster? Sure. But they have limited resources. And they are working their butts off to prepare for the election with the staff that they have. And then they work tremendously hard to count properly, accurately, as fast as they can. So could states change their policies to allow them in some places to pre-process ballots, to allow them to get to results faster? Sure. I'm not saying states shouldn't change their policies to create more efficiency here. Absolutely, that's welcome. But given the rules of the road that we have, we need to make sure that every properly cast ballot is counted. Okay. Give us a couple things to look out for during election day or in the immediate aftermath. If I'm someone who is concerned, and I am, about election security and about free and fair elections, what should I be looking out for? So I heard that there was some anxiety about mail voting, for example. If you want to cast a mail ballot, just know that you probably have a bunch of options in your state as to how you can cast a mail ballot. You can certainly rely on the mail and have USPS deliver that ballot. But of course, we know occasionally mail gets delayed. So your state may have ballot drop boxes. You may have ballot drop off at election officials' offices or even at polling places. Find out your options. Yes, definitely find out your options. Voters should also check their voter registration status. Make sure it's up to date with their current address. Make sure they're still on the rolls. Of course, if you're not registered to vote and you still have time in your state to register, please do register. Everyone should participate. Our democracy works best the more of us that can participate. So if your registration date has not passed, don't forget to register to vote. And vote with your friends. Vote with your community. Vote with your family. Voting should be joyful. It's a civic experience that I think is really fun. I try to take my kids with me to vote because it's exciting. They get stickers. Everyone loves stickers. Listen, the stickers have really helped me and my confidence in democracy. It's half the reason I go. It's also a reminder. You get your sticker. Other people see you. They know it's election day. Maybe they go out to vote. So it's a way to be part of your community and invest in your community and to choose who you want to be a leader of your community. Yeah. You know, as we're talking, I'm thinking about all the conversations I've had oftentimes with Republicans or Trump supporters who cite their fears about election interference. And I would put them in kind of two categories. The overwhelming majority, I think, are downstream from Trump's misinformation. And I think we've talked about the ways in which that has been an intentional kind of playbook from the White House to serve its own self-interest. But if I give there, a good faith kind of concern, I have often heard from some Republicans that, oh, yeah, maybe the election wasn't stolen in a traditional sense, but that in 2020 and particularly during the pandemic, a lot of states changed their election rules that fundamentally shifted how we vote. How would you describe the state of our kind of electoral system and maybe that pre to post pandemic? Was it such a big sea change in terms of how we cast ballots? I don't think so. We certainly saw in 2020 several states temporarily allow for more mail voting or universal access to mail voting in the context of the pandemic because for many, many voters, it was not safe for them to be at a polling place. But many of those policies were time limited, first of all. And to the extent that there were policy shifts, they tended to be, again, toward allowing more mail voting. Mail voting is super popular, not just with it, but also with Democrats, but also with Republicans. Roughly one in three Americans vote by mail. That's because it's pretty convenient. And I think our democracy should meet voters where they are. And it should be as easy as possible for American citizens to be able to cast their ballots. I was recently asked about like threats to democracy and, you know, citing folks like you were mentioning, oh, you know, Donald Trump's biggest efforts on this front may have not panned out. But then someone asked me about the kind of post-election efforts or the threats we've seen from Republicans to maybe, you know, not seat a member of Congress who was duly elected. And those seem like they should be getting some attention. Earlier this year, Democrat and Republican in Congress circulated a letter asking members to commit to recognizing state-certified winners and, quote, oppose any attempt to refuse or delay a seating of a member-elect. We saw Speaker Johnson delay the swearing-in of an Arizona representative last year. And that seems to me like maybe a preview of what might be to come. How fearful should we be of these kind of post-election attempts, not necessarily at interfering with the result, but interfering with the member being seated? I think those scenarios are highly unlikely. I understand why folks are worried about them. But the reality is, as we've discussed, states have their own certification processes, which are laid out in state law and that are mandatory for them to follow. It is not discretionary whether states certify their elections. And so once there is a new Congress, we have confidence that they will be seated according to how the voters actually cast their ballots. OK, you're actually making me feel pretty hopeful about this November. I like it. I want to end by thinking about Trump's consistent questioning of the integrity of our election system. If we haven't seen it substantively change people's access to the ballot in big ways this November, what do you think is the lasting impact of a presidency that has been relentlessly focused on people's access to the ballot? on things like the Save America Act or pressuring these states? Like, if the fear isn't that November is stolen, what is the impact then? Just because we have won in many courts against this administration doesn't delude me into thinking that this administration is just going to stop in this now years-long campaign to sow doubt in our election systems. And I think that is the intent. It's to create a lack of confidence. It's to discourage voters from participating. And to some degree, I think the administration has succeeded in creating some confusion about the rules or a lack of confidence. And the way to defeat that attempt to shake our trust in democracy is just to participate in our democracy and to turn out and to make their voices heard regardless of party, regardless of party, regardless of candidate. And to say that we will not be made to fear participation in our democracy, but we are going to continue to seize it and take joy in it and show that we deserve a stronger representative democracy that serves all Americans. Let's end on a note of hope. We've been talking about the ways distrust have been sown in our elections. What are things that could happen to inspire trust in our electoral system? Are there reforms or things that the Brennan Senate has looked at that you think might make the public feel a sense of reinvigorated confidence? Because I do think Donald Trump has chipped away at it. I think there are certainly things that Congress could do, as you said, to create a national floor of voter access and ensure that someone's right to vote doesn't depend on what state they live on. That includes basic reforms like same-day registration, online voter registration, universal access to mail voting that doesn't require strict satisfaction. of certain excuse requirements, which still exists in many states, I also think to what we talked about earlier with respect to Calais, I think it's time for Congress to ban partisan gerrymandering. Yeah. Someone tell them that. We are. We're working on it. I also think it's time to restore the Voting Rights Act and Congress can enact a statutory right to vote that is meaningfully enforceable so that voters can go to court if their voting rights have been burdened and they can get a real remedy. And that has been really undermined by the Supreme Court. But Congress can and should respond. They have it within their power. The Constitution gives Congress the power to set rules for elections. They should. I'm thinking about all of the anxiety we heard throughout the summer about this topic. It sounds as if maybe because of that anxiety, a lot of the worst impacts that Donald Trump could have had on this election in November seem to have been mitigated. I think the anxiety is the point. There's an attempt. There's an attempt to undermine people's faith in the system. And we want to remind folks that there is an easy way to overcome that, which is just to get out there and vote and have confidence. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. After talking with Eliza, I honestly feel a little bit better. Our voting system is so local, so dispersed, that it honestly makes interference a little bit harder to execute. But that doesn't mean that Trump's. Threats don't matter. He's sown confusion, raised the likelihood that people don't trust the results, and altogether depressed people's confidence in our democratic process. But I leave this conversation thankful for people like Eliza and the Brennan Center who have fought him in the courts at every turn. Our president may not be committed to the democratic process, but hey, at least somebody is. Thank you. America Actually will be in your feeds every Saturday with an interesting interview in culture or politics. You can also watch these episodes on the Vox YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube.com slash Vox or click the link in the show notes. If you enjoy our reporting and you want to learn more, sign up for our weekly newsletter, Midterms Actually. Just go to Vox.com slash Midterms Actually to learn more. That's Vox.com slash Midterms Actually. This show was edited by Kasha Brasalian, fact-checked by Esther Gimm, and mixed by Shannon Mahoney. Christopher Snyder is our video editor, and Kun Uy is our senior art director. Our executive producer is Christina Vallis, and our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Additional support from Miranda Kennedy, David Tadashore, and Nisha Chittal. I'm Asnet Herndon, and this is America Actually. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in. An all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. 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