Let's Find Common Ground - Election Briefing: Can We Hold a Fair Election?: David Hawkins and Tristiaña Hinton

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

With only weeks to go before the 2020 election, many challenges remain to holding a free and fair vote in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.  From likely surge in mail-in ballots, to changes in polling places for millions of voters and the urgent need for accuracy, we discuss whether the election will be a smooth exercise of democracy or result in a constitutional crisis.  David Hawkings, Editor-in-Chief and Tristiana Hinton, Audience Development Editor, of The Fulcrum explain America's many different statewide systems of voting, and why it could take days or weeks for winners to be declared. We look at the disputes between Republicans and Democrats, including the possibility of a disputed result, and explore why many local election officials from both parties share common ground on the need for fair and accurate results.    The Fulcrum is a non-profit, non-partisan digital news organization focused exclusively on efforts to reverse the dysfunctions plaguing American democracy. The Fulcrum and Common Ground Committee are members of Bridge Alliance, which acts as a connectivity hub for over 90 civic action organizations.

Election 2020 is just weeks away, and for some, voting has already begun. North Carolina was the first state to send out absentee ballots in early September. But many challenges remain to holding a free and fair voting process in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Will this November's election be a smooth exercise of democracy, or could it result in a constitutional crisis? This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Milne-Tight. And I'm Richard Davies. In this episode, we look at the election itself. What's different this time? Are there areas of common ground between the two parties? Were useful lessons learned from the primaries? Will the election results fairly reflect the wishes of the people? Hinton, audience development editor of The Fulcrum, a non-profit online news site that covers the workings of democracy and attempts to reform it. We asked David first about the biggest threat to holding a fair election.

This is a more confusing election process than most Americans are used to. And the biggest single threat, I think, is that Americans will be confused and easily dissuaded, either dissuaded from voting or confused about the rules that apply to them and end up not playing by the rules that abide to them through no fault of their own and that their vote won't be cast. And that connected to that is the work that some politicians are doing to discourage people from knowing the rules and to discourage people from playing by the rules. Obviously, one of the biggest controversies of the year has been over mail-in voting. The president claims there could be massive fraud if many people use mail-in voting. Is he right to be concerned?

I would say he's not right to be concerned. Even if we look at the states that have been doing mail-in voting for their full elections, there are so few instances of fraud that it's not even something to be considered, really. I think it's Patterson, New Jersey, that has had the instance of fraud that's probably the one thing that anyone could point to. And it was it was a pretty small election. And the likelihood that fraud is going to be an issue is very minuscule. And the thing about Patterson would be, yes, it was one city council race and it was discovered straight away. It was discovered even before election day was over. Are there some mail-in voting systems, though, that are better than others? I mean,

there are some states that have a lot of experience of this. And one of the problems with mail-in voting, as we've seen in several primaries, is it can take a very long time for votes to be counted when more people are using mail-in ballots than is normally the case. Well, one question would be whether that should be categorized as a problem or just as a cautionary note that people should just be aware of going in. We do have a sort of a tradition in this country of viewing election night as sort of a holy moment when the polls close and miraculously, within just a couple of hours, more than 100 million ballots are counted and we know who the presidential winner is. There's essentially no shot that that's, almost no shot that that is

going to happen this year. If we believe the polls, it's not going to be a landslide one way or the other. It's going to be closely contested. It's going to be closely contested in several states that are not used to lots of mail-in balloting. So we may not get the full results on election night from some of the swing states that could be crucial to the result. What are examples, David? Pennsylvania and Michigan, two of the three states that sort of created Donald Trump's upset four years ago, the laws in those two states, while no excuse absentee voting is allowed, anybody can vote absentee, the law has not been changed. And election administrators aren't even allowed to

open ballot envelopes until the polls close on election day. Even though there's going to be presumably a flood of mail coming in, in the days leading up to the election, state law prohibits those envelopes from being touched until election night. I mean, it would be astonishing if we knew the results of Michigan or Pennsylvania within a couple of days. Whose job is it to prepare Americans for the fact that it won't just be a one night thing? Well, I think the media plays a big role in that and helping people prepare. That's something that we've been talking about recently is how do we make sure that people understand that election night is probably going to be very different than the ones that we've seen in the past. And so journalists play a big role in making sure that people understand because of the

changes that we're going to see this election, things aren't going to function the same way that they have in the past. And that's not a bad thing. And it's not something to be scared about or something or a reason to have to worry about the results. It's just a function of the way that the election is going to go this year. And so there is some concern that, the longer it takes for the results to come in, the more likely it is to be contested. So I think that's also a big part of our role is making sure

that people are just ready for the way things are going to look in November. Are both of you confident that the count will be largely accurate? There is no one single count. There are at least 51 counts, because my dear hometown, the District of Columbia, counts for the purposes of this election and this election only. And then within those 51 jurisdictions, there are many sub-counts. There are some places where the tabulation is done by county, by city. There's lots and lots of different counts. I think we should go in with the supposition that the count will be accurate, but the count will just take a while, and that any claims of victory, nationwide victory on election

night are highly unlikely to be reliable because the vote count that we have on election night, grand total of votes that are cast that will have been tabulated by the time we all fall asleep the morning after the election is not going to be comprehensive enough for one side or the other to claim victory. But I do think in the end, the counts will, well, I think there'll be tons of litigation, but in the end, the counts will be accurate. DR. KATHLEEN HALLISON We've talked about the fact that there are states that cannot open absentee ballots or mail-in ballots until the end of Election Day.

But there are also states that allow absentee ballots to come in after Election Day for a certain amount of time that can also be counted. And so that is another thing to consider when we're talking about the timeline is that some states will still have ballots coming in for days after the election that will be able to be counted. And so it's just a matter of being patient and waiting for all those numbers to come in. If no election result comes in, though, in some states or some congressional districts for weeks, is that a screw up? The supposition should be that it's not a screw up. I think the supposition should be that for the reason, again, that's an excellent point.

Two out of every three states, the ballots have to be in hand by the time the polls close in order to get counted. But in the rest of the states, there are ballots delayed in the mail will still be counted. Sometimes they have to show up just one day late, sometimes as long as two weeks late in order to be counted. Again, it varies state to state. So in a very, very close race, we could be waiting for weeks. So if one side is ahead on election night, the results might change some days later. There were congressional races in 2018 where the Republican candidate was ahead, but the Democrat was later declared the winner after mail-in votes were counted. David? This was the case famously in a Senate race in Arizona two years ago, where it seemed that the Republican candidate was quite comfortably ahead on election night.

It certainly looked that way. And the Democrat ended up winning quite comfortably when all the votes were counted. Similarly in California, there were three, four, I think, congressional races that looked like the Republicans seemed to have them in hand on election night or early the next morning. And by the time all the votes were tabulated, the Democrats won. So no one has alleged fraud in any of those cases. This election is going to be held during a pandemic. That has to make the job of local election officials a lot harder. Are they up to it? I think time will tell.

I think what we've seen so far is some places have done a decent job with their primaries of adjusting to holding those in-person elections during a pandemic, and other places have not been as successful. And so hopefully election officials have been taking the opportunity to learn from what has happened and implement things that are going to help folks out. But only time will tell. I think one of the big issues is going to be if there are going to be enough poll workers. We saw a lot of poll workers call out in the primaries.

And that's also a big concern, especially given the fact that poll workers tend to be older, which means that they are at the biggest risk when it comes to the coronavirus. And so there is the possibility that there just won't be enough people to operate some of these in-person polling places. I know I live in Maryland, and one of the things they're talking about is shutting down a lot of polling sites and switching over to polling centers. So that could be what a lot of people are seeing is that they're not voting in the places that they're usually voting. They do. Republican and Democratic election administrators were united in begging the Congress for money to help in an array of ways to help produce a credible, comprehensive, and healthy election. And Congress has essentially not come through. It came through with a small down payment in March.

These election officials essentially rallied around a figure of $4 billion that they'd collectively needed. Congress came through with about, I think, $450 million of that. Yeah, this is creating additional worry that the count will be slowed. Maybe not wrong, but slow, slow, slow. This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley. And I'm Richard Davies. We're speaking with journalists David Hawkins and Tristiania Hinton of The Fulcrum, and this show is the latest in our series of election briefings. One interesting fact, about four in five American voters this year are eligible to vote by mail.

Before we hear more from Tristiani and David, a word about something new. It's the Common Ground Committee scorecard. It helps you see to what extent the candidates seek agreement on the issues that will help move America forward. Whether they're common grounders. Learn whether our senators, governors, and members of Congress shed light, not heat, by checking their rankings

on the Common Ground Scorecard. Find out more at commongroundscorecard.org. That's commongroundscorecard.org. Be an informed voter. Move our nation away from polarization. Now more from David and Tristiania. We've been talking mostly about whether we can hold a fair election. But before even the first vote is cast, will this be an unfair election? Is it much more difficult for some people to be able to vote than others? some people to be able to vote than others? Yeah. So I think in communities of color in particular, there are a lot of things working against folks when they are trying to cast their ballots, right? If we look at the Native American community, for example, and we talk about mail-in voting and how it's supposed to be a way to help people vote more safely.

But if we look at the way that mail-in voting would work for folks living on the reservation, it actually disenfranchises Native American voters. There was actually a lawsuit filed in Arizona recently about mail-in ballots being able to arrive later than Election Day because of the fact that postal service on the reservation is so unreliable. And actually being able to get those ballots back by election day is not likely. And so when we talk about some of the larger issues, like people concerned about the postal service, like these are issues that affect some communities all the time. And so when we compound some of these issues that we're talking about, like longer lines at polls that serve voters of color, particularly in the

Black community, wait times are often much longer for Black voters than they are for white voters. And we talked about the fact that there are going to be fewer polling sites for people to go to and voters of color are going to be more likely to end up having to vote in person. So all of these things are compounded by normal election problems that we see every year and the pandemic is just going to make them that much worse as we continue to move forward. Do Republicans and Democrats have fundamentally different beliefs about whether the vote count will be accurate? No. The president has a different view than both Democrats and most Republicans. And the disconnect is so stark that last week, the president's own son, Donald Trump

Jr., was persuaded by the Republican Party to do what's called a robocall, an automated call to known Republican voters, encouraging them to request their absentee ballots. Republican voters encouraging them to request their absentee ballots. So the Republican governors and Republican secretaries of state, not only do they believe the system will work, but that they believe the system will work for their candidate. In Florida, which has a disproportionately older aging population, elderly people tend to vote Republican. aging population. Elderly people tend to vote Republican. Elderly people, one might assume, would be the most inclined to take advantage of Florida's no-excuse absentee voting system.

There is a genuine fear among Republicans in Florida that the president is talking these people out of voting because he's saying, there's no point in voting by mail. You're going to be part of a rigged election if you vote by mail. And they're being told by everyone else, if you can avoid going to a polling place, avoid it, if you're elderly, because you don't want to be exposed to the virus at a polling place. Paul Jay Given that answer, David, do you think there are possibilities or ways of reaching common ground? Well, I do. I do. I think just beneath the president's rhetoric about fraud and rigged election, I think just beneath that, there is a deep vein of common ground among election

administrators of both sides that people know how to run elections. And if there's enough money to be spent, I mean, there is a challenge with the money, but they know how to do it mechanically. There are, before this year, there were four states, one of them, one of the most red states in the country, Utah, that were conducting all of their elections by mail. And there were widespread agreement that it worked and that it produced accurate counts.

Voters felt more enfranchised. They felt like by seeing the ballot a couple of weeks out, their civic engagement was higher because they were confronted with the ballot at their kitchen table and they could sit and do the research and saying, what's the difference between City Councilman Fred and City Councilwoman Sally? And I can figure out which is which. And people time and time and time again say voting from home is the best way to have a more civically engaged electorate. Most state and federal elections are fought only between Democrats and Republicans. But what about independents? Because polls suggest that more voters describe themselves

as independent than either Republican or Democrat. And yet in many states, they're prevented from voting in party primaries. That's a very important point, which is that if you're a Republican primary voter or a Democratic primary voter, you've probably been through this pandemic altered drill once this year. But if you're an independent voter in many states, you haven't been because there are plenty of states where independents, even if they feel compelled to enter the partisan fray for a year, they're not able to. So in terms of the mechanics of the election, yes, I think there are some independent voters who are still getting their head around all the complexities of this year in a way their more partisan neighbors have already tried it. As you say, a lot of independents generally in our democratic system feel kind of boxed out. It's what we call, we often end up referring to it in our copy at the

fulcrum as the duopoly. And the duopoly tends to box out independent voices. Tristiania, I see you nodding. Yeah, I think it's especially prevalent in the closed primary system. I live in Maryland, and we also function under a closed primary system. So if you're an independent voter, you don't really count until the general, unless you're voting for school board. unless you're voting for school board. And I think it can be very difficult for independent voters just when they're trying to function within the system. I would say one of the most important elections

that doesn't involve a person in the country this year is going to be there's a referendum in Florida, right? So our largest purple state, the third largest state, the people of Florida are going to decide this fall whether to do away with partisan primaries altogether and to open up all of their primaries to all candidates of all parties and just allow the top two finishers, regardless of party, to advance to the November general election. So when it comes to the voices of independents, this is a very, very big deal. Let's talk about another potential reform, ranked choice voting. First, because I know that the fulcrum has been thorough in its coverage of this issue. Oh, you're too kind. Could one of you explain what ranked choice voting is first? So ranked choice voting is essentially a voting method where people get to pick their vote for people in the order that they would like.

So you get a first choice, a second choice, a third choice and so on. And the way it's calculated is a little bit complicated, but there's a threshold. And if your first choice meets that threshold, then your vote is counted for them. If not, then your vote gets counted in the next round for your second choice until there's a winner. And why could that be a fairer system? So it keeps people from having to do the, well, this person's not going to win. And if I vote for them, then I'm splitting the vote calculation in their head, which is a big conversation that I'm hearing from a lot of folks right now. Instead of being able to vote for a third party candidate, because they feel like that's taking a vote away from whichever major

party candidate they would like to win. They just go for their second choice candidate. With ranked choice voting, they would be able to vote for their first choice candidate. And if that candidate doesn't meet the threshold, then their vote is counted towards whichever of the other candidates they've chosen as their second choice. So it gives people more options to be able to vote the way that they really want to vote instead of having to vote with all of these other calculations in mind. But in the end, the winner is the first person to emerge as having been mentioned on a majority of ballots. So the winner can always claim to have a majority support.

The idea is in order to curry favor, if not the first choice, second choice, or the third choice, candidates will tack more to the centre. They'll be more consensus driven. They'll be less polarised. It'll be less about cultivating a hardened base than it will be about broadening appeal. But who's doing this right now? How many states are using this system? Maine and only Maine. And then the voters of Massachusetts will decide this fall whether to do it for all of their elections. It's mostly done at the city level. New York City, most notably, will go to ranked choice voting for the election of mayor next year. Gerrymandering has been widely cited as another example of unfair elections. This has to do with the way maps are drawn.

Describe what gerrymandering means. So when legislative maps are drawn, politicians can, based on where voters live, draw the districts in a way that favors them to be able to win that district. I just looked at some states with their electoral maps, and there are some really strange looking congressional districts. For instance, the Snake on the Lake in Northern Ohio. And boy, there's also some weird ones where you live, Tristania, in Maryland. What's the snake on the lake first? Oh, the snake on the lake. Yeah, the snake on the lake was drawn 10 years ago when the Republicans decided that they had the opportunity to get rid of one of the two Democratic members of Congress from Ohio.

And all they needed to do was figure out a way to put the two of them in the same congressional district. And all that required was essentially drawing a congressional district that was about 120 miles long, connecting Akron, I believe, to part of Cleveland. And so the snake along the lake was drawn. Yeah, it's 120 miles long and what, half a mile wide. Barely big enough for them to drive up and down. So there are plenty of these. It is because the legislatures themselves draw these districts. The big debate that the fulcrum covers and that will be on the ballot also in several states this fall, Virginia most notably, is whether to take the pencils out of the hand of the politicians and turn the cartography job over to independent, nonpartisan actors. level in about eight states. The idea, right, as you would say, is that if independence can be told,

draw the maps without partisan consideration in mind, draw them to keep communities together, draw them to keep like-minded constituencies together, draw them to keep them compact. California does this, has worked pretty well. LESLIE KENDRICK I just want to point out that when it comes to partisan gerrymandering, both parties are guilty of this. Like, it's not something that just one party is doing. Everybody does it. Like you said, Maryland has some pretty bad gerrymandered districts and the Democratic state.

There are some aspects of making elections run smoother and making it easier for people to vote that probably if there was a partisan blind taste test applied, you'd get most Republicans voting for it. For example, I think the notion of automatic voter registration, where you are automatically registered to vote whenever you deal with the Motor Vehicle Bureau in your state. I bet there would be common ground if only that proposition were put before the voters or allowing people to register closer to election day. I think there are some, but they're sort of the second tier things. What keeps you up at night? What is your biggest fear with regard to this coming election? Tristania?

I think for me, it's the disenfranchisement of minority communities, which is something that always exists in our elections. But I worry that with the added complication of the coronavirus, that there are going to be a lot of communities that are disenfranchised come election day. David? I would say my biggest fear is that when the election is over, and that I think it is possible that the election might not be over until early next year, but once we know who will be the president on January 20th, my biggest fear is that we will have even more work to bridge the divide than we have now. to bridge the divide than we have now. And that we're already torn as a country pretty emphatically. And it's hard for me to see too many scenarios

where the tear doesn't get worse by the time this is over. Thank you very much for joining us on Let's Find Common Ground. David Hawkins and Tristiania Hinton from The Fulcrum, an online publication that shares news stories about the workings of democracy. In the coming weeks, we'll have more briefings on election

issues. Let's Find Common Ground is a production of Common Ground Committee. Thanks for listening.