America Votes – The System Holds

>> Bill Whalen: It's Thursday, November 7, 2024. And welcome back to Saints, Sinners, and Salvageables, a Hoover Institution podcast examining America's democratic process and the many challenges inherent in staging elections in these complicated and partisan times. I'm Bill Whalen, I'm the Hoover Institution's Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism.

I'll be moderating today. Joining me in conversation, my colleague Ben Ginsberg. Ben is the Hoover Institution's Volcker Distinguished Visiting Fellow and a nationally known political law advocate who's been involved in several projects involving election integrity in this election cycle. Ben, how are you holding up?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, just fine, we were all dressed up, but turned out there was no place to go.

It was an election that answered the election administrator's dream, which was please don't let it be close.

>> Bill Whalen: Exactly, so where were you on election night? And I was at home in Palo Alto watching the returns, but where were you, my friend?

>> Ben Ginsberg: I was tethered to the CNN set here in Washington, ready to talk about election dysfunction, and there was nothing to talk about.

>> Bill Whalen: So you went home early then?

>> Ben Ginsberg: I did not go home early, I didn't go home till 3 AM but I had a lot of good chick fil a in the meantime, which was the meal of choice for catering.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, that's good to hear, so for those who are keeping score at home, this is the third installment of Saint, Sinners and Salvageables.

In the first episode, Ben and I talked about the election at a 30,000 foot level, just looking at the general political landscape. In the second installment, it was Ben's turn to moderate. He did an excellent job of interviewing our colleague Justin Grimmer, who's a Hoover Institution Senior Fellow and a Stanford University Political Scientist who's been studying election integrity in an up close and personal way.

In Justin's case, he traveled to Southern Oregon to watch how the voting system was being challenged in that particular state. Now, here we are at episode three, Ben and Revenge of Waylon, my turn to moderate. And I want to get your thoughts, my friend, on what went down on election Day in America.

The first thing I think we should point to, Ben, is it was decisive. And here I want to give credit to either you or Justin or both of you in the last podcast because I think that was one of the first things that you pointed out in terms of how to improve the system, that it would help to have a decisive outcome.

And here's what I mean by decisive. I'm still here in California, Ben. The race was called by fox at about 10:30 PM our time. Now that's 1:30 on America's east coast. That may seem late, but in this day and age, it's actually pretty quick. I think it was deeper into the night in 2016 when they called the election for Trump.

Certainly was not 2020. Ben, when we went through days and weeks of agony over election and vote counting in states like Arizona and Georgia, Pennsylvania. And Ben, certainly not 2000, which I think you still shudder when you hear the word 2000 but certainly not that when we went through week after week of jurisprudence, the Supreme Court eventually deciding things.

So a decisive night, no?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yes, very decisive night, there's still a number of recounts that may unfold maybe one or two on the US Senate level, probably, a half dozen to a dozen on the US Congressional level and lots in the state legislative level. But that's pretty much par for the course.

And what was really interesting about this election was how quickly it was called. And probably as a direct result of that, very few of the slings and arrows we have heard about the integrity of the election system came floating this year.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, so I find at this hour, Ben, there's kind of an open question of is Donald Trump good or is Donald Trump lucky?

You can argue the lucky point in that in two of the three times he's run for president, he's drawn pretty convenient opponents. Hillary Clinton turned out to be a problematic candidate in 2016, we can agree. And we can also agree that Kamala Harris was problematic in 2024. Joe Biden not so much in 2020.

That's the lucky side. But on the good side, Ben, it seems to me he ran a pretty smart campaign. Now granted, I'm a communications guy, so I look at a lot of shallow things like him taking advantage of his followers being called garbage. And so he shows up the next day in a garbage truck, that's pretty clever.

His poking fun at Kamala Harris with her McDonald's Bonafides by going to a McDonald's in Pennsylvania and serving carry out that. To me that's just very clever campaigning. So he's good. But here's one thing I think which is worth noting at this hour, Ben. He is the first Republican since George W Bush, your old boss, George W Bush, to have won the popular vote.

Hasn't happened in 20 years for a Republican. He is the first Republican since George H.W Bush, Bush 41 to get 312 or more electoral votes, that's impressive. Here's a stat to consider, Ben. Donald Trump not only won the popular vote, but at this hour he's got the Senate in his pocket.

It appears Republicans are on a path to get the House. That remains to be seen. But Democrats pretty much have to run the table to get control of the House at this point. So he'll have control of Congress. Republicans have majority of state legislatures around the country, Ben.

And also Trump has a majority of Supreme Court justice in is right now chosen by either him or George W Bush. Ben, the last president to have these many things in this corner was Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, it's really impressive and I think that's being both good and lucky.

Certainly lucky in the way he drew his opponent. But you have to give credit for the way he changed the coalition in America. The number of what were previously low propensity, non college educated voters who were traditional Democrats and now voted Republican is a credit to political realignment, really.

And you also have to note the way he made real strides among Latino and African-American voters, particularly, the Latino vote where he got the majority of of Latinos. So that's impressive politics.

>> Bill Whalen: We ask you a variation of the Trump good Trump lucky question, Ben. What's the narrative coming out of this election?

Did Trump win or did Kamala Harris lose?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, again, I think it's a combination of both. I think the up and down the ballot dominance of the Republican Party for the next two years that you mentioned, Bill, would sort of argue for the good part because a top of the ticket can have an impact up and down the ballot.

And that's really what you saw in this election.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, that's true in Ohio, for example, where Trump's coattails bring in Bernie Moreno into the Senate, for example. It may or may not play out in Pennsylvania, as you mentioned, in Nevada where they're still counting votes. And I wanna get to that in a minute.

But yeah, you just saw red up and down.

>> Ben Ginsberg: And look at the congressional, look at the three contested congressional districts in Pennsylvania which Democrats had really high hopes of being able to keep or recapture. All appear to have gone Republican.

>> Bill Whalen: Right, yeah, that's a good point.

Let's spend a minute on Harris. Now, Ben, the one word that seems to stand out is just underperform, just underperforming in pockets across America. I am a native Washingtonian where you currently reside, I grew up in Northern Virginia. That has become a very Democratic enclave in my life and times for one simple reason.

And it's tied into the government plus also Northern Virginians tend to run on left of center now. She underperformed in places like Fairfax County, Ben, which is just a shock.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, and if you wanna look for an even bigger shock, look at New York and New Jersey, traditional Democratic states where Donald Trump did extraordinarily well in the cities and suburbs, in both what were previously red and blue neighborhoods among whites, Asians and Latinos.

Bill, this is New York State we're talking about. He lost the state, but he had a 12 point improvement from where he was in 2020. And in New Jersey, where Trump lost by double digits in both 2016 and 2020, he lost by just five points. And so that has ramifications up and down the ballot, but it also shows a real shift in the party's bases.

And it should be a flashing message to the Democrats that a lot of their policy positions just aren't working with the majority of Americans today.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, counselor, put down your legal attache and put on your strategist hat and tell me what she should have done differently, what he should have done differently.

Because in fairness to her, Ben, she was dealt a pretty bad hand. She was a sitting vice president. And history shows that unless you're Martin van Buren or George H W Bush, you don't do very well as sitting incumbent vice presidents. They tend not to get elected presidents.

She had a very unpopular president she was tethered to and an economy where she could point to some positive things like GDP. But, like in 1992, Ben, people just weren't feeling it.

>> Ben Ginsberg: No, people weren't feeling it. And she, she was dealt a bad hand, I think, in the fact that she only had 100 days to campaign.

I think when people vote for president, they wanna feel like they know the person they're voting for. And she had the disadvantage of not being in people's homes for the long drawn out primary season. But on top of that, she was never able to articulate satisfactorily to many, I think, who she was and what she stood for.

She was so good in the debate against Donald Trump and so bad in interviews where she had to. Where she was asked to be able to state her positions and sort of her governing philosophy and whether she'd do anything from Joe different from Joe Biden or not. And I think it was in those situations that she failed to be able to define herself enough to get enough people to feel comfortable with her.

>> Bill Whalen: Over my shoulder, Ben, is Herbert Hoover in 1928. Who does he defeat? Al Smith. Do you think Al Smith is smiling somewhere?

>> Ben Ginsberg: I suspect he is.

>> Bill Whalen: What we're referring to is her decision not to go to the Al Smith dinner, which is a traditional election year thing where you show up and you swap jokes and show jocularity.

But they were afraid to put her in that venue just as they were afraid to put her on the Joe Rogan show and just ran a very timid campaign. But you know, Ben, on the one hand, yes, she was dealt a rough hand, but, you know, she could have turned in those cards and said, you know, wait a second, let's have a democratic process.

Let's everybody wants to be president. Let's all get together at convention and let's all additional at the convention delegates. So she went along with the plan to just install her. And so, and you could argue she paid the price for a decidedly undemocratic process within her own party.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, I don't think you ever turned down the nomination on a silver platter.

>> Bill Whalen: I know, I know.

>> Ben Ginsberg: I don't necessarily blame her for that, but nonetheless, she came up short as a candidate for a variety of reasons.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, so, Ben, I'm doing this podcast here in Palo Alto.

It is very, very early on Thursday morning here, so much so the sun's not up, it is dark outside. And that reflects the local mood here because, as you know, as a visitor to Palo Alto, this is not Trump territory by any means. You and I would have to cop into a car and drive considerable miles to find any kind of Republican representation.

So people here kind of besides themselves. But I would not, though. It's not violent. It's not. People are not, you know, protesting and turning over burned, you know, trash cans and things like that. It's just more of just they can't believe this happened. And they're just kind of in the process of trying to, you know, sign blame for how this happened.

I'm guessing this is how Washington is right now, too.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, Washington is in its circular firing squad mode, I must say. There's a lot of blame here among the elites on sorta the racism, misogyny line of things. There is a lot of criticism of Joe Biden for not dropping out sooner and giving her the chance to launch.

The progressives are sorta saying, well, what do you expect to happen when elitist Democrats have abandoned working class Democrats? That would be the Bernie Sanders line. And then there are more centrist Democrats who are going hammer and tongue at wokeism, the defund the police sorta Israel, Gaza line of things and blaming the progressives.

So pop some popcorn and watch for the next year or so.

>> Bill Whalen: Is anybody going after the consulting class?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Not yet.

>> Bill Whalen: Not their turn.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, but a bit. I mean I think there's some criticism that I heard during the campaign that's likely to come out that Harris ceded her campaign to Obama people, and Harris was not Obama.

And so a lot of the tactics that they thought would work for Harris because they worked for Obama did not come through. I think there's been some criticism of the consultants for not recognizing the power of social media and the podcast that there is a jealousy on the left of the sophistication of conservatives and Republicans in the right in terms of ways to communicate in a cycle.

Where you look at the numbers of people who watch the results on television of one broadcaster, cable, and it was down by 25%. It's not that people weren't watching the results, but they were streaming and social media. And I think Democrats feel Republicans are ahead of the game on that.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, I think you're right, Ben. One good example of this is the outcry when the LA Times and the Washington Post chose not to make endorsements. Meanwhile, Trump is going on Joe Rogan's podcast. I think the last I checked, there was something like 45 million views of that podcast.

Ben, how long would it take someone to get 45 million views on the Washington Post or LA Times websites?

>> Ben Ginsberg: You would have to go a long distance to find somebody who said, you know, I was. I was going to vote the other way, but then I read a Washington Post or LA Times editorial and changed my mind.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah. One other aspect, Ben, is this the end of celebrities and politics?

>> Bill Whalen: Cuz what we learned, Julia Roberts doesn't necessarily turn around elections. Neither does Bruce Springsteen or Beyonce or Taylor Swift.

>> Ben Ginsberg: I think that there is a little bit of a moth to a flame phenomenon there.

So you won't get rid of celebrities. But ever since the 2004 presidential election, when Bruce Springsteen filled the horseshoe at Ohio State a week before the election, and we thought, boy, we're going to lose Ohio. And then George Bush, of course, won Ohio and really the presidency through Ohio.

The value of the celebrity concert is, I think, vastly overrated. They're fun to do, keeps the troops happy, but it's not outcome determinative.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, and celebrities won't go away, Ben, because celebrities don't wanna go away. Do you remember back when Gary Hart was running for president and he had this bromance with Warren Beatty and.

I forget which journalists said it, but they said that the problem here is that Gary Hart wants to be Warren Beatty and Warren Beatty wants to be Gary Hart.

>> Ben Ginsberg: I think that's well said. And

>> Bill Whalen: That was the demise of Gary Hart cuz he tried to be Warren Beatty.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Right. And that was his downfall. Okay, Ben, let's turn to election integrity, which, as you alluded to earlier, a pretty good night for you allegrity integrity watchers.

>> Bill Whalen: And let's start with, let's start with Florida. So first of all, a little history. What were you doing 20 years ago at this time?

Excuse me, 24 years ago.

>> Ben Ginsberg: 24 years ago.

>> Bill Whalen: You're 2000, where were you right now?

>> Ben Ginsberg: I was in Tallahassee, Florida, highly sleep deprived, sitting in the concrete bunker that was the Republican Party of Florida trying to deploy troops to all the counties in Florida for the recounts that were starting, especially the big four counties where things were really going crazy.

And then being sure that the other counties in Florida where the Democrats hadn't yet asked for a recount.

>> Bill Whalen: Here's why I'm asking it, Ben. Because 24 years ago, Florida was the epicenter of election integrity in America. We all remember the image of the fellow holding up the magnifying glass up to the dangling chad to decide whether or not a ballot had been.

>> Ben Ginsberg: That was a pregnant chad, not a dangling chad, Bill.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, a pregnant chat. Gotcha. Anyway, Florida was the epicenter, but here we are 24 years later, and boy, Florida was decided fast on election night. I was surprised how quickly it went down, Ben. And this was a reminder that in 2020, it was very much the same way.

In 2022, Florida got its act together. Ben, how did Florida do it?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Florida, really, under Jeb Bush's leadership, put through a series of laws, and that's been kept up by governors since then. That just improved the process. Part of it was getting new equipment. Obviously the old punch cards had some deficiencies in it.

So they have very good equipment. But on top of that, they have procedures for processing all the mail in ballots and absentee ballots well ahead of election day. So they verify the votes, put the ballots in the machine, don't count them until election day, but they're all lined up and ready to go.

They also have a sufficient number of polling places and a system where votes are counted in precincts so that it becomes very localized and broken down and that allows them to consolidate the totals quickly and get them out.

>> Bill Whalen: We have a republic, Ben, and it's a crazy quilt of states with different populations, different characteristics, and indeed their election systems are different in that regard.

But could you replicate Florida and 49 other states, Ben?

>> Ben Ginsberg: You could in most of them. What Florida does is have a degree of uniformity among its counties and fair enough resources to those counties so that you don't have kinda tyranny by locality the way you do in some states.

I mean Wisconsin and Michigan each have over 1,800 separate jurisdictions. In Arizona, which is taking so long, they allow, excuse me, in Arizona, they allow mail ballots to be walked into the polling place up until 7:00 on election day. A lot of people in Arizona, particularly Maricopa County, which is 60% of the population, bring in those ballots late.

And so that puts huge degree of pressure on them. Arizona also has a very comprehensive ballot validation process that takes a while to do. Maricopa this time they had so much democracy in terms of initiatives and races, they had to go to a two page ballot.

>> Bill Whalen: First time in 20 years they had a two page ballot.

>> Ben Ginsberg: So they have twice as many pieces of paper to actually tabulate. In Nevada, it's one of the states that does a couple of things. Number one, they allow absentee ballots to be received up to four days after the election as long as they're postmarked on election day.

So that takes a while. And they have a notice and cure provision so that if somebody sends in an absentee ballot that doesn't have the required signature or date, county officials can call them. So call the voter so the voter can come in and cure the ballots. So there's also a post-election cure period, which is why those are the two states we're waiting on for the Senate.

>> Bill Whalen: Right, so what you're referring to is they're still counting votes in Nevada and Pennsylvania. Republicans right now have 50-

>> Ben Ginsberg: In Arizona.

>> Bill Whalen: And Arizona 52 seats in the House in the Senate right now, so they could go up to 53 or 54. But it's interesting you look at each one.

So Dave McCormick's lead, I believe has shrunk, Ben, as more votes come. In the Nevada race, it's holding on, but I think the expectation there is that Jackie Rosen will eventually pull ahead and win because you look at the two counties where they're still counting ballots, those are Democratic friendly.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Right, and Arizona, it looks like Ruben Gallego will hang on to beat Kari Lake, given where the ballots are. I mean, that's sort of similar to the phenomenon you saw on the presidential level in 2020, where Republican election day votes created the red mirage. And then as more absentee ballots which were cast by Democrats came in, you had the blue wave.

>> Bill Whalen: All right, Ben, let's return to our good or lucky theme. When we started this conversation with the great state of Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, the state where I believe you went to college. Did Pennsylvania do a good job in this election or did Pennsylvania get lucky in that Trump won by such a margin that we didn't have to sit around and wait several days for all the votes to be counted?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, I think the bottom line is a combination of the two. But Pennsylvania election officials saw what happened in 2020 and did take some steps to improve things. Most notably, Philadelphia produced or purchased high speed ballot counting machines so that their absentee ballot process has been quicker.

Remember that in 2020, they couldn't call the presidential race until the Saturday after the election. And it looks like they'll do better on the Senate race this time. There were a lot of reports Pennsylvania probably had given that it was perceived to be the tipping point presidential race.

More things like bomb threats called into polling places that delayed voting and just sort of skirmishes in polling places that delayed voting, more threats by county officials that they wouldn't certify. But all of that seems to have been worked out in the size of the presidential one.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, how would you rate Nevada and Arizona's performances?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, they're still counting, so there is room for improvement. Let me say that it is not the fault of the election officials. The election officials have, I know, in both states been working around the clock. But there are state laws, policy decisions by legislators and executive branch that has caused the late delay, right?

You don't need To allow people to walk in their ballots up to 7 o'clock on election day, gonna have an earlier deadline. They've decided as a matter of policy it's better to count more votes and leave the deadline long. That's gonna result in longer counting times.

>> Bill Whalen: If I have it right, Ben, I believe Nevada does starts counting mail in votes on October 21st.

At least they did in this cycle. They started counting mail in votes on October 21. But ballots cast in person on a voting machine during early voting can't be counted until 8am on election day.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yes, and on top of that they do have the law that allows absentee ballots to come in four days after election day and the notice and cure provisions that slow things down.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, and this is similar to Pennsylvania which doesn't start counting its ballots until what, 7:00am of election day. Why can't they at least count the ballots before election day?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, there are seven states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, interestingly enough, where legislators, largely Republican senior committee chairman, are worried that if they count absentee ballots before election day the results will leak out, the mail ballots favor Democrats and there will be the perception of momentum against their party.

Again, it has been senior Republicans on the relevant committees who have held it up in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, despite what happens in Florida and any other number of states, including heavily Republican states, where they can process ballots early, get the results earlier, and there have been no untoward circumstances of leaked information.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, let me ask you a very naive question, Ben. We live in an information age. You and I are conversing over the Internet right now. A lot of Americans do Internet banking. A lot of American do travel reservations over the Internet. We live and breathe through that.

Why don't we vote over the Internet?

>> Ben Ginsberg: A great question. Every time this issue is broached, and there are any number of political figures and election administrators who ask the same question. The Internet security experts say you absolutely cannot do that, that the system is not safe enough, that it will subject us to possible hacking and vote manipulation so that our systems now there is not a state, county or precinct that connects its ballot counting machines to the Internet.

They're all sole source. So that it is really a question of the Internet security community saying stuff is safe enough so that we can vote on the Internet.

>> Bill Whalen: I think it'd be an interesting demonstration project if you could find maybe a city in America and allow maybe a Merrill election to include online voting just to see what the impact would be.

To see first of all, if it changes the turnout in any way. But Also secondly, if it can be done in a safe and secure way.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, I think part of the worry, part of what the security experts say is, well, yeah, you can do it in an isolated instance, but that's not enough bait to get the bad guys to come in.

So they would want that small local experiment to succeed. Well, and then really mess with things when it went nationally.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, very good. All right, Ben, let's spend a few minutes on the very dark at this hour, California in this regard, our voting system, which is, I would call it, curious.

That's one choice of words here. So in California, Ben, as you know-

>> Ben Ginsberg: I can think of something shorter, Bill.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, but it's a family broadcast.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Okay, good enough.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, California, Ben, as you know, every voter receives a mail ballot the state gives you, you can send it on election day if you want to.

I think they will count it if it comes in before, I believe, Friday or Saturday of this week as well. And here's the problem, California is notorious for stragglers, Ben, I think in 2022, something like 38% of the vote was tabulated after election day. The good news, if you wanna call it, and Ben, is that the turnout in California may be low this time around, I've been following all our performance in California since I live and breathe all things California.

Biden got about 11 million votes out here in 2020, Ben. The last I checked, she is closing on about 6 million votes and turnout. Los Angeles county, for example, the turnout in 2020 was about 70%. Last I checked, it's around 45%. You see this across the state. Just people were not excited about selection.

So maybe the vote count comes better. But that said, it puts California in this just really awkward position of taking weeks to count all the vot votes. And in 2024, this could decide the House. And so here we are, Ben, in a society which is built on speed and also for the practical, you know, purposes of government, you don't want to have the House or the Senate hang out in the ballots.

But because California takes so damn long to count its votes, that might happen. So is there a better way for California to do this, Ben?

>> Ben Ginsberg: There are certainly better ways to do it if the object is speed. I mean, again, this comes down to the thinking of the policymakers, of the legislators in the executive branch.

And California has decided as a matter of policy that they prefer to allow more votes to be counted, and so they extend the period. And of course, the cost of that is just what you're saying, which is delayed results. It's not gonna matter in the presidential race, obviously, this time.

But the thought experiment is suppose California was the outcome determiner race in a presidential election with it taking this long. In 2020, for example, that period between the time the polls closed and when the results were announced was really a hotbed of dysfunction and strife in the country.

And imagine if it was three weeks in California. So there are any number of ways that the California process could be speeded up, but so far the policymakers have refused to do that.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, I think that's very well put, Ben. But, Ben also raises this question of speed versus accuracy.

Do you want it quickly or do you want it right? Which takes us back to Nevada. If Nevada wanted to do things quickly, they could take the like, I think it's something like 27,000 signature cures they're looking at right now, and saying, okay, Ben Ginsburg's handwriting is incredibly sloppy here.

But we think it's Ben, we're gonna count the vote. So Nevada to credit at least is erring on the side of accuracy.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yes, and as you know, we do have 50 states and many, many jurisdictions and there are policy decisions and it is a fair argument in elections that one size does not fit all.

So that a state wanting to do things its way is like a feature of the federalist system, really?

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, I think so. So, Ben, you had a good night for election integrity. You had a decisive election that you and Justin Grimer were hoping for. But we still have this issue of election disinformation.

And here I want to take us back to President Elect Trump because what happened on election day, Ben, Donald Trump goes on to Truth Social and he's talking about Pennsylvania. And here's what Trump is doing, he found out that apparently he at least he was told by somebody that there was voter fraud going on in Philadelphia.

He did not cite a specific case or anecdotes, but all he did was he went on social media, Ben, and he wrote that, quote, there was a quote, a lot of talk about massive cheating, all caps cheating in Philadelphia to his more than 8 million followers. So what kind of damage does Donald Trump do when he posts something like that?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, false information about the Election system and sowing distrust in its fundamental accuracy and reliability has taken a toll in public faith in the election system. And you see that in all the polling it shows up to a third of the electorate doesn't have faith in the credibility of our results.

That is an institutional problem that needs to be resolved. I mean, fortunately, Hoover and Revitalizing American Institutions Project is looking at that. I think that the fact that in 2020, despite the allegations, there was never any evidence of systemic fraud or regularities. And in 2022, all the midterm elections were sort of solved without the bellicose charges, with the possible exception of Carrie Lake in Arizona.

But in 2024, we have heard remarkably little post election about the credibility of the system, which sort of goes to tell you that the charges that the election system is rigged really are sort of situational ethics. When your candidate loses, you don't like the system. So hopefully we can take these examples and especially 2024, where there is a general admission that the system worked and use that to restore some faith in the integrity of the institution.

>> Bill Whalen: But did the system really work that well, Ben, or is this again a function just the fact that Trump won and he won decisively. In other words, we just didn't have cliffhangers around the country as he did in 2020 and 2016.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, but I mean, the system worked in 2020.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Just as well as it worked in 2024. There were just more unfounded political charges about it in 2020. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the early Republican congressional initiatives was a voting bill of some sort. It might try and go back on non-citizen voting, might include voter identification for all federal elections.

There are a number of other provisions that might go in that I suspect if there is a House majority, particularly you'll see Republicans trying to push through.

>> Bill Whalen: So I'm gonna give our listeners a window into the Hoover Institution. In a couple hours, Ben and I are going to be doing something that the rest of the world doesn't get to see.

We're doing a call with Hoover supporters. And Ben, this is the question I plan to ask you. Just if Republicans and Congress with control of Congress, wanna do something in the way of election integrity, i.e, election reform. What do you think they will do?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Voter ID for certain, they were very interested in a provision to bar non-citizen voting, although it is already prohibited under federal laws.

So I think you might see that I would hope it would include adequate funding for elections which would benefit candidates across the, across the ticket. You know, there might even be a push to cut back on early voting and mail voting. Certainly that's Donald Trump's stated preference, although Republicans did quite well, as they have historically with mail voting.

So there should be some pragmatic looks at it. But it is a tradition of both parties when they get unified control of the government, to push through election bills that they believe will help them. One of the interesting factors in this bill is Donald Trump's ability to get low propensity voters to vote Republican in this election.

It has long been the presumption that high turnout elections helped Democrats and low turnout elections helped Republicans. I would point to this election and say that may not be true anymore as Donald Trump has succeeded in changing the basis of the parties. And so bills that put up barriers to voting will hurt more Republican voters than Democratic voters now.

So that will be an interesting calculation in what Republicans decide to do.

>> Bill Whalen: Let me throw an idea at you, Ben. And since it's early here in California, I'm still working on my first cup of coffee. You're more than welcome to tell me I'm nuts. But the idea is this, it's something akin to welfare Reform in the 1990s, the concept of block grants.

You remember, Ben, back with welfare reform, the federal government sent money to states, but in the form of a block grant. And the states had to show that they were doing welfare reform right with results to get their money. I wonder, Ben, if there would be any appetite, and this may be dead on rival, since it's Republican Congress, but any appetite for block granting money to the states to work on election integrity in this regard.

Ben, let me, let me give you an anecdote here. This is Cambria County, Pennsylvania, which is east of Pittsburgh, it's a Republican enclave. On election night, Cambria County had a problem, Ben. Election officials opened the polls, quickly realized its ballot scanning devices could not read the ballots. They needed a software fix.

So voters were still able to fill out paper ballots, Ben, while the county worked on a solution. They deposited their ballots in secure lockboxes for counting later. But election deniers have spent years stoking doubts about that option, suggesting without evidence that it was an AV to steal or destroy ballots.

So what happened after that, Ben? The courts extended the voting period until 10pm from the original 8pm deadline to give people a chance to vote. To election officials, your ordeal was a sign that a selection process had functioned normally. You overcame a technical problem by deploying a simple fallback option, but election deniers online were not convinced.

This is a long way, Ben, of saying that maybe states like Pennsylvania elsewhere need better technology, better software, and maybe the federal government could help them out.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yep, it's a real need throughout the country to better fund our elections, to get better equipment, make it easier for people to vote and harder to cheat.

And all that does take money. After Florida 2000, which you mentioned before, the Help America Vote Act was passed three years later, that did provide a lot of money to jurisdictions, all of whom bought new, more technically advanced equipment. And that's something that the electoral system would certainly benefit from now if Congress were to do that.

And is that what you do, Ben, you go down the technology, you go down the software road, or where would you spend the money? I think it's both hardware and software, I mean, the election system could certainly use an upgrade on technology, and you would do both software and hardware.

You can really do things with poll books that jurisdictions are still using paper for. You can have more uniformity throughout states so that you kind of take away the equal protection argument that's lurking underneath many of our elections. With so many separate jurisdictions, I think the push should be for more uniformity within states.

We are still a federalist country, so it should be state based. But that would, I think, help to increase public confidence in the election system if there was better equipment.

>> Bill Whalen: What about, Ben, a federal task force looking into this? And I'm not a champion in task forces because here in California, our governor is forever creating task forces to solve problems, and they don't.

But the timing might be curious, Ben, and that you don't have the world on. Fire in terms of people screaming about election integrity right now. So maybe since everybody's kinda calm right now, it's the right time to examine this at the federal level.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, it's an interesting idea.

You could do another commission on Presidential Commission on Election Administration.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah.

>> Ben Ginsberg: In 2013 and 2014, when that was done, the two sides were not shooting at each other in the same way. I think it would be a challenge to put together a bipartisan commission in which you had sort of uniform public faith in the process.

>> Bill Whalen: True, but-

>> Ben Ginsberg: It's a great idea.

>> Bill Whalen: Well, it's a thought. If Trump really wanted to kind of go down the bipartisan road and address this problem, rather than railing against it, he could create a commission. You could do something akin to what you've been doing at Hoover, Ben, where you bring together election officials, county election officials in particular, and put them on.

And maybe you could find a very prominent retired member of Congress. Mitt Romney would be an obvious choice, but because of his relationship with Trump, that won't happen. But somebody that profile Ben, who is not currently in office but is considered someone of statue who could run the thing.

And there you go.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, I mean, the big challenge in that would be we heard nothing about fraud and irregularities in this year because Trump won. But if there was a commission, I'm not sure that the silence of this cycle means that all of a sudden there's been a convergence in belief that the election systems work.

 

So I'm not sure Trump's most faithful people would concede that we need to look at the election system and make it fairer.

>> Bill Whalen: Well, I don't want to be a pessimist, but Trump had a good night, and so we're not talking about election integrity, but if you fast forward two years, the way elections work in America, he could have a bad midterm election.

If he gets the House this time, he could lose the House the next time. And if he loses the House, Ben, and it's a series of very close elections, I think we're back in the mosh pit of election integrity.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Totally possible, totally possible. Which is why it's important to see if all the doubters had any evidence of fraud and irregularities in this 2024 election.

Love to see the proof. Okay, two days after the election, Ben, is anybody making any noise out there about challenging any state results? Not yet, but you're in the process where some of those very close Senate potentially, but certainly House and state legislative races will at least go through recounts and election contests.

And as part of that, there, I suspect will be some litigating of that.

>> Bill Whalen: I think, Pennsylvania will have a recount, Ben, because the margin triggers it. But from a legal standpoint, how do you lawyer up for that?

>> Ben Ginsberg: You need a lot of lawyers in each of the relevant jurisdictions in the state or district.

You look very carefully at the ballots. So it is a combination of getting lawyers who know the law and field operatives, the Wiley political operatives, who handle the sort of counting and inspection. You'll be recruiting a team that includes some really good communicators to be able to tell the story.

You will certainly have your digital team deeply involved. Because one of the things that will be different about recounts, I think, in 2024, is the degree of technology and the ability to talk about what is happening when each ballot is counted in real time. That will be really a step different from recounts of the past.

And you'll need to raise a bunch of money for it. So those five branches will go into the staffing for the recounts. 

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, Ben, let's wind things down. So going back to election night, what surprised you most about the way things went down? And you can either take it with the Trump angle, the Harris angle, or the process.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, I was very pleased that there were no complaints about the integrity of the election system. And I think that surprised me, given the pre election rhetoric. I think the professionalism of the election administrators in getting results out quickly pleasantly surprised me a lot. And I think just overall, what surprised me as a consumer of all this was how we were conditioned to think of all seven battleground states as really, really close.

And that turned out to be totally wrong. And I know my pollster friends will say, well, it was all within the margin of error, but we were conditioned to think this was gonna be a long, involved, tense process, and it wasn't.

>> Bill Whalen: There was the Iowa poll.

>> Ben Ginsberg: There was the Iowa poll, yes.

>> Bill Whalen: Did you see where Iowa ended up, by the way?

>> Ben Ginsberg: I did, what was it, nine?

>> Bill Whalen: I think it was 13 the last time.

>> Ben Ginsberg: 13?

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, so about a 16-point shift, oops.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, well, that can happen.

>> Bill Whalen: But in defensive pollsters, we have a mutual friend, Doug Rivers, who is a Hoover senior fellow.

He polls for YouGov, great guy. If you look at the real clear politics margins, Ben, it's not that bad. They typically had a very narrow race and the margin was about one or two points, but it's consistently that way. I think what struck me about election night, Ben, was just really kind of the lack of drama.

It's not an American election unless you hear one side or the other crying foul about what? The machines have broken, we can't vote, or they are closing the bowls, we can't vote, blah, blah, blah. Just all this human misery. It just seemed we were very light on that now.

Maybe that's the function of just the results were so surprisingly pro Trump that the media didn't get around to that. They were still kind of stunned by that, but it just seemed to be largely devoid of that kind of drama.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, I think that's really true. I think it is because there was a degree of shock and surprise across the ideological spectrum on how quickly it was called.

And so that, I think, did lead to the lack of drama.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, final question, Ben. Watching election integrity as you do, since I'm now in the postpartum depression of no more baseball, give me an MVP in this election in terms of election integrity. Tell me somebody out there in the great beyond, who in your idea was just an MVP, a hero when it came to running a good election?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, I think it was all the election officials in the key jurisdictions who really, I think, did help dissipate the drama by being incredibly transparent in the way they ran their elections, that there was much more public outreach and inviting people in to kick the tires. And so I think you can go state by state and name the individuals involved in that.

And they're all my MVPs.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, so for 2024, Ben, a lot of saints and not too many sinners.

>> Ben Ginsberg: So true, it's great to be able to conclude that.

>> Bill Whalen: That is good. It's been great to talk to you today, Ben. Thanks for coming on. Hope you're holding up okay.

Get some rest, my friend.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Good advice for us all, especially those of you who are sitting in California before the sun's up.

>> Bill Whalen: Thank you, Ben. You've been listening to Saint, Sinners, & Salvageables, a Hoover Institution podcast exploring America's election system and the many challenges in the democratic process in this charge, partisan environment.

If you've been enjoying this podcast, please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to our show. And if you wouldn't mind, please spread the word. Tell your friends about us. The Hoover Institution has Facebook, Instagram, and X feeds. Our X handle is @hooverinst, that's H-O-O-V-E-R-I-N-S-T. Our next and final installment of Saint, Sinners, & Salvageables will be in mid December.

Ben's gonna be back and we're gonna talk more about the landscape. What, if anything, has changed between now and mid December. And I think also we're gonna talk to Ben about what else he has planned at the Hoover Institution moving into 2025 on this front. For the Hoover Institution, this is Bill Whalen.

We hope you enjoy this conversation. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back soon with Saint, Sinners, & Salvageables. Till then, take care. And again, thanks for listening.