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Welcome back to Washington Journal.
We're joined now by Benjamin Hoveland.
He is the U.S. Election Assistance Commission chair.
Welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me, Mimi.
It's great to be here.
So start by telling us about the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
How is it created?
What is its purpose?
Absolutely.
So we are a small federal agency.
We were created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which was Congress's response to the Florida 2000 election.
And we were designed to be independent bipartisan agency.
We really have four primary mission areas.
We test and certify voting equipment.
We distribute grants to the states from Congress.
Mostly those have been around security grants in recent years.
We do a survey of how elections are administered all across the country, how Americans engage in the process.
For example, do they get registered at a motor vehicle office or online?
Do they vote by mail, early in person on election day?
We even see what the average age of poll workers is.
And then finally, we serve as a clearinghouse of best practices.
Because each state runs elections a little bit differently.
We look across the country, we identify best practices and share those so that election officials don't have to reinvent the wheel and those best practices can benefit everyone and ultimately better serve voters.
Well, let's talk about those different practices because elections are run at the local level.
So how different are they across the country?
Yeah, it really does vary state by state, which is why when we talk about trusted information around elections, we always say that you should go to your state or local election official because those dates and deadlines matter, polling place hours, all of those things vary.
But what you see that's consistent all across the country is the people who run our elections are professionals.
They follow the laws of their state, and there's transparency built into the process.
And that's an important thing for people to know.
But aren't there lots of challenges given how different things are and from one locality to another, one state to another?
Should there be more uniformity?
Well, it's certainly something we can talk about, but there are a lot of benefits that we get from the decentralized nature of our elections.
I think back to 2020 when obviously in the pandemic we were looking at more Americans than ever voting by mail.
You had states like Oregon and Washington who had spent over a decade transitioning to full vote by mail and they had so many lessons learned that they and we were able to share with their colleagues across the country who were seeing record amounts of mail balloting.
And so those type of things allow us both to share those experiences, but also to have states pioneer new innovations.
Things like Arizona created online registration years ago, and now 41 states in the District of Columbia have that.
If we were waiting for federal legislation, we'd probably be still waiting.
So it is a great way to expand and see innovation in the field, but it certainly presents challenges as well.
I want to ask you about the level of confidence of Americans of this election.
This is a Pew Research poll that was conducted last month in October.
And it's asking, it says that most voters are confident that elections will be run well, but more skepticism among Trump than Harris supporters.
And here's a graphic of that.
It's showing of all voters, you know, it's up here at, you know, more rather than less.
At least that's good.
But there is a big difference here between Harris supporters and Trump supporters.
What do you make of those kinds of numbers?
Well, one thing we know from social scientists is that unfortunately trust in election outcomes is often tied to if your candidate wins or loses.
So there is that element.
But there's certainly a lot of pieces of the election administration process that most Americans are unfamiliar with.
And election officials have been doing a good job in the last several years trying to show more of that process.
I think historically most Americans would tune in on election night, hope there was a winner called by the media.
But what we know in the elections administration space is that election night results are always unofficial because there are processes and procedures that election officials follow to ensure the accuracy and integrity of our election.
But most people haven't historically been interested in that.
I know I've bored enough family members at Thanksgivings historically, but I can see the difference now where people are, more Americans are interested in that process.
And so at the AC, we've created a number of videos to try to explain the process.
We see election officials around the country doing behind-the-ballot tours, whether that's in person at their offices or doing videos to show people the work that goes into running elections, show people the safeguards that are in place that you don't see just as a voter.
You mentioned one of your objectives was certifying equipment.
And I want to show you this article from ABC News.
Elon Musk pushes false conspiracies about voting machines during Swing State Town Hall.
He says this, quote, I'm a technologist.
I know a lot about computers.
Musk told the crowd during the event, quote, and I'm like, the last thing I would do is trust a computer program because it's just too easy to hack.
What do you make of those comments and how easy is it to hack those voting machines?
Well, so first we don't trust them.
We have systems in place to utilize that technology, utilize the fact that technology is better at the mundane process of counting millions of ballots.
But then we have checks in place for that.
So you mentioned the testing and certification program.
Certainly that's a part of it.
At the AC, we have both standards that voting systems are built to, and then we have accredited labs that accredit that equipment.
And they test it to a range of things, whether that's security, usability, accessibility.
It's very rigorous testing.
But then you have, at the local level, you have pre-election testing, where you make sure the equipment is working the way it's supposed to.
And then you have post-election testing and/or audits to ensure that it worked the way it was supposed to.
And so essentially, what you see, the vast majority of Americans, you know, over 95% of Americans, are going to be voting on a paper ballot or on a piece of equipment with a paper ballot audit trail.
And then on the back end of the election, again, you use that equipment for the efficiencies.
When you think about, again, millions of ballots, dozens of races, it's just an exponential amount to count when you compare to other countries where you see hand counting.
There's only one thing on the ballot.
And so that's a much more simple process.
We use the equipment for the efficiency, but then you have checks in place to ensure that it's working the way it's supposed to.
Now, these voting machines are not connected.
They don't have the ability to be connected to a network.
They can't be connected to Wi-Fi.
They can't be connected to Bluetooth.
So how easy would it be to cyber-attack one of those computers and just switch all the votes?
Yeah, the vast majority don't.
Again, each state runs elections a little bit differently.
There's a few places where they utilize brief connection for sending results.
But by and large, you're talking about what would be physical access to the equipment.
Again, that would, and extended physical access, which would be difficult.
Again, what we've seen a lot more of, and what is relatively speaking, particularly for our foreign adversaries, lower-hanging fruit, is the information environment.
And again, we've heard from our intelligence community about formal lines influence, about actors from foreign adversaries trying to influence Americans online, putting out some of these false videos and false narratives about how elections are administered or potential issues that are arising.
We've seen that.
We saw it in 2016, 2020, and we've seen a lot of it already this cycle as well.
And if you'd like to join our conversation with Benjamin Hoveland, he is the chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
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There's this article here, Ben, by on NPR.org: Ballots set on fire in three states as election day approaches.
How worried are you about the physical security of those ballots of people that have already voted?
So a couple things there.
I mean, certainly that story, those incidents that have occurred are concerning.
Again, but it's also an outlier, bad actor, or bad actors, and fairly limited when you think that nearly 80 million Americans have already cast their ballot.
And those stories, while unfortunate, and I'm certainly hopeful that that person will be held to account.
But when you look at the work that election officials have done to identify impacted voters, to reach out to them to help mitigate the impact of that, again, it just tells you about the planning and preparation that goes into elections.
You know, so often election administrators hear someone will say, well, what do you do the rest of the year?
Or what do you do in the off years?
And the reality is that running elections is a huge logistical undertaking that takes a lot of planning and preparation for all types of scenarios, whether natural disasters or man-made.
I look at, you know, simply one of the things I think about this cycle is obviously the state of North Carolina.
I mean, so much of the Southeast was impacted by hurricanes, but places in North Carolina that never would have expected to be impacted by a hurricane were.
But all 100 counties in North Carolina had early voting up and running on time.
And that's a testament to the election officials in that state and across the country and the work they do preparing to administer our elections.
Well, speaking of threats of violence against people, here is the front page of the USA Today that says, prepping for protests and possible violence, election officials outline efforts to protect ballot counting.
What have you been seeing around the country as far as security measures in place to protect not only the ballots and the counting of those ballots, but the people involved?
Yeah, so this has been certainly something that we've seen change since 2020.
It is partially a spin-off from some of that disinformation and the false narratives out there about how our elections are administered or the integrity of our elections.
Those have resulted in threats and harassment to people.
And what we've seen is, again, so much preparation, so much outreach to local law enforcement.
You know, there has historically been some relationship usually, but the outreach and tabletop exercises that we've seen around the country to prepare for an array of incidents has really been impressive.
Again, we distribute grant money, I mentioned, the Havis Help America Vote Act security grants.
We've seen that used for a number of things.
It's very flexible, so it may go to replace paperless equipment.
It may go for audits.
It may go for cybersecurity protection.
But we've also seen it used significantly for physical security, whether that's cameras or swipe card access to particularly sensitive areas, but also hardening our physical barriers to facilities, things like bulletproof glass, things like making office space more secure for the election officials who work there.
All right, let's talk to callers.
So we'll start with Matt.
He's an independent in Maryland.
Good morning.
Hey, good morning.
I think the elephant in the room is that Donald Trump, Mike Johnson, and other Republicans have already said that they're going to try to steal the election again, to overturn the election if Vice President Harris wins.
What are you doing to ensure that we're prepared for that?
And last time we weren't prepared.
It came very close basically with if Mike Pence, who Trump supporters wanted to hang and Trump said, fine, let it happen, had capitulated, we would be in a very different spot.
What are we doing to make sure that what they say that they're going to do, if they lose, doesn't happen again?
Thank you.
Well, thanks for the call.
A couple things that makes me think about, you know, first, we've seen more coordination than I've seen ever before at the federal level with a variety of our both intelligence community partners and law enforcement partners to talk about an array of scenarios that may come up to prepare for that, to support our election officials as they run elections.
The other part that I think is important to remember is I mentioned earlier that election night results are always unofficial.
Anyone who says that they won or lost coming up tomorrow night, we won't know that for sure.
And that's because there are safeguards and safety measures in place.
There are procedures, whether it is for Confirming mail ballots, whether it is for provisional ballots.
Again, those are safeguards that are built into the place.
That's why it takes time.
And then election officials work through that.
They dot the I's, they cross the T's, they double-check the math, and that's ultimately then when the election is certified.
And it's important for Americans to understand that and to understand that when you're looking for information about that, to go to your state and local election officials is the trusted source.
And hopefully that helps people understand when there is certain rhetoric out there that they know where to go to get accurate information.
We've got a question for you from John in San Antonio, Texas.
He says, in 2020, we saw a 131% increase in mail-in ballots.
The mail-in ballot rejection rate went from 2% to 3% in every other election to 0.02% in 2020.
Why was that?
There's a lot of numbers there.
I know that's going to be hard for you to keep track of.
It's trying to put the math in my head.
It's essentially the rejection rate of those mail-in ballots.
And what is that?
Absolutely.
So I don't exactly know where those numbers come from, so I'm not going to speak to those specifically.
But what I'll talk about broadly in 2020 was that we did see a record amount of mail ballots, but at the same time, it wasn't a new process for Americans.
In 2016, nearly a quarter of all Americans voted by mail.
That went up to almost 45% in 2020.
But this year we'll see probably more mail ballots than any year other than 2020.
Because Americans experienced voting that way, because they like it, I vote that way.
But when you talk about the rejection rates, there's a number of things that go into that.
And what we also saw in 2020 was, in anticipation of a lot of first-time mail voters or people who were new to the process, you also saw a huge amount of voter education, people talking about the process, talking about, you know, there were PSAs about naked ballots and things like that to get people's attention, to help them know to read the instructions, to fill out their absentee ballot according to those state instructions.
And that went a long way to reducing the amount of rejection rates.
And let's talk to Andre in Gates Mills, Ohio, Republican.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you for doing all of this.
It's great that we're talking about election security and yes.
So Andre, you got to mute your TV.
You got to just talk right into the phone.
Yep.
But we heard you.
Keep going.
Okay.
So we're talking about election security, election, call it doubts or skepticism.
I'm just wondering if, given the last couple of elections where there has been so much, so much misinformation, so many lies, starting from one part of the electorate, which is the National Socialist election.
They always plan to question elections.
That's one of the first plays in their book.
Who's the National Socialist, Andre?
Who are you talking about?
I am talking about the National Socialist mind that dominates the Republican Party these days.
Okay?
So what's your question about election security?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Okay.
Let's talk to Dan in Atlanta, Line for Democrats.
And I just want to just like, I want to just start at the beginning.
This whole segment, you know, this whole elected security, let's just get this straight.
It was based on a lie.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Go ahead.
What was based on a lie, Dan?
Yeah, okay.
Okay, I'm sorry.
Okay, well, this whole thing was just based on a lie.
You know, what they're talking about, the voting machine, you know, Fox News had to pay out $787 million.
Okay, so can we just get this?
There was never no voter fraud.
The only voter fraud, you know, like I live here in Georgia was up in Cherokee County where they went in and they tampered, quitting the Republicans and Trump's people went up there and tampered with the voting machines.
Then we had another Republican here in one of the counties.
He actually voted nine times.
All of the election mess was, it was done by the Republicans.
They, with the colour, what they changed Georgia voting laws.
Georgia voting laws based on a lie.
This is crazy.
Let's just call it what this is.
This is a lie.
This is nonsense.
You shouldn't be debating like this is not an intellectual debate.
This is all based on a freaking lie.
All right.
All right, Dan.
Any comment, Benjamin?
Well, I would say that, you know, certainly there is a lot of false and misleading information out there about elections.
But one of the things that, you know, has stayed the same election after election is the work that election officials do to run our elections, the safeguards that are in place every election.
And that is all throughout the process.
And it's important for people to understand that and to see that.
You know, one of the things that I say a lot about election administration is that when you look at it, good election administration is not about politics.
It's about good governance and customer service.
It's about serving the voters and making sure they're able to participate in the process.
And certainly to me, that's a good, you know, that's a good way to measure anything that comes up around elections.
Is this helping people to participate?
Is this helping them to be involved?
And certainly that can be a good line to look at.
Lance in Fort Lauderdale wants to know, how do you restore the ballots that were burned up in the ballot box fires?
That's a great question.
So again, election officials do a lot of preparation.
There's a lot of work that goes into it.
Depending on the state of those, if they are, so in one of those instances, there was fire suppressant in there.
And so those ballots were largely saved as I understand it, but they might not be able to be scanned if there was some damage to them.
States have a process.
Most states have a process called ballot duplication, which is set out in law and is very specific and usually involves bipartisan teams.
And they meticulously copy over ballots onto a new ballot that can be scanned.
That's then documented and all the information is retained for chain of custody.
Again, there's a lot of documentation in election administration.
So those are probably the easier ones.
The ones that are significantly damaged, there still may be indication on the envelope of who that voter was.
From what I've seen in reporting, several hundred of those have been able to be identified.
And election offices do outreach, ideally, through email or the phone.
Sometimes it may be sending another vote or a ballot, and then certainly making announcements to say, you know, ballot drop boxes are checked regularly.
So it may be, you know, if you dropped off between 5 p.m. and 11 a.m. on this date, you know, please contact us.
There's also other tracking that occurs to see who's requested or received a ballot and what's been returned.
So there are a number of ways for election officials to identify and reach out to voters.
But the bottom line is election officials are committed to ensuring that Americans are able to participate in the process and they do that work to make sure that they can.
Don in Salem, Indiana, Republican line, you're on with Benjamin Hoveland.
Hello.
Hi.
Good morning.
I just have a comment, really.
We wouldn't have this problem if Donald Trump would learn to control himself and act like a gentleman.
And if you stop and look at the past over the years, you would notice that we've never had this problem until he actually started politics and started with the lies.
Someone needs to fat-check that guy, but he's never fat-checked.
And I don't understand why, but I am a Republican, but that guy is not going to get my vote.
Thank you.
All right, Don.
And speaking of the past, Diane from Morristown, New Jersey says, we used to know the results on election night.
There isn't a significant increase in population.
Since it's all handled locally, what has changed?
So, again, that's a great thing to raise.
Actually, nothing has changed as far as the actual counting of the votes.
Election night results have always been unofficial, and election officials have always gone through their process.
Election night calls, if you will, are a product of the media.
And that is the media making a decision, doing the math, taking those preliminary results, and making an assessment that an election can be called.
And certainly if the campaigns have done similar math, you often see someone concede.
But if we don't have that concession and we're dependent on the election officials process, those certification deadlines, there's something called the canvas and certification process.
And that's where election officials, again, review all of the information that's happened throughout the election.
You know, they do that accounting.
You also have, again, different deadlines for starting the processing of mail ballots, for example.
Or some states have a postmark deadline where others have a received by election day standard.
So if you're in a postmark state where the ballot just has to be postmarked by election day, then there's a number of days after that that can come in.
I mentioned provisional ballots earlier.
All of those are safeguards in the process to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the ultimate results.
And so election officials do all that to produce what is the canvas and certification process.
So they have all that accounting taken care of and then they present that and say, you know, here, here is the evidence of this election.
We've accounted for all the ballots.
You know, here are some issues that popped up because things do come up, but we've explained that, we've investigated it, we've identified it.
You know, here were the people that cast provisional ballots that were eligible.
Here are the ones that are ineligible.
All of that is documented.
And that's ultimately what's certified.
So a lot of it depends on how close the election is.
Absolutely.
Because if it's already, there's not enough outstanding ballots to change the result, then they essentially call it for that state.
Yes.
And again, you can at some point make that assumption, but when margins are very close, you know, certainly people are cautious on that.
Exactly.
Vanita in Baltimore, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I had a question or a comment.
I can't imagine with all the eyes that are waiting for cheating on this election, how anyone would get away with it.
I mean, I would think that trying to influence an election would take a lot of people and a lot of planning.
And to me, it seems as though if in the end anyone accuses anyone of cheating, it would be their fault, in my opinion.
I mean, I don't know.
You're sitting right in front of the store.
How did you let it get robbed?
I wondered how difficult is it to influence an election, especially a national one.
Maybe a state one might be easier.
So great question.
It would be extremely difficult at scale.
You know, again, I'll say we see very limited instances of voter fraud, but we know it's exceedingly rare.
Where you tend to see it occur the most often is in very small races, local races, school board, sheriff, things like that.
But it's still exceedingly rare.
And part of that is what would be involved.
First of all, there are certainly laws in place.
There are felonies.
And then I think it's, you know, the scope and scale of particularly statewide elections.
You think about all the polling we're seeing.
There's been a lot of talk about that.
You know, all of it is, you know, plus or minus 3%.
You know, you're talking about, I mean, essentially, you're talking about a conspiracy to commit hundreds of thousands of felonies.
And then that could be thwarted by the rain.
So, you know, just realistically, the scope and scale coupled with the protections that are in place makes it extremely unlikely.
We've certainly seen, never seen anything in recent history where you have sort of widespread fraud.
And again, throughout the process, you have safeguards and safety measures.
You have bipartisan teams.
I've been to so many election offices where you have to have a Republican and a Democrat swipe in together into the tabulation room.
And so, again, the likelihood that you would be able to do that and do that in an undetected way is extremely minimal.
Well, let's talk about non-citizen voting.
We know that that is against the law.
It's a felony.
How are non-citizens even allowed to register?
And is that possible in certain localities?
Again, this is exceedingly rare.
It does happen.
Usually, where you see the registration occur is a mistake by someone.
Either most commonly, and that's still very rare, someone was given inaccurate information by maybe somebody that's doing voter registration, or we've even seen instances at motor vehicle offices where somebody checks the box, but the motor vehicle then says, no, I'm not a citizen.
But they actually are.
Like, if that was a mistake?
Well, so they're not, but the motor vehicle clerk or that got processed anyway.
And so there are certain things.
And they'll say, hey, do you want to register to vote while you're here?
And the person might be like, sure, if that's allowed, I'll go ahead and do it.
So again, there are mistakes that get made, but it is exceedingly rare.
And then the number of people that actually end up voting is also exceedingly rare.
And the penalties for that are severe.
I mentioned it is a felony.
You know, what is likely to happen in that scenario?
We had, you know, there has been an incident reported in the news this cycle about a student in Michigan.
You know, while the legal process has to take place, if that was intentional and the facts as reported are true, you know, that person is likely to do jail time and then be deported.
You know, that is a big risk for a single vote when you're talking about the scope.
And we're going to have 160 million Americans cast a ballot this election.
Catherine in New Jersey, Independent Lion.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thanks so much for taking my call.
Just want you to know C-SPAN is the network that I will be tuned into exclusively tomorrow night.
So thank you so much.
I just have a word of encouragement for Benjamin.
I'm a politically undeclared Christian.
And so much of what I'm seeing right now at ballot boxes being burned and just the protocols that are in place for security just breaks my heart.
I can't believe that this is the United States of America.
I feel like at times it's more of the actions of a militant country.
All that to say, so much of this is motivated by fear.
And when I read my Bible, it says 365 times that we're not to fear.
So I just want to encourage those who are standing on their values today.
And I want to thank Benjamin.
He probably doesn't get a whole lot of that.
And just let him know I have been so burdened to pray for poll workers and the safety of poll workers.
And I'm so grateful for those who give up their time.
I think of that mom and that daughter in Georgia and what they went through in 2020.
And let us all stand together and pray for these individuals and say thank you.
Their job is not an easy one.
So that's all I wanted to say today.
Thank you.
I would just say, one, I appreciate that.
Thank you.
But also, there's a couple things there that are really important to remember.
One, there have been some unfortunate incidents.
But again, those are outliers.
Those are the exceptions, not the rule.
Again, nearly 80 million Americans have already voted.
I was in Michigan earlier or late last week, and they were running early voting for the first time in a presidential.
And there was great turnout.
People were happy to be participating.
And that's by and large what you see.
Again, there are incidents that are worth highlighting.
But again, we can't lose sight of the fact that nearly 160 million Americans will make their voice heard.
And they should be proud to do that.
And that is an awesome thing.
And I really appreciated the flag in there to thank your poll workers.
We forget so often that elections are run at the local level.
And that's both the official who is running elections, but also the poll workers, those people in the polling place who are your neighbors, who are people from your community who are taking time out of their lives to serve that day, to serve their community, serve our democracy.
And so while they'll help you through the process and give you the I voted sticker and thank you for coming out, it's also great to thank them and to know that while this election is here, if you're interested in being a part of that, what other profession, what other thing can you just step into for a day?
And so we created a website at the Election Assistance Commission, helpamericavote.gov.