Trump, I'm sorry, but I just can't vote for him after what happened with going to Washington.
He, like the other young man said, he could have stopped if he did not stop that protest, you know, when he didn't want to give up his position as president.
I'm going for Jill Stein because I don't like Harris with the continuing not to call out genocide when she sees this right in her face.
And she seems like a puppet more so than anything.
And I did not, and the fact that the Democrat Party selected her, I did not vote for her.
None of us did.
And I thought that that turned me off from being a Democrat.
I've been a Democrat for years, for as long as I've been living and, you know, was able to vote.
And I cannot vote for another Democrat after this.
It just turned me off.
All right, Bertha.
And up next, we'll have a conversation about how America votes and how those votes are counted with political science professor Paul Gronke, director of the Election and Voting Information Center at Reed College.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
We're joined now by Paul Gronke.
He's a political science professor at Reed College, also the director of the Election and Voting Information Center there.
Professor, welcome to the program.
Thanks, Mimi.
Good morning to everybody.
So start by telling us happy election day.
Start by telling us about the Election and Voting Information Center.
What is that and who funds you?
Yeah, thank you.
And appreciate having me on.
So the Election Voting Information Center, we are a nonpartisan academic and policy research center.
We've worked with federal, state, and local agencies.
We're really best known since 2018 for conducting a nationally representative survey of local election officials in the United States, trying to understand the challenges they faced, really the state of the profession of election administration at the local level, which is really such an important foundation of our democracy.
Our funding comes from my college.
We receive money from Democracy Fund.
We received some funding from the EAC.
Again, we've done work with some state and local agencies as well.
So let's drill down a little bit on that survey that you do of local election officials.
Can you give us an idea of what the questions are that you're asking in that survey and what are you hearing?
Well, absolutely.
We started the survey in 2018.
It seems like a long time ago, but the 2016 election, the first election where Donald Trump was elected against Hillary Clinton, there were concerns about foreign interference in our elections and cybersecurity threats.
And so we started in 2018 really with the intention of figuring out whether local officials, who are such a diverse population spread all over this country from the largest jurisdictions in the country like Los Angeles County, California, Maricopa County, Arizona, Harris County, Texas, Cook County, Illinois.
Those are very, very large jurisdictions, large staffs.
The local election officials there are almost like CEOs.
And then you get all the way to small townships in northern Michigan, in northern Wisconsin, in much of New England.
So we wanted to learn initially whether some of the lessons learned from 2016 had gotten through to these officials in 2018.
And the answer was it had.
But what really surprised us, Mimi, was how the profile of the typical election official, a 55-year-old, generally white female with some college degree earning about $50,000 a year, that had really stayed stable for 10 or 15 years.
And that brought us some concerns about this population, whether they were aging out, whether some of the new challenges that were coming in as technology moved forward, whether this audience, this population of professionals would have the right resources and support in order to continue to do their jobs.
And the answers we found have generally been good.
This is a population that still tells us, you know, they're ready to get their work done.
They like their work.
They're excited about it.
The major stressors for them, no surprise.
There's been a rise in threats and harassment directed at local officials at all levels, but at local election officials and just the time.
You know, we're asking these folks to work 60, 80 hour weeks during a very stressful period of time, you know, with all of the clique lights of the world focused on them.
So what I can say to everyone is let's try to give election officials nationwide these election heroes, give them the time to get their job done.
Hopefully we can calm down and wait for all the results to come in.
You know, don't have anyone spike the ball early today, but let's just let the results come in.
I want to ask you about those threats.
ABC News has this headline, law enforcement on alert for election day threats, according to a new report.
What are the concerns among local election workers and what kind of threats have they gotten to their personal safety?
Well, happily, you know, there are not reports of people actually being attacked, but there are just threatening phone calls, emails.
These ramped up after 2020.
I will say the federal government, the FBI, state and local authorities have really stepped up.
There's task forces that are working on this.
There are hotlines.
There are other places where election workers and frankly citizens can report.
Like we always say, Mimi, if you see something, say something.
If you see anything unusual, pick up the phone, get on the internet, report it.
In most cases, it's probably something innocuous, but just report the same.
The concerns are just the stressors of daily life.
You know, Mimi, you and I, you know, we happily share.
I hope we happily share.
I do.
I don't know about you, Mimi.
We happily share what we do with our job with our friends and family, people in the grocery lines, others.
And I hear election officials tell me all too often, you know, I don't tell other people what I do anymore because I get these challenges coming at me when they really don't understand the work.
So the concern is that we want this to be a profession of individuals who want to continue to step in and support democracy.
And we want younger people to enter this workforce and take part in this work.
And if it seems like this kind of environment, frankly, they'll do other jobs in local government that have some of the same benefits and rewards, but don't face these kind of stressors.
And what's being put in place to help address either the threats themselves or the stressors on that position?
Well, again, the FBI has a task force.
There are law enforcement at all levels.
There are both public and private groups that have been formed to try to support officials.
I regularly participate in meetings with officials to try to hear their concerns, integrate that into some of our research, and try to roll out to them some support mechanisms.
There's other organizations, the Carter Center, Jimmy Carter, now 100 years old, and the Carter Center is an amazing legacy that will live on behind him.
So the Carter Center has been rolling out wellness resources.
Just, you know, when we started doing the work, Mimi, one of the things I used to say was that the local election workforce was kind of the stiff upper lip.
You know, they always would get it done, and they always do get it done.
But I think what we've gotten working with this community, it's gotten a little bit more open, as all of us need to be, about saying when we're facing some mental health challenges, when we need wellness resources, just some exercise, some fresh air, anything, you know, share that with other people.
Be clear with your staff.
Talk to one another so that we can anticipate these problems before you end up leaving your job too early because you just can't manage.
If you'd like to join the conversation with Paul Gronke of Reed College, you can do so.
Our lines are by party.
So Democrats call us on 202-748-8000.
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And Independents, 202748-8002.
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Do election workers take any kind of an oath or sign a pledge that they will be nonpartisan and that they'll act fairly?
I don't know for the workers themselves, Mimi.
I should.
The local election officials, yes, they are bound by certain rules and regulations.
And so some of these problems that occurred after 2020, a very, very small number of officials who essentially broke rules, broke law, shared some confidential information.
Again, the good news there is that law enforcement moved in quickly and individuals have been removed from office.
And one individual in particular in Colorado was prosecuted.
So, yeah, some number of officials are elected in partisan elections.
Other nonpartisan, I will again share in all the time I've been doing this work that there's a real deep commitment to being objective and nonpartisan.
They just want to get the job done, get the ballots counted, give voters access, give candidates access, and get the job done.
There have been changes since because of the pandemic four years ago.
It was in the middle of a pandemic when Americans went to vote.
What were the major changes to the electoral process that we still have today?
Yeah, it was really astounding.
In 2020, two close friends of mine and colleagues wrote a wonderful article after 2020 called The Miracle and Tragedy of the 2020 Election.
The miracle was that we got it done.
Election officials got it done.
We had, by most reports, the most safe and secure election in American history in 2020, even under those conditions.
The big change that occurred is that in many states, they provided for alternative ways to cast your ballot than going to the polling place on Election Day.
And what that primarily meant was they moved to a full vote-by-mail or universal ballot delivery system in many states.
Some states that involved sending absentee ballot applications to everyone.
In other states, if you were eligible and on the rolls, they sent you the balloting materials.
Some of that was pulled back after that period in 2022, so they didn't remain in that full vote-by-mail position.
But what that meant in many states was that no excuse, absentee balloting, meaning you could request a ballot, an absentee ballot without providing an excuse.
That became available in many more states.
Drop boxes, election officials, state legislatures, others got used to drop boxes, got comfortable with them.
So while we've moved back, while we have returned in some ways to the voting patterns that we have observed in 2016 in terms of the partisan balance, but the one very unusual situation in 2020 was that because of some of the rhetoric coming from President Trump and other Republican forces warning people or casting doubt about vote by mail, more Republicans than normal voted on Election Day.
On the other side, more Democrats voted by mail.
And then because states and localities had procedures in place that meant that the vote-by-mail ballots were processed last or later in this kind of ordering that occurs, early on as the returns came in in 2020, the returns were skewed toward the in-person votes that were also more Republican.
And then as the night went on and the next day, as the vote-by-mail ballots began to get processed, things moved back in some states.
And that provided grounds for claims of malfeasance and created suspicion.
So with the changes back this year, meaning the electorate has shifted back to more normality, we are going to have more voting by mail than we had in 2016.
It won't be like 2020.
It will probably be about a third of our ballots will be vote by mail.
2020 was nearly half.
So there's been more options available in many states.
Drop boxes are being used in many states.
There has been some reaction and changes to, you know, just to make sure that counting occurs more quickly.
Election officials have been given the opportunity to open up some of those vote by mail ballots earlier and process them through the signature verification of the processes.
So really, I think election officials nationwide, state, state legislatures have adapted well to the lessons learned from 2020.
And I expect all reports are that things are going very smoothly at this point.
I want to ask you about the machines themselves.
As you know, Elon Musk has been said that he's a technology guy and that these machines are incredibly easy to hack.
ABC News has an election fact check.
It says how voting machines work and why they're hard to hack.
Can you explain how much confidence voters should have in the voting machines themselves?
Absolutely.
They should be very confident.
I can't get inside the head of Elon Musk.
I don't understand why he promotes misinformation on his platform.
He simply does.
And I wish he would stop doing it.
Talk to experts.
Talk to experts that are readily available.
Talk to secretaries of state, talk to directors of elections, talk to the technologists in these companies.
The one key thing that people need to know is that the election machines themselves are not connected to the internet.
You can't just go in and hack a machine by getting physical access to it, nor can you get access to it over the internet.
So whether or not you go to a DEF CON, which is a convention that occurs in Las Vegas, that is useful because they'll bring in the machines and try to expose vulnerabilities in those machines.
But you don't get that kind of physical access.
So the machines are safe and secure.
And Elon Musk is simply wrong about this.
And the fact checkers are correct.
The machines are not hackable.
They're not vulnerable.
They're not connected to the internet.
It's safe and secure.
And as far as physical access to the machines, how are they secured?
And what kind of security would they have around them?
So, you know, again, they're not connected to the internet.
You know, there's going to be security.
If it's a machine that's brought in on election day, it's brought in in a locked facility.
I can't say for every jurisdiction, but in the jurisdictions that I'm aware of, they're under video surveillance.
There's security guards there.
The machines are literally not turned on.
That is the election day machines.
They're not even turned on, brought up to speed until somebody comes in on election day.
So it's just not a way for somebody to come in there and hack those machines.
And then, you know, be aware of the radically decentralized nature of our system.
There are some problems with it, but the big advantages of it is in order to hack our election, imagine what you'd have to do.
You'd have to start from the smallest jurisdictions, the Dixville Notches in New Hampshire, those all the way up to Los Angeles County, Maricopa, Turant.
I mean, the scope of what would need to be done, it's just infeasible.
And so it sounds good when you have this one machine and you're in Vegas and you've got it playing the University of Michigan fight song.
That's a famous story from a decade ago.
But to do that on any kind of broad scale, last thing I'll say is you've got people like me.
You've got other experts.
You've got political campaigns, candidates monitoring everything.
We've got C-SPAN.
So you just can't do this under the radar.
It's just not realistic.
And I wish we would kind of put this to bed.
It is very important that computer scientists, programmers, others scrutinize, keep an eye on our election system, watch election officials, go as observers.
But this misinformation about the vulnerability machines really needs to stop.
It's just undermining confidence in what really is a very secure system.
And we're going to take calls, but just to remind us quickly about the court case brought by Dominion Voting Machine Company against Fox News.
Yeah, that was a pricey one.
It was a suit $700 million.
So yeah, that was Dominion became part of this misinformation campaign, that there was something wrong, that the machines were vulnerable, that they had switched votes.
It was promoted by a number of news networks that ended up losing that case pretty badly and paying a $700 million judgment to that company.
There's another case going through now, SmartMatic, that, you know, also, and I'm not involved in that case.
There were two election workers, election heroes in Georgia who successfully won a suit against me against Rudy Giuliani, again, for sort of promoting misinformation and kind of their lives.
These are just two civil servants working in a county in Georgia, and their lives are kind of destroyed.
So, yeah, folks need to calm down a little bit and let election workers do the job.
All right, let's talk to callers now.
On the line for independence, Paul in Portchester, New York.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Speaking of election integrity, my question is: is it required that both Democrat and Republican inspectors are at every polling station?
And if so, how can anybody say that the election was stolen in the last election?
11,000 votes were stolen in Georgia.
How did the Democrats pull the wool over the eyes of the Republican inspectors?
Well, Paul, good name, by the way.
I can't say for certain whether there's a requirement of a Republican and a Democratic individual observer, inspector, whatever the term may be, in every polling place.
I simply can't speak to that.
I know that in the jurisdictions that I'm familiar with, if there are election boards, they will have a partisan balance.
Here in my own county, Multnomah County, there are election boards that do particular work working with the election official.
Those boards have partisan balance.
In other states, you know, and there's opportunities for election observers to come in and evaluate these things.
So, yeah, the claims of the claims in Georgia were thrown out.
You know, everybody had their chance in court.
The other thing, Paul, I think you could feel good about this is that there are lots and lots of lawyers out there and candidates and campaigns that are paying very, very close attention to what's going on in every locality.
And in many ways, that's what we rely on is those campaigns to pay very close attention.
So, you know, the transparency is really high, really.
If anyone listening or watching today has a question, you know, I urge you to, it's a little bit late this election, but sign up, go observe, talk to your local election official.
They're very open and transparent.
They love having people come in and show them what the procedures are.
Josh in Juliet, Illinois, Democrat.
Hi, good morning, CFA.
Good morning to your guests.
Hi, guests.
I was hoping you can remind all callers about what Tina Peters committed in Colorado, and she was convicted by a jury of her peers, not Biden administration, targeted of whatever they call it, investigation.
Can you please remind what she actually did to the machine and how she hacked it personally?
And can you remind how many people these cases are all Republican?
I don't know if you can say it's that case.
And the last thing I'd like to remind all my MAGA supporters: please don't go to jail for Donald Trump.
As you can see, Tina Peters did.
And there are several proud boys in jail for committing election interference.
They listened to Donald Trump and instead of, you know, now you can see the evidence in January 6th.
You can see his emails, his tax, you know, he lost.
And he's got people trying to subvert our election under just to support him.
So this man is not supposed to be a president.
Please do not vote for him.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you, Josh.
Tina Peters was the individual that I referenced a few minutes ago.
You know, I recall when that happened.
I don't remember the specifics of the case.
I don't recall that it was a hacking incident.
Think she provided passwords or their access to an outside group.
Yeah, I remember when that event occurred, and I was interacting with election officials both from Colorado and other states, and they were shocked, they were saddened, they were outraged.
You know, one line that I'm not going to attribute to anyone, but a leading official from the state told me that this, you know, this Tina Peters violated the public trust.
That, you know, that role is critical and vital.
And it was, and this individual was saddened and outraged that that had happened.
And eventually the full weight of the law came down.
There was one other case in the county in Georgia, I believe, where an individual, an election official, provided access to an outside group.
The important thing to understand in both of those cases is that nothing happened with the election day count.
Nothing happened with the tallies.
This was afterwards when questions were being raised about the credibility or integrity of the results.
And apparently they thought that giving this access to an outside group was appropriate and that was wrong.
That broke the law.
And hopefully it's lessons learned.
We have to pay close attention to make sure this doesn't happen again.
And Professor, I do have an article here from the AP about that.
It says, former Colorado County Clerk Tina Peters, sentenced to nine years for voting data scheme.
It says that the judge said that she sharing earlier sparring with her for continuing to press discredited claims about rigged voting machines that she never took her job seriously.
The judge said this, I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could.
You're as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen.
You are no hero.
You abused your position and you're a charlatan.
So if you want more information about that case, it's at the Associated Press.
It was a pointed decision.
Yes.
That was a tough one.
That was hard.
I want to say that was hard when that happened.
Even it was one individual out of 10,000 officials nationwide, again, to focus on the good side.
But yeah, that was a shocker.
On the line for Republicans in Cumberland, Maryland.
Gary, you're next.
Okay.
I want to say I like seeing Donald Trump do all that, take away the border and stuff and get rid of all them people down there.
And he does a good job.
I like him.
I like everything he does.
And I want to get this country back on its feet.
This country's going downhill fast.
Well, my wife is pretty died two years ago.
Someone living in an apartment house by myself.
So she would be proud of Donald Trump, too, because she liked him.
Have you voted, Gary?
Have you voted, or are you planning to vote today?
I can't get there because my legs are bad and I can't walk at four.
Were you able to vote by mail?
I got bout one day for something and not setting in.
All right.
I wonder, Professor Gronke, about the differences in how states tabulate when they start tabulating votes, when they start processing votes.
Can you talk about the major differences there?
Yes.
I will say the differences are a lot less than they were some of the things that we had referenced in the opening, Mimi.
So in Georgia in 2020, they by election night at the end of election night, I believe they had 75 or 80 percent of the votes in and more votes were coming in as they processed them.
The estimates I'm seeing now are that 98, 99 percent of the Georgia ballots.
Michigan as well, we should see a much higher percentage of ballots reported after the polls close.
What that means, there's not assurances, but what we don't, I say not assurances.
What we don't know is individuals like we just spoke to, if they are big supporters of President Trump, and let's just say that this individual, somebody learned that he hasn't gone to vote yet.
Hopefully somebody will come and help him and assist him and give the polls today.
So there may be a higher surge of election day turnout than some people are expecting.
That's unknown.
But it looks like in most states, we'll be seeing 90 plus, 95% plus of those ballots being reported with an hour of the polls close closing.
And because of the legal changes that we talked about previously, Mimi, the disparity between the ballots so that the first reports are only the early in-person and election day votes followed by the vote by mail, we're not going to see those kinds of disparities.
That means that the mix we see when the polls close is going to be more reflective of what we're eventually going to see.
The big caveats for the viewers to think about are those states that either that allow you to only have your ballot post marked by election day, but not necessarily in the hands of the election officials.
The big ones to pay attention to are California, Oregon, Washington.
And there are some critical congressional seats in those states that are very competitive that may be key states to determine the control of the House of Representatives.
And it's quite possible that we won't have final results if those races are close, that we won't have final results for a couple days or even a week.
So control of the House of Representatives may be in question for a while.
And that's, if I can get really in the weeds here for a moment, Mimi, I won't get too deep, but Maricopa County is a very nice example.
It's the second largest jurisdiction in the country in Arizona.
In Maricopa County, individuals are allowed to bring their by-mail ballots, their absentee ballots, to the vote centers on Election Day.
The estimates that I heard a couple days ago was 300 to 500,000 people will do that.
So here we have 300 to 500,000 ballots that have arrived at a vote center, a polling place.
And those ballots won't be transported to the central office in Maricopa until the polls close.
So that means you've got a pile of 300 to 500,000 ballots that have to be signature verified.
All those processing has to occur.
I've been to Maricopa.
They have an amazing staff there.
It's all live stream.
People can watch what happens.
But yeah, you watch that stream and you're going to see a lot of paper coming in, a lot of envelopes coming in in the evening, and they have to start to work through them.
So, you know, if the presidential race comes down to Arizona, we may be waiting a while.
And that's just because of the mechanics of the way they do things.
We've got a question for you from Dan in Pennsylvania.
He says, how are voting machines, total vote tally collected and reported on TV networks if no internet is used?
Dan, that's a great question.
So the way the internet is, so let me be clear.
The voting, if you walk into, there, by the way, there's a voting machine right there.
That's an old punch card machine right over there.
Nope.
Sorry, Mimi.
Over on that side.
There it is.
So you walk into a polling place and you fill out, you fill out, in most cases in the United States these days, you're filling out an optical scan, you're filling in ovals, and then you're inserting it into a machine.
That machine that is reading your choices, that machine itself is not connected to the internet.
Most commonly, there's a memory card in that machine that's collecting the choices.
It's collecting images of what your ballot.
So here we have a bunch of images that have been collected.
Then that card is removed at the end of the day, securely transported.
In some cases, a tally is run at the precinct place, and then that tally or result is, so that's called a precinct count, and that's then transmitted to the central office.
Or as in Maricopa, those memory cards are securely taken to the central count, and then it is run into a machine that does that tally.
So the machines themselves are separate out.
Then there's a machine that does the tally that looks at that optical scan, discerns your choices, summarizes, and produces a report.
It's just a computer report, but it's a tabulation.
Then that information, then, yes, that's put up on the internet.
So there's multiple layers of protection here until it's finally put up on the internet where you can see it.
And what the networks are doing and other journalists, they're actually at these county offices, in some cases, the precincts, and they're keeping their own separate tallies.
And so, right, so there's multiple levels of people checking and paying attention.
And frankly, Mimi, and for the caller, the candidates and campaigns themselves are sitting there and watching, and they have their own summary.
So there's so many layers.
But the internet only gets involved when they put up the results, right?
The machines are firewalled off and they're protected.
And if we ever have to go back and do an audit or post-election audit or recount, you go back to those machines which have never been connected to the internet.
Here's Ronald in New Hampshire, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Yeah, thank you for taking my call.
Yeah, I just, you know, one out of six U.S. presidents were not from a major party when they took office.
You know, people are getting gaslit into thinking that all they can vote for is Democrat and Republican.
There are other candidates out there.
You know, 70% of the people don't like the Democrat and Republican candidate.
But the question I have for Paul is that I would like to be able to go on the internet and look and view an image of my ballot and everybody else's ballot and be able to count up the ballots myself if I want to or to check to make sure that my ballot is in there.
How come we can't, every single person in the United States can't get access online and look at every single ballot that has been cast.
And then anybody who wants to count it up can count it up theirselves.
That's the most transparent way to do it.
Why don't we do that?
Yeah, John, that's a great question.
And go Granite State.
So we're getting there.
What I can say for you in New Hampshire is if you want that kind of information available and access, you can get involved.
And I'm not just telling you, hey, you can get it if you get involved.
But what you want, we're getting there.
There are some jurisdictions that provide that.
I want to highlight a colleague of mine, good friend, Lana Atkinson.
She's at Florida State University, and she works with a county in Florida.
I want to make sure it's, I believe it's Pasco County, but if you go to the Florida State University, Lana Atkinson, so she's been able to make that available in that jurisdiction.
The challenge is this, is that that means that you've got images, scans of every single ballot.
And let's say John, I believe Johnson's name of New Hampshire, decides that, boy, he really loves a third-party candidate.
He writes his name on the ballot.
He literally writes on it because people do that.
They write things in the ballot.
Are we comfortable with putting that out for everybody to see, or do we have to go and redact that information?
I'll give you another example.
I know it's this obscure stuff.
It's a way the American election system.
In my own county of Multnomah County, the city of Portland, where I live, there's parts of the city of Portland that overlap other counties.
Hillsborough County is next to my county, and there's 10 households that are in Portland City, but that are in Hillsborough County.
So if you release those ballots and you've got this little slice, geographic slice that's only in Hillsborough, it's not difficult to identify individuals and be able to connect individuals to their ballots.
So we don't want that to happen.
So asking for what John wants, this full transparency, there are difficulties just because of the complexities of our system.
But I will say that there are these things called cast vote records, which are a digital record of our choices, just ones and zeros.
That there are states that are moving toward that.
Tennessee is a nice example that's moving toward that full transparency so that then an individual like John could go and see and if he wants to do his own mathematics and statistics and add things up.
So I think we're getting there.
People want that kind of transparency.
They should talk to their state legislatures.
It will require some technology.
It will require some money.
But this is not something that's impossible.
We can get there.
And there is a way to track your own ballot, isn't there?
To make sure that it gets there.
I appreciate that.
And thank you so much for that correction.
That's right.
So we have moved, you know, back in time, way back 20 years ago, the first wave of election reforms after the 2000 election, after the Bush v. Gore election, when we realized that we had these voting machines that we needed to work on improving that technology.
The first wave were called DREs, direct recording electronic machines.
The view was, hey, technologists like, I don't know, Elon Musk, we have the answer to everything, which is the electronic voting machines.
We realize that's a problem.
Those are not, people are not comfortable with those.
So we've sort of moved back to voting on paper in most places, which are these op scans, basically optical scanning machines.
But yes, if you're voting still on the electronic machine and it does not provide you a record of what you did, you should ask your state legislature or your local elections.
Well, how come I can't get that?
If you vote on a ballot, you can see to make sure that your vote is reflected.
And then, yes, in most states, it's 47 states now, you can track your ballots.
If you vote by absentee, you can kind of check to make sure your choices were reflected correctly.
That's right.
Here's James and Collins, Mississippi, Independent Line.
James.
Yes, ma'am.
Yes, how are you doing?
Good.
Yes, sir.
So I'm not really interested in anything but the women vote, especially the Caucasian women and the Arabs, the African-American women, because I just can't see.
I just can't figure out how these experts are saying that this is going to be a close race.
I mean, I'm trying to go along with them, but I just don't see it being close.
And I don't, the only way I see it being close is when you tell me what's the percentage of white Caucasian women and African-American women and all the rest of the women are supporting one of the candidates.
And another thing, sir, is this.
When They have been speaking the candidate for president.
They never used, or they never said to me, you never used the House and the Senate who's running for the House and the Senate.
All I've been seeing now is these people running for the House and Senate on TV where they never did question none of these people that's going in for these offices.
They never questioned them.
And now all of a sudden they want to put them up there that the Republicans are going to win the House and the Senate.
Why did they not do that?
Because those people need to be called out too.
The one that's supporting the president, each one of them, they should have been called out on their records.
That's a problem we got now.
But my main point is women, if women, this is about women all over the world.
Every woman, every city, I mean, every country of what women are with children.
So James is a little bit off the topic, but Professor Gronke, I wanted to ask you about, you know, we're hearing that there could be long lines at polling places.
If there's people in line and it's time for that polling place to close, what happens at that point?
Go back to James for a second.
I will say that it is really historic that we have a, well, the second female candidate, but the first female candidate of color running.
And he's right.
Women are really energized.
Men are energized.
And it is great to see.
And I'm glad to see James.
I'm guessing an older male like myself.
And it is exciting really worldwide to see women moving into positions of power.
And he's right.
It's about time.
One way or another, whether Kamala Harris wins or loses, it is an exciting election.
Waiting in line.
Yeah, in most places that I'm aware of, if you're in line when the polls close, they allow that line to complete.
You're sort of in line.
You've checked in and you can complete.
To go back to the example that we talked about with Maricopa County, the reason why Maricopa keeps coming up in the election observers like myself is that they have a, it's called a we'll call it a long ballot.
It's a two-page ballot.
And there's some reports that people in Maricopa County are taking 45 minutes or an hour, some people, to navigate through that ballot.
And if that happens and there's a lot of people in line at 6 p.m. and the polls close at 7, and somebody, a couple of people come in and they're slow, that line could get pretty long.
And they're going to keep those polls open.
We're not going to get all of that stuff I talked about, getting those absentee ballots back to the central count, closing down the machines, getting the memory cards out.
All that can't happen until everyone has completed.
And who makes that call, Professor, as to keeping the polls open and how long they stay open?
Yeah, I can't answer that, Mimi.
I'm sorry.
There may be differences in state and local laws.
My understanding, again, the places I'm aware of, it's not really a call.
It's just required.
If you're in line at that point, they're going to let you keep the polls open until everyone can complete and vote.
But there may be variations state and local in what that really means.
I will say for anyone who's viewing and is concerned about that, again, a really good thing.
There are many jurisdictions now where you can kind of monitor the lines if you have alternative places where you can go.
But look, go early, go at lunchtime.
I mean, we, you know, Mimi, it's, you may know, like everybody, I think, I could be a professor and ask people, what's the most common voting periods?
It's in the morning, right?
It's in the morning at the rush hour when people are coming in.
It's after work, you know, that 4 o'clock to 7 o'clock time, lunchtime.
So if you have the opportunity to go to your employer, if you have the flexibility to go at 10 a.m., 2 p.m., those tend to be lower stress times for election workers.
You can get through more quickly.
But yeah, get there.
Get out and vote, right?
Just get in line, be like James, you know.
All right, and here's Susan.
Get support, right?
Enjoy yourself.
See your friends and neighbors.
Susan in New York, Republican line.
Go ahead, Susan.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I wanted to share that I did early vote here in New York State, upstate New York, and no lying, nothing like that.
But I had an interesting conversation with my brother who lives in Michigan.
And when he went to vote, they asked for his driver's license, and there was a double check on the verification between two different individuals.
And he was, you know, everything was double checked, and it was very thorough.
My experience here in New York State was when I went to check in, they asked me my name.
And then instead of asking me to verify for accuracy what my address was, the lady said to me, said my address to me.
And that didn't seem very secure or accurate.
So I question that when I vote.
So there are different state laws in terms of the requirements for identification.
In some states, you are obligated to provide some sort of identification.
In other places, you go through an experience, as you did in New York, where you provide your name and then you certify by, you know, you certify that's who you are.
And that is the state of the law.
And I'm not familiar with the details of the law in New York, but that sounds like the law in New York.
There is, it's a felony to federal that you're breaking, you're breaking a serious law if you do misrepresent who you are.
So there is that legal protection there.
But if the caller is interested in changing that, then, you know, talk to your state legislature and see if they can change the identifications.
Identifications do change.
They're different state by state.
This is a text from Jan in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, who says, years ago, I worked on the election board and it was a pleasant experience.
There is no way I would work at the polls these days.
It is completely different now with all the threats and hatred nowadays.
I would be too afraid.
That is also the reason I mail in my vote now.
Yeah, I regret hearing that from Jane.
I hope that the situation in her county and her locality can improve and that either she or friends that she knows can go in.
Again, I can go back to our survey.
Election officials and their staffs do tell us they really enjoy the work.
It's exciting.
It's fast-paced.
Change, there's a lot of change in the space and they thrive on the change.
They thrive on these challenges.
The threats need to stop.
You know, we need to stop feeling like if we don't like something from a government official, whether it be an election official or someone else, the thing to do is threaten them.
That really is not fair for any of us.
And it's going to limit people like Jane and others going into public service.
So hopefully we can move away from that kind of corrosive atmosphere and just support these officials who are doing the tough work of supporting democracy or delivering social services or serving on law enforcement or being first responders, right?
You know, these people are stepping up and serving in the military, other kind of public service occupations are so important.
And we don't want to, no one should be subjected to threats and harassments like that.
Gail in Regalwood, North Carolina, Democrat.
Good morning, Gail.
Good morning.
Okay, I just want to say I think half the country has amnesia.
They forget about January the 6th and the COVID pandemic with Trump.
But my question is, why?
Why is Trump able to even run for president when he participated in an insurrection on January the 6th and his Republican colleagues also did, which violated the 14th Amendment?
And as far as getting a job, you can't get a job working in a school lunchroom or be a bus driver at a school or work in a school as a teacher or teacher's assistant with a felony record.
And I just don't understand why Trump was never held accountable.
Why did they wait two years to do the investigation to try to hold him accountable?
And I think that our country is, that is what bothers me about this whole situation is the fact that we have a felon man who's got tons of charges against him, sexually assaulting women, stealing documents, participating in the insurrection, causing the insurrection, trying to steal the election.
All right, Gail, let's get a response.
Any response here, Professor Gronke?
Yeah.
I'm not a lawyer.
He is qualified to be on the ballot.
If he was not qualified, he would have been removed.
North Carolina is a competitive state, so I encourage her to get out and vote and speak to others and try to convince them of her position on this.
Yeah, it's at this moment in American history.
Here we go.
Here's John in Falls Church, Virginia, Independent Line.
Go ahead, John.
Hey, good morning.
Thank you.
So if I am the president of Xi Jing of China, Xi Jinping, more than anything, what I would want is to be able to control the American elections.
If I'm Vladimir Putin, more than anything, I would want the ability to control U.S. elections.
I have unlimited amounts of money and expertise to hack the elections in the United States.
If I have that ability or if I have that desire, and if we haven't identified how China and how Russia are trying to attack our election machines and adjusted for anything in the past 20 years on what they could potentially be doing, how can we say that we don't know that they don't have control of it?
Because we haven't identified what they are doing to try to control our elections.
So until we can actually say, here's how, and it's not just foreign adversaries.
There's very powerful people all around the world that would want to control our elections and get their own desired outcomes to control that lever.
And so we have never identified where people that would want to do that are doing that and what they're doing.
And until somebody gets held accountable and they say, you know, here's what they're doing, here's how they're doing it, and here's how we're securing it from that ever happening.
I just, I have very limited faith in digital voting machines and the digital equipment that goes from the booth all the way to centralizing that data to where it's tallied nationwide.
So there are so many places in there where people can insert and play with things and mess with things.
We haven't identified any of them.
The only thing the FBI came out with in 2020 was semi-ringing emails.
It was just, but nobody's gone at the core of the issue.
I've never identified anything.
Professor Gronke.
Yeah, I can't agree with John on that.
The federal government, so both governmental authorities and major technology companies, Microsoft, others, are constantly monitoring foreign threats and foreign adversaries.
John is correct.
There are foreign actors and domestic actors that are attempting to hit our systems.
Really, back to what I said a few moments ago, the system in the United States is sort of so decentralized that doing so on a kind of a systematic basis is impossible.
It would be detected.
You'd have to hit 10,000 jurisdictions with hundreds of thousands of individual machines.
Putting that aside, it is just not right, correct that the federal government is not monitoring and others are not monitoring things.
They're constantly monitoring, constantly hardening the systems.
Yes, we need to be vigilant at all times, but they've been doing just heroic work in protecting our systems.
And just because something's digital doesn't mean it is vulnerable when you have all of those layers that I described before, all of those kind of layers checking the same thing over and over and over again.
So John's right.
We need to be vigilant.
We need to protect our system, but we have.
We've been working very hard at this for a decade or longer.
And the best minds in the world, really, in the United States and these tech companies and in the U.S. government and state governments are protecting our systems.
Professor Gronke, one last comment from you that we got on text from Jeanette in Vermont.
She's got concerns about those drop boxes that were set on fire.
And if you could comment on that and what kind of security there is to protect the votes that go into those drop boxes.
I can, and thanks for that question.
I've been doing a lot of work on that.
So that, again, it's very unfortunate that somebody felt motivated to try to do something like that.
You know, in my own county, Multnomah, there is their fire suppression equipment that worked as advertised.
There were only three ballots that were damaged.
The individuals were identified, contacted, and then supplied new materials.
Situation is less good in Clark County for reasons that we don't quite understand yet.
The fire suppression did not work as they hoped.
There were approximately 488 ballots that they were able to identify and get new materials to the people already.
There are some additional, they're not certain.
So they've been reaching out to all the voters in Clark County.
There's ballot tracking in our state and many, most states, where you can find out to make sure that your ballots have been successfully brought to the election official and have been certified.
So what's happening with election officials?
They're stepping up security.
They're watching those boxes.
Law enforcement is making cycles more frequently to check those boxes.
And we're going to have to, you know, after the election, we're going to have to look back and make sure that we have these drop boxes secured sufficiently.
Voters really love drop boxes.
Election officials like them.
They can be put in places to make it very convenient for people.
But yeah, that's a point we have to pay attention to.
And I will say this.
Over decades of using drop boxes, this is really the only attacks like this that we've seen.
And I'm confident that the manufacturer, we're going to look at what happened here and see what vulnerability this individual is able to penetrate.
All right, Paul Gronke, director of the Election and Voting Information Center and political science professor at Reed College.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
Thank you.
Go voting.
And more of your phone calls on this election day 2024.
After the break, you can start calling in now.
Here are the lines.
If you support the Harris-Walls ticket, it's 202-748-8000.
If you support the Trump Vance ticket, it's 202-748-8001.
If you support neither candidate or are undecided, it's 202-748-8002.
But first, we want to show you Evan Kozloff from our election partner, Spectrum News.
He'll give us a preview of the battle for the House and Senate.
Take a look.
Right now, we're living in a world of split government.
Democrats control the Senate while Republicans control the House.
But all of that could change on Tuesday.
So let's start by taking a look at the Senate.
Where right now, this is the balance of power.
Democrats have 48 seats, along with the three independents that caucus with Democrats, compared to 49 seats for Republicans.
So essentially, Democrats have a 51 to 49 seat majority.
Republicans are really hopeful that they could change that, starting with West Virginia, where longtime Democrat Senator Joe Manchin announced his retirement, essentially opening the door in this Ruby Red state for Republican Governor Jim Justice to win the Senate seat.
From there, Republicans are hopeful that they could really go on offense, including in Montana, where right now John Tester, a moderate Democrat, is trying to hold on to his position in a state that went for Trump by 16 percentage points in 2020.
They're also targeting Ohio, where right now Sherrod Brown, another moderate Democrat, is trying to hold on against Trump-backed Republican Bernie Moreno.
Now, if there's one opportunity where Democrats think they might be able to go on offense, it's in Texas.
That's where right now Senator Ted Cruz is trying to hold on to his seat facing off against Colin Allred.
So those are going to be some big races to watch in the Senate.
Let's talk about the House now, where right now it's 220 to 212.
Republicans have the majority.
Democrats would need to flip just a handful of states to take back that majority.
They're really hopeful that they're going to be able to do so starting on Tuesday.
For Spectrum News, I'm Evan Kozloff.
This election night, C-SPAN delivers something different.
Not just the presidential race, but the state races that will decide the balance of power in Congress.
No political pundits, no spin, no commercials.
Just the candidates, the results, and you.
Follow C-SPAN this election night beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern, live tonight, on TV, online, or on the free C-SPAN Now video app.
Discover the heartbeat of democracy with C-SPAN Voices 2024 as we engage voters ahead of Election Day asking, why is it important to vote?
Hi, my name is Paula.
And the reason why I think we all should vote is because we think that our voices are never heard and we see a lot of things that we need to make changes of and I think it's important for us to vote considering what's going on in the world today.
It's our only opportunity to express individually how we feel about the issues that are important to us.
Even though they say every election is an important election, but this one in particular, I think you should exercise your right to vote.
One, if you see how this country is going truly in the wrong direction, then you should get out and vote.
And don't base it on personality.
Base it on policy.
Things that will help your life.
It's important to vote because elsewhere in the world, people don't have their right to vote or their votes really don't count.
So here you can definitely make a change.
And it's very important as far as what kind of country you want to be.
And the two rival candidates have definitely different opinions about what kind of America they want.
I'm voting this year because I care about my women's rights.
I care about my rights as a black woman.
And I'm also in the military.
So I care about how I'm getting deployed and where I'm going and the reasons why.
And I feel like that's a big reason to fight, and you guys should fight too.
C-SPAN's Voices 2024.
Be a part of the conversation.
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
A reminder about our election coverage starting tonight at 7 p.m.
Be sure to keep it tuned to C-SPAN right here.
We're going to have speeches.
We're going to have results as soon as things come in.
We're going to have to take your calls all through the night.
We're going to be with you all night, including tomorrow morning through Washington Journal all the way till 12 noon.
So we will have our election night coverage starting at 7 p.m.
And here is Ibrahim in Germantown, Maryland, Harris supporter.
Good morning.
All right, good morning.
Yeah, I'm a Harris supporter.
So I'm an immigrant.
I've been in the U.S. roughly about 10 years.
This is my first election since being a citizen.
I've been eligible to vote.
And just everything I've been seeing, the rhetoric from Trump, just the policies in terms of Roe v. Wade, policies as it relates to hardline position against immigrants and just things have been saying about, you know, just different communities, just how dark the rhetoric has just been.
It has even prompted me to even sign up with their campaign to do canvassing and phone bank because I believe that these elections are just too important to just sit on the sidelines.
So for me, it wasn't just about voting, but how can I get involved?
Because this is where I call home.
And I know that the policies that the Harris campaign has been speaking about as it relates to for immigrants, as it relates to opportunities for myself as an entrepreneur and the future that I want for my children, I more align with that.
I see more of that future that is American.
And even just like a few weeks ago, I was looking at some videos and I was seeing a speech by Ronald Reagan where he was talking about, hey, when you work in Japan, you don't get to be a Japanese.
And when you work in England, you don't get to be English.
But America, you know, there's a pathway for you to be a citizen.
And I'm like, you know, that's the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and Bush and so forth is not the Republican Party that you see now.
So I don't know how Republicans can align themselves or sleep at night, you know, aligning themselves with what the MAGA has transformed their party to be.
So, you know, I'm really happy about Harris campaign.
I mean, she had, what, 100 or less than 100 days.
I think that I believe she will win, but worst case, even if she doesn't win, I think that they've run a really good campaign that they can be proud of.
And I'm looking forward to it.
Yep.
Thank you.
And here's Nancy in Montgomery, Alabama, Trump supporter.
Hi, Nancy.
I'm calling because I am a Trump supporter.
I am because I heard a Republican congressman say on a campaign that he would be.
Are you still listening to me?
Yes, yes.
Go ahead, Nancy.
You look like you were talking.
That he was talking on a campaign and he said that they had given the Harris Biden Administration $57 billion for internet to help the people that can't afford it.
And they didn't get it.
So I would think that the illegal immigrants must have got it for their telephones or their rooms or wherever they, what their food or whatever they needed money for.
So that's why I'm going to report vote for Trump.
And Nancy, did you vote for Trump last time in 2020?
No, I didn't vote in 2020.
And why is that?
Why didn't you vote?
I didn't get to, I wasn't able to get to the polls at that time.
But if you had gotten there, would you have voted for Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden?
I don't know right now.
Probably for a change, I might have voted for President Biden, but I'm voting for Republicans this time because that was a Republican congressman that said they gave $57 billion to their administration.
And they give everything to the Democratic immigrants and the Americans are.
No, no, no.
I think what you're referring to is the infrastructure law that was passed.
It does include broadband for underserved communities.
That's right.
Yeah, well, they didn't get it because I know too many people that had it before and they don't get it anymore.
All right, Nancy, this is Mike in Washington, D.C., Undecided.
Good morning.
Well, first of all, I want to thank C-SPAN for taking my phone call.
To me, when it comes to it, let me just say this to the American people.
Don't let nobody bully you or tell you who you should or should not vote for.
That's your right as an American citizen to vote for whoever the hell you want to vote for.
And if you're in any kind of relationship, if your relationships are based on who you vote for, it's not a real relationship.
Person should love you no matter what, who you decide to vote for.
So, you know, I just felt like I needed to put that out there.
Now, as far as it comes for this presidential election, you know, I'm still undecided because to me, I really feel that nothing for black people will really change regardless who gets in that office.
Because the black community has gone for this cycles after cycles after cycles.
And we're still going through the same thing.
But the really disappointing thing to me in this presidential election, while living in the District of Columbia, that Anacostia and East of the River was ignored once again.
Now, I would have loved to see some of the billion dollars that the Harris campaign raise up and some of that money be allocated towards the black businesses out there.
Standing underneath the iconic chair in Anacostia would have boosted the economy out there automatically.
Palma Harris is an historical figure.
So is Donald Trump.
And I think that both of those candidates should have gone out to Anacostia if they really want to know what black people are really thinking because East of the River is the last part of Chocolate City because District Columbia is no longer Chocolate City no more.
Genification really did destroy that.
And when I look at these elected officials, and if truth be known, with the black elites in this city, they always turn their nose up at the people from East of the River anyway.
So I don't have any respect for the black elites in this city.
But what I would like to see is them to address what they're going to do with the vets because these vets go out there and put their lives on the line.
I have not heard neither one of those candidates talk about what they're going to do for the vets.
And I certainly wish that since E. On Musk giving the money away, I wish you would have gone down to the Martin Luther King Library and asked for all of the homeless vets out there.
And the first one raised up a hand, give a million dollars to those vets because they put their lives on the line for corporate America and they still treat them like garbage.
All right, and this is Steve in Oak Ridge, North Carolina, Harris supporter.
Good morning.
Good morning, Mami.
First off, I would like, I've got a comment, a couple of comments, but very quickly, as far as am I better off now than I was when Trump was president, I would say absolutely.
My Edward Jones is skyrocketed.
I have more money in my checking account than I've ever had, and I've got a lot of money that's earning me 5% in CD.
So I really think that's misconception.
The last time I called, though, I'm a science teacher, and I talked about perception.
And I would show the kids at school a picture from the front of the room and say, what do you see?
And they'd all say, well, it's a skull.
I said, okay.
And then I'd hand it to one of them.
And they'd say, it's not a skull at all.
It's a picture of a lady sitting in front of a big mirror.
You can see her reflection and bottles of perfume and stuff on the little dressing table.
So the fact is, your perception can be totally wrong.
And if you're not willing to think about that or understand that your perception may be wrong, then you're lost from the get-go.
I've talked to people about that, some of my Republican friends, and everyone tells me that my perception is wrong.
Theirs couldn't be wrong.
It's got to be mine wrong.
And I will be the first to admit that my perception could be wrong.
But I just want people to think about the fact that your perception may be wrong.
You need to think about that.
And Steve, have you already voted?
Oh, yes, I voted by mail.
I'm on the North Carolina coast fishing right now.
And I voted for mail before I left Tennessee.
And I will say this, you know, the old PNN the wind is kind of like voting blue in Tennessee.
So, but I did vote for Kamala and Tim because I think they're obvious best choice.
So this enemy from within, this scum, would like to say thank you and everyone get out there and vote.
Linda, Summit New York, Trump supporter.
Good morning.
Good morning.
My name is Linda and I want to thank you for taking my call.
Definitely a Trump supporter.
I was better off four years ago than I am now.
We're on a fixed income and we're dipping into our savings.
The other thing I wanted to address, the lady who voted in New York, and she said that the poll person repeated her address to her, that's illegal.
She should report that person who's working in the boards there to the boards of election, and she will be dealt with because all you do is you're supposed to say your name and address.
They're not supposed to feed you any information.
Thank you very much for taking my call.
Bunsen, Monroe, North Carolina, undecided.
Good morning.
I'm an undecided voter because I'm convinced either Kennedy will improve.
I'm not convinced either will improve the economy.
I thought about it and Trump has some sexy lips, that motherfucker.
Ooh.
Okay, watch your language, please.
Patrick in Oregon, Harris, supporter.
Go ahead, Patrick.
Yeah, I didn't like the comment that my last caller made, but I'm voting for Harris.
And in fact, I've already done it.
My wife and I both have done that.
And we were thinking about all the different things.
We've got a candidate that's going to save the world everything.
He's going to fix everything.
He's a know-it-all, do-it-all, and he's a liar, a felon.
And, you know, I don't think he could even get a job in a daycare center, you know.
But I don't know.
We thought about it a lot and listened to all the campaigns and stuff, the rhetoric going on.
And, You know, like some of your callers have said, that the Vice President doesn't, you know, change things.
He's the backup.
Or that person is the, you know, the backup in case the President dies, but he doesn't make the decisions and make the laws and stuff.
So, I mean, she wouldn't.
I'm real tired.
I've been up all night.
I'm sorry if I'm rambling.
All right, Patrick.
And this is a Trump supporter in Sanford, Maine.
Dawn, good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I'm a 20-year Navy retired vet, 100% disabled.
And I want to say first off to the people out there that Donald Trump, for me, when he was in office, got rid of a lot of people that didn't care about the vets.
They dropped your appointments, but you couldn't fire them.
You couldn't fire them.
He changed it so that you could fire them.
And now it's a lot better when you go to the, they care about you.
They talk to you.
It's just, I just can't explain how much better it is.
So for people that say he didn't do anything, he did a lot when he was in office.
It's just that the media didn't put it out there.
He has said repeatedly, the federal government should not be in the decision for what a woman's body does.
Now, that's not exactly what's coming out in the paper.
And it's not exactly what Harris is saying, but that's what he said.
He wants that decision to go to the states.
And it should go to the states.
That makes you get off your butt, pay attention to who you're electing for your officials in your state so they can vote your state, an abortion state, a non-abortion state.
So I don't understand how it can get so crooked.
And so many people can say, oh, he wants abortion.
He doesn't.
He wants the government to get out of it.
Pass it to the states, which passes it to the people.
And I don't understand why people don't want that.
You want the federal government to tell you what you can eat for breakfast?
Come on.
He's done a lot.
Yeah, he's kind of crass sometimes.
You know, he says kind of crazy stuff.
But when it comes down to business, the man is smart.
All right, Don.
We have an undecided voter in Springfield, Virginia.
Ron, good morning.
Hey, good morning.
Yeah, I just want to make a last bitch plea to the voter.
Please do not vote for Harris if you care at all about the genocide in Palestine.
If she gets elected, that's sending a message to future elected officials that they can do the most atrocious thing and they'll be forgiven.
So it's really important if you care at all, if you've ever protested, if you've ever shed a tear, you've lost sleep over this genocide, you cannot vote for her.
And it's about the future.
And it's similar to 2004 with Bush.
Anybody who voted for Bush in 2004, you just told him it was totally okay to invade Iraq and kill eventually a million Muslims.
And so I think the election is going to boil down to two things.
One, most people vote special interests.
I mean, their own interests.
So usually it's, am I doing better now than I was four years ago?
But I think there's this sliver of young people, people with conscience, Muslims who are just a no for Harris.
Kind of like Rashida Talib was an absolute hero, unlike the rest of the squad who endorsed Harris.
So Ron, who are you going to be voting for?
I'm probably going to be uncommitted.
Oh, that's not.
Oh, thank you for asking that question.
I think you should change the line from undecided to other, because undecided implies that we haven't decided between Trump and Harris, but that is not the case.
We are other.
And I think that's super important to make that distinction.
You know, we have it as neither or undecided.
So you would be in the neither camp.
So when you call, they say, like, okay, you're on the undecided line.
It's a little offensive.
Okay.
Well, we'll say, we'll say other from now on.
Yes.
All right.
And we're going to pause actually the calls for right now because we are joined by a guest, Wendy Underhill.
She is the National Conference of State Legislators, Elections, and Redistricting Standing Committee Director.
Wendy, welcome to the program.
It's nice to be here.
Thank you so much for having me.
And happy election day to you.
Yeah.
Tell us a little bit about the National Conference, your organization, and what you guys do.
Sure.
The National Conference of State Legislatures is the nation's bipartisan organization that supports the work of legislators throughout the states and the territories.
And also, I want to add the legislative staff.
So there's 30,000 people out there who work for the legislatures, and we support them as well as the lawmakers themselves.
And many states are starting to offer live streams of the election process.
Can you talk a little bit about that and how that came about?
Sure.
In this modern era, when we're used to having cameras in many places, you know, you've got closed caption cameras when you go to the grocery store, that kind of thing.
I want to say that's not what live streaming is about.
There are those kinds of cameras in many, many election offices to ensure that nothing nefarious happens.
But the live stream is to capture the action associated with processing ballots and counting ballots so that anybody who's interested in it on the outside can watch it at home.
I'm thinking of it as a wildlife camera, you know, where you can watch the chicks hatch and then the fledglings fly.
If you're interested in seeing the action, it may not be fast-paced, it may not be exciting, but you're welcome to watch it.
And what do you think this will accomplish for viewers?
Do you think that this will give them the confidence of a fair and secure election?
Well, there's a bunch of different components that go into the trust that voters can have in the election.
And I think that the live cams is more like a cherry on top of all the other things that election officials are doing to ensure that they're counting votes accurately and can go back and review as needed with a post-election audit, that kind of thing.
So first you get really good processes in place.
And then if you've got the resources, you can put a camera on it so that the outside world can watch.
So it's one component, let's say, not by any means the one thing that makes an election transparent.
Transparency is built in from the very beginning.
Talk about the role of outside election observers in the tabulation of votes.
So for many, many decades, 100 years perhaps, there have been a role for poll watchers.
And those are often people who are appointed by their political party, but they can sometimes be members of the public and they can sometimes be people from abroad and they can sometimes be academics.
And so these kinds of people have a role in the polling place where they can observe.
They cannot disrupt the process.
They can't speak to the voters, but they can observe and take notes and discuss what they've seen.
And that's part of being transparent.
And sometimes what those folks see and their reports written sometimes, and sometimes there's something to be learned from their experience.
So that kind of in-person observation is a little different than the at-home.
Anybody can do it.
And you do need to be in communication with your local election official to play one of those other poll-watching or observing roles.
And there are people that still believe that the 2020 election had widespread instances of voter fraud.
What would be your message to those voters?
Well, I would say that like every process that you can imagine, there's room for improvement.
And states have been focusing on improvement in the last four years, but I would say they've been focusing on improvement for the last 25 years or perhaps the last 50 years.
So when you find a little something that's not working quite right, lawmakers might say, let's put this in law, that we want to have it work this way in our state.
And not all states have made the same choices on things, but I can assure you that states have figured out the processes that they'd like to have, the timelines that they'd like to see, and when various actions can take place, and who's going to do those actions and what the import of it is.
Those are pretty locked down at this point.
There's been a lot of attention to making sure we know what's going to happen and when it's going to happen.
It's like Santa Claus, the lists are out there and they're checking them twice, they're checking them three times.
And so there's a lot of emphasis on this.
And if you, as an individual, want some more certainty about it, you can watch the live streams if you'd like.
But better yet, go on down and watch the ballots being counted.
Many, many locations have a space where just the plain public might be behind a glass wall.
And they may even have big monitors back in that area so you can see more precisely.
And election officials love to have the public come in.
Maybe not today.
Maybe today is not the right day to be a tourist at a local election office.
But in general, local election officials are really pretty excited to have people come in and they can explain what's going on.
All right.
That's Wendy Underhill, Director of the Elections and Redistricting Standing Committee at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Thanks so much for joining us.
And thank you.
We'll go back to your calls now to James in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Harris supporter.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
So I think that there are a lot of Republicans out there that don't recognize their party at this point.
And one of the reasons why they stick with Donald Trump is because of the numbers that he brings to the party.
Okay, so how does he do that?
And first of all, there was a lot of conservative Democrats, and this goes back 12 years, and I could bring up Trump's birthday comments to show what side he was on at the time.
But I think there's a lot of Democrats out there who became disenchanted with the party because conservative Democrats, because they felt their party was going too far to the left, progressive, liberal, all those words.
Also, well, the scariest thing for me about Donald Trump is that he's a symptom and not the cause of how divided America is.
And I want to remind people, I guess, that I grew up in a time and I recognize that the same party, the same Democratic Party that brought us JFK and RFK also brought us George Wallace.
And the segregationists were across the South, and they were represented by Democratic leaders.
And you had people like Jesse Helms in North Carolina who was supporting Trump Democratic Party.
He was a Republican.
I know that.
But in any case, I just repeat myself in saying that the scariest thing about Donald Trump is that he's a symptom and not the full cause.
And James, have you voted already?
Yeah, I voted by mail a couple weeks ago.
And I definitely voted blue and PA.
Thank you.
All right.
And here is Elazer in Sherman Oaks, California, Trump supporter.
Yes, good morning.
Good morning.
So, first of all, I want to thank C-SPAN for their website, actually, because so many of the videos that I've been trying to look for were nowhere online, but they were all available on the website.
So, thank you guys for that.
And the thing I wanted to share about today was the debate about abortion and how there seems to be so much focus about the president and who we would want to pick because of that debate.
And it's a bit confusing for me because I'm trying to figure out how that would make a difference, being that I don't understand if maybe the president would be able to make some sort of executive order.
My understanding is that he wouldn't be able to.
And then, if it were to go to Congress, I don't think any Congress would ever approve like a national ban or anything like that.
And even when it comes to assigning Supreme Court justices, Donald Trump had just assigned three.
The likelihood that the next president would be able to or even assign enough that would somehow counter the role he weighed is to me extremely unlikely.
So, just very curious about how this topic has become about the president when, again, I don't see how he would be able to push the agenda in any one way direction or the other.
I mean, not anymore.
All right.
And here is John, Florence, Massachusetts, undecided or other voter.
Yeah, so I'd like to also urge people not to vote for Harris, especially in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan.
That'd be great.
But these people keep talking about people are racist if they don't want immigrants.
It's not that we don't want immigrants.
No, but I don't think there's any American that doesn't want to have legal immigrants.
It's the illegal immigrants.
Nobody ever makes a distinction.
Everything's always generalized towards one way of thinking.
And as for abortion that everybody's worried about, I'm curious how come we don't complain about the rest of the world and change the rest of the world that has a 10 to 16 week ban for abortion.
We don't complain about Canada, Mexico, Europe, or any of the other places.
So, John, you are a Trump supporter then?
No, I'm not a Trump supporter because it doesn't matter in my state.
My state's going to go Democrat for everything.
Are you kidding me, Massachusetts?
Are you voting at all?
Yeah, I'm going to vote.
I'm going to vote for one of the third-party candidates there, probably Cornell West, because it doesn't matter.
And what do you like about Cornell West?
I don't like anything about any of them.
They're all bad.
They're all horrible candidates.
The only one that's going to do anything is the one that makes all of them mad.
But it doesn't matter if I vote for them or not.
And everybody tries to demonize one side and tries to give one side of every single issue.
Frank in Aberdeen, Maryland, Harris supporter.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
You know, history does rhyme.
In 1800, Alexander Hamilton became the first American politician to put country before party when he rejected the Federalist candidate, Aaron Burr, in favor of his arch rival, Thomas Jefferson.
The reason he stayed it repeatedly was character.
And that was borne out in history because Aaron Burr not only did he change the federal original Senate rules and he threw out the rule that allowed a closure vote upon a majority vote, but he then killed Hamilton in a duel.
But more importantly, he was indicted for basically trying to establish himself as a king in the western part of our country.
I think it was Texas and Louisiana.
And I think it's kind of ironic that Liz Cheney is now stepping into the boots of Alexander Hamilton.
And Ernie in West Virginia, Trump supporter.
Good morning, Ernie.
Good morning.
How are you?
Good.
Well, we've got a great day coming up today.
I pray that the Lord will look down on this country and the people here and lead them to vote for somebody that really loves this country.
And I think Donald J. Trump is the person.
The other side there don't have any idea how to run this country or anything else.
They've been tearing it down.
They're all for the foreign people.
We're giving this country away.
We need people to stand together in this country to build up this country for the people and our grandchildren to come along.
God bless Donald Trump, and I pray with the Lord's help, he makes president.
Thank you.
And here on Washington Journal last week, we had the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly, on the program talking about the threats facing the elections and the safeguards that are in place.
The threat environment has never been more complex.
There are serious cyber threats, ransomware, denial of service, so you can't get to websites.
There's very serious physical threats to election officials.
And there is a range of very serious threats from our foreign adversaries, from Russia, from Iran, from China.
They're using different tactics, but they are focused on two main goals, to undermine American trust in our democracy and our confidence in elections, and to sow partisan discord, basically pitting Americans against each other.
And so we are focused on the full range.
We've been working with election officials since the beginning of this cycle to provide physical assessments.
We've done nearly 1,200 for physical security, 700 for cybersecurity.
We've done nearly 200 exercises to work with election officials on the full range of scenarios where you could have incidents or disruptions.
And we've done hundreds of trainings to help election officials reduce risk to election systems and processes.
I do want Americans to understand that despite this threat environment, as I said, no matter who you vote for, you can have confidence that your vote will be counted as cast.
And why am I saying that?
Well, a few things.
So to prevent digital interference, voting machines are not connected to the internet.
Really important to understand that.
To prevent digital manipulation, over 97% paper ballots.
And to guarantee near zero human manipulation, there are multiple, multiple layers of safeguards, physical security, cybersecurity, pre-election testing of equipment, post-election auditing to ensure that election infrastructure is safe from compromise.
And the last thing that Americans should understand is every state runs elections differently.
Different equipment, different processes.
The saying goes, if you've seen one state's election, you've seen one state's election.
And that diverse and decentralized nature of our election infrastructure is actually a great strength because it means it's not possible for a bad actor to tamper with or try and manipulate our voting systems in a way where you can have an impact on the outcome of the presidential election, certainly not without being detected.
That was Jen Easterly, director of CISA.
And this is Mary calling from Ashburn, Virginia, Harris Supporter.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I am speaking directly to the people who say they are voting for Trump because they had more money in their pockets when he was president.
And my question is, is that more important than the future when you may need Social Security and Medicare?
I'm 86 years old, and I depend on Social Security and Medicaid, Medicare.
Project 2025 has changes or talks about changes to Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.
Mary?
Project 2055.
Oh, there you are.
Yes.
Yes, keep going, Mary.
We can hear you now.
Trump says he's not involved in Project 2025, and he doesn't know anything about it.
However, JD Vance wrote the foreword to a book by the same person who is behind Project 2025.
And 18 out of 40 people who worked on Project 2025 worked for Trump.
My question is, will you need Social Security and Medicare when you get older?
Don't think about what you had in your pocketbook in 2016 or up to 220.
Think about the future.
I would also like to make a comment to the man who called about not supporting Harris because of what's going on in Gaza.
The person who is creating the loss of lives in Gaza is Natan Yahoo, and who is the supporter of Natanyahu and Israel?
Trump is the big supporter.
I do appreciate that man's concern for the people in Gaza.
Thank you.
And Mary, have you gone out and voted?
Or did you vote by mail?
I voted early.
Okay.
My husband.
Oh, sorry.
William in Oakland, California, on the line for other.
Oh, yes.
What I'd first like to say, I'm similar to what Mary said, is that the, oh, one thing I'd like to say about voting early doesn't give you the chance in case you hear something about the candidate you chose and then you want to change your mind.
So it's always, I think, better to vote on Election Day because if you vote early and change your mind, you're not allowed to then, you know, change your mind again.
That's impossible in any state.
But there is laws in some states that allow you to change your vote by writing in after Election Day.
You can change your vote, but you have to make a legal statement.
I just want to say that from California.
I also want to address the issue of Gaza.
The idea that it's in the campaign, I think, is, let's see what's it called.
I wrote it down so I'd know it for sure.
It's called Anyone But Harris, before I was called like Anyone But Biden.
I think it's wrong to vote for the third-party candidate in this case because that is basically if it would, I heard the head of the campaign speak on a program.
I think his name is Dr. Hassan Abdel Salam.
And he was very happy that he said they had 10,000 votes in all the swing states except in Michigan.
They had 70,000 votes.
And this is enough to sway the election to make that Harris doesn't win.
I think this is short-sighted because the fact is, after Harris elect, then we have the ability to sway what she thinks.
But if she loses and we get Donald Trump, then there is no way.
And as Mary mentioned before, Netanyahu and Trump have been in conversation with each other, and Trump believed everything that Netanyahu says.
Now, to be critical of Israel is not to be anti-Semitic.
Just like the right-wing maggot type of Trump is, is the same Netanyahu is.
So even many members of people that have hostages being held are asking, actually, they don't believe in the policy in Netanyahu because he's the one that's kept any ceasefire from happening now.
The other thing I'd like to bring up is that one thing that your guest said the day yesterday about how politicians cannot be held accountable for lying, this is actually nuance, not quite correct.
And I sent an email to Washington Journal in the middle of the night last night about this.
If a politician, say, in a public meeting, makes statements that fraudulent, you know, we would say, hey, those politicians are lying.
Well, if the statements they make can actually affect a person's business, like they're putting an appeal before, say, a city council, that.
So you're drawing the distinction with like defamation.
Yeah, well, it's not defamation.
It's actually fraud.
And it's actually a criminal charge.
Because if it can hurt an individual's business financially, they can then take that to many cities have what are called public ethics commissions.
They can take it to a public ethics commission.
Then if the public ethics commission finds in favor of the business, then that can go to a public integrity unit within a city attorney's office.
And then they get that evidence collected by the public ethics commission.
William, I got to move on.
This is Gerald in Ohio, Trump supporter.
Good morning, Gerald.
Good morning.
Good.
Go right ahead.
Yes, I'm hoping really that Trump gets to be president of the United States.
Because if Harris gets it, it's going to be like the last four years of Biden.
We'll have the next four years, the same thing with Ayers.
She just wants a title.
President of the United States.
This abortion thing All these women need to quit to quit President of the United States.
Thank you.
Laura in Austin, Texas, Harris Supporter.
Good morning.
I'm just calling because I'm really concerned about this election.
Well, actually, I'm really concerned about our country.
I just really don't even understand how we got here.
My thought is that we have a large port.
Well, half of the population that has been conned, I mean, it starts with Fox News because they don't show their viewers everything, the full truth.
They just, you know, cut it up and show it to just promote what they want you to believe.
And then the GOP, you know, used to be the grand old party.
Well, it's now become gaslighting, obstruction, and projection party.
And then we also have Russia, who's in cahoots with Fox News.
And, of course, they hate the United States.
And unfortunately, people, you know, half of our population is buying it.
And if Trump wins this election, basically we're giving our country over to Putin because Trump is also, you know, obviously in cahoots or a fan advocate, whatever you want to call it, of all these, you know, bad people, the evil of access, what W. Bush used to call.
And I just, I don't, I just don't understand how people have gotten conned like this.
And we need to give away this country.
About 20 minutes ago, Senator JD Vance cast his vote in Ohio, and then he spoke to reporters right after.
Here's a portion of that.
Hey guys, good morning.
Good to see you all.
Appreciate you coming out to see one of the great traditions, of course, in American democracy.
I, of course, voted for Donald Trump and myself.
So did my wife, and we also, for all the locals out there, we voted for Bernie Marino for the United States Senate.
And if you want the policies of Donald J. Trump in the United States Senate, then Bernie Marino is the only candidate in this race who I think is the candidate of peace and prosperity for the United States Senate.
So I hope people will get President Trump over the finish line.
I hope people here in Ohio will get Bernie Marino over the finish line.
Look, I feel good.
You never know until you know, but I feel good about this race.
I felt good about my own race a couple of years ago when I voted in this exact same spot.
Hopefully it goes as well for President Trump and me as it went for me a couple of years ago in the state of Ohio.
So I appreciate you guys being here.
Happy to take a few questions.
You obviously can see my kids bouncing around here.
There's Usha.
And, you know, we'll take a few questions, but we're going to hit the road, go back home, and then head off to Palm Beach.
Senator, regardless of the rest tonight, half the country probably won't be satisfied with your results.
Sure.
What's your message to them, potentially her supporters, if it doesn't go the way that they want it?
Well, look, I think our message is, first of all, we do expect to win, but obviously no matter who wins, half the country, as you said, is going to be at least partially disappointed.
I think my attitude is the best way to heal the rift in the country is to try to govern the country as well as we can, create as much prosperity as we can for the American people, and remind our fellow Americans that we are all fundamentally on the same team, however we voted.
I certainly hope you vote for Donald J. Trump today.
I think that his policies are going to promote peace and prosperity for our citizens.
But if you vote the wrong way, in my view, I'm still going to love you.
I'm still going to treat you as a fellow citizen.
And if I am lucky enough to be your vice president, I'm going to fight hard for your dreams and for your family over the next four years.
That was earlier today.
And back to the calls to Joni, a Trump supporter in Connecticut.
Hi, Joni.
Hi, how are you?
This is my second time calling, and I've got three quick points.
One, I heard Tina Peters trash this morning, and I think that's despicable.
She was a Gold Star mother and a patriot, and yet nobody mentioned Jenna Griswold, who let all of those passwords go in the same state of Colorado.
That wasn't brought up at all.
That was point number one.
Point number two, I didn't believe your guest gronki.
His body language told me that he wasn't confident in what he was saying about election integrity, and I've done a lot of research, and don't tell me not to believe my lion eyes.
And number three, I don't know why people are so obsessed with abortion when this is going back to the states.
People should be more concerned about protecting their daughters in sports and in bathrooms and the violations against Title IX than they are against aborting third-term babies, which is what they want to do with these people.
Nobody has a problem with abortions for rapes, for the life of the mother.
And Trump has said this a number of times.
But nobody's focusing on the fact that we send our girls into locker rooms that now have men changing with them, or they're playing volleyball with these brave girls who are now refusing to play against teams that have men on them, and rightly so.
I think Americans need to really look at what's happening.
It's not all about abortion.
It's about women, and women are being violated in lots of other ways that nobody's talking about.
I thank you for your time today.
Christopher in Charlotte, North Carolina, Harris supporter.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm voting for Harris because she is not a criminal.
She is not unhinged.
And I think that she would make a great rational choice to run this country.
Also, the issue about abortion.
I believe that recently the Supreme Court gave more executive powers to the president to streamline decisions.
And if she becomes president, she will be able to pardon anybody who tries to save the life of a woman with a troubled pregnancy that might affect her life.
So she's got plenty of power to help people out in need if they get in that sort of situation.
And that's really all I have to say.
Have a good day.
And Patty on Facebook says, I'm excited.
I was up at 3 a.m. and in line to vote by 6.
I'm ready for Vice President Kamua Harris to be my president.
An independent, I voted blue.
This is Smith on Facebook.
Half the country will be rejoicing, and half will have to suck it up.
That's politics.
And Dustin says, hopefully the day is peaceful.
Here is Mercy in Nebraska voting for neither.
Hi, Mercy.
Hi.
Thank you for having this today.
It's an important day for our country, as we all are aware.
I'd like to first say thank you to all our election workers, too, because if you're keeping up with other things in government besides just election, you understand that we've had National Guard activated to help with the integrity of our election sites.
And that's scary to me.
I'm only 34.
But I voted for Chase Oliver.
I'm a libertarian.
I've been a libertarian.
I have watched Donald Trump and his team come into our political party over the last several years and totally opted out.
Like they have taken over it.
What is happening with the RFK Victory Fund and Donald Trump and the Libertarian Party has our party at odds within itself.
It has been for the last two years.
So, you know, in this election, it's important to not just focus on which candidates are where, because there are other people running that other countries are hoping will take enough votes and muddy the waters enough that we don't have a clear winner tonight.
And today's the day that this is all coming to a head.
So I only want to ask everyone to vote your conscience.
Vote who you think can help our country protect everyone.
Not just girls in locker rooms.
I have transgender family members, so that's offensive to me, but everyone.
I don't want to hear people crying because they're not allowed to play sports because they're a girl.
Don't set us back 40 years today, please.
Thank you so much for having me.
Bye.
And Mercy, there is want to make sure that everybody's aware of the results page that we've got on our website.
It's cspan.org slash results.
You'll see a map here, and you can press on any state and find out more information about that.
You can also take a look at your state and your local House and Senate races will be here as well.
You can take a look at that when you get a chance at c-span.org slash results.
And Joe, West Chicago, Illinois, Trump supporter.
Hi, Joe.
Yes.
Trump supporter.
Bertie voted, and that's where I'm at right now.
And I would like to address the liberals out there about the fact that they have Sololinsky's book as their Bible.
And Sololinsky's book is The Rules for Radicals.
And it says, the book makes it perfectly clear who his readers are.
And it says that it goes on and it talks about who his readers are.
It is written for the have-nots on how to make it away.
Take it away.
Halinski's reference to Machiavelli in there sets readers up for a high degree of ruthlessness and real politic.
And the book does not disappoint.
If you're looking for an anarchist cookbook, Level Radicalism, you'll find out that's the best book ever for it, for the liberals.
And who is one of them that supported Halinski all along?
Obama.
What's her name?
Hillary Clinton.
She was in college and all when that stuff and telling them how much they enjoyed it.
So there's where the liberals are.
They are out there.
And he says here, parts of the far left who have gone so far in the political circle that they are now all but indistinguishable from the extreme right in recent revolutionary violence.
All right, Joe, and here's Ernestine in Brooklyn, New York, Harris supporter.
Yes, good morning.
I probably will say something that may shock people.
However, Harris to me represents the American way.
The Democrats represent the American way.
Trump and his supporters are more like communists, the vile and the venom that they speak about.
I reflect what my mother used to say about George Willis.
The only thing that is missing on Trump and his supporters are the white hoods and the roads.
This is hidden.
Ann in Buffalo, New York, supporting neither.
Go ahead, Anne.
Hi.
Yeah, I'm not voting on the Democratic line.
I'm voting on the Working Families Party line because the Democrats really pissed me off.
So ultimately, I will be voting for Harris, but that's with fighting a bullet to do so.
I just want to make a few points to other undecided fans who thinks the means of lying justifies the end.
Says Harris will raise taxes on the middle class.
This is a lie.
I verified with Kiplingers.
People who make less than $400,000 will find their taxes lowered.
Forbes quotes a non-partisan budget watchdog group saying Trump's plans for tariffs and tax cuts for the rich will lead to 33% cut to Social Security within a few years.
Proposition 25 threatens democracy and Trump is a puppet to make this happen.
And I predict fans will cut, will call for the 25th Amendment to deem Trump incompetent and make himself president within a year.
And the last thing is Harris is the best chance of the two viable candidates in regard to Gaza.
Trump will flatten Gaza.
Not yahoo, can't wait for him to get in office.
Thank you.
And on this program on Friday, we had Cook Political Report senior editor Dave Wasserman talking about his tips on which states and counties specifically to watch for tonight as the results come in and how they might influence the outcome of the presidential election.
So I'm trying to give viewers at home a rough guide of how we're sizing up election night as we see these results flying at us.
And there are a couple of bellwether counties that are worth watching for clues on election night in the presidential race.
We're probably going to get some of our first meaningful results in Georgia and North Carolina, where most of the votes are typically counted within a few hours.
And I'll be watching Baldwin County, Georgia.
Now, most everyone is focused on the Atlanta Metro, and that's where about three-fifths of the state's votes are.
But the reason Democrats have been able to do well in Georgia in federal races lately is not just that they've made huge strides in Atlanta's suburbs, but also that they've been able to hold ground in rural Georgia and small town Georgia in places that are losing some black population.
An example of that is Milledgeville, Georgia, which has two colleges in it.
It is about 41% black.
It's a county, Baldwin County voted for both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden by about a point.
But if Trump were to carry it this time, that would indicate that Harris is experiencing some erosion in either black turnout or support among young and minority voters.
If Harris does keep that county in her column, then that would be a good sign for her chances of Metro Atlanta overpowering the Republican rural reaches of the state.
In North Carolina, I'm going to be watching Caberris County outside Charlotte.
This is a place that has seen a lot of growth in voters who are moving out of Charlotte, a lot of added diversity relative to 10 years ago.
Trump won it by 20 points in 2016.
He only won it by 9 in 2016.
I think Harris has to keep Trump's margin under five points in Cabarris County to have a good chance of flipping North Carolina.
And then I'll also be watching Nash County, which is outside of the research triangle, but it's a middle-income, very racially mixed part of the state.
And that has been within 1,000 votes in every presidential election since 2004.
Democrats, Joe Biden carried it by just about 100 votes last time around.
If Harris keeps that county in her column, that would be a good sign for her.
That's also part of that first congressional district that is in our toss-up column for House between Democrat Don Davis and Republican Lori Buchout.
That's going to be another one of our earliest House indicators.
And back to the calls to Raymond, a Harris supporter in Brookhaven, Mississippi.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Well, I voted.
I know my vote going to the popular vote.
And I was really looking forward to the House where the power for me was going to be.
But when I looked at my sheet, and they didn't have nothing but one, the Republican on there.
Is that what they mean by it?
Jeremy Mann, we ain't have nobody from the Democratic Party running in the third district in Mississippi.
I mean, I don't agree with this guy up there in Washington, D. Street, but I okay.
Thank you.
Cross in Kentucky, neither candidate.
Hey, good morning.
Long time listener, first time callers.
Please forgive me if I'm being a bit nervous.
So I won't take up too much of your time.
This is basically a little observation that I wanted to point out.
First of all, I'm actually quite balanced.
I was watching Monday Night Football.
Of course, they were running election commercials.
The Trump commercials seem to inform you of his platform most of the time, his stance on different issues.
The Harris commercials, it's just like the presidential debate.
You know, entire commercials are attacks and sneer statements against Trump and the other party, and no relevant information about her.
So, anyways, I just want to point out the philosophical concept of OCAM's razor for this scenario, which basically means that if something seems insanely simple, then it is likely that's the correct answer.
So, with everything that's going on in our country, the Sentinel crisis, Israel, Russia, and all that, why would we hand over our future to Harris, who's essentially proven herself to be a schoolyard bully?
Anyways, lastly, I just wanted to add: long live the madhouse, long live Carlito, the great horse.
Rick in Columbus, Ohio, Trump supporter.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yeah, I'm not spread.
I am for Trump.
And they keep talking about this abortion, this abortion.
Well, I could solve that in three seconds.
Ladies, keep your legs closed until you're Diane in Melchor Dallas, Iowa, Harris supporter.
Hi, Mimi.
Good morning, and thanks for everything you guys do.
Four years ago, I had an absentee ballot.
I'm here in Iowa.
And I got COVID.
So my 10 days, it took my outdate was November 2nd.
I'm almost sure that was that Tuesday.
And I had to run to the courthouse, which was in an elementary because our courthouse in Marion County was under construction.
So this year, I decided to vote early if I didn't have COVID.
So I wasn't better off four years ago.
I lost a brother in 21.
He died from COVID.
So no.
And it's greed all over the place.
And Mimi, let me tell you, these campaign commercials here in Iowa, they don't mean nothing to us in Iowa.
It was spewing.
It was terrible.
I hope Meeks loses.
Please, just give us America and let's just help each other.
And thank you for everything you guys do.
Joel in Massachusetts, neither candidate.
Good morning, Joel.
Good morning, Mimi.
First off, I really want to say you look marvelous, and I really want to be thankful and grateful for all that C-SPAN does.
What an amazing time we're living in, and what an amazing service C-SPAN does for us.
The fact that I can go and toggle back and forth between the two candidates and compare and contrast is just so enlightening.
And the fact that you bring on these wonderful guests on both sides of the aisle who are very thoughtful and civil, and it's just a beautiful thing.
I'm grateful that we live in a system that is democratic but Republic.
And it's an amazing experience.
And everybody should be able to, as Tim Walz says, sit on their back porch in their old age with their grandkids who are studying civics and say, What did you do, Grandpa, to save the democracy?
I am grateful that I live in a deep, deep blue state.
And even though I support the Democratic candidate and I love Tim Walz, I voted for a third candidate because in my mind, my vote is a reflection of who I am and what my values are.
And I have been a registered libertarian, a registered Democrat, a registered Republican, usually to vote against candidates.
And I found myself in the opportunity to vote for somebody different this time.
So I cast my ballot for the party of socialism and liberation, which is on my ballot here.
And I know they may get four votes in my state, but that's where I am.
And I'm thankful that we live in a system that we can see the contrast.
All right, Joel.
And this is Jeffrey in Round Lake, Illinois, Trump supporter.
Hi, Jeffrey.
Hello.
Even though I support.
Go right ahead.
Yes, Trump support.
All I can say is that God's in control and we'll support Trump make America great again and all this abortion and stuff.
The only person who's in charge is Ken.
And I believe Trump is a man for his job.
Thank you.
And that's the last call for today.
Don't forget to watch C-SPAN's Election Day coverage.
It's starting at 7 p.m.
We will be with you all night long into tomorrow morning and all the way till noon.
We'll be taking your calls.
We'll be showing you results as they come in.
We'll be also watching the state and the Senate and the House races, the governor's races.
We will show you speeches as they come in.
So that all gets started at 7 p.m. Eastern.
Don't forget to watch that.
Have a great day, everybody.
Thanks for watching.
We'll see you again soon.
Tonight, we'll be live all night to bring you the results of the 2024 presidential election and get your reaction by phone to the evening's outcomes as the ballots are counted and each state is called in favor of either Vice President Harris or former President Trump.
We'll also follow all the state races that will decide the balance of power in Congress.
Our coverage begins at 7 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
You can also watch on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, and online at c-span.org.
This election night, track up-to-the-minute detailed results for the national campaign down to the congressional district level on c-span.org/slash results.
That's results by state, presidential, senate, house, and governor's races.