Pivotal moment in America where we have to make the decision to speak up and speak out, and this is the time to do it.
I feel like it's very important.
I feel like our country needs a lot of healing, and I hope that the people are able to come out and band together, and our voices are truly heard.
I think this is one of the most important election cycles I've lived through, and there's so much at stake with our economy and how we live on a day-to-day basis, and also just our personal rights.
So, I've never really felt an election where it seems so close, and it's just so important.
So, I hope everyone goes on out there and votes.
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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 there are 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, but 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.
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On this election day, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance spoke to reporters this morning after casting his ballot in Ohio.
Senator Vance shared his plans for election night and took questions.