CSPAN - Washington Journal Matthew Weil
Aired: 2025-08-21
Duration: 02:57


=== Paper Ballots Debate (02:57) ===

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[00:00:43]  We're joined now by Matthew Weill.
[00:00:45]  He is Vice President of Democracy and Bipartisanship at the Bipartisan Policy Center, joining us to talk about election security and mail-in voting.
[00:00:53]  Matthew, welcome to the program.
[00:00:56]  Thank you for having me.
[00:00:57]  So let's just kind of set the table first.
[00:01:00]  I want to play you President Trump talking about mail-in voting and what he says is corrupt, and then have you comment on it.
[00:01:11]  Mail-in ballots are corrupt.
[00:01:13]  Mail-in ballots, you can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots.
[00:01:19]  And we, as a Republican Party, are going to do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in ballots.
[00:01:25]  We're going to start with an executive order that's being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they're corrupt.
[00:01:34]  And you know that we're the only country in the world, I believe I may be wrong, but just about the only country in the world that uses them because of what's happened.
[00:01:43]  Massive fraud all over the place.
[00:01:45]  The other thing we want change are the machines.
[00:01:48]  For all of the money they spend, it's approximately 10 times more expensive than paper ballots.
[00:01:55]  And paper ballots are very sophisticated with the watermark paper and everything else.
[00:01:59]  We would get secure elections.
[00:02:01]  We'd get much faster results.
[00:02:02]  The machines, I mean, they say we're going to have the results in two weeks.
[00:02:06]  With paper ballots, you have the results that night.
[00:02:09]  Most people, almost, but most people, many countries use paper ballots.
[00:02:14]  It's the most secure form.
[00:02:17]  Matthew, break that down for us as far as what the president said there.
[00:02:23]  Sure.
[00:02:23]  Well, I think it's first most important to note that more than 90% of Americans are already voting on some form of paper ballot.
[00:02:32]  That's the first part.
[00:02:33]  I mean, I think the president has kind of conflated a few different things, right?
[00:02:38]  So we do have voting machines, but those voting machines nowadays are typically just scanning the paper ballots.
[00:02:44]  So you have most Americans writing onto the ballot using a pen, making their indications of who they want to vote for, and then those ballots get scanned.
[00:02:54]  And those are scanned at the polling place or during early voting.