'If You Can Keep It': Election Integrity And The Upcoming Midterms

0:07We're just a few weeks out now from the very first state primary elections of the year. President Trump and the party he leads are, at the moment, unpopular. As people around the country prepare to head to the polls to decide who will run in this year's midterm elections, the president is once again trying to undermine the most basic functions of those elections. He's still spreading lies about past elections he lost, and he's now sowing disinformation and doubt in local and state election processes. Republicans should say, we want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least many, 15 places.

0:47The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that are so crooked and they're counting votes. We have states that I won that show I didn't win. There's no evidence to support Donald Trump's repeated false claims of voter fraud, faulty vote counts, undocumented immigrants voting, or any of the rest of it in the past presidential election. Nevertheless, in late January, the FBI at the president's direction seized boxes of 2020 election ballots and other voting records in Fulton County, Georgia, which for years has been the focus of his baseless conspiracy theory that the election was rigged.

1:21For this installment of our weekly politics series, If You Can Keep It, we explore what the president's latest attacks on election integrity mean for the future of our democracy. I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd Swillick. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. Stay with us. We've got a lot to get into.

1:42Joining us from Philadelphia is Seth Blustein. He's a Republican City Commissioner. He's one of three members of the Philadelphia County Board of Elections, which oversees election operations and voter registration in the city. Commissioner Blustein, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. So I just want to start with comments the president made from the Oval Office last week about the federal government taking over local elections. If a state can't run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it. Because, you know, if you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections.

2:15I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway. If we have areas, take a look at Detroit, take a look at Pennsylvania, take a look at Philadelphia. You go take a look at Atlanta, look at some of the places that horrible corruption on elections And the federal government should not allow that. The federal government should get involved. These are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can't count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take them. Now, Commissioner, the president names your city, Philadelphia, as a city that has, in his words, quote, horrible corruption on elections.

2:54As one of the people tasked with overseeing those elections, what's your response? Elections in Philadelphia have been free and fair and safe and secure, and they will continue to be so. I've been involved in running elections in Philadelphia for 14 years now, and we work very hard to make sure that our elections are well run and that they have integrity. This isn't the first time President Trump has claimed, again, without evidence that there's fraud in Philadelphia's elections. What effect do the president's claims have on trust in the local electoral process? Well, it takes a lot of work for us to build trust amongst our constituents so that every single registered voter in Philadelphia can go vote and be ensured that their vote will be counted accurately.

3:37It's something that we take very seriously, and we do that work throughout the year, regardless of anything else going on in the political world. Commissioner, just describe some of that work. I mean, do you take out voting machines the day before Election Day, flick them on, and then have people vote? Or do you do more work than that to ensure that voting is counted properly, free and fair, and fluid? Can you just give us a window into what you do? So the work to make sure that our elections are being conducted accurately takes place year-round. Prior to every election, we conduct what is called logic and accuracy testing.

4:15And that is when we take every single piece of equipment and we test it before every election to make sure that it is tabulating the results accurately. And then we send the voting machines out. And at every polling place in Philadelphia, we have 1 ,703 precincts, over 700 different polling places. There are local boards of election. They're your neighbors, your friends, your family. They work at the polling place. And it's their job to see when they open up those machines on the morning of the election, they all say zero. And then they sign people into the poll book and they make sure that the number of people who sign in matches the number of votes that were cast on those machines.

4:56And everything comes back to us on election night. The paper ballots with the vote records, the electronic results, which is what people see on election night, the poll books, the voting machines, they all come back to our warehouse. And as we're going through the results and we tabulate the results, after we do the computation and we have a final number, we conduct two audits of those results so that we can be certain that those results were calculated accurately. And then we do a certification. And that entire process takes just under three weeks. But the reason it takes that long is so that everybody can have confidence that it was done accurately.

5:37Commissioner, I have to wonder, as someone who has worked on Philadelphia's elections for the last 14 years, personally, how does it feel to you to have the city's electoral process attacked in this way? When you're working to ensure every Philadelphian, regardless of political affiliation, has a chance to cast their vote and have that vote counted? I am always more concerned about making sure that we are not disenfranchising any voters. When we went through this in 2020, we had a pandemic. There were law changes in Pennsylvania prior to 2020. So we had new vote-by-mail laws that were passed in 2019 before the pandemic even started.

6:21And it took a lot of effort to make sure that we were ready to count those votes. And with the pandemic, we had hundreds of thousands of mail ballots that we weren't expecting because people didn't want to go vote in person. And we put a lot of effort into making sure that those ballots were able to get out to voters, that we were able to get them back, and that we were able to count them as quickly as possible and count them accurately. And despite all that, we had to endure harassment and death threats and have security. So we've made sure that we've kept up those efforts since 2020 and are focused on doing the job well.

6:58Commissioner, Philadelphia County has thousands of poll workers. They're registered voters from the community who volunteer to help run elections. Last week, the city launched a new campaign. It's aimed at recruiting 250 more poll workers who will be ready to volunteer in time for the 2026 primary election in May. What role do poll workers play in keeping elections free and fair? So it's a little unique in Pennsylvania, but we actually elect about 50 % of our poll workers. So neighbors in a precinct will go, and once every four years, they will elect who represents them to run the polling place.

7:35And the job of those poll workers is to help people sign in, to make sure that the voting machines are set up, that people are able to cast their ballot, and that all of those materials get back to our facility with chain of custody. So their role is critical to ensuring free and fair elections. Now, the other 50 % are appointed, and that's where our recruitment efforts come in. So every year, even though we need a total of between 8 ,000 and 8 ,500 poll workers, we're always looking for new people because we want to supplement who is working at the polls. And every poll worker is offered two trainings before each election so that they are fully ready to go on election.

8:18Are you running into more trouble recruiting people for those roles? No, we've been very blessed. Philadelphians have stepped up. We've had a lot of positive feedback from the residents. And while it's a continuous effort that we have to do year-round, I'm confident that we will have those positions filled before the next election. What are poll workers, volunteers, appointees saying, Commissioner? I mean, we're going to talk about Fulton County this hour, how the FBI raided the voting facility there. But two election workers in Fulton County were very famously targeted by Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump with a campaign of lies and disinformation.

8:58They received threats. Al Schmidt, who was the Republican commissioner there in Philly, who's now Secretary of State of Pennsylvania, was directly targeted, got death threats at his house, he told me. What are poll workers saying about their experience, why they're stepping up now? I mean, are they sensitive and aware of the environment that might face them in a contentious city like Philly? Our poll workers are stepping up because it is a sense of civic duty. that they are excited to go to the polling place and make sure that their neighbors are able to vote. You know, the threats that we dealt with in 2020 and since then, those were fairly targeted more at the commissioner and deputy commissioner level.

9:42There was a lot of attention in 2020 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where I was responsible for overseeing the mail ballot counting. And now we have a very secure vote counting warehouse House that we've been operating out of for the last five years. So people are stepping up because they are excited in helping their neighbors vote. And I think they understand the environment that they're stepping into. Briefly, Commissioner, President Trump says federal officials should oversee elections. The Constitution gives that power to the states. What do you think the relationship between state election officials and the federal government should look like?

10:20Well, so I'm a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Elections Task Force, and that is a coalition of elections officials from red states and blue states, urban counties and rural counties. And it is everyone stepping up to show that they care about running elections well. And elections are run at the state and county level, the levels closest to the voters, and it should remain that way. That's Commissioner Seth Bluestine. He's the city commissioner on the Philadelphia County Board of Elections. Commissioner Bluestine, thank you for speaking with us. Thank you so much. Coming up, President Trump ordered the FBI to seize boxes of 2020 election ballots from Fulton County, Georgia.

11:02We explore what that remarkable moment means for our democracy after a break. We'll be right back.

11:13We're back with our weekly politics series. if you can keep it, focusing on the stakes of the midterm and elections for people, for the country, and for our democracy. Joining us now from New York is Nick Corosiniti. He's a national politics reporter covering voting and elections at The New York Times. Nick, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Also with us is Jessica Husman. She's the editorial director at VoteBeat. That's a publication that provides nonpartisan local reporting about elections and voting. Jessica, welcome back. Thanks so much. And Lawrence Norton. He's vice president of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

11:50Larry, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Well, before the break, we heard from Commissioner Seth Blustein from Philadelphia, Republican City Commissioner there in Philly. He helps run elections. Philadelphia, of course, has been a main target of President Trump in his disinformation campaign around elections. I just want to get a little bit of reaction from some of you. Lawrence, what did you think about what Commissioner Blunstein had to say about the president's unfounded claims about election fraud in Philly? He's made a lot of them and one in particular with mail-in voting that in a place like Pennsylvania, you'll see a Republican leading in the polls.

12:29And then later in the night, a Democrat takes over. And that's fraud. And that's fraud coming from Philadelphia. Yeah, well, look, I think most importantly, the comments of Commissioner Blustein were reassuring and consistent with what I've heard from election officials, which is they are aware of what's happening. There is a concerted campaign on the part of this administration, on the part of the White House and the president to undermine future elections and that they are resolute in ensuring that their voters will be able to vote freely and that there will be a fair election in 2026. Thanks.

13:14Jessica Housman, VoteBeat does stellar reporting on how voting actually works in places like Philadelphia, places like Maricopa County where the coverage has been excellent. What does your reporting show about how free and fair Philadelphia has been and how well it works? We heard the commissioner talking about it a moment ago. Yeah, I mean, I think that we don't have a single piece of evidence to suggest that any vote was improperly counted in a fraudulent manner in Philadelphia or really anywhere else in Pennsylvania. You know, I think it's important to note that these big cities, like other big cities, make basic administration errors that do not amount to fraud or manipulation.

14:00And that sometimes those are spun out of control. And so certainly we see basic human error. But beyond that, you know, I think we are seeing, just like everyone else is seeing, that the elections there are well run. Well, late last month, FBI agents seized boxes of ballots from an election center in Fulton County, Georgia. Last week, the county filed a motion to return those ballots. That's the same county where Trump was indicted in August 2023 on 13 felony charges, including racketeering, forgery and false statements related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.

14:36Those charges were dropped in November 2024 after the case's special prosecutor determined bringing a sitting president to trial in Georgia would be unrealistic. But Nick, connect these two events for us, the FBI seizure of these ballots and Trump's indictment. Well, I think you even have to go further back. Fulton County, Georgia, has been the epicenter and ground zero of the entire kind of election denial movement that spun out of the 2020 election. It was home to the most significant pressure from the president in 2020. He called the Republican Secretary of State and said, find me votes. You know, they were passing around these videos that claimed to show fraud that were quickly debunked and explained in a very simple way by election officials in the Secretary of State's office or the Secretary of State himself, both of whom were Republicans.

15:26Yet this idea that there was fraud, despite any evidence in Fulton County, has persisted and has been core to a lot of the president's claims about, you know, fraud in the United States. And so that obsession, I think, has fueled a lot of these actions. And it's what eventually culminated in the raid in Fulton County. Now, there's certainly been, you know, a litany of examples of some of the president's actions looking for revenge or retribution since he's been elected, even though he says he's not for it. So you could you could see where the indictments that came in 2023 against him in Georgia might put Fulton High on his list.

16:02But I would just think that it's actually always been number one. Just going back to 2020, looking at his true social posts, the fact that he still would talk about, you know, State Farm Arena video or these conspiracy theories that have shorthand names amongst his supporters, it always kind of starts with Georgia. I mean, Nick, he's still posting about the Coliseum that you just mentioned. Within the last week, he's still posting about it. He's still posting those conspiracy theories. What's the FBI's explanation for why these records were seized, Nick? Well, we're still learning. You know, this is a very fluid process.

16:38So what the Warren said was that they were there to obtain materials related to the 2020 election, which is a very unusual, if not completely unprecedented, move by the Department of Justice to seize election equipment about an election that's, you know, so far in the rearview mirror. So they've been saying, you know, it's part of their investigations into securing our elections. And that's what you kind of keep hearing. We haven't heard, you know, much else from them. I think we might hear a little bit more in the coming days as the court orders some records unsealed. But it's been a little bit, you know, just it's about election integrity.

17:14It's about protecting our elections and then investigating. And that's kind of just been the tailored line, at least out of the Department of Justice. Well, Jessica, what are Fulton County election officials saying, not just about the seizure, but about the precedent it sets? Yeah, I think they're very concerned. They framed it to me as sort of their moment in the spotlight to prevent this from happening to other places, right? So they don't want the Justice Department going into Maricopa and doing the same thing or to Philadelphia and doing the same thing. I had a candidate there for lieutenant governor described it to me as their Minneapolis moment.

17:55And so I think that's really instructive as to how they see the stakes of this. And I think that they're very concerned that they've lost control of these records entirely. This administration and many other people, because they're correct, talk about how important chain of custody is for ballots and how to know where they are and what is being done with them at any given moment of time. Well, that's been entirely shattered. And so those two things are sort of the themes that I'm hearing over and over from from these local officials. Well, while FBI agents raid voting facilities in Fulton County and take the ballots and break the chain of custody, the FBI HQ is letting localities and states know that it would like to talk to them about elections.

18:48Crooked Media reported just last week that the FBI is organizing a conference call later this month, and they're inviting local election officials from all 50 states to talk about their plans for midterm elections with federal law enforcement. Larry, is this usual, given what the FBI is doing on the ground? Well, so I think in another time, this would not have really raised too many eyebrows. It is a regular occurrence for federal agencies, the EAC, CISA, the FBI, to brief election officials on what they are seeing and to talk about how they can be helpful. I think the issue here is recent events.

19:38The president and the administration have been threatening election officials and others who work in elections with prosecution. The president, in fact, put out an executive order to go after Chris Krebs, who headed the agency in charge of election security in the 2020 election. And you have this recent, of course, raid on Fulton County. You have the Department of Justice going after states trying to hoover up private confidential information that they're not entitled to. So on the heels of all of that, having the FBI of all the agencies call folks together, I think is what really, frankly, freaked some people out.

20:24While we're hearing from you, Chris in West Virginia emails, states are in no way agents of the federal government, but play an integral part of our federal system and with a distinct role and responsibilities under the Constitution. And Claudia in Ohio emails, I do not think of the states as being agents of the federal government, as the president has asserted in the election process. I think of the states as being agents of the electorate, that is, the voters. Larry, what protections do states have against federal intimidation or meddling in their electoral processes. Yeah, I think we should be even more clear about this.

21:02The Constitution and the framers were very plain that the power to run elections is with the states. That's how our system works. It is with state and local governments. Congress can pass laws to override certain aspects of the way elections work, but that's it. It resides with the states. They are responsible for ensuring free and fair elections. And at the end of the day, they're the ones who are going to run every aspect of our elections. And they do have to be planning right now, I would say, for the threats that we have seen coming from the administration. So that means planning for any scenario, having papers written up to run to court and most importantly, assuring voters that there are multiple ways to vote.

21:53and that they will be able to vote securely. Well, while we talk about the pressure and disinformation that the president is putting on states and localities, that pressure is also building from other parts of the MAGA movement and the government now. And I'm talking about the Speaker of the House. Last week, Mike Johnson made comments suggesting that the scenario I mentioned just a moment ago where a Republican might be leading in an election, then later in the night a Democrat takes over, that must be fraud. He implied that must mean that undocumented immigrants are unfairly voting, for instance.

22:31The reason, Jessica, why this gave a lot of people a lot of fright is that the Speaker of the House has a very important role in seating members of Congress, members of the House who get elected. Back in October, he refused to seat Adelita Grijalva after a special election in Arizona that would have given Democrats the last vote they needed to force a revelation of the Epstein files. Six weeks went by, more while he refused to seat her. Can you describe some of the concerns around Mike Johnson, his role, and what could happen between election day and January after these midterms that's giving people pause here.

23:12Sure. I think that while we've talked a lot about how the federal government doesn't have a huge role to play in the administration of the elections, they do have a huge role to play. And all the things that have to happen as a result of those elections taking place, and one of them is, of course, seeding the people who get elected to Congress. And Mike Johnson has a big role to play in that. And so I think the concerns of many are that he will repeat what you just talked about and refuse to seat people whose districts are theoretically in contention because of theoretical voter fraud accusations that happen inside them.

23:51And they need to wait until those play out. I think that that remains a huge concern. And it's one that's basically unprecedented in modern American history. I don't even remember ever being remotely concerned that this would happen, much less sort of staring down the barrel of a real possibility of it. So I think people are preparing now, but I would hope that in the event that things moved in that direction, you'd see the same type of sort of pushback from within the Republican Party that we saw in 2020, right? Those efforts happened eventually and in stages. And so given that we've all seen this movie before, perhaps we'll see it sooner, but I think the jury is still out on that one.

24:43Oh, we've heard the president repeatedly claimed elections were rigged when he loses. At the same time, he's made it more difficult for states to guard against threats to their election systems by cutting critical federal funding designed to do just that. Last February, the Department of Government Efficiency, this of course was the entity run by Elon Musk, fired more than 100 staffers who help state and local officials monitor and respond to election cyber hacks. Alhanna Freed is the CEO of All Voting is Local. That's a nonpartisan nonprofit working in eight states to advocate for free and fair elections.

25:18And we asked her what the reduction in federal support and cooperation means for elections in the states she works with. Americans want every voter to vote, and they want every eligible vote that's cast to be counted. State and local election officials have relied on federal support and cooperation to make that possible for years. Secretaries of state from both parties in Arizona, Minnesota, Mississippi, have warned that pulling back federal coordination increases risks to their voter registration systems. It makes it harder for them to counter disinformation. And it leaves already stretched local election offices more vulnerable as they try to fill that gap.

25:59The cuts by the administration to the safety assessments and threat sharing that CISA has done for years raise real questions about our preparedness for cyber threats in the 2026 midterms and beyond. Doing this in a midterm year is a real indicator of how little this administration prioritizes ensuring that our elections are actually safe and fair and that our votes are going to count. Now, after the break, we'll talk more about cuts to funding for critical voting infrastructure. And we'll also talk about the hundreds of thousands of poll workers at more than 90 ,000 polling locations nationwide who are the backbone of the electoral process.