'If You Can Keep It': How The Midterms Will Run

0:00This week on NPR's Newsmakers, Tucker Carlson has broken with President Trump over the war with Iran and says he warned the president to his face that the war would be a mistake. And he looked at me and said, yes, you're right. But in the end, we all die anyway. So it doesn't matter. Tucker Carlson, this week on NPR's Newsmakers. Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

0:31The midterms are five weeks away. Ballots are already in the mail and in-person voting is underway in some states. Meanwhile, the federal government's role in this election is still being fought over in the courts. This month, the Supreme Court blocked President Trump's attempt to give the Postal Service greater control over mail-in ballots. Then on Friday, it revived a federal citizenship check system that a lower court had found illegal. And three separate lawsuits have been filed in recent weeks to keep armed federal agents away from polling places. The White House says its push to federalize elections is about protecting the integrity of the vote.

1:07But a new NPR, PBS News and Marist poll found that 75 percent of voters trust their state or local government to run a fair and accurate election. Meanwhile, undermining confidence in elections he could lose has been a centerpiece of President Trump's political strategy since his first term in office. And he's used his official power to meddle with election functions all over the United States. In a primetime address in July, he warned of what he called a crisis in election security, provided no solid evidence for it, and has since used it to falsely claim an epidemic of illegal voting. All of this points back to an important question amid all of the false claims and efforts to confuse.

1:50How are elections running for the midterms? Well, here's what you have to say. This is Tara in Hillsborough County, Florida. I have been a poll worker for probably about six years now. And I feel 100 % confident that our election is secure. And I feel like the people who doubt that actually should do a work in election. And they will learn how things are kept secure and safe. And it might put some of their fears to rest. I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd Zwilling. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. For today's installment of our weekly politics series, If You Can Keep It, We're talking to people who run those elections.

2:32That's right after this quick break.

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3:42Let's meet our guests. Democrat Shanna Bellows is Maine's Secretary of State. She's in the state capitol, Augusta. Secretary Bellows, welcome to the program. Hi, thank you for having me. Also with us now is Justin Levitt. He joins us from Los Angeles. He's a constitutional law scholar and professor at Loyola Marymount Law School. He was also the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division from 2015 to 2017. Justin, welcome back to the program. Great to be with you once again. Well, Secretary Bellows, as we said, we're about five weeks out from Election Day, though early voting has started in some states.

4:16As an official charged with making sure things run smoothly where you are. What's your day-to-day life like right now? It's very busy. And it's no different than prior elections in many ways. We are mailing our ballots out to our clerks because in Maine, our version of early voting, no excuse absentee voting starts Monday, October 5th. We are already receiving ballots back from our military and overseas voters that started 45 days prior to the election. And we are getting ready. We're doing a lot of public education, a lot of training of our clerks, and we'll be doing training of our poll workers.

4:56I loved what Tara said that if you want to understand elections, you should volunteer and work in elections. Well, Tara's not the only one with that sentiment. Kate in Charlotte emailed us, I have worked at my polling place for many years and I have confidence in our elections. For anyone who has doubts about the process, I recommend working the election. You will learn how the process is designed to facilitate fair voting and complete and accurate counting of votes. Secretary Bellows, just quickly, though, what kinds of questions are you getting from voters right now? We'll talk more about it, but I'll bet a lot.

5:27We are. And the question that really concerned me before the Supreme Court came down on the side of the states and saying that there would be no changes to mail-in voting was, will I be able to mail my ballot? Because we have Maine is the oldest state in the nation demographically. Demographically, we have a lot of older Mainers, people with disabilities who rely on vote by mail, and they had some serious concerns. We're also getting a lot of fears around armed agents at the polls on Election Day. Will Election Day be safe? And that's the first time we've ever heard that in our history, really, people having fear about ICE at the polls in particular.

6:06And so how are you responding to voters who raise those concerns with you? We are reassuring voters that this election will be business as usual. We will have yet another safe, free, and secure election. And that's because the Constitution is so clear. Elections are run by the states, not the federal government. And the laws and the Constitution are, again, incredibly crystal clear. So we did see that Supreme Court decision upholding vote by mail. And there is a bright line prohibition on federal agents at the polls. So I think the fear is the point. There's a lot of heated rhetoric designed to scare people away from voting.

6:44And so I continue to reassure voters, we've got this. Wow. And it's, you know, Election Day will be yet another really fun day where we all get to raise our voices for democracy. Well, we are fortunate to have more than one election official with us today. Joining us now from Greeley, Colorado, is Carly Coppess. She's the clerk and recorder for Weld County, Colorado. She's a Republican and also the president of the Colorado County Clerks Association. Carly, welcome to 1A. Thank you so much. So as another official who's also charged with making sure elections run smoothly for your voters, what's your day-to-day life like right now?

7:22Very similar to everybody else. We're fielding a lot of questions around how this election is going to run, especially the last few weeks have been very intense with all the different types of legal aspects that were happening. And now we're just kind of into making sure that our voters know the election is going to run as it has in all previous years and just making sure that they're hearing our message over a lot of the noise and rhetoric. We're obviously continuing to prep and get our ballots ready. Some of our ballots are going to be going out this Friday and then the next Monday. And so, again, it's really just trying to communicate to the voters that the election is going to be run like we've always ran it.

8:04And it should be as expected. And how they have chosen to participate is going to be available for them. Well, Justin Levitt, we love having you on the show for reality checks and for legal interpretation. So thanks for being here yet again. I want to ask you about some of the latest news out of Washington when it comes to ballot access and voting. Friday's news from the Supreme Court, which Secretary Bellows mentioned in response to a presidential executive order demanding that they create a system to check the citizenship and immigration status of voters. DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, modified an existing database.

8:43It's called SAVE. That database was built to check on non-citizens eligibility for public benefits, not voting, but other things. And as part of that modification, DHS linked it to Social Security records for the very first time. In June, federal judge blocked that overhaul, finding that it violated federal privacy laws and other laws, too. On Friday, here comes the Supreme Court and pauses that ruling, essentially greenlighting this new safe system in relation to the election. So what exactly did the court decide? What does this mean for voters in the midterms? Well, the court decided to let DHS continue with creating a broken system effectively.

9:32That's a shame, but it's not going to affect voters on the ground. You heard from Secretary Bellows. You heard from Carly. I'm hearing from election officials, state and local all over the country, a very similar message. One, we got this. Two, things are going to look like normal on the ground, even if there's a ton of noise between now and Election Day and maybe even after Election Day. And this save database thing is more of the noise. So it's true. The Supreme Court allowed DHS to continue compiling lists. The problem with that is that the lists aren't worth anything. They took a system that was working pretty well for tracking people through the immigration system, expanded it for a purpose it wasn't designed for, and broke it in the process.

10:18The best evidence we have of that is DHS going out to election officials and saying, we found thousands of purported non-citizens on your rolls. And the election officials, whose job it is to actually keep the rolls clean, and that is only their job, not DHS's job, push back and say, show us your data. They say, okay, not thousands, but maybe hundreds. And then they'll look at the hundreds and those vanish too. In Nevada, DHS claimed 15 ,900 purported non-citizens on the rolls. Nevada officials who keep really clean rolls, like all of the officials around the country, pushed back and said, show us what you got.

10:56They said, okay, we got 185, which is a pretty street drop. They looked at the 185 and 185 out of 185 of those names were citizens. Literally every single one. So DHS was batting zero for however many swings they were taking at that pitch. And that's part of why no state or local official around the country is likely to use the data. Because they know their own records are correct and accurate and secure and DHS records aren't. That's also why it's not going to affect voters this fall. There are a bunch of legal reasons why you can't do wide-scale list maintenance right now. But even more important, people don't particularly trust the DHS data, and the people who are running elections don't have to use it.

11:44Well, we have to take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll hear more about some of the legal challenges in play between now and November. Stay with us.

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12:56Hey, it's me, Peter Sagal, host of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. It's leaf peeping season, so why not peep our weekly news quiz while you're at it? We got comedians, celebrities, and games to help laugh about the week's news, and you can listen while you're spicing your pumpkins, whatever people do. Listen every week to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Back now to how the people who run our elections are getting ready for November and the legal fights shaping that work. Let's zoom out a little bit, gang. The president has repeatedly insisted without evidence that elections and mail-in ballots are rife with cheating and that non-citizens are voting in large numbers.

13:38And we got this email from Kit who says, I voted by mail in Florida for years, but with Trump shenanigans, I no longer trust mail-in voting. I'm voting in person and voting early to avoid crowds. Now, that brings me back to a University of California, San Diego poll this month, found that fewer than half of voters expect the midterms to be free and fair. Another poll commissioned by the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, 62 % said they're worried legal or political disputes over elections and the rules could affect whether their own ballot is counted in the end. Carly, what is the on-the-ground result of this kind of doubt?

14:23You're in Colorado, which is heavily mail-in vote state, has been for years. Surveys are showing voters not confident overall. What about in your community? Yeah, I'm not sure it's going to have as big of an impact as some would think. Our voters have been so used to participating by mail, even in our primary election in June with the turnout that we had. We still had 90 percent still utilize their mail-bought election and very few people are coming and voting in person. Now, of course, the rhetoric continues to get louder and louder as we get closer to November 3rd. we will see if there ends up being a bigger push to go vote at our in-person voting locations.

15:14We heard that in 2022, and we heard that same rhetoric in 2024. And the voters here in Colorado just didn't respond to coming in mass droves of voting in person. There was still a huge utilization of our mail-in ballots for those two elections after that big 2020 presidential. and we continue to see more and more people are utilizing our secure 24-hour drop boxes instead of using USPS to return them as well. So what we have seen from our voters is we continue to see a bigger push and drive to use our drop boxes instead of USPS and our in-person voting, even despite everything that you all just have said, just is not having that impact here in Colorado so far.

15:58Obviously, we'll see in here in about a month and a half if that's different, But we are going to continue to plan for all options for our voters and see what they end up deciding to use to get their ballot cast. Secretary Bellows, what about in Maine? What are you observing there? So I think we have to be candid that Louis DeJoy broke the Postal Service back when he started as its head. And we have seen mail delivery times just fall and fall and fall. And that's really sad. When I was a kid in rural Maine, if you requested your ballot on the Thursday prior to Election Day, you would get it on Friday.

16:36You could put it back in your mailbox on Saturday or Monday, and it would arrive by the close of the polls on Tuesday. And now we advise voters to mail their ballots back at least a week ahead of time or even 10 to 14 days ahead of time just because of changes in how postal delivery works. And we see that with prescription drugs and holiday packages. But Carly makes a really good point. The other innovation, how election officials have responded, is this 24-hour secure absentee ballot drop box. And we have those all across our state. 92 % of our voters have access to a drop box. And we do see increased utilization of that.

17:17And what I loved about the voter who wrote into your show is that he's making a plan. And I think that's what we encourage voters to do. What is your plan? And whether that is voting by mail and doing it earlier than usual because of potential postal service delays, using the dropbox, going in person or going in person early. And so I think we just remind voters what's best for you, what works for your life, and then execute that. So, Justin, we're hearing from both of our election officials here that voters where they live are figuring it out, whether it's making a plan or utilizing a different method of voting.

17:54They're making sure they cast their ballot. To your mind, what is the concern around not necessarily turnout, but whether people accept the results with this constant seeding of doubt and election security? So I have trust in the American people to screen out the noise. They actually have pretty good BS detectors, and they're doing that work pretty well. You just heard from Carly, you just heard from Secretary Bellows, most Americans have multiple different options for the ways that they might cast their ballots and make sure that those ballots get counted. They're making a plan. They know what they're going to do.

18:30That has led to, time and time again, over the last at least six years, Pew's been doing a survey of trust in local elections, right? Do you think that your ballots will be cast and counted freely and fairly and that the local elections will be well run? and reliably over the last six years, across party lines, across jurisdictions, 90 to 92 % of voters think that their local elections will be free and fair and well run and that the results will be accurate because they will be. Because locals know that their officials are working for them, for their own constituents, casting ballots and counting the ballots as their constituents intend.

19:13And I think that's really important. There's a lot of generic worry about how the election results might be or about how elections are run, quote unquote, over there. But when you ask people, do I think that my ballot's going to be counted fairly? Do I think that my election official is going to be doing a good job? The answer is overwhelmingly yes. And that's in part because of the very same experiences you were hearing from your listeners who were serving as poll workers, who once they get under the hood a little bit, they recognize that the election structures are really robust. So this next six weeks is going to be a challenge in tuning out the noise.

19:47But I think Americans realize that their election system is actually serving them. Not that it couldn't be better, could always be better, but that it's working to deliver the fair, free, reliable results they expect. Well, lots of our listeners are planning to work Election Day. Allison emailed, I'll be working the election at the Scott Ridge Elementary School here in Apex, North Carolina. It's a long day, but it's worth it to ensure we have fair and efficient voting. Because I'm working the polls, I'll be voting early on our first day of voting. Well, Allison, thanks for that message. And we've been hearing from so many of you, so many of you across America, not only have a plan, but you've been thinking about voting and your participation.

20:27Here's Linda in Illinois. In the last presidential election, we voted by mail, my husband, myself, and my son, which we had been doing for quite some time, but only our son's ballot was received. My husband's ballot and my ballot did not ever show that they were received and counted. Secretary Shunna Bellows, I know that you're in Maine. You're not in Illinois, different jurisdiction. But what would you tell Linda about her mail-in ballot, whether it was received and counted? So we have an online absentee ballot tracking system, and it sounds like she has access to one as well, to see when your ballot gets mailed out and then when you've returned your ballot, whether it's been accepted or rejected by the clerk.

21:21And we remind voters that they can always go in person on election day. If they look in that tracking system on Monday night before election day and they don't see that their absentee ballot has been returned, they can go in and say, look, I understand you haven't received my absentee ballot yet. I'd like you to cancel or reject that ballot and cast my ballot in person. So that's the backup plan, certainly for voters in Maine. And I think that diligence in monitoring what happens to your ballot is a really good strategy for voters. Carly, this is your final election as clerk and recorder after more than two decades running elections.

22:01What, if anything, feels different about this year's election? The biggest thing that feels different is that we are just facing a huge amount of noise that we have just been building and building and building. And we have never seen an administration throwing anything and everything on the wall and pulling any legal lever they can to try and create questions about how is an election going to be run. In my 22 years, I've never had to have this many conversations around this is how it's going to be run. This is how we're going to operate it. The last time I had this many conversations was when Colorado changed our election model to the model that we have now.

22:51And it's been a challenge to try and reach as many people. But I am also really glad to see more and more people have been hearing our message since 2020 to come to the trusted source, which is your local election official. And I have been able to have them come to me and ask those questions, send me emails, send me DMs on social media, because they are coming to me and my colleagues instead of just running wild with whatever Google or ChatGPT or anything else is saying. And I will continue to say, don't Google. Google doesn't know everything. But I do feel that that is a silver lining for us is we have been, not just here in Colorado, but across the nation, we've been jointly saying, come to us, ask us the questions.

23:43When you hear something and you question it, come to us. And I really have to say that we're really starting to see the results of people coming back to us to actually ask those questions, even despite all of the noise and rhetoric at the federal level. They have decided that, you know what, to Justin's point, my local person is the person I should trust, and I'm going to go and talk to them. And I think that's the silver lining that all of us, In the midst of all of this chaos and noise, we can rest assured and have a little bit of a gold sticker star, like my three-year-old would say. Well, Friday was a significant win for the administration when the Supreme Court, as we said, let it resume using save, at least from now.

24:33But some other election moves have been blocked. A federal judge blocked the Postal Service, the rule there intended to carry out the president's mail-in voting orders, and the Supreme Court refused to let it take effect. A bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote has stalled in Congress. Stephen emails to remind, please note that the SAVE system that we mentioned is not the same as the SAVE Act. That's the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which is only proposed legislation and has not passed. That's the SAVE Act I just mentioned has not passed. Justin Levitt, what's the common legal thread in all of the losses?

25:15I read somewhere, and I don't know the exact number. It's something like 60 and 1 of the administration's record in court when it comes to trying to alter elections before the midterms here. I think the common thread is that trial and appellate judges and every once in a while the Supreme Court, which doesn't weigh in on every issue and shouldn't weigh in on every issue, recognize that the people in charge of the election process are state and local officials by constitutional design. Every once in a while Congress gets to change those procedures for federal elections, but that's Congress that gets to change those procedures.