Here’s the Scoop, Election Edition: Can You Trust the Vote?

0:00Al Schmidt: Hey, Nightly News listeners, we have something a little different for you today. You're about to hear a special election edition of our NBC News podcast. Here's the scoop. In this episode, Chief White House Correspondent Garrett Haake sits down with experts to break down the key issues shaping the upcoming midterms. Take a listen. Election security is more than just protecting voting machines. It's about protecting Americans' confidence in the results. So what happens behind the scenes to make sure your vote is counted and the outcome can be trusted? We prepare for any conceivable thing that could get in the way of our democracy functioning the way that it should.

0:38Al Schmidt: It's just now there are far more things to consider than we've ever had to before. At the end of the day, we go beyond the call of duty. we want to make sure you can just really trust the results.

0:52Welcome to Here's the Scoop Election Edition. I'm Garrett Haake. Every Saturday from now until the midterms, I'm going to be talking with the smartest voices to discuss the top issues, the places, and the players that could ultimately decide control in Washington. Last week, we took the show to Texas, which has become one of the biggest and most expensive battlegrounds in these midterms. This week, as ballots arrive in mailboxes around the country, and early in-person voting begins in some states, we're zooming out to talk about the security of our elections and how states are working to make sure that every legal vote is counted, and only those.

1:29Time and again, President Trump has claimed that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. Those baseless claims have been debunked, including in the courts, where the president has lost dozens of lawsuits. But that hasn't stopped him from continuing his attacks on the U.S. election system. Now his top legislative priority is a bill focused on election security, which is stuck in the Senate. And over the summer, he gave a major speech attacking the U.S. election system. There's no third world country that has elections like we have. It all has some people worried that the president could order some kind of unprecedented federal interference in this election.

2:08But the federal government doesn't run our elections. state and local governments do. And today, I'll talk to two experts on exactly how our elections actually work to find out the truth about how secure they are or are not, and what people should expect when they go to the polls this year. My first guest is Al Schmidt. He's Pennsylvania's Secretary of the Commonwealth in charge of Pennsylvania's elections, and about as battle tested as you can get on this issue. You may recognize him from his testimony to the January 6th committee, where he talked about the death threats he received as a member of Philadelphia's election board for insisting that that city's 2020 election was secure.

2:48I want to find out what he thinks are the actual threats to our elections in 2026 and whether sowing mistrust in elections is itself a threat. Then I'll chat with my colleague Jane Tim. She covers elections and election security for NBC News, and she's fresh off a reporting trip to Georgia, another major battleground state, where she interviewed Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State who stood up to President Trump in 2020. Remember that infamous phone call?

3:16Al Schmidt: I just want to find

3:2111 ,780 votes. Jane can catch us up on the still ongoing investigation into Georgia's elections, how the peach state is protecting its voting systems, and also about the other big national trends and how rhetoric about election fraud is impacting voters. Because in the end, everything we're talking about in this series leads up to that moment where you cast that ballot in the mailbox or the voting booth and trusting that when you walk away, you know it will count. We'll be right back.

3:57This message comes from Wise Business, the only account your business needs to scale globally. You're building a business with global ambitions, but hidden fees are eating into your margins. With Wise Business, you can pay overseas suppliers without exchange rate markups. Have customers worldwide get payment details in 22 currencies, so you get more of each hard-earned payment without hidden conversion fees. Be smart. Get Wise Business. Download the app. T's and C's apply. This episode is brought to you by Whoop, the wearable health and fitness coach that gives you personalized insights into your sleep, recovery, strain, stress, and overall health.

4:37So you can finish summer feeling more aware of what you're capable of. With Whoop, you can better understand how your body is responding to travel, training, late nights, warmer weather, and packed weekends. It helps you see what's supporting your energy in recovery and what might be holding you back. Visit join.whoop.com slash SiriusXM. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Haley Bailey. Okay, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst.

5:10I get ad-free, I get backroom play, and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Try it now for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. That's a mouthful.

5:29Welcome back to Here's the Scoop, election edition. My first guest oversees elections in what could be called America's premier political battleground, Pennsylvania. No pressure. But Al Schmidt is used to it. Back in 2020, he was the lone Republican on the board that oversaw Philadelphia's elections and spent days huddled inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center overseeing the counting of ballots, all while demonstrators brandishing Stop the Steal signs protested outside. President Trump singled him out, and death threats followed. Testifying before the January 6th committee, he pushed back against conspiracy theories and defended the city's process.

6:09Al Schmidt: Not only was there not evidence of 8 ,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania, there wasn't evidence of eight. We took seriously every case that was referred to us, no matter how fantastical, no matter how absurd, and took every one of those seriously, including these. Now, as Secretary of the Commonwealth, he's working on making sure the Keystone State's elections are free, fair, and trusted by the voters who participate. Mr. Secretary, thanks for being here. Of course. Thanks for having me. So we talked a little bit about your experience in 2020. How did everything that you and Pennsylvania went through in 2020 inform how Pennsylvania's elections are being run now in 2026?

6:52Al Schmidt: It really has. I mean, there have been plenty of lessons learned along the way about how to better administer elections in this new environment. And elections, just the mechanics of elections have changed so much. In 2020 was the first time we had no excuse absentee ballot voting or mail ballot voting in Pennsylvania. We had new voting systems with a paper ballot record of every vote that's cast. And elections have never been more safe and secure. And yet, we're encountering this environment with so many questions and so many efforts to undermine confidence. So we've changed a lot when it comes to election administration, especially on the communications end with voters, with candidates, campaigns, and all the rest.

7:32How much of what happened in 2020 do you think was because of how new a lot of this was? There was obviously COVID was such a big deal then. All the procedures around voting in so many places was completely different than what a lot of people were used to.

7:43Al Schmidt: It was. And in Philadelphia, we were dealing with vote by mail for the first time. We were dealing with new voting systems at the polling places that voters were using. We were dealing with the COVID environment at its peak. And we were dealing with civil unrest in Philadelphia. So there was a lot going on. And because elections had changed and voters, you know, didn't in any way change their expectations along the way for it taking longer to count votes that are cast by mail, it created a real window of opportunity for bad faith actors to undermine confidence in the results when it was clear that they were going to come up short.

8:20I want to peel back the onion on a lot of that stuff, but especially on the count timing, because I feel like that's where a lot of the conspiracy theory comes in. A lot of the distrust comes from, I think, a society where we're used to, like, you know, you vote for American Idol, you get the results back that night. You vote for president or for Congress, it might take days. Why does it take as long as it takes in Pennsylvania? What's a reasonable set of expectations for voters to know who's won a close election in your state?

8:46Al Schmidt: It has always taken time. It has always taken days if not weeks when elections are close. So after every election, the county board of elections or the state would take time to review absentee ballots or what are called provisional ballots that are cast by voters who show up at the polling place who aren't registered at that polling place in the poll book and all the rest. People like yourselves and others call – NBC and others call the election, right? But that doesn't stop anything. It only stops once the last voter's vote is counted. It's just people stop paying attention once networks and others call it.

9:22Al Schmidt: So I think the big change in 2020 was because of having about half of our voters vote by mail and the counties not having as much experience in Pennsylvania doing it. It took longer to count many, many hundreds of thousands of ballots over those days. So does the combination of more experience and presumably fewer mail absentee ballots mean faster results in 2026? I think it's really three things. It is fewer voters voting by mail, even though it's very popular still. It's certainly down since 2020, and that makes a lot of sense. Another thing is Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth has made funding available for counties to use to purchase equipment that assists with the processing of mail ballots faster.

10:11Al Schmidt: So timestamping them and opening the envelopes and extracting the inner envelope and extracting the ballot and all the rest. So one, fewer ballots in play, two, more assistance in processing, and three, counties have just become a lot better at the performance management involved in counting significant numbers of ballots quickly but with integrity. The president has never stopped attacking our election systems around this country, even after he won again in 2024. How much of a threat to elections are attacks on the trustworthiness of elections? It's extremely harmful. I mean, anything that undermines confidence with no basis in fact is harmful.

10:58Al Schmidt: We want every eligible voter to register to vote and every registered voter to cast their vote and their voice to be heard in every election. Not all voters take advantage of that. They should, obviously. But anything undermining confidence, if you truly care about election integrity, you would only make accusations that have some foundation in fact. Or you are not only undermining confidence in our democratic system of government, but you're also undermining confidence in any legitimate efforts to identify, investigate, and prosecute voter fraud or election irregularities. crying voter fraud undermines the effort to find actual voter fraud.

11:42Al Schmidt: That's right, especially when you want to take every accusation seriously that has a basis in fact. You know, we've heard so many things that are so – are based in nothing but fantasy or paranoid fantasies or whatever else about election fraud. But you still have to take every allegation seriously just as you have to take every allegation of voter suppression seriously. Every vote is precious, and it's precious whether it's a fraudulent vote that's counted that shouldn't be counted or an eligible voter who is kept from voting as a result of any barriers put in their way. How do you deal with the distrust that's baked into the system now?

12:18How do you convince people who are worried about their vote not counting or inappropriate – votes that shouldn't count count? How do you convince people to trust the system again?

12:26Al Schmidt: And I think that's a very significant change that we've seen in the world before 2020 and after 2020. The people who run elections and have always run elections are very – I don't know how to describe it. Like inward looking, they're focused on the mechanics of election administration. But now they also have to be public relations people. They have to communicate to the voters to make sure the voters understand what's going on with elections. It makes sense that people have a lot of questions about elections, right? They've changed so much. And it's our responsibility to answer their questions and build confidence.

13:04So what do you think are the actual threats to our elections in 2026?

13:09Al Schmidt: I mean, anyone involved in election administration has to be vigilant, whether it's cybersecurity threats or voter intimidation at the polls or federal interference when it comes to running elections. that according to the constitution and law are run by our states. So I don't think there's one sort of specific threat. You have to be concerned about everything all the time. That's why when we do tabletop exercises and everything else that we do, we prepare for any conceivable thing that could get in the way of our democracy functioning the way that it should. It's just now there are far more things to consider than we've ever had to before.

13:46What is that preparation like? Are you running like doomsday scenarios or everything that could conceivably go wrong? Well, doomsday sounds sort of grim.

13:53Al Schmidt: Until it happens. But we do indeed work with our counties and our partners at the Commonwealth level and all the rest to sort of run through scenarios and what we would do. We've always done that, except for in the past, it focused on things like what happens when this county runs out of ballots? What happens when that county is hit with a tornado? Now it includes all sorts of things that we had never really considered before. What's your level of concern about the manner in which the federal government could interfere in state-run elections in 2026? It's always difficult to answer questions when it's sort of like levels of concern because the smallest thing, like a county running out of ink to print ballots on paper, is a significant concern.

14:37Al Schmidt: So everything is a concern. It would be helpful if members of the federal government were more knocked down any of these sort of like rumors and things that spin around because everyone still has to focus on all of the mundane but very important things when it comes to running elections. And it's important that everyone still do that and not be distracted or allow themselves to be distracted by chatter coming out of D.C. or wherever else that gets you to take your eye off the ball. You can't do that ever. So I covered the White House. The president's gripes about elections and his complaints about fraud I think largely fall into two buckets.

15:19He complains a lot about non-citizen voting and also sort of big sort of conspiratorial fraud among Democrats. Can I ask you to address those individually? How big of an issue is non-citizen voting in Pennsylvania? Well, any number greater than zero is something to be concerned about.

15:43Al Schmidt: So when I say that we've only had six or eight examples in recent memory of noncitizens being prosecuted or pleading guilty or whatever, that's not to minimize it, right? Because I said just a minute ago, like every vote is precious when it comes to voter suppression or all the rest. So you have to take all of this seriously. It's just what is the right response? What is the right solution to addressing a problem? And how frequently does that problem occur? How do you identify it? and, like I said, address it. And when the president talks about this big kind of conspiratorial, large-scale fraud, I mean, you testified in the January 6th committee that that wasn't the case in 2020.

16:22We've had elections in 22, 24, now 26. Have you seen any evidence of that kind of thing in any of those elections?

16:28Al Schmidt: No, and I would encourage everyone to be driven by evidence of facts when reaching conclusions about their confidence in elections. It's easy to throw out these sort of things. It's easy to do some matches of big databases and get an avalanche of false positives. But election integrity requires hard work. It requires a thoughtful, deliberate, methodological examination of accusations to determine if it's actually occurring or not and to what degree. The other thing that I imagine is a challenge for you, and you mentioned sort of everything as a degree of worry, is the pace at which technology is advancing.

17:05How does AI change election security? How people vote, how the votes get reported, what are your concerns in that space around that technology?

17:14Al Schmidt: Well, that is certainly an increasing concern, especially because it's so new and it's developing so quickly. And we've certainly seen that it's reached the level of maturity to do harm and to deceive, as we've seen with deepfakes and other things like that. It hasn't yet reached the level of maturity to assist with election administration in any meaningful way. Or voter education. Is that something you're studying? I could see that being useful in the future. It is, absolutely. And I'm hopeful there will be ways in which we can leverage AI and harness that for good, right? Like voter education and to inform voters and all the rest.

17:52Al Schmidt: It's just right now we've seen it being weaponized in a way that is harmful. And that's one thing that's concerning about the federal government sort of pulling back resources from the state. because the Department of Homeland Security has CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration, that assists states in doing a number of things. One of those is identifying deepfakes. So when there's a voice deepfake or a video or something else like that, CISA in the past has been helpful to say, no, this is not legitimate and you should make sure your voters know. Are you getting sufficient support from the federal government?

18:27Al Schmidt: Well, the federal government has certainly withdrawn a lot of support in the cybersecurity realm. So it's resulted in Pennsylvania and other states really leaning on other partners. We work closely with the Pennsylvania State Police. We work closely with the Pennsylvania National Guard to do cybersecurity penetration testing and sort of all the rest. So we've had to rely on others, but no state does what the federal government has the capability of doing when it comes to monitoring, collecting information and intelligence of adversarial bad faith foreign actors and any foreign efforts to undermine elections.

19:07Al Schmidt: It doesn't mean that we let our guard down. We have to sort of double down on that and become even more on guard because you can't really see around the corner. You have to strengthen the security sort of infrastructure that you have. That sounded like a longer and very diplomatic way of saying, no, you're not getting sufficient support from the federal government. We're certainly getting less support from the federal government, period. But what I'm saying is states have been able to replace that by relying on other resources, other state partners that I mentioned and others in this area. But there's one component that can't be replaced, and it's really the foreign aspect of it all.

19:46So we have sort of election month leading up to election day, and I feel like we have litigation month that follows. How do you prepare for all the various types of litigation that you are likely to see about the results this cycle?

19:59Al Schmidt: While there's always been litigation in elections, and certainly you remember the 2000 election in Florida and how that all sort of played out, it is certainly something that we are a lot more involved in than ever before. Not just responding to litigation, but being prepared for potential litigation that could come your way. What happens when a county board of elections of three county commissioners refuses to certify election results? And that holds up the state certifying election results. It's a matter of preparing for litigation so that it's ready to go and lined up should any of those things occur.

20:35You've spoken in other interviews about how important the courts were after 2020 and kind of this last line of defense for our elections. Can you expand on that and the role that you think the judiciary could conceivably play in this cycle or in the future as kind of being that bulwark when it comes to election results? They really did.

20:53Al Schmidt: I mean the courts held fast in the face of all of that that was seeking to undermine confidence in the results or prevent certification from taking place, which would open up a whole other window for people to try to undermine confidence in results. And I think we've seen that. Again, DOJ, for example, demanded all states provide their voter rolls that include Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers. We won't do that. It wouldn't be legal for us to do that. We refuse to do that, as did dozens of other states. And every court decision, I think we're up to maybe 30 now, the courts have sided with the states against the federal government in providing that sensitive information.

21:35We talked about a number of things that are challenges and issues and concerns. At the end of the day, when we're coming into election day, what will be the issues that are keeping you up at night?

21:49Al Schmidt: What we haven't thought of. I mean, I know that's – it sounds Rumsfeldian to say the unknown unknowns. The unknown unknowns, yeah. But that's frequently the case. You can't help but be – A failure of imagination could be the challenge. That is exactly right. And after the fact, you can see something coming clear as day, but not maybe in the moment. So we have prepared in recent elections for all sorts of fantastical things that never came to pass. Like what? Well, I don't want to necessarily go into all of those scenarios. I don't want to give anybody any ideas. Cases where you have like mass challenges of voter eligibility at the polls.

22:31Al Schmidt: That was certainly something that a couple years ago, that was a headline. Like this is going to happen. You got to prepare for this and you prepare for it. But that never actually occurred because whether people wanted to do it or not, they looked a little closer and realized it would not be a useful thing to do other than getting in the way of eligible voters casting their votes. And it would not be a legal thing to do. Well, for your sake and for the sake of everyone voting in Pennsylvania and watching the results, I hope all of your problems are foreseen problems this cycle. Thank you. Every election is a very complicated undertaking with thousands of polling places and, you know, obviously millions of voters.

23:09Al Schmidt: And we want to make sure that it goes as smoothly as possible so that voters can make their voice heard. Al Schmidt, we'll leave it there. Thank you. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we're back, we'll head to Georgia, the state where President Trump went looking for 11 ,000 plus votes, and find out how the guy who stood up to him is protecting their elections this time around. This message comes from Wise Business, the only account your business needs to scale globally. You're building a business with global ambitions, but hidden fees are eating into your margins. With Wise Business, you can pay overseas suppliers without exchange rate markups.

23:50Have customers worldwide get payment details in 22 currencies so you get more of each hard-earned payment without hidden conversion fees. Be smart. Get Wise Business. Download the app. T's and C's apply. This episode is brought to you by Whoop, the wearable health and fitness coach that gives you personalized insights into your sleep, recovery, strain, stress, and overall health, so you can finish summer feeling more aware of what you're capable of. With Whoop, you can better understand how your body is responding to travel, training, late nights, warmer weather, and packed weekends. It helps you see what's supporting your energy in recovery and what might be holding you back.

24:29Visit join.whoop.com slash SiriusXM. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Haley Bailey. Okay, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi. Because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get ad-free, I get backroom play, and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Try it now for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

25:00That's a mouthful.

25:05And we're back with Here's the Scoop Election Edition. I'm Garrett Haig. After Pennsylvania, the state most closely associated with concerns over election integrity back in 2020 was Georgia. President Trump's fixation on the election results in Georgia didn't stop with that famous phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to find votes, or even with Trump's own return to office in 2025. In January, the FBI raided the Fulton County Election Hub just south of Atlanta and seized hundreds of boxes of 2020 election material, part of an unspecified investigation into the election, which is still ongoing.

25:43You can expect the Trump administration is going to be laser-focused on Georgia's elections when early voting begins there next week, and the same man, Brad Raffensperger, who will be overseeing it all. My colleague, Jane Tim, who's been covering elections and election security for a decade, spoke to Raffensperger this week in Georgia, and she joins me now. Hey, Jane. Hey, Garrett. How you doing? I'm all right. So you just interviewed Brad Raffensperger, who has the weird distinction of probably being the most famous secretary of state anywhere in the country. What did he tell you about how Georgia is preparing this time around to both keep their elections secure and keep people convinced that they are secure?

26:25Yeah, Raffensperger is sort of the face of state-run elections, of pushing back against President Trump. And he has the dubious position of being a Republican while trying to do that. You know, six years in, eight years as Secretary of State, he is just sort of trying to browbeat Georgians with the facts. At the end of the day, we're going to beat you to death with audits, 20 risk-limiting audits. Most states don't do any. Maybe they'll do one or two. We're going to do 20 here in Georgia. And so, you know, you're just going to say, I can't handle so many facts. But at the end of the day, we go beyond the call of duty.

27:04We want to make sure you can just really trust the results. I mean, we went through logic and accuracy testing today. So we watched them test the machines. We held up the ballot paper to see the watermarks. He told me about how if you, you know, take a blue light and flash it on those ballots, it's sort of going to sparkle. There's special fibers in the security paper that has one of the many ways they show Georgians that they can trust their elections. You know, he is he's an engineer by trade and he is just like mouthing off statistics one after another. You know, here's how we checked to make sure there's no noncitizens on the rolls.

27:41Here's how we, you know, verify this, that we have our real IDs. Here's how we verify every single ballot. He is adamant about trying to avoid the conflict and just be incredibly neutral and incredibly even-keeled as he just, like, throws all this data at you. He's like, I got the facts. I'm just going to bore you with them. Just the fact that they even let reporters in to witness all this seems very much designed to try to put to bed the conspiracy theories before they sprout. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I walked away with one of these little tags, the seals they put on these voting machines, a little memento for someone who's nerdy like me and really fascinated by elections.

28:22But they're essentially these seals that go on the ballot marking devices after they test them. And then you have to cut them off and they have numbers on them and they check the numbers against what the numbers are supposed to be. They have this intense level of security around this. And the election officials I talked to in Paulding County, which is where we were with Secretary Raffensperger, they said, you know, we try and tell everyone, if you have any doubts, come talk to us, sit down with us, work as a poll worker. And they said some of their best poll workers are actually people that doubted the election, came in, saw how it works and are like, oh, this is great.

28:58Let's get involved. Raffensperger has gotten some pushback from inside the state. The state board of elections even has tried to go around him and invite the federal government in to take over aspects of Georgia's elections. What was his reaction to that when you asked him about it? Yeah, the state election board wrote these extraordinary letters asking for a federal investigation and intervention last week. You know, voting has already started in Georgia. Early voting starts next week. The mail ballots are out. and I pressed him on this because, you know, he doesn't want to get into a fight with other people in his state.

29:37But I said, you know, there's people calling for an intervention, a federal takeover of your elections. What do you think about that? And he just, he has this incredible moment where he pauses and he sits there and he goes. Well, bless their hearts. That's very Southern. And he says, you know, we're Georgia. We want to be respectful of people. But this state election board is a product of the fight that has happened here. The secretary of state used to be on the state election board, but he was stripped of that ability after the 2020 election and his refusal to help President Trump try and overturn those results.

30:17So now that state board has gone very far to the right. It has a lot of people who doubt the integrity of these results and have spent years advancing conspiracy theories. about elections in America. And so he now is like, you know what, you tried to sort of censure me, but at the end of the day, that board, they're not working in reality. You're not operating in the facts. And he said, you know what, we're doing the real work. So while we might send the results of an audit or the results of an investigation into voter fraud to that board, he says, I also send them to the local prosecutors because I want to get things done for the anecdotal incidental fraud they do find.

31:00He also is the recipient of the most direct pressure of probably any individual from President Trump after 2020, that very famous phone call about finding votes. How concerned is he that the president or the federal government could try to interfere in some way with the conduct of Georgia's elections? Yeah, I pressed him on that. And I said, you know, how are you preparing? There's other secretaries of state that have been running tabletop exercises on what happens if federal government gets involved. And he says, you know, we're prepared for everything, but we don't really think that's going to happen.

31:35He was asked, you know, what about if President Trump calls you up again? And he said, I'm going to give him the results. I'm going to tell him what the data says. You are election security expert. You've traveled all over the country. You covered this issue even when we're not three weeks from the midterms. What is your sense of how other states have responded to or internalized the way that President Trump talks about, you know, fraud in elections and stolen elections? What's happening in some of these different states around the country that people should be aware of? You know, the thing that I find the most interesting about this trust issue is that people trust their own election officials.

32:18They don't trust their neighbors' election officials or, you know, the next state over's election officials. It's more about this, the idea that something bad is happening elsewhere. When you ask people about their own home state or their own elections, they tend to feel pretty good about it because it's their neighbors working those elections. That's state control for you. That's local control. That's how the election system was designed, that having people run their own elections at home is supposed to be a security mechanism. Every state's responding differently. Georgia has some of the most restrictive rules on the books.

32:53You need a real ID in many cases to vote by mail here. But they also counter it with a lot of access, a lot of early voting. They encourage people to go in person and vote. Every state is having that conversation and trying to figure out what's most important to them. You know, California leaves really heavily on access versus, you know, a lot of restrictions. And they take a lot of time to count their ballots because they do so much by mail. They think that's the best way for them to cast their own votes. You know, every state does it differently. And therefore, that's in part why there's so many conversations because people understand their own elections.

33:32They don't understand other people's. We talked about the state board in Georgia. Are there other Republicans who've gotten into Secretary of State's offices or having oversight over elections who are more in line with the president's viewpoint on election security? Like where will we see that manifest around the map on election night? There's secretaries that very much align with the president. I mean, the first one that comes to mind is Missouri's Denny Hoskins, you know, who fought adamantly to keep a redistricting ballot amendment off the ballot despite the courts really, really pushing back very severely.

34:07But the reason Georgia comes up so much, the reason I end up in this state so much is that this is a 50-50 state. You need to have the kind of place where this all comes down, where it's ground zero for these conversations. It has to be a very closed state. The margins have to be what's important. So most states aren't going to have these conversations because elections are not won by a few thousand votes. It's those super closed states. That's where it all comes down to. I hear a lot, I'm sure you do too, of concern from people on the left about ways in which the president could insert himself into these midterms and could interfere.

34:44what are the things that secretaries of state are taking seriously? What are the concerns out there about potential federal interference and how that might be counteracted in individual states? Yeah, when I talk to election officials, they're not just worried about potential federal interference, like the idea that, you know, ICE might show up at the polls. That's something people on the left are terrified about. And there's definitely election officials who are concerned about that. They're also worried about the appearance of federal interference, the idea that, you know, if someone in a uniform shows up, a rogue ICE agent could give the appearance of those things.

35:25And the idea is that any fear, any confusion is bad for elections. So election officials want to plan for every single scenario that could possibly exist. but at some point it's hard to know what these officials should be planning for. And they say they're ready for anything, but time will tell. Yeah. I mean, Schmidt made that same point to us about the unknown unknowns, sort of very Rumsfeldian concern about the corners you can't see around. I mean, that's the challenge for a lot of these guys and women. We've got pre-audits. You talked about our Athensburgers already preparing to do all these audits.

36:05What are you seeing around the corner about litigation? What kind of court fights are these secretaries of state and these state election officials already preparing for? Because I'm sure this is like the litigator's Super Bowl here when it comes to election law. Yeah. I mean, I would love to know how many lawsuits have already been written because most of them already have been written on both sides of the aisle. People, you know, preparing litigation because they think there's voter suppression, people preparing litigation because they think there's voter fraud. It is on all sides of the spectrum.

36:39There are lawsuits being written for every possible scenario. And there'll be lawyers around the country who are simply sitting in courtrooms waiting for something to happen, sitting outside, waiting to run in and, you know, ask for polls to stay open late or trying to get certain ballots sequestered from the others. This is going to be an election that happens on Election Day, but may well continue for weeks after as the litigation goes on. Again, it all comes down to these margins. You know, lawsuits are only as effective or influential if we're talking about a few hundred ballots, a few thousand ballots.

37:17That's where litigators end up and these things end up in the courts. And I asked Raffensperger about this. What we try to do and what we've been working on is everywhere there's potential errors of what would happen if you had the Bush v. Gore 2000 with the hanging chats. That would be something that would probably keep anyone up late at night that 400 votes can determine the outcome of who your next president would be or who your next governor would be. If you don't know what a hanging chat is, go ask your parents. Any of us who are around in 2000 remember that and are probably scarred by it.

37:53I want to talk a little bit about mail balloting and voting by mail specifically. I put my mail ballot in the mail this week. It's very popular around the country. The president continues to attack voting by mail. He did it this week, said it's ripe for fraud. He himself votes by mail and has in the last couple of elections. Can you dispel some of the myths around voting by mail around the country and answer the bottom line question, which is how secure is it to cast your ballot by mail in this country? Yeah. And I think it's important to note that we've been talking about potential changes to mail voting the whole year because the president has been fighting for them.

38:32But no laws have changed broadly. You know, maybe the state's changed one or two provisions. But basically, if you could vote by mail before, you can vote by mail now. Nothing has changed in terms of the law. And voting by mail is secure. Secure. You cast a ballot. It is verified under the rules of your state. Typically, that means checking to make sure your signature matches. Election officials take signature verification courses in many states. In states like Georgia, there's more restrictions where you have to put your driver's license number so that people can verify that that's you here in Georgia where they have these very strict mail voting law.

39:12I think the one thing that has changed is that budget cuts have made it so that the mail service is slower. So if you're going to vote by mail, I would encourage you to cast that ballot early because you want to make sure it arrives on time under the rules of your state. Usually that's election day, but sometimes it can be a couple of days past election day if it's postmarked. But either way, if you want to cast that ballot by mail, it is completely secure. It's safe. You just got to do it early because the post office can be a little slow these days. To that end, we are early in the voting process.

39:46But are you seeing any indication that fewer people are voting by mail, perhaps because of all those attacks on the process? You know, we're seeing some anecdotal evidence that people are choosing to vote in person, maybe in person early versus by mail. In Wisconsin, there was a data point saying it was down 18 percent from a comparable period. But I will say that some of these comparisons are relics of the pandemic. A lot of people voted by mail during the pandemic and may just be going back to voting in person the farther away we get from that. And as people remember, you know, hey, I like voting earlier.

40:25I like voting on Election Day with my kids. So, Jane, what are your unknown unknowns? What keeps you up at night thinking about challenges, things that could go wrong on Election Day? You know, for me, the question is really, are people going to trust the results? You know, when you talk to election officials, they say, I just want to show people because I see how secure it is. And I saw it today, the many security provisions that go into Georgia's elections. But whether people trust it, accept it, that's the real question. Well, I hope you get some rest at least between now and Election Day. Jane, Tim, thank you for your reporting.

41:05Thank you. All right, that's going to do it for us today. Thank you for listening. Next week on the show, Iowa has slipped off the battleground map in recent election cycles. It's too conservative, they say, too rural, too white. But now the governor's race there leans towards a Democrat. Fox News rates the Senate race there a toss-up, and three out of the four House seats are competitive. So what's happening in the Hawkeye state? That's next week on Here's the Scoop Election Edition. Our show was produced by Caroline Kenney and Amanda Llewellyn, Erica Huang and Bobby Carlisto engineered with support from Jessica Fenton and Jacob Condon, Kateri Yoakum is the executive producer of Here's the Scoop, and Shalini Sharma is the senior vice president of content development at NBC News.

41:51I'm Garrett Haake. See you next time.

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