ROSALIE: This is Rosalie (ph).
LEON: And Leon (ph), from San Diego in California. We are on a road trip with friends visiting from Germany. We started in Miami, traveled through South and North Carolina to Virginia, and conclude this week in Washington, D.C., where we visited the White House yesterday, and us kids became junior rangers. This podcast was recorded at…
DEEPA SHIVARAM, HOST:
12:49 p.m. on Tuesday, September 17, 2024.
LEON: Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we will still be amazed by the history we experienced in the U.S. capital.
LEON AND ROSALIE: OK, here’s the show.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: What a road trip.
SHIVARAM: Oh, that’s too fun.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Only kid time stamps from now on.
SHIVARAM: I was going to say, do you want to add NPR to your D.C. day? That would be fun.
PARKS: Oh, yeah, next time, next time.
SHIVARAM: (Laughter).
WANG: Come on over.
PARKS: Come say hi.
SHIVARAM: Hey there. It’s the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I’m Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House.
PARKS: I’m Miles Parks. I cover voting.
WANG: And I’m Hansi Lo Wang. I also cover voting.
SHIVARAM: And today on the podcast, you guessed it, we’re talking about voting. It’s National Voter Registration Day, and we’re going to talk about how this fall’s general election will run. NPR has a new online guide on how to register to vote in every U.S. state and territory, plus Washington, D.C. You can find it at npr.org/elections.
Miles, let’s kick things off. The very earliest ballots have already gone out, right?
PARKS: It has begun.
SHIVARAM: It has begun – to absentee voters in Alabama. Voting, of course, will look a little bit different – right? – than it did four years ago at the height of COVID. Everyone was isolating. You couldn’t really stand in line the way we normally do. But for this year, I mean, what do you know about how folks are casting ballots? And also, you know, I’m curious, how early are people voting?
PARKS: Yeah, it’s always important at the top of these to say, like, this is different state by state and county by county, right? But generally, I think what’s really interesting when I talk to election officials is that the narrative around voting has really focused the last few years on restrictions. After 2020 and all the expansions we saw for the COVID pandemic, a number of states did restrict and roll back some of those voting expansions, which kind gave the vibe that voting was going to be harder in 2024. But then when you actually look at the landscape of the U.S., I reported on this report from the Center for Election Innovation & Research, that found that 97% of voting-age citizens live in places that offer some form of early voting to all voters. So that is almost all voters…
SHIVARAM: Wow.
PARKS: …Have the opportunity this election to vote early if they want to. And I just think it’s important to put that into context when we talk about, you know, in 2000, more than 80% of voters voted on Election Day, and so it really has been a sea change in just two decades.
And so in terms of what we’re going to be looking at from the electorate this year, I reached out to Charles Stewart, who’s an election data expert at MIT, and I emailed him and basically said, do you have any bets on what your prediction…
SHIVARAM: Yeah.
PARKS: …Is in terms of how people are going to be voting? What he told me is that there has been a trend over the last two decades towards more mail voting. He said there’s going to be a little bit more Election Day voting this time around than in 2020 because there is not – we are not at the height of a pandemic where there is no vaccine at this point. So his prediction is that this year, we’re going to see roughly about 45% of people voting in person on Election Day, 20% of people voting in person early and about 35% by mail.
SHIVARAM: That really changes the landscape and it kind of speaks to why a lot of us reporters, and definitely here on the pod, we often talk about how it’s voting season, right? And we say the election ends on Election Day. It does not begin voting, right? It’s…
PARKS: This is music to Hansi’s ears, I imagine.
SHIVARAM: Yes. It’s really, really important.
WANG: Wait, wait, wait, Deepa.
SHIVARAM: Yeah.
WANG: It’s voting. The last day of voting is Election Day. The election may not end on Election Day ’cause things can get very messy.
SHIVARAM: Hansi, good point – very good point. Well, another storyline that we heard a lot about in 2020 was concerns about the U.S. Postal Service and whether delays on their end could impact the millions of people who do use the mail system to vote, Miles, like you pointed out. But Hansi, you know, you’ve been reporting on this issue with USPS. It’s kind of popping up again this year, but how does that look?
WANG: Well, you have election officials speaking out last week in a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, and they flagged issues that were also raised by the U.S. Postal Service’s internal watchdog, the Office of Inspector General – you know, issues like the Postal Service workers not always following the right procedures for handling mail-in ballots and voter registration applications. And in some states, election officials are saying they’ve received hundreds of ballots for recent elections 10 days or more after the postmark.
To be fair, the Postal Service says it’s working on addressing all of those concerns, and it’s also urging voters who are planning to vote by mail this time around to return their completed ballots early, which may sound familiar from 2020. And here’s another pro tip – especially for voters in states that use postmarks to determine if a ballot arrived on time, if you want to make sure your ballot gets a postmark, you should stop by a post office because sometimes mail gets through the system without a postmark.
SHIVARAM: Oh, that’s very interesting. So there’s a lot of nuances here in terms of how people are voting, when they’re voting, the whole scale of it – definitely really interesting. But, you know, you were talking about election officials, and, you know, generally people’s concerns about voting in this election, and that’s something we talked about a little bit yesterday on the pod, too, when it comes to extremism and violence in our politics. For both of you, I mean, from your reporting, is that something you’re hearing that’s top of mind for voters? And I’m also curious on the other side, for folks who are working this election – right? – people who are poll workers, are volunteers.
PARKS: Yeah, I think the atmosphere is very charged right now. I was talking to an election official in rural Florida the other day, Wesley Wilcox, who’s the Republican election supervisor in Marion County, Fla. And I asked him kind of, what is the thing you’re most concerned about right now? And the phrase he mentioned was polling place anxiety, that, you know, he is in this kind of swath of rural Florida that doesn’t really have any issues. All their poll workers are, you know, over 65, generally. Their polling places are in churches. It’s usually kind of a quiet process. And here’s what he told me he’s hearing from voters.
WESLEY WILCOX: I had a question just a couple weeks ago, you know – oh, are you anticipating, you know, violence at any polling place? And I’m like, have you voted here in Marion County before? You know, because everybody is watching some of that stuff and, you know, you see the chants, and you see all the stuff on the TV, and I think it’s just making everybody a little apprehensive.
PARKS: He obviously is saying it can happen anywhere. He’s preparing for all of these scenarios, but you can see how this cycle works, where people are worried about these sort of issues when they go to vote. That kind of gets you charged up. You show up at your polling place, and I think that’s what election officials are worried, that everyone, for different reasons, is going to kind of show up to vote this time around a little charged up.
I talked to another person the other day who said, this is a neighborhood transaction. Just remember, you’re talking to your neighbor. You’re going, whether it’s your local school or your local church. This is not a national thing. And I think that will kind of, hopefully, bring the temperature down a little bit.
WANG: You know, Deepa, the one constant I found about this election cycle is just how unpredictable things have been – so many twists and turns. So I wonder what we’ll actually see on the ground in terms of voter turnout, what the polls look like for folks who are voting in person after the dust settles.
PARKS: Hansi, that’s exactly what Wilcox told me, too. When I asked him, like, what are you expecting? He was like, I’m just worried about the unknown, that there is still some other thing that we have not thought about that is going to pop up in the next few weeks. And I think there is some part of this that’s just kind of like the tale of the COVID election, where, like, I think election officials are still thinking it’s possible that we could have everything prepared and there could still just be an absolute kind of, like, thing that turns everything upside down.
SHIVARAM: Absolutely. Everything feels unprecedented, and it’s just so interesting to talk to both of you who report on this, about something like voting, which is such a tradition for so many people in this country, as they experience politics and policy, is showing up at the ballot box. And how they’re doing it, when they’re doing it, how they’re fearing going about it is just so different every time we kind of do this, every four years. All right, we’re going to take a quick break, and more in a moment.
And we’re back. And a quick reminder to hit that follow button wherever you get your podcasts to get a notification whenever we have a new episode.
The biggest story following President Biden’s win in 2020 was Trump’s refusal to concede and his lie that the election was stolen, something he continues to say four years later. And in that time, you know, there were a lot of legal challenges that came about. There was the violent attack of January 6 on the Capitol, as an effort to stop the certification of the results – obviously, a lot going on. And Hansi, a big part of that monthslong ordeal were these alternate slates of Trump electors. Can you just remind us what was going on with that?
WANG: Right. Well, you may have heard about what’s been called the, quote, “fake electors scheme.” And basically, four years ago, some potential members of the Electoral College of 2020 got together in seven states where Trump lost the popular vote, and they weren’t authorized by their states’ governors to be on the official slate of electors for their state. But these Republican electors signed certificates that became part of that scheme to overturn the 2020 election results by reversing Trump’s defeat.
SHIVARAM: OK, so is there work on the part of Trump’s allies to bring those folks back if needed, I mean, if the race is still really close like it was four years ago?
WANG: Well, what we know for now is that Trump has refused to commit to accepting this year’s election results without any conditions. And what I’ve confirmed recently is that 14 of those pro-Trump electors from 2020, were linked to that push to overturn Trump’s loss, they are back serving as potential electors in 2024 in Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. And these are mainly current or former Republican leaders in their states. Some have been criminally charged with felony counts related to sending false certificates to Congress. In Michigan, those electors have pleaded not guilty. In Nevada, the charges have been thrown out by a state judge who said the prosecutors picked the wrong venue for the case.
What’s interesting is that the returning electors in Pennsylvania and New Mexico have not been charged. And legal experts I talk to say that’s probably because, back in 2020, those electors signed certificates with caveats, and those caveats said the certificates would only be used if a court overturned their state’s election results. And I talked to one of those pro-Trump electors in Pennsylvania, Ash Khare.
ASH KHARE: They screwed up. They should have put the same caveat in like we did.
WANG: Ash Khare’s saying, “they should have put the same caveat in like we did.” Ash Khare is now one of the potential electors, and formally speaking, if former President Donald Trump were to win the popular vote in Pennsylvania, Ash Khare is set to cast one of Pennsylvania’s 19 Electoral College votes for President Trump, assuming he – you know, the governor of Pennsylvania certifies the results for President Trump.
SHIVARAM: Is it fair to say, like, you know, because of that caveat that they put in, like, he doesn’t face any consequences, right?
WANG: So far – right. So far, he has not been charged criminally, civilly, and folks think it’s because of this conditional clause that was included in the Pennsylvania certificate and their (ph) similar one in New Mexico. And what I’m watching for is to see if that’s a strategy that is used again, given that we’ve seen there is a pattern that Republicans in 2020 file a bunch of lawsuits challenging election results in various swing states, and they’re likely to do it again.
SHIVARAM: I mean, yeah, and that, as you pointed out earlier, took a long time even after Election Day, right? It was weeks and days and a whole process. I mean, have you seen any reforms to try and prevent any attempts to upend the Electoral College process and potentially overturn this year’s presidential election results?
WANG: Yes. And these are reforms that I know Miles has covered a lot. These are reforms passed by Congress, signed into law at the end of 2022. It’s called the Electoral Count Reform Act. Real wonky, but what’s important to know, this is a law about how Congress counts electoral votes, and legal experts I’ve talked to say those changes are likely to make it harder to carry out any attempts to try to overturn the results of this year’s presidential election.
And there are those criminal charges against some of the pro-Trump electors from 2020, and there’s also been a civil lawsuit against 2020 pro-Trump electors in Wisconsin, who’ve now entered into a settlement agreement that bans them from serving as electors again when Trump is on the presidential ballot. So legal experts, I’d say they hope those charges are sending a strong signal that there are legal consequences to attempting to overturn election results.
PARKS: Yeah, I feel like everyone wants there to just be some sort of fix to the laws that make it so the schemes we saw in 2020 can’t happen again. And I’ve heard the same thing, Hansi, that basically, there’s this hope from experts that it’s kind of a hodgepodge, that, like, yes, the rules made it so some sort of scheme would be more difficult, but that it’s important to remember that all the people involved are real people, and real people don’t want to go to jail. And so I think seeing the idea that being involved in something like this, whether it is storming the Capitol or whether it is being involved in this sort of, quote-unquote, “fake elector scheme,” could actually lead to an indictment – the legal experts I’ve talked to have said, basically, that they think that the fear of jail time may actually be a better deterrent than actually some of – even some of the rule changes that have been put in place.
SHIVARAM: Yeah. But still, it sounds like there’s, like, these soft guard rails, right? It’s like there’s a traffic cone, but like, your car could still kind of hit the traffic cone over. Like, that’s kind of what I’m gathering (laughter).
PARKS: The cone has, I would say, been turned into maybe more like one of those cement barriers that you still, I guess, could drive over.
SHIVARAM: Really fast, yeah (laughter).
PARKS: But I think it’s more substantial than it was in 2020.
SHIVARAM: OK, that’s good to know. Is there anything else that you guys are watching for? I mean, we’ve got literally weeks left, and as we said, ballots are already still going out. What else is on your mind?
WANG: Well, a lot of people are predicting a close presidential race, a lot of people are expecting people to vote by mail. And in swing states like Pennsylvania, I think it’s important to keep in mind, we may not have a clear winner for the presidential race by the end of Election Day, November 5, and that may be because state law in Pennsylvania bans election officials there from opening and counting mail-in ballots until 7:00 a.m. Eastern on Election Day. And that is a big difference compared to states like Florida, for example, where this processing of mail-in ballots starts before Election Day. So we have to be maybe very, very patient and give election workers the time they need to do their job and make sure results are accurate.
SHIVARAM: It is voting season and election season and ballot-counting season. Everything is a season.
PARKS: It’s have a little bit of patience season, I would say.
SHIVARAM: Oh, that’s good way to say it. All right, we’re going to leave it there for today. I’m Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House.
PARKS: I’m Miles Parks. I cover voting.
WANG: And I’m Hansi Lo Wang. I also cover voting.
SHIVARAM: And thank you for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
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