Election Integrity, Voter Access, and Executive Orders: A Deep Dive with Jessica Huseman

In the wake of recent executive orders aimed at tightening voter registration requirements, Will Wright and Josh Burtram welcome back Jessica Huseman, the editorial director of VoteBeat. They discuss the implications of Trump's proposed documentation proof of citizenship, the SAVE Act, and their potential impact on voter access. Jessica also sheds light on the challenges facing election workers in the current political climate, the unintended consequences of voter ID laws, and why voting technology remains a small, underfunded industry despite its critical role in democracy.

Guest Bio:
Jessica Huseman is the editorial director of VoteBeat, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering voting access and election administration across the United States. She is a prominent voice in election integrity, with a focus on how voter ID laws and executive orders impact marginalized communities. Her work has been featured in major news outlets and she continues to be a trusted source for understanding the complexities of election policy.

• VoteBeat: votebeat.org
• Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database: heritage.org/voterfraud
• Executive Order on Documentary Proof of Citizenship: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/preserving-and-protecting-the-integrity-of-american-elections/
• Addressing Risks from Chris Krebs and Government Censorship: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addressing-risks-from-chris-krebs-and-government-censorship/
• SAVE Act Legislation: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22
• Dominion Voting Systems Settlement: https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe
  
  

Transcript

0:16

Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. If you're watching our YouTube channel, I am your political host, Wright, and I'm joined by my trusty sidekick and your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. What's up, Josh? Hey Will. Nothing. Nothing's up. Everything up and nothing up. I kind of thought you would move on from there, but you know, I'm doing well. Thank you Will. I thought there would be like, uh hey, Will, how's it going? Not just like acknowledge your, you know, but uh anyways, but hey, returning back to us is one of our favorite voting people, Jessica Huseman. She is the editorial director of Vote Beat, which is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering voting access and election administration across the United States. And I will say I get all of my election news through Vote Beat. ah They are a phenomenal organization. uh Small, but very, very smart. So it's like, you know, if there was ever a seat in the press briefing room for new media, I would hopefully expect VodB to be there. Speaking of which, Jessica, have you guys applied for your new media pass? No, they think that we'll probably talk about this today. uh But one of the beautiful things about voting is that the White House can't do anything about it. our ability to get a question answered and have that be useful at the White House is almost zero. uh If we were allowed access as a alternative press or whatever to a gubernatorial office, I would be. will beyond all reason but that hasn't happened for us yet so we'll see. Yeah, you know, I did uh apply for that just recently. was on the fence because I like, you know, they're letting these like podcasters in there, you know, just ask these really crazy questions. And I'm like, why not? Why not? Like you are at least as qualified as Tim Pool. You know what I mean? We should definitely go up there Will and just like sit in on a press conference if we can get in. Are we able to do that? I mean, here's the thing. I think you would probably actually have a little bit more credence. You're a white evangelical pastor. You're kind of reading that mold. You're conservative. me going in there, I don't know. I would probably fill it all up. They would just welcome you with open arms, Josh, I think they would be like, yes, we have a special entrance for. they thought I was a shepherd for sale, dude. And I was so woke, and then it would be over. is true. Because I've mentioned and I figured this out ah over the years, Jessica, that I don't think most people that book people for guests on our show ah know what our show is. They just figure faithful politics and they assume conservative right-wing religious something something. ah So like we'll get folks on the show that realize what the show is as we're as we're talking to them. And yeah, it's always really fun because I don't know, I just like to see people be surprised in the show. I I think I'm conservative, but again, they might not, so I don't know. But yeah, I'll go in there. I'm white. party might be shifting under your feet here. So, yeah. so. Well, anyway, so you are still working in the folks. Normally we have you on closer to November, but there's just been kind of a lot going on. So I appreciate you coming back. We want to talk to you about a whole wide range of stuff like SAVAC, Chris Krebs, uh executive orders, all that kind of stuff. So do you have a place that you prefer to start? anywhere. It's all chaos. So just pick something out of that steaming pile. Great. That sounds great. Trump signed an executive order in March that required people to provide proof of citizenship to register using federal form. So can you just sort of unpack what that's all about? And then we can kind of talk about the larger implications. Yes, so right now federal law has established a consistent voter registration form that you can use in any state to register to vote in federal elections, right? So. all of the things that are on the ballot during federal elections. That's what this is for. And that form right now requires you to prove your identity by either listing a partial social security number or a driver's license number. And so instead of that, essentially the administration would order the Election Assistance Commission, which is the agency that manages this form. to update the form to require documentary proof of citizenship. So it wouldn't just be a number you would have to present in person with some paper or documentation showing that you are a citizen of the United States. And that is not currently required. There are a couple of states that require some version of that, but not that. strict. ah And then also there are states that require that for state voter registration. There's one state, Arizona, that requires it to register at the state level, but courts have ruled that they cannot use that at the federal level. So they have like a split voter registration system for federal and state elections. So that's what it is, right? Like we just sort of make more strict ah the way that you prove citizenship in the United States for voter registration. So just for all of us who are listening and we maybe know about voting history in the United States, maybe we don't, we're very ignorant of it. What are the pros and cons of this kind of thing? Is there an issue with it? Is it bad business to do that? And if so, why and kind of help us understand the controversial issues surrounding this. Yeah, this is really interesting. Every year we hear about one non-citizen that has cast a ballot, right? I think the most well-known example this year is a Chinese national who was a student at the University of Michigan who cast a ballot and then sort of told on himself immediately after. And he was like, I cast a ballot. I don't think I was actually supposed to do that, right? And so he was prosecuted. And that's kind of ongoing in the state of Michigan. That's one ballot, right, for the whole state of Michigan that we know to have been cast by a non-citizen. Other secretaries of state, especially in Republican states, have done really extensive surveys of non-citizens on the rolls. So Georgia, for example, found, I think, like, 12 on the rolls for the in the entire state. So we're talking about like less than 0.0001 percentage of registered voters. So this is a really small problem. I think that there are sort of like normative arguments that you can make about that being fundamentally incorrect, right? Like if you're a person who believes that voting in the United States should be completely restricted to citizens, you can make the argument like, even one is too many, right? This is a right that we have as citizens. That is not like historically a particularly compelling argument for me, but it also means that you're saying this is so important that every single voter in the United States, even ones that have voted successfully since they were 18 years old and are 85 now, are gonna have to go back. to the voter registration office and present their documentary proof of citizenship. So even if you can make the argument that this is basically okay and most people do have your proof of citizenship, like. making that requirement of every one of that's on the voter rolls is a massive logistical challenge. And it also means that you're putting county clerks in a really weird position, right? So like, what does documentary proof of citizenship mean, right? Like maybe a passport. It's pretty easy to determine like what passport is real and what passport isn't. Those are, know, they come with internal things, but. what's also available is a birth certificate, right? Like there was a whole national controversy not a decade ago because we don't have consistent birth certificate forms in the United States. So we're essentially saying to these county clerks, you need to be able to tell which birth certificates are forged and which are real and which aren't real. Like we do not have consistent identification in the United States. And so that, That is really awkward for clerks. like, I don't know that we want to put clerks in that position. So, you know, I think yes, if we isolate the idea of the problem, like whether or not citizens should be able to vote in the United States and whether or not that's a problem, that can sort of be a different conversation as to like whether or not documentary proof of citizenship and requiring every to give you, like to present that documentation and the impact of that as a logistical challenge. I think those two questions can be separated out. And so I think there's just no question in my mind that this is almost impossible to implement logistically, ah you know, in like the form that Donald Trump is talking about. I think in terms of the normative argument, I think people would probably be surprised to know that Non-citizens voted in the United States well into the 1920s. The last state to ban it was Arkansas in 1927. uh So yeah, mean, like voting used to be open to all lawful residents of the United States. Well, I mean, and like lawful resident used to be defined very widely. We used to use voting, like even for new immigrants as an inducement to move to the territories. So it really wasn't until the xenophobia that was sparked by World War I that we decided that voting was only for U.S. citizens. It's just like foundationally, historically not true that the founders, for example, intended for citizens to be the only ones that voted because citizens voted in this country for more than 100 years. Wait, what? I literally had no idea and I swear we could spend the rest of this episode just me learning new stuff. favorite fact about history. so I think like, and it's particularly surprising now because we talk about this, like there's some provision of the constitution that's like only US citizens vote. That is not in the Constitution. There is no part of the Constitution that restricts voting to citizens. That is something that we have evolved into over time. And I'm not going to take a position, and I don't think it's my place to, as to whether or not that has been correctly decided in the course of history. But like, This thing that we all have decided is fundamentally part of being an American was not actually part of the American experience until after World War I. That's pretty wild. And I'm curious about just the logistics of like how you implement something like this. You were alluding to it a little bit earlier, but it's like an executive order doesn't necessarily come with funding. So like if you make a change, you know, cost stuff. like, mean, like, and I'm not a constitutional scholar. I don't think there's one on this call. ah But how would that work? mean, just fundamentally, how would president signing a document fundamentally change how we do elections in this country? Right, well, I think that there's like a question as to whether or not this is even a thing that can happen and the courts are deciding that, right? I think that I would be really surprised if the courts decided that the executive order in its current form can be enforced as written. uh it would seem impossible to me to do that. think if we sort of assume that it's like that the courts have just like, if we just like pretend that the courts have decided this is fine and the states now have to implement this, there are a couple of ways that this could get done. But I think that like you can learn from the attempts by states to do this, to understand that it's like not It's not easy to do and it tends to disproportionately impact younger voters and minorities because they move more, right? So like, for example, in Arizona, they have passed a documentary proof of citizenship law. So they have separate voter registration processes for state elections and federal elections. a couple of months ago, VoteBeat did a big data analysis as to like who is most impacted by this. essentially which voters are not registered to vote at the state level and are registered to vote at the federal level because they can't present proof of citizenship or they haven't at And those voters. skewed significantly younger than the rest of the population and they were very much like centered in university towns because like what do you not have when you go to college? Probably your passport and your birth certificate like when I was in college I don't even think I had a passport and I don't think I could have told you where my birth certificate was if you held a gun to my head. You know what I mean? these are like that's the kind of thing that that's going to happen here and you know I also think that it's interesting. Republicans are assuming that this is not going to impact them, but there are surveys that have been done that show that if you ask somebody, do you know where your proof of citizenship is, like your birth certificate, your passport, whatever, the group of people most likely to say no are older Americans, and those tend to be Republicans. I think that there's reasons that skewed younger in Arizona, they sort of grandfathered people in. So if you've been registered to vote for a long time, you didn't necessarily need to do that. So that sort of exempted a lot of older people. But like you can kind of see how badly this is gonna go. Kansas also tried to do this a few years ago and ended up, there ended up being 30,000 people in this limbo. or they like attempted to register to vote, but didn't present documentary proof of citizenship. And so their voter registration was held like just in limbo until a federal court ruled that they couldn't enforce the law anymore. And then all of those people were automatically registered to vote. I thought Kansas and Chris Kobach had like the best, you know, like election system in the country. Didn't Trump make him like the election czar or something? know, until that imploded on him. ah well, you know what though? Chris Kobach has risen again. He is now the attorney general of Kansas, I'm sure he will be in a perfect position to enforce this law uh should it go forward. I don't know. uh Quick tangent question, then I know Josh has one. uh I forgot to ask you at the top, how's Walter? Okay. He's loving life. We have two new dogs next door, so he's just making friends and, you know, being his best self. I'm assuming Walter, of course, is your dog. Walter is my dog. Walter, yes, Walter Cronkite is his full name. He is not just like my child that really likes the dog food or anything. So. Oh, sorry, just had to throw some levity in there. okay, let me throw out this kind of conclusion from this executive order. And then I want to ask how some of this is going to be, like the implications of some of this. So the idea is that the federal government should require or is going to require through this executive order, documentary proof of US citizenship. um And then, you know, we've kind of talked about what that means. um Can a license work or is that not? um That's not my total question, but a license that doesn't work or no. OK. really good question. So there are a couple of states that have citizenship flags in the license system. em And so the license by, because it just happens to record that documentation can be proof of citizenship, but the vast majority of states, that's not the case. And in fact, what constitutes proof of citizenship is a harder question to answer in the United States than in most countries. So in most countries, Like. all developed Western countries and even countries like Mexico and India. When you are born, you are issued an ID. There is, as a result of that, like a list of every citizen of these countries somewhere, right? That can, like the ID can be checked against. There is no list of United States citizens, not a one. We are not issued identification as a result of our birth, right? We are issued a social security number. born in a hospital, but some people aren't, right? Like we're issued some form of non-photo identification, but like this mythical list of citizens that we're gonna use to check voter registration against doesn't exist, right? And so the list of documents that are listed on that executive order include, for example, a passport, they include licenses. in states where that is flagged, they include military IDs, right? But military IDs don't include information about citizenship either. And lots of non-citizens join the military. um And you might think, well, if you're in the military, you have a passport. That's not true, right? Like, if you are in the military, you can hop on a military plane without a passport. So. like one of the groups that's going to be most negatively impacted by this is the military. Wow. and then, but another part of this is uh withholding of funding from non-compliant states. Is that correct? So, what does that mean? What funding is going to be withheld and how is that going to affect ah states? that's a really good question because there is no federal funding for elections. so, so like, I think people freaked out about this, but I didn't, I sort of read this part of the executive order and I was like, oh wow, like. Dozens of states aren't gonna get dozens of dollars. you know, like they're not, like one of the things that election officials say constantly and all the time is that they're not getting enough federal funding. So like the federal funding we're dispersing to states was passed as a package as part of the Help America Vote Act of 2000. Like we are still distributing that money 25 years later. Like we passed additional funding for states for election security a couple of years ago. And I think the average disbursement to states was like $100,000, like to the state of California. Like this is not a life-changing amount of money. And so I think that even if this executive order were to go through in full, m and I don't think that it will, states could easily and without much sacrifice be like, no, we're not doing this. And then that would just be it, right? And so, you know, even the, I'm sure we'll talk about the sort of the voting machine piece of the executive order, but even the system that he's asking to be updated. is the voluntary voting system guidelines, right? Like inherent in the name is voluntary. like states do not have to do this and they've never had to do this. And there's not much money behind getting them to do it, right? Like I think we hear about these instances in the past, like while we wanted to like increase the drinking age to 21 and so we would. withheld highway funds. That is a significant enough amount of money annually to incentivize behavior on the part of the states. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, not even a million for most states. Yeah, I'm curious about the hardware or machine part and did the executive order address sort of like the proximity to like nest thermometers or anything like that, which was a big... You know what? I would have loved it it did because that would have made this much more exciting to write about. But unfortunately, no. All it did was ban the use of QR codes in vote tabulation, which is a thing, but it's not like that big of a deal. Anyway, this is really not worth talking about because it's it's a silly thing that he's required. That's like very much a continuation of a conspiracy theory. uh But it's also like not that big of a deal. think like the next iteration of America's voting machines wouldn't have used this technology anyway. And so saying like, stop using this technology that nobody really likes is like not, it's sort of like we're banning floppy disks. you know, it's like, it's just not like nobody gives a shit about this. pardon my French. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious about, so they're kind of in the same vein, but a question that came to me as of just today was there was another executive order that established like English as the official language of the country. And I'm curious on like, like, will that affect voting? At least like how stuff is printed. No, I don't think so. mean, you know, I think he could make the argument. Like, I don't know that one could make a real argument that an executive order invalidates existing federal law passed by Congress and signed by the president. So there are laws that require, that have like, contain formulas for what and how you must translate election materials. So if like a certain percentage of your population that is eligible to vote speaks a language. You must, under federal law, translate your ballots into that language. So for example, in Dallas County, which is where I live, we have translated the ballots into Spanish and Vietnamese. There are other places that have a lot more languages. And then there are places that sort of translate voluntarily into languages that they're not necessarily required to translate ballots into. So like Los Angeles, I think translates its ballots into like 40 different languages. And that's just something that Los Angeles chooses to do. And there are, for example, like places in Michigan that translate ballots into Arabic, even though federal law actually doesn't take into account Arabic as a language you should translate into because it's an old law. So there's a lot of weird stuff that goes into this. like at bottom, States are gonna do what states are gonna do. And there's not much that the federal government can do about that. So there's nothing the federal government can do to prevent LA from translating its ballots into whatever language LA wants to translate its ballots into. So even if this executive order, we decide that it like, you know, is more important and... surmounts federal law, which I doubt. uh States can still do whatever they want to do here. So I didn't know about non-citizens being able to vote. It's absolutely fascinating, actually. That's one of those trivia questions that you could totally get someone fired up about and then prove them wrong. And then they'll be like, oh, man, just really embarrass them. I don't know if you ever pull out that trivia on people. But if you don't, you definitely should at your next cocktail. let me tell you what I'm sure you do. know, my question, so I, right, I don't have any problem personally with them saying, hey, only US citizens legally here are allowed to vote. I don't have an issue with that. I'm okay to hear the arguments of people that do. That's fine, but I don't have an issue with that. I guess my question about this is, is requiring documentary proof of citizenship Is that going to prevent non-citizens from voting? And is there a better way to do so? Like, is this the most efficient way? Is this a good way to do it? Or as you've been saying, it kind of seems like this is going to be kind of a disaster in some ways in terms of logistically. What would a better way to do it be that you think? You know what, I don't know that there is a better way to do it, right? Like I think that if we assume that this is a problem that must be solved, at some point we will have to require documentary proof of citizenship because as I say, there is not this like beautiful clean list of everybody who's a citizen in the United States, right? I think there are people who think that, you know, if the United States would just... give states more access to citizenship information. We could just run our voter rolls against those databases and we would all just know the answers to like, that's just really not how government data is stored or works. And there is no list of citizens. We do have a list of identified non-citizens that are in the United States, but that list isn't super up to date. People will become citizens and then stay on that list, right? And then also that list is only the people we know to be here as non-citizens. So it's people who hold green cards or people who have presented themselves to an immigration office in some capacity, right? And they go on this list. That's the list we have, right? And that's not fulsome enough to do sort of this automatic citizenship check, like people think should be able to happen. em And so I think the real, like, The baseline question is like, is this problem such a problem that we must do this really disruptive thing? And I would say that the data suggests that it is not happening at a rate that would justify the cost that will be associated with this type of change, even if you assume, like even if we agree that. m non-citizen voter registration is fundamentally a problem. You know, that's interesting because I haven't looked at the data as closely as you have, obviously, but I have looked at the Heritage Foundation's uh election data, which is like something I've been giving to friends. When we have conversation, was like, Heritage data, like, spend five minutes on it, see if you see any patterns. And then it's not long. They're just like, oh, wait, wait a minute. Most of these are. are Republicans. know what I'm like? Yeah, I mean, like, hey, I'm all for fixing problems, you know, but like, like, let's just phrase the phrase the right problem. So that way, you know, we are fixing it. But, you know, I am kind of curious about your your thoughts on on the SAVE Act. Since that is also somewhat connected to identification. So I love for you to maybe one just unpack what is a SAVE Act. uh And two, if you can address some of the concerns, especially like married women have about... Yeah, so the SAVE Act would function very similarly to what we've been talking about here, right? And it leaves a lot up to the individual states in terms of like what... documentation they're willing to accept, how they manage problems between sort of like, what if there's a legitimate reason why my name is no longer the one that I was born with, right? Like I'm a married woman, I changed my name for like totally normal reasons. There are lots of reasons why somebody's name might not match the name on their birth certificate. And so I think people are really concerned about that. And the SAVE Act is basically silent on how it solves those issues except to say that states need to and that they should. Can you explain what the SAVE Act is? Yeah, so the SAVE Act would basically require documentary proof of citizenship. And so it does very much similar, there are some smaller differences, but at base it is the same as what the executive order would require. And it has passed the House, it will almost certainly not pass the Senate. And so I don't think that this is likely to become law. uh But there's quite a lot of uh concern about how it will impact people who have changed their names. And you bring up married women. That's probably the most vocal group. uh But they're certainly not the only ones that are going to be impacted by this. So I think we will see, should this pass, it's going to take some time for these things to become law. I think that people think, the SAVE Act is going to pass. And then magically, I'm not going to be allowed to vote if I don't have this document and this document. That's really not how it would work. So even if it did pass, states would have to pass their own legislation in order to like decide how it will be implemented in each state and that's going to take time, right? Like it takes years for state legislatures to pass things through. Texas's legislature is about to close for the next year and a half, right? Like our legislature meets for six months once every two years. So even if it passes tomorrow through the Senate, Texas isn't going to be enforcing it for another year and a half at least, right? And so, you know, this is going to take a lot of time. um to roll out. Like this is this is a really big ship that we have to sort of like turn around very slowly. So is a SAVE Act kind of like what the executive order should have been? Like a piece of legislation that has a CBO and all that and kind of goes through the paces? is it just in addition to? Because I think the SAVE Act lived before the executive order, if I remember the timing, right? SAVE Act was sort of like in the works and being talked about and like through committee while the when the executive order was signed and so the the way that I that people thought about it as like, so the SAVE Act is going to be the backstop for this executive order when this executive order is tossed out by the courts. I actually think it's the other way around. The executive order was meant to do what the SAVE Act did because the SAVE Act was never going to pass, right? And so this was Trump's attempt to do what he knew that the SAVE Act was never going to be able to do. uh that there's a realistic path forward for it in the Senate and there's really never been. And so the executive order was really the thing that they could get out without Senate approval as it were. So the message was consistent. So I want to move to this investigation into Krebs and kind of talk about Kris Krebs. And I would love for you to help our audience understand who is Kris Krebs. Why has he come under the ire and the target of this current administration and what what's going on with him? Yeah. so Chris Krebs uh was the first director of CISA, which is the cyber, I always forget, it's the Cyber Infrastructure Security Agency. Yeah, so it's the agency that thinks about cybersecurity and cyber infrastructure in the United States for all of the government. uh And this was an agency that stood up under the first Trump administration. So it's really important to keep in mind that... Trump 1.0 selected Chris Krebs for this position and made him the head of an agency that his first administration created. So that's what this is, right? And so in the aftermath of the 2020, like during the 2020 election and after the 2020 election, CISA decided that they would take on sort of a rumor quashing responsibility because there were tons of rumors. lying around about cyber security for voting machines, whether or not voting machines were connected to the internet, who was hacking into voter registration systems. Like that was just everywhere. like the only agency that could have meaningfully sort of addressed that in a centralized way was CISA. And so they did that, combated a lot of the sort of misinformation that Trump and his campaign were spreading from inside the Trump administration. So that was not very popular. And then after the 2020 election, CISA put out a statement that said the 2020 election was not, was like secure. was the most secure election we've ever had. And Chris Krebs was very publicly fired right after that statement came out and like sort of the lame duck days of the Trump administration after he had been rejected for a second term but was not had not left office yet. He was fired by tweet. It became a big thing. em Trump, Krebs leaves CISA obviously he is fired. He starts his own cybersecurity firm. Then that's what he has been doing for the last few years. And, and so Nothing has happened with Chris Krebs in the last four years. There has never been any suggestion that he violated the law in any capacity. He was not investigated by the Biden administration. Trump did not begin an investigation of him in the several months he had to do that after Krebs was fired. eh And so this is really sort of Trump's... Attempt to continue to litigate the 2020 election and so in an executive order specifically targeting Chris Krebs He announced an investigation into CISA as an agency Which has really freaked people out uh but into Chris Krebs specifically and also removed his security clearance and then the security clearance of anybody who works at the Security firm that he ran that he formerly ran he has now left that security firm to focus on this investigation. But that was sort of the nature of the executive order. You know, I feel like reading a portion of the executive order I think kind of really hits home for especially in the context of everything that you just told us about. uh So I'm just going to read just a short section here. says, Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, says, you're right, agency, ah is a significant Chris Kribbs is a significant bad faith actor who weaponized and abused his government authority. Kribbs' misconduct involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID pandemic. uh CISA under Kribbs suppressed conservative viewpoints under the guise of combating supposed disinformation and recruited and coerced major social media platforms to further its partisan mission. I mean, it goes on and on, but I... Like I'm guessing what was just written there doesn't comport well with what your understanding is of how central he was on maintaining the integrity of the elections, right? Yeah, no, mean like there's very little. There's very little understanding of Krebbs' actual role uh in that work. And I think that it is because there's so much space between what he actually did and what the executive order sort of publicly says he did, I think it's... so obvious that this is sort of a messaging thing, right? This is not a good faith attempt to investigate an actual unlawful actor. is very much just, this is his ability. There's very little he can do to sort of continue to litigate 2020. This is one thing he can do and so that's what he's doing. You know, what's sad about this is, mean, obviously Trump is still sore about losing the 2020 election. Really sore. ah And there is a, like, branch of Trump supporters that really still do think that he won and his triumph in his third term, ah you know, is just sort of a rebuke of the deep state. And I mean, I still know people that you know, say the 2020 election was stolen. So I'd love for you to kind of make the best argument. I mean, it's 2025 now, but I feel like we still need to this. What's the best argument you can make for why the 2020 election was not stolen, ah you know, and where some places that people can check just uh to fact check you. Yeah, so you know, I think that it's really important for people to keep in mind that election results are first and foremost, tallied and checked and canvassed at the local level. And there are polls that suggest that people really do trust their local election administrator. It's just that they don't trust everybody else's, right? And so that I think is a really interesting thing, right? And so when you say the 2020 election was stolen, what you're saying is my election administrator messed up. because that has to be what you're saying, right? Like elections are conducted at the county level. And so if you trust your county election official and most people do, and most people are rational and can like look at somebody in the face and be like, you're trustworthy, then the election results are trustworthy. The great thing about elections and the thing that I like as a nerd, love, about them is that there is a paper trail for everything. Like everything is data and everything is measurable. And so at the end of the day, unless you live in the one state in the country that doesn't, that still uses DRE machines, Louisiana is like the only state that does not produce paper backups for its voting systems. ah Unless you live in Louisiana, You can audit anything you want, right, in elections. Like, the paper is there for you, and federal law requires that we hold on to that paper for 21 months, at least after elections. So this is all checkable. And there's most and the vast majority of states require at least partial recounts to make sure that there are no problems. And so the sort of election night results that you see is like the first slice of the checking that your local election administrator is doing. There's going to be a canvas. There's going to be results reporting up to the state. The state's going to fact check that. Then they're going to report that. This is the level. out thing with huge numbers of people quality checking is as it goes and if at any point you individual human being are like I don't think that that's correct you can request the ballot images and you can do an audit yourself ah and and so this this does not have to be this thing that happens behind closed doors I think of all processes that happen in our bureaucracy, this one is the most transparent. And I just think people don't realize that. Yeah, I don't I really don't think that they do. You know, I'm thinking about this use of the executive orders in a way that is, you know, very targeted at these very, you know, these individuals and these companies or these firms, lawyer firms. And even thinking about so I was looking some of this up and in a March 14th, 2025 speech. at the Justice Department, Trump stated essentially that people who did this essentially rigged the election in 2020 should go to jail. Is that, mean, what do we make of the statements that Trump is saying? Is that out of context? Is that like a misrepresentation of what he's saying? And with that, like, Is there precedent for this in terms of presidents sending, like making executive orders against specific people? I'm not saying you're an executive order expert. I just don't know if you have knowledge about that in this area. I'd love to hear. mean, just as a like, overall, no, this is not normal. There is not a heck of a lot. precedent for this in American history. We have not previously seen executive orders that are this targeted, right? There have been very narrow executive orders before that address some very specific provision of immigration law, for example, like something that we as a country and as a court system are squarely in agreement that this is an executive power, right? specific narrow executive orders. But these are so targeted at individuals in a way, and law firms as you say, in a way that is not typical and there is no precedent for in American history. You know, I am curious um about voting machines um kind of post, ah gosh, what's the name of the voting, like lawsuit, Fox, one billion, whatever. Yeah, like who's making voting machines now? Same dudes, same dudes are making voting machines. You know, I think that I like, I know I'm such a nerd, but I really love talking about the market for voting technology because it is so small. Like I think, I think people don't really take into consideration that like, The market, there are three companies more or less that produce all of the voting machines in the United States. There are a smattering of other really small companies that make things like e-poll books and voter registration software and stuff like that, right? But this is a really small market. We spend as a country about $300 million a year on voting technology. By comparison, we spend about a billion dollars a year on pets, on Halloween costumes for pets. So like this is the tiniest industry in the world. And so big companies like IBM. used to produce voting machines. And then they were like, why are we doing this? We keep getting sued and we're not making any money. And so now the market is just tiny, tiny, tiny. And there's not enough money in it to encourage growth or innovation. so Dominion got Probably its biggest payday ever from that lawsuit. Like it was $768 million or something. That is much more than they make in a decade as a company. Like for all of their sales. You know, I should make sure that we clarify, you're not downing on people that want to dress up their pets in costumes, right? Just like, don't at me! uh So I want to kind of close this out just talking a little bit about, I don't know, job satisfaction, morale of poll workers. mean, I remember the the first time we had you on the show, you were like a rabid voter worker proselytizer. And yeah, and you still are. like, I'm curious, like, how are people? doing out there? mean, especially given all the, you know, Rudy Giuliani lawsuit stuff and just the way that voters or vote workers have been treated in the past. Like, what are you hearing? You know, it's rough out there for an election worker. I would not want to be doing this job. I think... we're sort of approaching kind of a perfect storm here, which is that we were already going to see a natural turnover as sort of the baby boomer generation retired from these jobs that they have held for years, right? Like these have historically been jobs that you take and you have for decades, right? Like these have been sleepy bureaucratic positions. Like the number of election officials that I've talked to who were like, yeah, like I started as the deputy clerk when I was 18 and then I became the clerk when I was 30 and I've just become, I've been the clerk ever since, right? Like. Or like, I was a stay at home mom and then my kids went to college and so I decided to run for clerk and so now I'm the clerk, right? Like that is what these positions have always been. And so people who took these positions, because they wanted to serve their communities and they wanted to kind of be in these anonymous, very bureaucratic roles, found themselves all of a sudden as like, the talk of the town in 2020. And that was foreign, that was uncomfortable, obviously. They were getting threats all of a sudden, ah and they were super freaked out by that. And I think that, you know, there were... larger politicians and like they had Senate hearings about the threats that election workers were getting. em And these senators were like, why is this a big deal? Well, I mean, if you're a senator, you've got a whole group of people surrounding you. If you get a death threat, there's like a, there's a thing you can do about that. You send it to a designated person, you've got security. If you were a deputy clerk in, you know, Austin, Texas, who are you going to? You're not going to anybody, right? Like there you do not have security. You don't even have an IT person. So like you are going, you are protecting your damn self, right? And so like it's a different security landscape for these folks. And so I think like On top of the fact that these people are retiring, it is now a totally different job than it used to be, right? It used to be this thing that was like quiet, reliable, you got county benefits forever. It was like an awesome job, especially if you were a woman in a small town. And now it is the opposite of that. And so it's... I think that the whole landscape has just shifted under these folks' feet. And some of them have really risen to the occasion and have learned to talk to the media and have learned to deal with the spotlight. And then some of them are still freaked out by it. And I don't blame them. Yeah, I mean, I would not want that position. I know that that's that's the hard thing, right? When you then what kind of people are going to get the position? What incentives are there for it? All these things create a lot of uncertainties and there are unintended consequences that happen in all of this. And I guess we're going to see how that all pans out. And with that, what what are you hopeful for and what are you concerned about? not hopeful for in terms of election integrity over this administration this next few years. Yeah, know, I, one, I am hopeful that, you know, the, I think we were all really expecting it to be a really difficult legislative season for voting and elections. The, it is May, Texas's legislature is about to wrap. Things are not as bad as they could have been in terms of like the amount of rat, voting changes. And when I say bad, what I mean is like, anytime you change anything about voting, it's just chaos, right? And so any change, like doesn't matter what it is, right? Radical amounts of it. produced chaos. And so there has not been a lot of chaos producing this time around. Like, could, this could change, right? Like, I'm saying this too as of mid-May. So that's all I'm being held accountable for. The thing that I'm not as hopeful for is this clerk issue, right? I think that we're talking about a group of people who, make such little money. Like these people make less than classroom teachers in public schools. You know, we're talking about people make $16 an hour and work part time. And so we are asking of a job that attracts that level of employee, right? because that's what the job is. We want them to be IT specialists and like make sure that the voting machines are perfect. And we want them to make sure that everybody's a citizen and we want them to make sure that they're checking birth certificates. It's sort of crazy, like all of the things that we're expecting out of this municipal employee that we pay $16 an hour. ah And so that is the thing I am most pessimistic about is our ability to sort of attract and retain talent. into those positions that just seem impossible to fill. ah Yeah, I mean, I think I would share that concern with what you just outlined. mean, I couldn't even imagine wanting to go and face the pressure of that and liability and all this stuff for for what? And then you're asking them to do it, you know, because of their patriotism. And of course, that's that's great. But again, if you're if you're going to be if they're going to be treated in this way, it's just not enough. It's not enough protection. and you know, it creates a huge disparity between big counties and small counties, right? In big counties. So for example, like Dallas County, we have a full-time election administrator, Heider Garcia. makes uh a perfectly good salary for the amount of, like, don't know, $150,000 or something. Like he is qualified, he is like... We know that he can do this. It's all he does. He only manages elections. But in most rural counties, election administration is like... part of what the county clerk does and that job includes like 18 other responsibilities. So like business registration and you know land titles like they're basically the secretary for the whole county and they just happen to also do voter registration and election administration. em And so you know it's just it's an incredibly hard job and we're asking them to just spend an incredible amount of time on something that for most election administrators in the United States is only like the smallest percentage of their overall responsibilities. Man, that is wild. We appreciate you coming on so much, Jessica. It's been a pleasure as always to talk with you and to pick your brain a little bit about these topics. How can people uh connect with your work? Where would you send them to keep up with all this exciting voting news? Thank you for asking me that. They can go to votebeat.org. There's a button at the top that says newsletter and you should subscribe to the newsletter. That's the best way to keep up with us. You get it every Saturday morning. You can wake up to some hot, hot voting analysis. uh That's how I like to serve my weekends. you know. oh Yeah. Take that to your weekend parties. You'll be the talk of the place. The hottest club in New York. start being clerks. Oh man, that's good. Well, thank you again. Yes. Thank you again, Jessica. It's been a real pleasure. And to our listeners and viewers, guys, thanks so much for joining us again. We try to get this great content out to you. So make sure you like, subscribe, hit the notification bell, share it with someone who needs to see it. Maybe your Uncle Ralph, who still thinks that the 2020 election... is stolen, send it over to him. You guys can have a great conversation next time you get together. And guys, until next time, keep your conversations in that right or left.