Ready to Vote?

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. On today's show for climate week, we're doing a climate story of the week every day. Today, in our usual Tuesday climate spot, we'll be talking to Aileen Brown who won an award for Covering Climate Now media consortium on her reporting about the impact of climate change on prisons and incarcerated people.

Plus next hour, have you noticed that food allergies have been on the rise for about the last 20 years? We'll look at just how prevalent they are and what's behind it. Gen Z, if you're listening, especially if you're at work, at home, we want to hear from you about how weird it has been to start your working career in this way. Have you ever actually met your boss in person or gone to an impromptu happy hour? If the answer is no, maybe you think that's totally fine, or maybe you're missing out. Stay tuned for that conversation.

First, President Biden is expected to speak this morning at the United Nations here in Manhattan to a gathering of leaders from across the globe. It's his third speech to the UN as president. Beyond talking about what he considers his administration's achievements, The New York Times reports that he is planning to make the central focus of the speech the need to protect democracies.

It's easy to imagine that a speech may focus on the challenges being faced by democracies elsewhere and problems across the globe, the war in Ukraine, struggling economies in the Global South, but with a presidential election looming next year, the health of American democracy is just as much a concern. Polls show President Biden and former President Trump in a virtual dead heat. A Siena poll out just this morning shows a plurality of voters, 34%, say neither President Biden nor former President Donald Trump is fit to serve another four-year term as the nation's next president. A lot going on there.

Beyond the top of the ticket, there will be battles for control of Congress and state legislatures next year. Even before all of that, there are elections this November. Here in New York City, there are some dynamic city council races in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. If you've been following any of the news that Mayor Adams wants to make some very deep cuts to the city budget, remember those city council members are right on the front lines of that budget process. More about those contests at another point.

I want to start things off today by asking a question that's really about a fundamental building block of our democracy, and that is are you ready to vote? Are you registered? Do you understand the laws here in New York and across the country that may affect where and when and how you cast your ballot, and very important, the generally mundane but recently politicized process for counting those votes?

I have two guests to help us unpack those extremely vital questions. Andrea Hailey is the CEO of the nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org. She and her team are experts on the rules of voter registration for every state in the country. Andrea, welcome to WNYC.

Andrea Hailey: Happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Brigid Bergin: I'm also joined by Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center's voting rights program. Sean, always great to talk to you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Sean Morales-Doyle: Thanks. Great to be here.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, I want to hear from you. Are you ready to vote? Do you have questions about how to register, what the deadlines are, how you can cast your ballot here in New York or in other parts of the country? Do you have concerns about what safeguards are in place to protect how our elections are run and the people who run them? Call me at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. When you think about President Biden talking about protecting democracy, does that speak to you regardless of party affiliation about the need to engage and participate?

Again, the number is 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. If you can't get through on the phone, you can also text at that number or tweet us @BrianLehrer. Okay. Andrea, I failed to mention that today is actually a holiday. I want to wish you a happy National Voter Registration Day and to all the others who celebrate. Every year since 2012, civic organizations have made today, September 19th, a day to register voters across the country. I'm wondering, what do you see as the opportunity for a day like today?

Andrea Hailey: Well, yes, happy National Voter Registration Day. It's a big celebration over here at Vote.org. We are the largest partner of National Voter Registration Day. There is a huge opportunity ahead. We have 8 million young people across the country that are turning 18. We have millions of people who are eligible to register right now who haven't registered yet. We know that United States is one of the few countries out there where you have a separate registration process from voting process.

It's important that everyone out there go to Vote.org, check their registration, and get ready to participate. Not only do we have elections that are literally happening right now, but we have a huge presidential year coming up. It's important that everybody makes sure that they know dates and deadlines and that they register. A day like today reminds us that we can celebrate the joy of civic participation, the joy of having a democracy and access to the ballot box.

It's a good reminder to get friends and family involved and to bring it to everyone's consciousness that we have to be out here and exercise our right to vote and exercise our voice, and that we can do so and make it fun.

Brigid Bergin: Can you talk a little bit about what your organization is doing on the ground, some of the outreach that you're doing, some of the partnerships you have going on today?

Andrea Hailey: Absolutely. Today, we're launching registration project in five states. We are on college campuses, especially all across the South today, but we also have a larger national program where we work with companies and influencers and schools to remind people to register to vote, to check their registration. We were really excited to launch our large project on registering 8 million people and on ramping them into our democracy.

Last presidential election cycle Vote.org, we registered about 4 million people, so we have big ambitions this year. I think, for us, the organization, our aim is to simplify engagement. You can go on your phone, check your registration within two minutes, register if you need to, send the link to your friends and family so that they can register themselves to vote. I think that's part of the big work, but we're excited to launch on campuses all across the country today.

Brigid Bergin: Yes, absolutely. Sean, I want to get you into this conversation. We're going to talk about some of your recent research about potential threats facing our elections here in New York and elsewhere, but we've seen a lot of major changes to our election laws, particularly in New York. Are there some changes that make you feel optimistic about who can more easily engage with democracy in the Empire State?

Sean Morales-Doyle: Yes, I think New York has made a lot of progress in really the last four years. For a long time, New York was way behind the rest of the country in the types of policies that we have on the books to help voters, but the last few years, we've moved forward dramatically. That includes finally having early voting, like almost all of the rest of the country. It includes passage of automatic voter registration, although that's not yet in effect.

It includes restoring voting rights to people with convictions in their past as soon as they're released from prison. The legislature passed a number of laws this year that have not yet become law because they're waiting the governor's signature, but they really, every year, have continued to make progress on expanding access and making the voting process more smooth.

Brigid Bergin: To keep that sort of good vibes that we've got going in this point, in honor of National Voter Registration Day, of course, we have a caller that I want to bring into our conversation. It's the city's Chief Democracy Officer, Kathleen Daniel. Kathleen, thanks for calling in WNYC. Where are you now and what's your plan for today?

Kathleen Daniel: Good morning, Brigid. Thanks so much for having me. It's so wonderful to be on the phone with you and our partners in advocacy. I'm here at Washington Square Park, right in the heart of the NYU campus, my alma mater, and we're with HeadCount. It's a great partner with Vote.org, so again, in great company. Today, we're going to be out here from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM registering people to vote, telling them about their rights, so they know their rights. We're going to be helping them update their status and check their status and making sure that we are vote-ready in New York City.

Brigid Bergin: That's exciting. I can hear you sound really excited, Kathleen. What kind of tools do you have out there today? I know the New York recently launched online voter registration. Do you have iPads or stuff that people can check their voter registration status right there in the park?

Kathleen Daniel: Absolutely. We have multiple iPads. In New York City, you can register online to vote through TurboVote through the Department of Motor Vehicles. We call it DMV here. Headcount is here, and we're using the same online apparatus that Vote.org uses. There are eight ways to Sunday to do this. We also have voter registration forms printed and in multiple languages, and we have people out here serving people in multiple languages.

We're also joined by the People's Bus, which is a civic engagement artist and residence bus. It is a reimagined recast bus that used to take people to Rikers Island to visit their family and loved ones that are incarcerated. It is absolutely gorgeous and people can go in and go through. It is our way of being really participatory in the democratic process and showing people that their voice can be heard and can be powerful if they just register to vote.

Brigid Bergin: Kathleen, thank you so much for calling in and joining us this morning. Kathleen Daniel is the city's Chief Democracy Officer. As she said, she will be with her team out in Washington Square Park all day registering voters in honor of National Voter Registration Day. I'm really glad that she could join my guests, Andrea Hailey, the CEO of Vote.org, and Sean Morales-Doyle from the Brennan Center.

As we dig into both how you can get registered today, why it's important, and potentially what are some of the obstacles going forward as we look ahead to 2024. Andrea, you mentioned that Vote.org actually has a target of registering 8 million voters. That's double the number you registered in the previous presidential election. How did you land on that figure, and how are you tracking it?

Andrea Hailey: Absolutely. That was so exciting to hear the last caller. Shout out to everybody working on the ground in New York today. She's out there with HeadCount, who is our Vote.org partner. They actually are using our Vote.org tools to digitally register people. Part of what we do, we're excited to launch a really ambitious program this year to register 8 million people throughout the nation, and we are able to track all of that through our platform and digital tools on the back end.

If you go to Vote.org, and you register to vote, we're able to see immediately that you've registered. We can literally count how many people on this. At the end of the day today, we'll be looking at what was the impact of National Voter Registration Day, how many people were we able to inspire and to get to check their registration or to register to vote.

Then we also have partners, like the partner that you just heard, where they will use our tools, and we'll be able to see how many people did they register to vote using Vote.org technology. It's an exciting day. We're able to track in real time the impact of the work that we do. We also, this morning, Taylor Swift posted Vote.org for National Voter Registration Day. She used a link where we were able to actually personalize links so that when influencers post, we can see exactly who they motivated and where and how many people participated.

That's lots of exciting stuff to come. We really wanted to double down on our efforts from the last presidential election. We were really excited to see that we had record high turnout in the United States of America for the last presidential. We think that even with that we can do better, that, as a country, we can really get to the point where we have 80% record turnout in this country. That's the dream.

We know that to even come close to realizing that dream, what we have to do is make sure everybody is registered, everybody knows the rules in their state, everybody knows how they can participate, and that we really have to knock down that barrier to entry. It starts with registration, and then we will follow through and communicate with voters all the way through to election day to make sure that we get people out to vote.

We send text message alerts and emails after people register to let them know, "Hey, your election is now three weeks away. It's two weeks away. You can do it in person right now. Here's the date to mail in your ballot," whatever the rules are in that particular state. We'll follow the voter all the way through and make sure registration turns into showing up at the ballot box.

Brigid Bergin: Andrea, I have to slow you down and rewind because did I hear you say that Taylor Swift is part of your voter engagement efforts today? I think what that does is it makes me wonder do you tailor some of your outreach to different segments of the population in different ways? Is the use of someone who's such an influential figure among many the type of voice that can help you encourage people to register and to participate?

Andrea Hailey: That's right. Taylor Swift, if you go look on her Instagram stories right now, posted this morning about Vote.org. It reminds me that if as busy as Taylor is on tour right now, she's taking time out for civic engagement and to motivate others. That, for me, that inspiration is something that we can all do. No matter how busy our days are, we can stop and remember to check our registration and to remind everyone out there.

I think one of our strategies at Vote.org is to meet people where they already are. It's so helpful when influencers use their platforms for good and for giving people messages about how they can access the vote. Everyone is an influencer, whether you have millions of followers like Taylor Swift or whether you have a couple of thousand.

On our campus program today that we're launching, we have a lot of peer-to-peer engagement where people who have larger following, students who have larger followings on campus are putting up registration dates and deadlines and encouraging people to register to vote. It's important to remember that we are all influencers, but yes, we believe in meeting people where they already are, whether that's a classmate they follow.

We worked with WhatsApp to build a WhatsApp voter resource bot. Whether that's in the WhatsApp chats or in the past, we've worked with all sorts of companies for them to put voter registration digital tools that Vote.org builds on their platforms, their websites, things like that. We'll meet people where they already are with the information they need to participate.

Brigid Bergin: That's so great. We are talking all things voting here on The Brian Lehrer Show this morning. We have to take a quick break, but when we come back, more of your calls and more on the obstacles and opportunities on National Voter Registration Day. Stay with us.

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. It is National Voter Registration Day, and my guests are Andrea Hailey, CEO of Vote.org, and Sean Morales-Doyle, the director of the Brennan Center's Voting Rights Program. We're going to get some callers into this conversation in just a moment, but Sean, let's talk about some concerns as we look ahead to the upcoming elections in November and certainly next year.

You're the co-author of a report released by the Brennan Center just yesterday that looks at the issue of guns and voting. What were you trying to look at there?

Sean Morales-Doyle: Looking at there is really a couple of big shifts both in the way that our country and many states regulate guns, and also in the way that our democracy has been working recently that we think increase the risk of gun violence in our elections moving forward. I want to be very clear that our elections have been by and large very peaceful. We hope they'll stay that way. We think they'll stay that way. The reality is that our states are not really prepared as a legal matter for the risk that something goes wrong.

Only 12 states in the country right now prohibit guns, all guns at polling places. Even fewer prohibit them at drop boxes, at counting facilities. No state has what we think is the ideal policy for preventing intimidation of voters and election workers, which is a problem that we've seen rise dramatically recently. No state actually accounts for the role that guns can play in intimidating voters and election workers explicitly.

We have a lot of work to do in order to fill these legal gaps and pass the laws that we need to protect against gun violence in our elections. Again, we hope that nothing comes to pass, but the reality is we're living in a country where about half the states have been dramatically deregulating guns for the last couple of decades. We went from two states about a decade ago that had permitless carry to now 27 states. That's just one example of many changes like that.

Brigid Bergin: Wow. Sean, I'm curious, how do the states in our region fit into your analysis? New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, generally states that have stricter gun laws. As I was looking at your report with the Bruen decision and rules around concealed carry, it raised some questions for me. How would you fit our region into your broader analysis?

Sean Morales-Doyle: Yes, it's a great question. As you mentioned, the states in this area, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, have historically had stronger gun regulations than in many parts of the country, in New York, in particular, but as many people probably remember last year in the Bruen decision, the Supreme Court reinterpreted the Second Amendment pretty radically. They dramatically changed the way that the Second Amendment applies.

In that case, specifically, they struck down a law in New York about permits for carrying weapons. They struck down the laws of six states at the same time that had that same rule that New York had. At the time, those six states, who are states that had pretty strong gun regulations, only five of them prohibited guns at polling places.

I'm sorry, five of them did not prohibit guns at polling places. New York was one of those five because states that have historically had broad regulations prohibiting people from carrying guns in lots of public places haven't been as focused on prohibiting them in these specific sensitive locations. Places like Texas and Georgia and Arizona and Florida actually do prohibit guns at polling places, but places like New York and Hawaii did not.

Now, thankfully since the Bruen decision, where the court, at the same time as it was dramatically reinterpreting the Second Amendment, made very clear that there are certain kinds of gun laws that are presumptively constitutional and that includes sensitive places regulations, and they specifically mentioned banning guns at polling places. If there's one policy that we can be certain moving forward is pretty safe from challenge, it's prohibiting guns at polling places.

New York acted right away. The legislature immediately passed a new sensitive places law that does prohibit guns at polling places. New York is now one of the states that's doing better on this issue, so is New Jersey. Connecticut just recently passed a law that will go in effect in October. That is a general prohibition on open carry of weapons anywhere in public, not just in polling places. All three are doing better than a lot of the country, but they all still have places they could do better.

Connecticut has that general prohibition on open carry, but it is still legal to concealed carry into a polling place, concealed carry into a government building or near a drop box, concealed carry in an accounting facility. New York and New Jersey are similarly doing pretty well on a number of categories, but could do better in terms of concealed carry at accounting facilities in New York, for instance, and this other policy that I mentioned, which is making sure that our laws that prohibit voter intimidation or election official intimidation make explicit the fact that a gun is presumptively intimidating.

That if you're openly carrying a gun near voting, that that is presumptively intimidating. New York is doing great on many of these things. There's still some room to improve, but we're in a better spot than most of the country.

Brigid Bergin: Let's bring Mitchell from Manhattan into the conversation. Mitchell, thanks for calling in.

Mitchell: Hi. Sure.

Brigid Bergin: We were talking all things voting.

Mitchell: Hi. Good morning. I know. I've always loved Brian's show and when you sit in as well. I do want to say there's tremendous emphasis and I really appreciate it on voting. I'm all for it. I've been voting for many decades. I'll say as a Democrat, although I'm horribly disillusioned with the Democratic Party at this point in time. That aside, what I wanted to emphasize here, Brigid, is once whoever gets into office that they listen to their constituents and follow our requests, if not demands.

It's crazy. In some way, I don't even care who gets in, they are just supposed to be representing us. I think that gets really lost in the conversation about voting in this country. We make voting seem like it's the pinnacle of democracy. I say it's one of the pinnacles. The next one is the follow through of people demanding and whoever it is that is in office following what we want, not their own agenda. We see what their own agenda gets us, and it's into a lot of trouble. Anyway, that's what I wanted to share with you all.

Brigid Bergin: Thank you so much for that call. Mitchell giving voice to, I think, a feeling that is probably a fairly bipartisan sensibility. Andrea or Sean, any reaction to that sentiment that voting is a piece of the puzzle, but accountability is also really important and arguably harder to do than casting a ballot?

Andrea Hailey: I think that it's very true that voting is one of the many tools that it takes to have a healthy and thriving democracy, but it is potentially one of the sharpest tools in the sense that when access to the ballot box starts to erode or when it disappears, you no longer have the means by which to hold people as accountable. It's a very important tool, but of course, we've seen protest, voting, holding government officials accountable.

All of it together and combined are the kinds of things that you see in a healthy media in a democracy that is thriving. All very, very, very important. I would say it is one of the sharpest tools that you can have.

Brigid Bergin: Sean, you want to jump in?

Sean Morales-Doyle: I mean, I agree with all of those points. I do think that it is true that democracy is about more than just voting. There is lots of ways that citizens can and should be civically engaged in participating and holding their representatives accountable. I agree with Andrea that the primary way we do hold folks accountable is by voting and that we should be-- I agree with Mitchell that we want our democracy to be designed in a way that will make representatives feel that they are held accountable to their voters.

That is what we should be thinking about when we talk about the rules that are going to govern our democracy. We want redistricting maps that create districts that are not a sure thing for one party or another due to partisan gerrymandering. We want rules that give everybody access and allow them to participate. We want folks like Vote.org and the caller we heard from earlier doing all the work to get people engaged and involved because when they're actually able to participate and when elections are actually responsive to the will of the people, then I think our representatives are far more likely to listen to what we have to say.

I can say I've spent a lot of time in a lot of state capitals in Albany and many other states around the country talking to legislators. They really do care more about what they hear from their own constituents and their voters than just about anything else. I think sometimes people feel like it's not really effective to make that call or send that email to your representative. Obviously, one call and one email is only one call or one email, but the reality is they are paying attention to those things.

They see which of their voters are engaged and what they're engaged on, and they want to be responsive. It's not perfect. It doesn't always work. It works better when our democracy is set up to make elected officials actually feel like they need to listen to their voters if they want to stay in office.

Brigid Bergin: Sean, this is the first presidential election since the January 6th insurrection. You write about the election denier movement, launched by some of the supporters of the former president, to cast doubt on the outcome of the 2020 election. You know, "This election denier movement has spread beyond Trump and reached into state and local elections fueled by conspiracy theories about mail voting, drop boxes, election officials, poll workers, and ballot counting." What are some of the steps that you think need to be taken to counteract this kind of misinformation and disinformation?

Sean Morales-Doyle: It's not an easy thing. I want to start by saying that. Misinformation and disinformation are powerful things. We have a lot of folks in this country that are locked into their view and listen to the people who they listen to. The most important thing we can do to counteract misinformation and disinformation is put out accurate information and to have trusted sources putting out that accurate information and getting it out as widely as possible.

We should be looking to the people who run our elections for the information about our elections. We should be looking to other trusted sources. That means, secondly, actually investing in the people who run our elections. It means improving election administration. It means providing folks with training and written guidance and investing money in the equipment and the security and everything else that we need to run elections.

That's especially critical right now where this election denier movement, so much of what it changed was this negative focus on election officials. The people who are often the heroes, who were the heroes in 2020 of running an election during a pandemic, but usually operated in the background. This election denier movement just launched this unprecedented level of harassment, and abuse, and criticism, and nastiness aimed at election officials and election workers. The result of that has been a mass exodus.

These folks are leaving office. These are not high-paid jobs. They're not glamorous jobs, and they're not easy jobs. It's hard to do them in a regular election year, but when you have people making death threats, it's hard to imagine withstanding that to run our election. Folks are leaving. Now we have a bunch of inexperienced election officials filling the void. Unfortunately, in some places we have election deniers filling the void, but in places where we have folks who are there in good faith and want to do the job, we need to give them the support and the resources that they need to actually do that job.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. Andrea, you have spoken out in the past about the need for better regulations on some social media platforms, including some emerging tools like Threads, and that's, of course, Facebook's parent company Meta's response to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. What kind of response have you seen so far to some of the calls for making sure that misinformation is clearly identified on a platform like that?

Andrea Hailey: Yes. We were so excited to see the growth of Threads. It took off and became one of the fastest-growing platforms of all time. Yet, we were really dismayed that right away, they didn't start to announce how they would address misinformation and disinformation with an election cycle coming up. We did call on Meta to clarify their policies, and they eventually clarified that the policies would be the same as those on Facebook.

I think it's really important for tech platforms to proactively start to think about what their role in healthy and thriving democracy is and how they're going to counter misinformation. What we saw just a few months ago is that, across the board, many of these platforms started to lay off the very content teams that would identify misinformation and disinformation ahead of election cycle. That has me gravely concerned. I think your budgets show your priorities.

I'm hopeful that ahead of this presidential election people will start to show us that they are prioritizing addressing this. I think that right now we're also seeing, when we look into future election cycles, I'm concerned about the combination of AI and disinformation and what that can really mean if we don't have both proactive thought from tech platforms on this and regulation.

Brigid Bergin: Andrea, I mentioned today was a holiday, National Voter Registration Day. Hooray, but I can imagine hearing some of these concerns about the safety of our elections might be disconcerting to voters. I also know that you have done a lot of work to get voters to turn out. How do you address some of these concerns and make your pitch to turn some of those folks who take the time to register today to turn out when it comes to the actual election day?

Andrea Hailey: I think the thing is exactly what we're doing, which is you have to find a spirit of joy, of celebration, of care for your community, your neighborhood, your street, your local school. You have to realize that the decisions you make when you show up to vote and the decision you make to vote is going to affect the people that you love and that you care about. It's going to affect the policies by which we are all governed.

I think when you come to voting in a spirit of celebration, it becomes easier to kind of stave off the negative. I'm from Indianapolis, Indiana, and in the last presidential election cycle, I was out there standing. They opened five early voting spots for over a million people, and I had to stand out there in early voting-

Brigid Bergin: Wow.

Andrea Hailey: -day after day in seven-hour lines, just like everyone else. Until eventually, the city started to realize, or there was increased awareness brought to some of the issues, and they started opening additional sites after people were incensed. I think the thing that got me to continue to show up until I could actually cast my ballot was that I wasn't going to let anything get in my way.

I know that there are people out there who are trying to take out percentages of the population death by a thousand paper cuts, 10,000 voters here, 20,000 voters there, another 15,000 voters over here, and reshape the electorate. For me, I have a little bit of a fighting spirit. No one's going to take away my voice or my access. I think the way to overcome all of this is to show up, find community to show up with you, bring your partners, your friends, your family to the polls. Come from a spirit of optimism because the way to protect democracy really rests with all of us.

Brigid Bergin: I just want to get a final word from each of you really briefly. Is there something you feel like you'd like to see change to help improve how the media reports on democracy and elections? Andrea, why don't you start, and then Sean, you can finish us off?

Andrea Hailey: What an excellent question. How the media reports. Yes. I mean, I would like to see exactly what we're doing here. I'd love to see conversations about registration and about the voting processes themselves elevated all throughout our country. I would love to see it become a priority, not just in the couple of weeks before an election, but I'd love for us to be talking about these things year round and gather as much attention on it as we can year round. I would love to see people not repeat negative things that they're seeing over and over again. We have to really draw a line at reporting out things exactly as they're happening.

Brigid Bergin: Sean, what about you?

Sean Morales-Doyle: I agree with those points. I think that, to that last point, we often in recent years have started talking about the rules of elections and how they work in response to people making up nonsense, [laughs] making up lies and spreading lies about the way that our elections work. That sort of defensive, reflexive posture is not great. I think that it would be great if there was more reporting in a sort of proactive, positive way about how our elections work.

This is gets back to this point about how the best way to counter the disinformation is to put the accurate information out there. Then I think after the elections are over, the way that the results are reported on is this sort of horse race narrative that I think has played somewhat into these false narratives and conspiracy theories about our elections because it suggests that someone is in the lead, and then they're overtaken after the polls have closed.

When really it's just about when we get to different types of ballots and when the counting is happening. I will say, I think that the media by and large has gotten better at both of those things. There was a lot of work on the way into the 2020 election to make people understand what things were going to look like post-election. Obviously, it wasn't enough to stop the conspiracy theories from taking hold. I think we still have work to do.

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. Well, I know that this is a place, WNYC and this show, where we are committed to doing that work. I want to thank you both for joining me. Doing some of that work this morning. Andrea Hailey is CEO of Vote.org and Sean Morales-Doyle is the director of the Brennan Center's Voting Rights Program. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Andrea Hailey: Thank you.

Sean Morales-Doyle: Thanks so much for having me.

 

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