A Plan to Strengthen Democracy in 2024

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, again, everyone. Later this hour we'll have a call in for you morning people. Oh, and you night people on how you're adjusting to moving the clocks back last weekend and in general how you coexist with your fellow morning people and night people if you're not one of each group, if you know what I mean.

First, this week's elections had the interesting results that we've been talking about, New York, New Jersey, and around the country on abortion rights and more. One thing this election day did not have was losers claiming the election was rigged and that they really won. Next year's presidential election has people nervous, understandably, about a 2024 version of what happened after the 2020 election, and with different kinds of Republicans, more election denial-friendly ones in power in some swing states and as speaker of the House, how safe is electoral democracy?

Well, enter the group Public Agenda known for its polling and its legacy and origins with a pollster Daniel Yankelovich and what it now calls a research-to-action orientation as a nonprofit. They have a new project that they call the Democracy Renewal Project, which will focus on strengthening voter participation and trust in elections. Can we have both things? With us now is Andrew Seligsohn, president of Public Agenda. Andrew, thanks for coming on WNYC today. Hi.

Andrew Seligsohn: Thank you so much, Brian. It's nice to be here.

Brian Lehrer: What's the Democracy Renewal Project? Tell us more.

Andrew Seligsohn: Well, it starts as a response to what we see as two interconnected challenges. One was the one you were just pointing to, which is the challenge facing our democracy broadly. We see declining levels of trust in institutions, declining levels of trust across partisan lines, everybody thinking everybody else is willing to do unlawful, unconstitutional, illegal things to seize power. We've seen an increase in political violence in the United States in some well-known incidents, but also lots of other ones that are being tracked. I think we see at Public Agenda and among many people working in this area, a genuine risk of a slide toward post-democracy. Obviously, none of us wants to see that. That's the first challenge.

The second related challenge starts with a little bit of good news, which is there are many people, organizations, philanthropy organizations, who are working to try to reverse this trend and build a stronger, more resilient democracy. That's great. That's important. The challenge we see is that we just don't know enough collectively to take effective action. There are people trying things, there are organizations funding those things, but we don't have really good evidence about which kinds of reforms, which kinds of civil society practices or efforts are likely to make the most difference. We need a lot more information about what design features might help them be most effective. There's a lot of different ways, for example, to do rank choice voting. We've seen some successful and some less successful efforts. We need a lot of evidence we don't have.

There's another piece of good news here, which is there's a lot of researchers who are really excellent at answering those questions. The role that Public Agenda through the Democracy Renewal Project will play is helping to frame, identify those key questions that really matter to people taking action on the ground, bring those to researchers, and then spur them to do research on these questions and then we'll help to translate that research to bring it and communicate it in frameworks and formats that work for people who are doing advocacy, doing activism, for policymakers, funders, journalists and really try to change the degree to which all of this work is informed by the best evidence that it's possible for us to generate.

Brian Lehrer: That's really interesting. We'll get into some of the research, some of the polling that you might do, and other research aimed at identifying solutions that build both participation and trust. I want to follow up on what you said about there being better and worse experiments with rank choice voting so far, but before we do any of that, just to continue to establish the foundation of what the environment is that we're talking about in this country with respect to these issues.

I imagine you've seen the polls that found Republicans, as well as Democrats, think democracy is endangered, but for opposite reasons. A lot of Republican Americans, not just Trump with a self-interest, think elections can be too easily rigged. I wonder how you're looking at these polls, and if you can describe what you see as concerns about democracy on each side since you're trying to be ideologically diverse here?

Andrew Seligsohn: Absolutely, yes. As you suggested, we come at this as a nonpartisan organization that believes that democracy really needs ideological diversity among the public and that we need open space for people to debate and discuss and then resolve questions through legislative means and electoral means for choosing who's in those bodies, et cetera. As you said, the first cycle of our Democracy Renewal Project will focus on these twin requirements of elections, which is they need to be open, accessible to all. We need everyone to have the opportunity to participate, otherwise, we're not a democracy. We also need people to trust the outcomes of elections or we're not a sustainable democracy.

One of the things I think that's complicated in talking about all of these issues is that on the one hand truth matters. It's really important whether elections really should be trusted, and whether-- we know, for example, that there are very, very low levels of actual fraud in our system. That's been well documented. It's important to say that. It's also true that what people believe, that matters too. In a way, it becomes a fact on the ground.

Even if those beliefs are not themselves based in fact, they can have a huge impact on our system, and we're seeing that. If people believe that someone else is willing to rig the election, it becomes much easier to justify either engaging in election rigging activity themselves or in using non-electoral and illegal means to try to hold power or take power. That's where you get into these very dangerous downward spiral scenarios that really threaten the long-term possibility of maintaining democracy.

It is important to say what's true. Obviously, for example, journalists have a huge role in communicating to people what we know about what is actually happening. It's also true to figure out how we can deal with the fact that so many people now hold a set of views that may not be grounded in fact but can nonetheless threaten the foundations of our democracy in the long run.

Brian Lehrer: There's a paradox there. What do you think about, for example, election security measures that could build confidence among Republicans, but also wind up serving as voter suppression vehicles like certain kinds of voter ID laws, minimizing vote by mail or early voting or drop boxes, things like those that were being accused, mostly falsely, after the 2020 election of winding up with ballot stuffing that didn't happen?

Andrew Seligsohn: I think this is exactly the kind of question that motivates the Democracy Renewal Project and our focus on these twin questions as our first cycle for this work. That is to say, I think we have a sense that there's a really big challenge here, that it becomes easy to justify voter suppression efforts in a context where people believe that there are these very, very high levels of fraud, that they're worried that elections are being stolen. It's easy to make the case in that context. I think, at some level, my answer to this is we don't yet know what is the most effective way to take on this challenge of rebuilding trust in ways that do not involve voter suppression or do not involve making it harder for people to vote.

I also want to say that some measures that people get very nervous about, we may not have great evidence that they are likely to significantly reduce voter participation. I think building a clearer picture based on evidence about what kinds of measures are really protective of democracy and do not, in fact, interfere with voting versus things that are being used, kind of brought in under the cover of protecting democracy, but in fact have the effect of excluding people. I think there's a lot that we can learn about that, and that's one of the areas we want to see people working on.

One thing I would say about this is it's not that long ago that many Republicans were very supportive of various kinds of vote-by-mail and other kinds of access efforts because, for example, senior citizens who tend to vote more for the Republican Party often have a hard time getting to the polls and are in a position to take advantage of other technologies. I think we've seen this in some recent elections that whatever is being said on the broad national stage, at the state level Republican candidates have been seeking to encourage people to take advantage of what is often called convenience voting, these various early voting, and other approaches.

I do think there is some opportunity to find folks who recognize there is value in opening up opportunities to vote. I actually think the more evidence we have about the effects of these measures, the fact is in some states making it easier for more people to vote will probably help Republicans, in other states it's likely to help Democrats. The clearer the evidence, the greater the possibility for having discussions about this that may yield positive results without suppressing people's votes, and that will enable people to rebuild trust in elections.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Listeners, anybody have any suggestions or questions along the lines of this paradox that I was laying out and Andrew Seligsohn from Public Agenda was just addressing? Election security measures that could build confidence among Republicans, but wind up serving as voter suppression vehicles. How do we get beyond that? Listeners, any suggestions for what real election security looks like and what encourages maximum voter participation?

Any questions you want to ask Andrew Seligsohn as his group, Public Agenda, embarks on this Democracy Renewal Project, as they're calling it, to try to expand voter participation in this country and trust in elections at the same time? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, you can call, you can text, 212-433-9692. Andrew, you just heard me frame a question for listeners that way. I'm curious if you would like to ask our listeners for any informal, unofficial, thoroughly unscientific additions to your information gathering today.

Andrew Seligsohn: Yes, I will definitely take you up on that. We've done a lot of research as part of our hidden common ground initiative about issues where lots of Americans, it turns out, actually agree on various public policy directions, et cetera, across party lines. People want to go to publicagenda.org. You can see all of that research. We've also done research like what you were just mentioning, Brian, that shows the degree of alienation and fear about democracy that we see both from Democrats and Republicans even if they have different reasons for thinking.

I would be interested in having your listeners reflect on things that from their perspective actually make a big difference in terms of whether people have the opportunity to vote and things that would make them feel more confident in elections. I do think it's certainly true that election skepticism is much more common right now on the political Right in the United States, but there is evidence that it's growing among Democrats as well.

It's also the case that we've always had a fair amount of election skepticism.Some things that we know contribute to it. Just to give a couple examples, one is, everybody gets nervous about elections when it takes a long time to count the votes. That makes people think something untoward is happening. I think, again, we saw some of that in New York with the ranked-choice process where just the delays made people wonder whether something was going on.

The other thing that contributes to it, and this also may be interesting for your listeners to reflect on, or one other thing, is people tend just not to really believe there are as many people on the other side as it would take for them to lose an election. Democrats tend to believe it's not possible there are this many Republicans out there. Republicans have the same view about Democrats. I think a lot of that is that we're very geographically segregated right now by party, so most people don't live near or interact frequently with people with very different views.

Just things that might help people believe that even if they lose an election, it could be fine. I'm wondering what they feel about these questions about, can people tolerate delays or should we be really focusing on making sure that whatever systems we're using, the votes are all counted on election night so that we don't have people waiting and wondering for days on end?

Brian Lehrer: That would require, wouldn't it, a mail-in ballot, absentee ballot, deadline for being postmarked earlier than election day itself so that it's received by election day, or that would be the standard mail just anytime you want, but it has to be received by election day by the polling officials.

Andrew Seligsohn: Yes. I will say this, I am not an expert in election administration. The particular ways to best achieve this, the use of drop boxes, and other kinds of ways of delivering ballots. I'm not 100% sure. I would say this, that one question is, what do we prioritize? If we prioritize building trust, then it might be that doing things that make it possible to count votes faster would be in everyone's interest.

Yes, that might be a place where we have to think about, what is the trade off for that form of access, but again, these are questions that I think are worth exploring. I do think for many ways that you might increase trust, they do not involve any kind of a trade-off with access. The question is just designing them in ways that enable both access and trust to be built simultaneously.

Brian Lehrer: Then you'd have to trust the post office in the scenario I laid out. Wayne in Hempstead, you're on WNYC. Hi, Wayne.

Wayne: Yes. Good morning and thank you gentlemen. I'm calling to note that, you know Jimmy Carter of course spent many decades working to bring fair and free elections in many different countries. The country of France being the most notable example, no, he didn't do the work for that one, but they have been doing a paper ballot on their national election, they have each person do their ballot, and then it is hand counted in each local counting voting place, and they produce the entire election result by 10:00 PM local time in France. There is no reason why the United States of America cannot do exactly the same thing.

I spoke with my polling person the other night. He was there for 31 years. He knows everything about what we used to have. He explained why the original lever metal machines in New York here were starting to be unmaintainable and the parts weren't produced, et cetera. That's fair, but hand count. We had 20, 30 volunteers and workers there at the polling place that I've voted at personally for the last 40 years. Not a single one did I miss, every single election, national, et. cetera. What I'm saying is our volunteers, my dad was a volunteer, and it is very-

Brian Lehrer: Paper ballots.

Wayne: -very, very simple to count those ballots and not have machines. By the way, one last thing. The machines, which the machine producers claim are not connected to the internet, are 100% connected to the internet during the poll and after the poll during the finalization.

Brian Lehrer: Wayne, now we're going to leave it there. You put some interesting things on the table. I'm not familiar with France at all in this respect. Andrew, I wonder if you are. It almost sounds too good to be true. Like in our presidential elections, I think something like 100 million people vote. Could that all be done on paper ballots and be counted by 10:00 p.m. in each time zone?

Andrew Seligsohn: Well, I also, I couldn't tell you a great deal about France. I do know in various countries-- First of all, it's certainly true that in many countries the way the elections are structured, it is the case that you have results very quickly afterward. Some of that has to do with some of the things we were talking about, Brian. That if you don't enable mail ballots to come in after election day, you can get results more quickly. Those are choices that are reasonable to talk about and might look different in different places.

I would say one of the things just calls to mind is the real challenges we're having in maintaining our workforce of election officials, election workers. I think it's absolutely true that having high touch systems where lots of people who are members of your community whom you trust are part of the process, and who can tell you that it's all reasonable and fair, and maybe they were the ones counting the ballots, or they were watching as it was happening, or they understand how the machine works and they trust it for that reason, that's really valuable in all of this.

We just have a challenge with this. There've been huge numbers of retirements from election officials, workers, people just leaving the work because they've come under such stress from partisan attacks and it's just not worth it to them to stay in the game. It's harder to recruit volunteers in that context and also just having then experienced people to train them. I think one of the things we should be thinking a lot about is the infrastructure that a trusted election system requires and trying to get to a point where we can rebuild that.

That has to happen really quickly obviously because we want elections that begin to rebuild trust rather than strengthen concerns about it, and that requires lots of people. I think we have seen lots of younger people since 2020 serving as poll workers, volunteers, et cetera, but we have enormous amount of work to do to make sure that we maintain just professional workforce to carry this burden.

Brian Lehrer: We have a couple of poll workers calling in. Let's see what they each think briefly. Carmine in Suffolk County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Carmine.

Carmine: Hi, Brian. I worked at the polls in Suffolk County yesterday and I was at the poll pad where people check in. I'd say maybe one out five persons checking in were ready to show me their ID. When I told them that it wasn't necessary, it reinforced their skepticism in the process. The poll pad works fine just by them checking in the way you do without an ID, but if I would've accommodated them and looked at their ID, they would've felt more secure. It seems to me that allowing poll workers to, at least, peruse or glance at the ID and verify it when offered, not require it, but just when offered, would promote some more confidence in people who are predisposed to thinking that things are rigged without the ID.

Brian Lehrer: What's the system there that you call poll pad? Is it your signature? Is your ID?

Carmine: People check-in, you have an iPad and you ask the person for their last name. You punch in the first four letters of the last name and then the first three or four letters of the first name, and then it searches the database and 9 out of 10 times, that person pops up. Then you ask for their address and they tell you their address. You don't show them the poll pad. Once you see that the address is verified, there's more than one person that looks right. You can check their date of birth. Then when you're convinced that that's the right person, you turn the poll pad around and they sign.

Brian Lehrer: Those things serve as the ID. You're saying if there was a physical ID requirement, people might trust it more. Carmine, thank you very much. To a poll worker in Harlem, Gregory, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Gregory: Hi, Brian. I've been working-- I got to tell you man, it's very much like with the last caller just mentioned, but here in New York, we've all got those cards. All we have to do is show the card that we have and boom, you're in. We always have had. I don't know about other places that I was going to ask our guest, are the police at the poll stations? Because we have always had at least one or two cops there at all times. That's a sense of security to me as a worker for one thing, and because I live in Harlem, I've worked the polls here in Harlem, I know all my neighbors, they know me. I'm the guy with the bow tie on. They're always glad to see me every time they come to vote.

Brian Lehrer: Gregory, thank you very much. In fact, we got a text from a listener, Andrew, that says, "The decline in trust in elections is a natural result of the decline of neighborhoods and communities. If you knew your neighbors, if you knew your poll workers, you would trust elections." Some people know Gregory is the guy with a bow tie at his polling site in Harlem. We're going to run out of time soon. What do you think of those two calls taken together?

Andrew Seligsohn: One thing I would say is that one of the challenges we face in the United States is the fact that elections are controlled by state law. They look different in each of the 50 states, and then there's often within those state laws a lot of opportunity for local variation. One of the challenges is things that seem normal in one place can seem very strange in another place, and so when people are seeing, especially for presidential elections or control of the house or the Senate, you might see things happening that are reported on the news in another place and they look weird and strange and there must be something up with that because that's nothing I've ever seen in my local polling place.

I think that is a real challenge for us, is how to have people understand we do it in different ways, but there are different safe ways and those things can be consistent. I also would agree with the texter who said that one of the challenges is if you don't have naturally occurring trust in a community and local people who've stayed in the same place for quite a while, and you recognize, usually, we make up for that in public life through formal procedures that everybody understands and has confidence in. If we can do it without those formal procedures, it can be a lot easier and more efficient where we don't have those kinds of naturally occurring trust relationships.

We often need clearer and more well-understood rules that everybody understands are being applied, but again, the great diversity of electoral practices in the United States raises that as a challenge. Again, that's why we think learning more about how within our system, given its complexity, we can build greater public trust in elections, we think that's a really important thing to understand, recognizing that we're not going to do it by sacrificing people's opportunity to participate because that undermines democracy. This is exactly what's motivating public agenda as we take on this work.

Brian Lehrer: Andrew Seligsohn, president of the group Public Agenda, which is launching, what they call a Democracy Renewal Project to try to increase both voter participation and trust in elections. What a worthy project. Good luck with it. Keep us updated. We'll bring you back on.

Andrew Seligsohn: Thank you so much, Brian.

 

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