Inside the MAGA Blueprint for Breaking the Midterms

President Trump tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and he’s already laying the groundwork to undermine our confidence in the midterm elections. Kara brings together three experts to map out how Trump is trying to tilt the November elections before a single ballot is cast, and what he might do during and after election day to maintain his grip on power. She’s joined by: Natalie Adona, the registrar of voters for Marin County, California. Adona is the co-author of the books “Understanding the Voter Experience” and “Stewards of Democracy,” and a contributing author to the recently published book, “Local Election Administrators in the United States: The Frontline of Democracy." Susan B. Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. She writes a weekly column on life in Washington and is a host of the Political Scene podcast. Her recent article on this topic, “Donald Trump Already Knows the 2026 Election Is ‘Rigged,’” is essential reading for those who want to understand the threat Trump poses. And Nate Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the co-director of the Stanford Law AI Initiative. He is an expert on election law and redistricting, and he’s the co-author of the leading election law casebook, “The Law of Democracy.” Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:13Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Two years after electing a president, voters usually sour on the party in the White House, and they're in the mood to throw the bums out. But President Trump sees the loss of the House, Senate, or both, as an existential threat, and he'd like to see the Republican Party nationalize elections in 15 states. Trump says he's going to mandate voter ID laws across the country, and if he has his way, mail-in voting will be illegal. What's more, the FBI raided the Fulton County election hub in Georgia and seized ballots from the 2020 election, and his administration is demanding voter rolls from across the country.

• 0:56Kara Swisher?

  So in order to try to wrap our heads around Trump's strategy for undermining the upcoming elections, I brought together three experts: a journalist, and an election administrator, and a law professor. Natalie Adona is the registrar of voters for Marin County, California. She is the co-author of Understanding the Voter Experience and Stewards of Democracy. She's a contributing author for the recently published book Local Election Administrators in the United States, and she personally experienced harassment at the hands of MAGA election deniers. Susan P. Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She writes a weekly column on life in Washington and is a host of the Political Scene podcast.

• 1:37Kara Swisher?

  Her recent article on this topic, "Donald Trump Already Knows the 2026 Election Is Rigged", is essential reading. And Nate Persilli is a professor at Stanford Law School and the co-director of the Stanford Law AI Initiative. He is an expert on election law and redistricting and the co-author of the leading election law casebook, The Law of Democracy. I know a lot of you are confused. I'm confused. I'm upset, and I don't know what is up and what is down. So this is an important conversation for you and for me. Stick around.

• 2:23Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from The Guardian and their new show, Stateside, where journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman use the entire independent reporting resources of The Guardian to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what is actually happening in the world. Join Kai and Carter three times a week as they utilize all the reporting resources The Guardian has across news, international coverage, climate, culture, wellness, and more. And The Guardian's not owned by a billionaire, they fearlessly report the facts without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.

• 3:07Speaker 01

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• 4:24Kara Swisher?

  Natalie, Susan, and Nate, thanks for coming on. Last week, President Trump posted on Truth Social, "There will be voter ID for the midterm elections, whether approved by Congress or not." Exclamation point. Voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent, but polls show that eight out of 10 Americans support voter ID requirements, and emphasizing that some states don't require ID reinforces Trump's narrative that the midterms are rigged. So, are you all more concerned with how Trump could weaponize this narrative in the lead-up to Election Day itself, or after the vote during the counting and certification process? Let's hear from you first, Susan, then Nate, and then Natalie.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Well, thank you so much, Kara. You know, it's great to be with you. You know, I think, to me, it's not an either-or question, unfortunately, right? You know, already, what's so striking about the 2026 midterms is Donald Trump's preemptive efforts to undermine it on such a broad front, right? So, you have the category that you're talking about, which is to, you know, demand changes, essentially, in the playing field, in the rules. This has begun, by the way, much earlier, much more persistently, and much more specifically than Trump's previous efforts. We all know he's the only president in American history ever to, you know, seek to overturn the results of an election that he decisively lost.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  But it's much broader than that this time. So, he's gone after it earlier. I would say the minimum scenario here for his interference in the election is to seek to undermine the confidence in it, right? And the integrity and that sort of thing. But he's also made these very specific threats, like the one that you just mentioned. If only that was even the extent of it, right? The lawyers could just say, "This is absurd. It's not constitutional. It's not legal." But from my perspective, he's tried to change the rules. He's tried to change the playing field, literally to rewrite the maps, you know, across the country in places that are favorable to him. He's threatened state and local election officials. He's installed election deniers in key positions in the federal government.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  So, you know, we could go on, but I think the problem that I'm looking at is that here we are only in February and we're already in a scenario where it's not if, but when and how Trump is going to seek to undermine our confidence in these elections.

• 6:43Kara Swisher?

  Right, so he's preparing for like an octopus or whatever. And because people have a long history of thinking elections are lifted, whether it's fictional or in American history. Nate?

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Well, in particular, the last decade, right? I mean, Donald Trump actually has said each of the elections, even the ones that he won, was marred by fraud. I mean, we tend to forget that. Even in 2016, he thought that that was a fraudulent election. And so I'm actually less concerned about this particular declaration because I do think the courts would stop him from doing that. But there's a lot of things outside of that that are happening, whether it's DOJ requests for data from the states, or whether it's possible messing around with the mail system, let alone threats as to what might happen on election day itself. So, so these kinds of kind of faux executive orders, the courts are going to be able to handle beforehand, but there's just a lot of uncertainty as to what might be happening in the run up to November.

• 7:38Kara Swisher?

  And Natalie?

• 7:39Speaker 05

  Sure, thanks for having me on. For me, I have a little bit of a different perspective because I do administer elections. And, you know, from my point of view, in California, identification is required when you register, but not when you go to vote in person. We do go through a verification process, particularly with vote by mail. And so from, for me and for many of my colleagues, if it's not on the books as law, then it's just sort of messaging. But, you know, that said, the messaging does have an effect on our voters. They get confused. Do I need ID? Do I not need ID?

• 8:22Speaker 05

  And, you know, all of the messaging that's out there that's coming from the administration can get confusing for people. Surveys show time and again that local elections officials are a trusted voice when it comes to election information. And so, you know, our focus is on making sure that people get the nonpartisan information that they need because at the end of the day, people just want to vote.

• 8:48Kara Swisher?

  As an election official, do they feel scared or do they just confuse? You use the word confuse specifically, correct?

• 8:54Speaker 05

  I think, you know, some people do feel, you know, very concerned with what they see out there in the news. But, you know, I think for the most part, people are just seeking information and they want to hear directly from the elections officials. What do I need? Am I registered? Where do I go to vote? And that's where we come in and tell people, hey, you know, if you want to vote, you are welcome to come here. Make sure you're registered. You update your registration if you need to. And you know when election day is.

• 9:29Kara Swisher?

  Right. Let's talk about three things the Trump administration has already done to undermine elections. One is seize the ballots in Georgia, demand that Republican states gerrymander to create more Republican leaning House districts and demand voter data from states. Each of these have varying levels of success, but these are three very specific things in each area. Susan, I want to start with the January FBI raid on the Fulton County election hub. It was based on an affidavit that was full of debunked claims about the 2020 elections. Nonetheless, a judge still signed it and it's leading to renewed calls in Georgia for the state to take over elections in Fulton County. Walk us through the raids implications as we look towards the midterms.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, Kara, I think you're right that it's not just, it's both backward looking. Donald Trump is seeking to put, you know, sort of flesh on the bones of his debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. That's, you know, a theme that runs through a lot of his second term is to actually rewrite the outcome of the 2020 election and sort of the fever dream search for evidence to back up a claim, though there is no evidence, though they counted those ballots multiple times, I believe, three different times, the ballots in Fulton County were actually counted. Including once by hand, nonetheless, you know, there's this effort to, you know, kind of muddy the waters to make people believe that there's some kind of an active question

• 10:49Speaker 03

  mark involving the 2020 election. So it's backward looking, but you're right to say that it's also forward looking. And I think that's the part, you know, where it's not entirely clear, at least to me yet, why it is the Trump administration is, is seeking this voter data from all across the country, from state and local election officials. And, you know, what they would intend to do with it when they do receive it, are they looking towards a kind of mass purging of the voter rolls or something like that? You know, again, there's also, to me, this kind of chilling question of, are we looking at a kind of sneak preview of a future? If you really wanted to call into question,

• 11:33Speaker 03

  you know, elections, I mean, a scary scenario that we've all heard talked about would be that the federal government seizing upon some kind of pretext seizes voting machines before elections are called. I do think that's one of Trump's takeaways from 2020 is you've got to stop it before they counted, before the votes are certified, and make it maybe impossible in key contested elections to have people confident in results so that, you know, if Congress, if the control of the House of Representatives is close or up in the air, you could actually see a scenario where they throw it into enough doubt, you know, that you can't reliably certify the outcome. So lots of scary scenarios that

• 12:16Speaker 03

  the raid in Fulton County suggested to all of us. And then just one final thing to throw out here, because I would love to know what, you know, everyone thinks about this is the role of Tulsi Gabbard. My gosh, you know, it's not, I think we've forgotten what a shocker that is to have the head of national intelligence, like in this country, that is a bright red line. You do not have intelligence officials whose job it is to collect foreign intelligence involved in potentially domestic intelligence gathering and domestic political operations.

• 12:47Kara Swisher?

  Oh, so people had forgotten about her. That was a holy shit thing. Yeah, yeah. So let's, uh, in any of your own address that, but I also want to turn to gerrymandering. You've actually worked with multiple states on their redistricting. The situation is fluid. For example, the Virginia Supreme Court just allowed a special election on redistricting in the state. That could lead to four more seats for Democrats. When we get to November, which party is most likely to gain the advantage of redistricting?

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Well, I think the Republicans are going to gain a little bit, but not as much as they had hoped for when they started down this path. And so I think Gavin Newsom's decision to gerrymander California then sort of was the firing shot for the Democrats. So that they were willing to retaliate, which frankly was not, not a predictable outcome. I mean, I wasn't sure that the Democrats would be able to get their act together, let, let alone that they'd be able to get it passed on these referendum ballots. And we'll see whether that happens in, in Virginia. But if you, if you sort of do the math, it looks like the, the Republicans may have gotten a few seats. But that's all with the caveat that we think that this is going to be a close election in the fall. There's the possibility that this whole strategy backfires on the Republicans because they've spread their supporters too thinly.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  Because that often happens when you, when you draw these lines. Over the long term though, I think there is reason to be concerned that now a pretty important norm has been broken. That incumbent parties can redraw the lines to their advantage if they don't like the way the electoral winds are blowing. If I could say one thing on the voter matching, because I think Susan said, well, we don't know what they're, what they're trying to do with the data that they're gathering from the states or they're requesting. I think we do, which is, and it's exactly what Susan suggested, which is that you, they're going to use the data that they get from the states to match up against something like, you know, a DOGE database or a, you know, DHS database. To then allege that, you know, millions of people are ineligible that are on the rolls. And whether it's people are out of state, people who have died, people who have moved.

• 14:37Speaker 04

  But it's one more sort of ingredient in the recipe to prove that the election is fraudulent even from the get go. And anyone who does these kinds of matchings, and Natalie can, can attest to this, there's always errors. In fact, there are usually more errors than there are, you know, positive identification of these false voters. Because people have the same names, people have the same birthdays, there's all kinds of things that get screwed up. And, and given the way that they've tried to, to sort of join together all these federal databases, you can easily see how that can be relevant if they're trying to go after the voter rolls.

• 15:09Kara Swisher?

  And they want the data to create a pretext for alleging fraud. That's really what's happening in order to create a case, even if it's specious at the start. Natalie, the Trump administration is suing 24 states for that data, including California. They, a lot of resistance to it. Explain how those records are kept for people to understand and maintained at a county level. And tell us how they could be misused if that was their goal, if they're even going to get them.

• 15:33Speaker 05

  So you all know that we do sell the voter roll. And it has to be for a specified purpose. It needs to be for an election purpose, political, journalistic or governmental purpose. And if you can't articulate what your purpose is, then you don't get a copy of the voter roll. When you do receive one, it does not have key pieces of personal identifying information that we use for registration and that are used for, you know, sort of more sophisticated list matching programs like ERIC.

• 16:05Kara Swisher?

  So very quickly, explain what ERIC is.

• 16:08Speaker 05

  ERIC is the Electronic Registration Information Center. It's a consortium of states that agree to share data and share resources for when voters do move across state lines. So you don't get an image of the signature. You do not get the last four of the social security. You don't get the driver's license number. And I think that's where the fight is. I believe that the administration wants that personal identifying information. And, you know, that is a recipe for identity theft. We take it really seriously. We do not give out that information to anyone. And it is maintained through, in California anyway, through an election management system

• 16:53Speaker 05

  that is connected to the statewide database. There is information that is flowing in between and the registration roll changes daily. So when you get a voter roll, that is what people were registered at, at that moment. It could be some people die the next day or become disqualified for some other reason. So Nate is absolutely right.

• 17:17Kara Swisher?

  And how could it be misused by the administration? If, a scenario, give me one scenario.

• 17:24Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, it could be mistakenly, like a voter's file could be mistakenly matched to someone who may be in what's known as the SAVE database. You'll forgive me, I don't know the exact acronym, but the SAVE database is kept by the federal government and it has a list of folks who are not citizens. There could be a situation where it erroneously, you know, sort of targets that person as being a noncitizen.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Can I just jump in on this whole question of matching?

• 17:56Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 17:57Speaker 04

  It's, I want to reiterate something Susan said at the outset, which is that you can't sort of look at each one of these steps in isolation as if this is a cause for some particular action that's going to happen on Election Day. All of this is sort of spreading bets as how you might create doubt in the election, both going in and then afterwards. And so if the narrative that comes out of these voter matching efforts is that there's all these noncitizens that are on the rolls, or dead people on the rolls, or that's just somehow all screwed up, that that's the narrative you take in to cast doubt on the election, there will be, you know, court action if efforts are trying to purge people from the rolls, or if it leads to challenges in the polling places. But each one of these things that's happening, whether you're talking about Fulton County, you're talking about

• 18:41Speaker 04

  the matching, or other kinds of efforts with these executive orders, is all about creating that kind of ground for contesting the election beforehand.

• 18:50Speaker 05

  Right, which is the point.

• 19:08Kara Swisher?

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• 19:50Kara Swisher?

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• 21:25Kara Swisher?

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• 22:32Kara Swisher?

  So, let's talk about the actual elections themselves, then. One of the main fears for Democrats is that Trump will use ICE or National Guard to physically intimidate voters. Susan, what would that look like in practice? And what's the likelihood that it'll happen? And where?

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Well, that's right. You know, you're not necessarily going to see this happening all over the country. One of the things about our elections over the last few decades, right, is the gradual winnowing down of competitive districts and states in the country. And I think that's one of the reasons, this incredible polarization is one of the reasons why we're having this crisis in the first place. But it also means that if you want to go after the elections, you don't, you know, you have a more limited number of places where you need to do it. And in that respect, I thought it was really notable that Trump, a few weeks ago, said that he was, you know, he talked about he wanted to nationalize, he used that phrase, "nationalize election," in 15 states. Now, he didn't say what 15 states, or, you know, where's that number coming from.

• 23:30Speaker 03

  In recent years, at the presidential level, you know, we've shrunk down to basically six states or even three states that have made the difference in in the last several presidential elections. So we all know what those states are that are our competitive states. Add a few more states where there are highly competitive congressional districts or senate races, and maybe that's how Donald Trump got to 15. Again, to be clear, you know, the Constitution is silent on many things, but it's very not silent on the notion that that it's the states that have the responsibility to regulate the time, place, and manner of elections. So that's first of all. But but that same week, Trump

• 24:10Speaker 03

  was talking about nationalization. You also had Steve Bannon, you know, MAGA podcaster, former Trump strategist out there saying, you know, that let's be clear, let's send ICE right to the polling places, and we're not going to let Democrats steal this election again. If you combine these sort of threats to, in effect, you know, militarize polling places, and again, you wouldn't have to do it all over the country, but just in targeted places where there might be immigrant voters.

• 24:40Kara Swisher?

  What's the likelihood where it will happen that they have this plan? I mean, Steve Bannon says a lot of things, but.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 24:46Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. So what's the likelihood, do you see?

• 24:49Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, first of all, we have to say that Trump has already made it clear in how he has been deploying these ICE forces already. He's using them in democratic cities and democratic states as an instrument of sort of retribution, in effect, or punishment of his political enemies. So, you know, they would be looking to do this in places where there are large numbers of potential immigrant voters who might be scared off by the presence of ICE. And, you know, democratic-run cities are often the places in the past that Donald Trump has targeted with his rhetoric. For example, Pennsylvania has been a key swing

• 25:31Speaker 03

  state, you know, in in all of our recent elections. Donald Trump has been crying fraud in Philadelphia practically before anyone's voted there. Same thing in Detroit, in Michigan, which has a key senate race on the ballot, as well as various contested House races this fall. So, again, I think we know the map of where they might go after pretty clearly.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  Can I have a note of optimism here?

• 25:54Kara Swisher?

  Yes, I'm going to ask you this because Trump's, as he said, said he wants to nationalize election. Is that just legal, Bluster? But go ahead saying what you were going to say.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, he can't nationalize the elections, as Susan said, right? The Constitution says that the state legislatures are the ones that are in charge of elections. And so he can't take over the elections. But, you know, the US Postal Service, for example, is always involved in elections. And so the federal government does have a role.

• 26:18Kara Swisher?

  So what else could he do? Sending troops to the polls, obviously, et cetera. What are the most effective legal?

• 26:25Speaker 04

  Well, I'm actually kind of optimistic that the number of seats that are going to be competitive in the fall will make it very difficult to sort of target particular areas. And so, you know, if it's a presidential election, we know what those seven battleground states are. But with this election, there are going to be up to, you know, 30 to 50, maybe even more competitive congressional races. So it's going to be difficult to try to target each one of the polling places. Not only is there a kind of geographic difficulty there, but there's also a temporal problem, which is that we don't just vote on election day.

• 26:57Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 26:58Speaker 04

  And so we're going to have weeks where people are going to be able to be voting, and those votes will then be, you know, banked in offices like Natalie's. And so I do think that it's easy to be concerned about these tweets because they're so unprecedented. But there's a lot of things that would make it very difficult for the federal government to try to take over local elections.

• 27:20Kara Swisher?

  So January 6th showed that Trump can use social media to summon his supporters. Obviously, you can imagine him telling them to go protect the polling sites, and that sort of ambiguous language gives him a veneer of plausible deniability. Natalie, in 2020, a so-called Trump train of around 300 people held a rally in the parking lot outside your office and blocked the ballot drop box. Tell us what that was like and what you could do if similar situation occurred.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, um, that was, I have to say, I felt a little intimidated myself. Um, just for a little bit of context, it was, I believe, a Sunday afternoon and, um, we had just sent out all the ballots by mail. Um, and I, I went to the office just to catch up on a couple of things and it was, you know, relatively quiet until about three o'clock and then I heard this rumble and then outside I saw, um, a bunch of cars and they had set up a merch booth with a bunch of, um, sort of Trump branded merchandise.

• 28:24Speaker 05

  Uh, there was a megaphone, uh, sort of talking to people about who to vote for and, you know, free speech is something that elections officials value, uh, but there are rules around doing so around a voting location. And we had a Dropbox that people wanted to use but felt they could not access, you know, one, they could not physically access it because there were a bunch of cars blocking the way, uh, but some people who would try to walk up to the Dropbox did not feel like they could and, um, you know, that, that is a clear violation of the law. Normally I would go out to folks and say, you know, there's a Dropbox here, can you

• 29:08Speaker 05

  please move your activities to, you know, a hundred feet or more away? But because I was alone and because there were so many people, uh, it was a situation where I did not feel like I could, you know, sort of go out there on my own and no one else was in the county building. So, um, you know, moving forward, you know, I think that, you know, we advertise where all of the locations are and we work pretty closely with our local law enforcement to let them know, here is where people vote. And a voting location does include a, an official vote by mail Dropbox and the law reflects that.

• 29:48Speaker 05

  You cannot do any electioneering activities or, um, you know, sort of any, sort of political protest within that, um, sort of hundred foot boundary.

• 29:59Kara Swisher?

  So imagine if the Trump trains activating on election day on a large scale.

• 30:03Speaker 05

  You know, I think that, you know, part of my job is not only to preserve the right to vote, but also preserve rights. And, you know, what I have told people time and again is, you know, your rights do not compete with each other. You have the right to political speech, just as you have the right to vote. But there are really good reasons why there is that buffer zone around voting location. It's because this country's history of voter intimidation around the polls. It used to be way, way back in the day that you could electioneer right outside the door. And it turned out that, you know, sort of created some chaos around voting locations.

• 30:44Kara Swisher?

  So what is your preparation? You were nervous to go out and fix the problem. So people presumably weren't able to vote because if they wanted to. So people were being denied the right to vote.

• 30:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 30:54Kara Swisher?

  So what's your plan?

• 30:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. In that particular situation, what we had done is we had worked with the local Republican Party to make sure that those rallies did not occur in sort of key locations anymore.

• 31:08Kara Swisher?

  Could you stop them now?

• 31:10Speaker 05

  Well, yeah. I mean, we, we could, you know, sort of certainly try. It is a violation of the law to, you know, purposefully electioneer for the purpose of intimidating folks. And so we would just call the police and they would take care of it. I do not believe that there's a history of that happening in Marin County. Most kinds of electioneering are passive. It's like someone's, you know, campaign button or a shirt. And, you know, we politely say to the voter, can, can you just please remove that button while you are here or turn your shirt inside out? Some people have taken the extra step of just stripping. We don't

• 31:52Speaker 05

  encourage that. But, you know, it, it, it does allow folks to, is it to feel comfortable in the voting location and that they can vote calmly and free of intimidation.

• 32:04Kara Swisher?

  So if 2020 is any guide, Trump may do the most damage after the votes are cast. If armed federal agents showed up to an election administration site with a warrant and demand for ballots, like they did in Fulton County, talk about how to stop that and how easy or hard would it be for the FBI to obtain? Another warrant. How do you deal with that, Susan?

• 32:27Speaker 03

  You know, I've spoken with election experts, Cara, who say that the key is, you know, to be prepared in advance. I was even, you know, speaking with one election law expert who suggested that one approach some people will take this year is to get injunctions in advance to try to stop activity that they fear from the federal government. You know, again, I'm not a lawyer, but I think heightened alert obviously has been achieved here. But, you know, I was really struck by, it was almost an offhand comment that Trump made a few weeks ago in an interview with the New York Times that, you know, suggested that we may be, once again, overly limiting our imaginations as to what is possible here.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  If you're, you know, dealing with people who are willing to just absolutely go completely outside of the lines of what we see as acceptable. And to that end, I was really kind of blown away. In his recent interview with the New York Times, Trump said, as an aside, "Oh, I really made a mistake in not ordering the federal government to seize election machines after the 2020 election." And, you know, this is essentially the almost martial law scenario that was being promoted by, you know, Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn and, you know, a lot of really just wild extremists who had Trump's ear in the aftermath of the

• 33:53Speaker 03

  2020 election, but who, you know, were constrained because there were others, such as the White House Counsel at the time, the Attorney General at the time, you know, who were indicating they wouldn't go along with these extreme measures. But how amazing that Trump is now saying out loud, "Yeah, I wish I had seized voting machines," you know, after 2020. I mean, imagine, we all know the mayhem that ensued on January 6. Imagine the mayhem if there weren't any duly certified results from certain states. I mean, that's the thing is that what Trump did in 2020 was extraordinary, and that was in a situation-

• 34:33Speaker 03

  Where there were no massive, you know, and in any way, proof of fraud. There were no court decisions anywhere in the country saying, you know, questioning the overall results of state elections. December 14th, that's the key date when states had to certify the election results in 2020. Every single state met the deadline and certified the results. I think what Trump has learned, and somebody once compared him to me to like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, you know, learning how to open the door. What Trump seems to have learned from 2020 is seize the machines, stop it before those results get certified.

• 35:13Kara Swisher?

  Stop the count, in other words.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:15Kara Swisher?

  So, Kathleen, in California, every voter, for people who don't know, is sent a mail-in ballot, and the vote counting can be slow, and that's to the advantage of Trump. Explain how vote counting works in a state like California. And you're, explain your experience in 2012 while you were a team were counting the votes.

• 35:30Speaker 05

  Sure. So, before I do that, I just want to sort of circle back on the voting equipment and, you know, sort of seizure of election materials. That would be a serious problem. Election security includes a strict chain of custody on voting equipment and on ballots. And, you know, sort of specific to this issue, I have asked, you know, our county council to provide me and my staff with training on what to do if we see a warrant and what to look for. Because, I mean, frankly, I don't know about you, but I've watched a lot of cop shows and

• 36:11Speaker 05

  there may be a disconnect with what I understand a warrant to be and, you know, what you see on television. So I want to be really clear that, you know, for me and my colleagues and likely for my peers across this country, if a warrant comes in, the first call is going to be to our attorneys and to sort of see, you know, what the scope is of what we are dealing with.

• 36:38Kara Swisher?

  And not handing it over.

• 36:40Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, I want to stress that I'm an administrator. That, you know, I know the law, I can tell people what the law is, and in some cases, I can even enforce the law. And, you know, with a warrant, we're sort of in a new world, but it would be, you know, very disruptive to the elections process to not have voting equipment. It would probably be an expensive problem, too. I cannot imagine that our secretary of state would continue to allow us to use equipment that was seized and broke the chain of custody. But as you had stated, a lot of people vote by mail in California. Anywhere, you know, from, you know, eighty to ninety percent of the electorate that participates

• 37:24Speaker 05

  chooses to vote by mail, and that process does require added verification. So, you know, in this state, we give voters plenty of time to submit a ballot. We send them out twenty-nine days prior to the election. After the election, if the voter chooses to submit that ballot by mail, then we basically have seven days to accept a timely postmarked ballot. And, you know, sometimes people forget to sign, or, you know, the signature does not compare with what we have on file, so we need to reach out to the voter. And so, you know, one of the dynamics that's happening that we, you know, try to ameliorate

• 38:08Speaker 05

  with through our messaging is please vote early. But what we see in California, at least, is a lot of people are choosing to cast a ballot in an envelope, you know, by mail, you know, with an official drop box on election day, and then turn around and say, why haven't you counted this yet? It's because we go through the process of verifying that, you know, you haven't voted already, that, you know, the signature that you submit, like I said at the top, you know, people provide identification when they register, and they're often registering through the Department of Motor Vehicles. So when you sign, it's got to match what we have on file, and sometimes people draw stuff.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  Or they just put their initials or print, they don't sign, and it takes a lot of time to sometimes reach out to the voter.

• 39:02Kara Swisher?

  So let's assume the elections themselves are relatively uneventful. But while the counting is underway, Trump plays these cards we've just discussed. The FBI seizes the ballots, he stokes conspiracy theories, and his supporters make life hell for people counting the votes, like Natalie. And Speaker Johnson refuses to seat elected members because of the results are illegitimate, so that Republicans maintain control of the House. What happens then? Let's start with Nate, then Natalie, then Susan.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  All right. So technically, what happens is that the Congress is impaneled on January 3rd. Each one of these folks comes with their certificates of election, saying, here, I'm the person who won this. And so, in the ordinary course of things, you would have certain people who would be clearly members of Congress would then vote if there's someone who objects to one of the elections of each one of the other members of Congress. And so there have been times in our history where Congress, which is empowered under the Constitution to determine the qualifications of its members, then rejects the certificate of someone and says they can't be seated. The problem is, we've never been in a situation where who controls Congress is actually in doubt.

• 40:12Speaker 04

  The first votes that are taken are to appoint the speakers, so we don't necessarily even have a speaker. And so we are walking in totally new constitutional snow at that point, right? This is a very different situation than even the January 6th uprising from five years ago. And so, the question is whether, say, after the election but before Congress is going to be seated, whether there's somehow a new law that would be passed that would try to deal with this issue of seating electors who allegedly were elected under fraudulent conditions.

• 40:44Kara Swisher?

  And which they could do unless they don't have, unless people resist it, presumably.

• 40:48Speaker 04

  It's not clear what's going to happen if all these people show up, and then there's an effort to, you know, say that there is no majority. The question is whether there will be new rules passed in the lame duck period that then would, you know, give my Johnson unprecedented power, but you know, generally speaking, the House, you know, disappears after the election and then it has to reappear on January 3rd, according to, you know, the processes that have been in place for over 200 years.

• 41:16Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 41:16Speaker 04

  But I mean, then we are, we are in really dangerous territory, right? I mean, then, then we're talking about an election that was run. And then, you know, as in other parts of the world, you know, someone, you know, a leader then rejects the elections and then tries to cancel the vote.

• 41:31Kara Swisher?

  Right. What about you, Natalie? How do you look at this?

• 41:34Speaker 05

  I assume that folks up to this point who have doubts would have come to an office like mine. And I think, you know, one of the most important things that we do as elections officials is we open up the process to the public. You can see how we are processing ballots. You can see how many ballots that we have. Under the California vote of Bill of Rights, you have the right to ask questions about the elections process and receive answers from the elections official. And we spend a lot of time educating the public. So if there was some sort of doubt as to the election results,

• 42:15Speaker 05

  I would assume that we would have a high level of contact with our lawyers, with the Secretary of State. We may be asked to, you know, sort of provide statements to the court or, you know, even testify as to our process. And this all would very likely happen once the election results would be certified. In California, we've got up to 30 days to certify. Many of us are done before then. But yeah, we would have to, you know, continue to do what we always do, which is show our work.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  Well, let me just say that it's not as if the courts are going to be silent in this, right? I mean, in the event that there's an effort to try to undermine the vote, but you're going to see action before the election, you'll see action on election day, and then you're going to see actions afterwards in the event that there's an effort to undermine the vote. And the courts have been a kind of shining light in election litigation. But in a bipartisan way, you've seen Trump-appointed judges, you know, Obama-appointed judges have been sort of buttressing our democracy.

• 43:26Kara Swisher?

  Right. So, speaking of China, just for people who don't know, Natalie has had MAGA observers demanding to stand closer, using binoculars, taking pictures of signatures, and borderline harassing you and voters, just to be clear. But Susan, go ahead on this question.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, look, right, we're already in a dark place because we're trying to contemplate scenarios that have never happened before in American history. So, that's part of it, right, is just we're off the grid here. I think, again, certification is really key, as it was in 2020. It's also true, it's not just at the presidential level, but also House and Senate races have to be certified by the states. So, we don't know the map yet of what would be contested, but you know, the scenario we're talking about here is presumably where the House of Representatives, where control is very close. And so, it would depend, actually, to a certain extent, on in what states are the races that are very close.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  Because if those are states that have Democratic governors and Democratic state election officials and Democratic legislatures, it's going to be very hard to do what the Trump administration might want to do. If those are states that are more evenly divided, or where there's Republican officials, okay, then the question is what kind of Republican officials? We've seen, by the way, Republican officials in many states, even if they supported Trump at the national level, who have had more backbone than their national colleagues, not just in Georgia in 2020, but also, look at what happened in Indiana, where Republicans, very conservative Republicans, refused Trump's efforts.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  To redo the district line. So it depends on the map, number one. Number two, I would just also point out that Mike Johnson is also already barely in control of the US House of Representatives. So to Nate's point about, you know, could you rewrite the rules before January 3rd, before the new Congress, I think that would already be very, very hard to do. In fact, there's actually a scenario where over the next few months, Mike Johnson and the Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives even before the November elections. He's down to one vote right now, you know, in the natural process of a few hundred people, many of them older. You could have, you

• 45:46Speaker 03

  know, someone resigning Congress, a resignation and a death. And then all of a sudden, you're talking about Democrats even possibly being in control, or Republicans, you know, dumping Mike Johnson, who already doesn't have a lot of confidence among many of the members, and picking someone else. So, you know, Trump may want to do this.

• 46:06Kara Swisher?

  He doesn't have a lot of juice, is what you're saying.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:10Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 46:24Speaker 06

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• 48:57Kara Swisher?

  All right, let's wrap up by looking forward to election threats we'll be facing even after the midterms. The Supreme Court appears ready to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The ruling could come too late for the states to redraw their districts in time for the midterms, but the consequences could be dire for Democrats in 2028 and future elections. Nate, game this out for us. What do the Democrats' chances in the House look like without Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act?

• 49:18Speaker 04

  Well, if the laws of political physics haven't been sort of completely unended in the last 10 years, the Democrats should win somewhere between 20 and 40 seats, which is to say that with people having a pretty low view of the economy and low presidential approval, that that should be the kind of expected shift in the House. Now, gerrymandering may blunt some of the natural forces that would lead to A democratic takeover in a midterm election. But but it would the the amount of advantage that Republicans are getting is not that significant. Over the long term, when you're talking about the decline of section two, this has been the main piece of legislation that has provided for majority minority districts, for minority opportunity districts.

• 50:04Speaker 04

  So the black and Latino communities are able to get many more districts than they would otherwise. Because the Supreme Court has said that partisan gerrymandering doesn't raise any constitutional questions. It's it's statutes like the Voting Rights Act that have been the bulwark that have prevented certain types of gerrymandering. I do think the Supreme Court is going to gut section two of the VRA. I think the writing is on the wall. And so that means that we may see some more redistricting maybe after this election, as well as as we, you know, come into the 2030 round of redistricting.

• 50:35Kara Swisher?

  Right. So so far, election officials have played it pretty straight. Republicans like Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, who's running for governor, and Stephen Richard, the former Maricopa County Recorder, did their jobs in 2020, despite intense pressure from Trump and fellow Republicans. That might not always be the case. Natalie, if the election official wanted to corrupt an election, could they do it? Or would it be too obvious? Not that you would.

• 51:02Speaker 05

  No, no, never. And I mean, that's that's that's serious. We all do take an oath to defend the the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of, you know, our respective states. So breaking that oath is a serious issue. It would take a lot of planning. It would not go unnoticed, as we saw in the case, for example, with Tina Peters, clearly got caught. And, you know, when when I read a story about Tina Peters, it was just shocking to me that any

• 51:43Kara Swisher?

  She's from Colorado for people.

• 51:46Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah, Mesa County, Colorado. It's shocking to me that anyone would really go to that lengths. So, you know, we in California, we do have, I think, a very strong cohort that is constantly in contact. We are also in contact, you know, on a regular basis with Secretary of State, and we all talk about what the rules are. In a place like California, you have a lot of local control over how elections are run, but, you know, we're all operating under the same laws. And, you know, we know what each other is doing. And I would venture to guess,

• 52:28Speaker 05

  because, you know, I'm like this, and I assume that my colleagues are the same way. If you're doing something that is way off base, we'll let you know. Hey, what?

• 52:41Kara Swisher?

  Right. So you're saying it'd be very difficult for an election administration to purposely miss town votes?

• 52:46Speaker 05

  Yeah. It would be extremely difficult for it to go unnoticed.

• 52:50Kara Swisher?

  Okay. So one of the ways it gets noticed is through the press. Trump's attacks on the press have been unrelenting, as I know, as Susan knows. Many of the legacy media's owners are caving in. Just today, CBS is cutting off an interview with James Talarico, because Brandon Carr is a giant jackass. But for a large portion of the electorate, facts don't seem to matter. James Madison wrote that "A popular government without popular information are the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both." Very fancy quote, but absolutely holds up. Susan, how do you think about your role and the news media's role more broadly? Is it a prologue to a farce, a tragedy, or both?

• 53:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Look, Donald Trump himself, in the 2024 election campaign, said, "If we don't have free speech, we don't have a country, period." And it's against that backdrop, a very cynical statement, really, when you consider the broad array of attacks that Trump has launched, not just on the integrity of the electoral process, but, you know, you could argue that it's going after, in a pretty systematic way, Americans' free speech rights that have been a signature move of this president. And of course, that's all in the context of maintaining power and, you know, using it. And I think that, you know, for Trump, he sees the stakes In this fall's election as very significant to him.

• 54:13Speaker 03

  While some people will downplay it and say, well, what difference does it really make if Democrats take back the House? You can say that Donald Trump believes it makes a big difference. He himself has repeatedly, almost obsessively, already begun talking about it. He says the Democrats will impeach him once again if they take back the House, that, you know, he understands there will be not only potential impeachment, but there will be oversight hearings, there will be Congress acting in a different way. It might cause him also to lose the hold over the Republicans who remain on Capitol Hill, who he's counted.

• 54:43Kara Swisher?

  No, it's existential. It's clear he understands it's existential.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So number one, it's existential. Number two, it's the lies and disinformation that have fueled Donald Trump and his movement from the beginning. And of course, it's lies about an election that are at the heart of this presidency. The New York Times called Trump's second term "the January 6th presidency." Well, that means it's a story about lying about an election that is the foundational ideological belief of the people who are running this country right now. And so it's in that context that I think, you know, we have this responsibility as journalists. And again, Kara, I see that as a very nonpartisan thing in the same way that our election officials, you know, need to have rules of the road that are not benefiting Democrats or Republicans,

• 55:30Speaker 03

  you know, but that it's a, you know, essentially a technocratic role in our democracy. Without it, we can't have confidence in it. I feel the same way about journalism. You know, reporting independently without fear or favor doesn't mean saying that there's an equivalence between our two parties or everything that comes out of the mouth of a candidate has to be weighed in that context. It means being able to speak without fear or favor. And I worry that in too many communities around the country, including sadly, the community you and I live in, the Washington DC, which has lost its reporting about state and local elections. You know, my husband spent more than a decade reporting for the metro section of the Washington

• 56:13Speaker 03

  Post, including from Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia. You know, we're losing our independent reporting about elections at exactly the moment they're challenged by the people who are running the country. So, you know, obviously, the role of journalism is an important one to spotlight in terms of the integrity of the elections.

• 56:31Kara Swisher?

  So one of the things that's interesting is... You know, after they dumped this James Talarico interview on the broadcast network, CBS acquiesced instantly. They put it on YouTube a second later, which I thought was hysterical. I was like, hey, have you heard of the Internet kids? In any case, my last question, there doesn't necessarily have to be anything dramatic like ICE agents patrolling voting sites or FBI agents taking ballots for Trump's prolonged assault on our democracy work between gerrymandering voter roll purges, ID laws designed to suppress turnout, the gutting of Voting Rights Act, whatever Trump does around the midterms, we could see American democracy severely damaged by 1,000 cuts. How do we avoid that spate? Let's hear from Susan, Nate, and Natalie. You get the last word.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Thanks, Kara. I mean, you know, look, that's the thing about us journalists, right? We don't have to, we're not as good at prescriptions as we are at analysis and describing the problem rather than fixing it. And I feel like that's the role for us to play in this democratic small d crisis that we have right now. You know, I will say that in other countries that I've observed and reporting from Russia during, you know, the beginning of Vladimir Putin's tenure, in other countries around the world where you've experienced democratic small d rollbacks, it's the role of civil society coming together. And journalism, in my view, independent journalism, is part of civil society. Americans just aren't used

• 57:57Speaker 03

  to talking in those terms. We tend to actually buy into this very polarized, like, there's Democrats and there's Republicans. And frankly, the interests of the Democratic Party, capital D, isn't always the same as the interests of the democracy, small d. And, you know, I feel like this is a moment for civil society to come together in a pretty widespread and sweeping way, and not to wait until it's too late. Because I think that that's what happened after Donald Trump was first sworn in last year, that you didn't see that kind of civil society coming together, the resistance, the people understanding, you know, that they needed to act collectively and stand up collectively for democratic values. That,

• 58:41Speaker 03

  if that doesn't happen, a lot of the things that we're warning about in this podcast may come to pass.

• 58:47Kara Swisher?

  Nate?

• 58:48Speaker 04

  So a lot has to happen before we get to that apocalypse. I think that viewers and listeners need to understand that the courts have been quite active in particularly protecting the vote. And so while there's all kinds of executive orders and other kinds of threats that are being posed in this pre-election period, you know, the system, you know, I remain optimistic that the system is going to hold. I think over the long run that there is damage that has now been done, which is that people have lost confidence in the election infrastructure. And so long as elites send that message that voters can't trust that their ballots will be counted, that I think that that long-term distrust of the mechanics of American democracy

• 59:34Speaker 04

  is something to be concerned about. But as has been sort of the lesson over the last year, it's very difficult right now, about nine or 10 months away from the election, to predict what we're going to be talking about then. And so what I tell my students is that I can't tell you that there's light at the end of the tunnel, but I can only tell you that there are going to be other tunnels.

• 59:53Kara Swisher?

  Okay. Natalie?

• 59:55Speaker 05

  Sure. I appreciate the question because, I mean, I hear a lot of crazy stuff that could affect the work. And there's a lot of things that give me hope. And, you know, one of the big things is, you know, I'm just going to take it back to my colleagues, both here in the state and, you know, in my office and across the nation. We care very deeply about a free and fair elections process where voters get to participate if they choose to do so, and that we count ballots to the fullest extent of the law.

• 1:00:35Speaker 05

  Unfortunately, nowadays, we, you know, sort of become more like referees than anything else, but the level of planning and detail and care that we put into every single election, even in the face of, you know, intense harassment, intimidation, even threats in some cases, we are dedicated to this process. And, you know, I would encourage anyone who has any questions to come into our office, look at our operations, see what we do. We all open up the process so people can have the opportunity to come and see

• 1:01:20Speaker 05

  the level of detail and verification that we pour into every election. We care about getting it right. We're often forced to keep from getting too distracted by the politics of it all, and we'll continue to do so for this election and for all future elections.

• 1:01:41Kara Swisher?

  All right. Thank you all so much. I really appreciate you for joining us. It's really important to talk about these issues in a relatively calm and extensive way so people understand there are things they could do. And Natalie, I have to say, I believe in democracy because of people like you who are doing this work despite all the difficulties. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

• 1:02:01Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:02:02Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, thank you so much. It is heartening, Natalie, in an unoptimistic time. I know. I'm like, go Natalie. Absolutely. I appreciate it.

• 1:02:16Kara Swisher?

  Today's show was produced by Christian Castro-Weissel, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Eamon Whelan and Madeleine LaPlante-Duby. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, we get to keep our democracy. If not, we still get to keep our democracy. We're not backing down, and please, go vote. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

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