Can American elections be "nationalized"? What does that mean?

In this country, the states run elections. Congress is empowered to step in; the president is not. So what does it mean for the president to call on a political party to "take over." Is that allowed? What would that mean? And why is this happening now? DONATE TO THE PODCAST! We talk with Sarah Cooper from the Carter Center to understand who is in charge and whether anyone else can take charge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from Star.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  Make them remember you.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  Hey, listen. Power up your play with Nintendo Switch 2 and experience Link's legendary adventure, now reborn in vibrant detail on our fastest and most powerful system yet.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  And harness the power of the Ocarina with the built-in microphone.

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  The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. Game and system sold separately. Game rated everyone 10 and up.

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• 1:39Speaker 03

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 1:46Hannah McCarthy?

  You know, Nick, once upon a time, there were election day riots and party bosses buying votes, sometimes with two bucks, sometimes with booze or a sandwich. And people voting, and then voting again, but in disguise. And there was fraud and corruption and intimidation. And it sounds like it was a real mess, right?

• 2:08Nick Capodice?

  It does indeed, Hannah. The 19th century, if you remember it, you weren't there.

• 2:16Hannah McCarthy?

  I'm Hannah McCarthy.

• 2:17Nick Capodice?

  I'm Nick Caffedy-Jay.

• 2:19Hannah McCarthy?

  And this is Civics 101. There are some really juicy stories about the supposed sham that was the 19th century election system. You ever hear the one about Edgar Allan Poe being kidnapped, drugged, and forced to vote by a bunch of poll hustlers in an 1849 congressional election and then dying a few days later?

• 2:37Nick Capodice?

  Wait, is that true?

• 2:39Hannah McCarthy?

  Maybe. Does it matter?

• 2:41Nick Capodice?

  I feel like it probably does, yes.

• 2:43Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, my point there, Nick, is that a juicy story is a useful story. And there were, for sure, some gnarly things going on in that era of American elections. And election reformers did their best to put a stop to that. There was the rise of the secret ballot, for one thing.

• 3:00Nick Capodice?

  AKA, the Australian ballot, AKA, people don't know who you're voting for, and that makes it a lot harder to mess with you. And it's basically useless to try and buy your vote.

• 3:11Hannah McCarthy?

  That was the idea, right? That and a bunch of other reforms were passed to clean that system up, and voter turnout went down.

• 3:20Nick Capodice?

  Because all that vote buying and fraud disappeared?

• 3:23Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, that's one way to look at it, and that is the way that a lot of people have looked at it. But it's kind of hard to know what was actually going on, because for one thing, a lot of the people who were crying corruption had skin in the game. I'm talking about opposing parties perhaps casting some doubt on elections, and anti-party reformers who wanted to shake the whole system up. Now, vote buying was happening, right? That's not great. So were other shenanigans, for sure. But a lot of what we know about it comes from people with a clear motive.

• 4:01Nick Capodice?

  So it was happening, but we don't know how bad it really was?

• 4:05Hannah McCarthy?

  What we do know, again, is that this age of voter reform predicated on the claims that bribery, intimidation, and corruption were running amok in the election system, it resulted in fewer people voting.

• 4:22Hannah McCarthy?

  There were new voter registration requirements, poll taxes, literacy tests. Never mind the fact that the secret ballot was itself a literacy test of sorts. You had to be able to read it in order to use it. So this reform resulted in certain eligible voter populations becoming disenfranchised. Non-English speakers, illiterate people, immigrant men, impoverished men, black men.

• 4:53Nick Capodice?

  Ah, and if you can disenfranchise whole demographics, you can gain a whole lot of political control.

• 5:00Hannah McCarthy?

  That's right. The Arkansas Democratic Party even had a campaign song about that in 1892. Do you want to hear the lyrics?

• 5:07Nick Capodice?

  I really don't, but go ahead.

• 5:09Hannah McCarthy?

  "The Australian ballot works a charm. It makes them think and scratch. And when a Negro gets a ballot, he certainly has got his match. They go into the booth alone, their ticket to prepare. And as soon as the five minutes are out, they got to get from there."

• 5:29Nick Capodice?

  All right, well, that was just about as disgusting as I expected.

• 5:33Hannah McCarthy?

  Sure is. And it also points to a clear awareness on the part of political parties that this voting reform would result in people not being able to vote. And stopping people from voting, specifically by targeting certain groups, that is a really effective way to get what you want out of an election. And Nick, I'm not saying that the secret ballot is full stop a bad thing, especially now, of course. In fact, protecting a voter's right to secrecy was part of the reasoning behind a Democratic defeat of a recent voter ID amendment in the Senate. The secret ballot has become a foundation of the American election system. I'm bringing up this little bit of history to point out that there are good reasons

• 6:17Hannah McCarthy?

  to protect elections and protect voters. And good things can come out of reform. But you also have to look at the reality of the voting landscape in which reform is passed. And you should ask why the reform is being proposed. Is the problem really what people say it is? And what will the proposed solution do to elections and to voters? So let's ask some questions.

• 6:47Nick Capodice?

  Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once, and they keep working in the background.

• 7:33Nick Capodice?

  You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code CIVICS at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.

• 7:54Nick Capodice?

  Holiday season is coming, and I don't think I have to tell you this might be a tough one because things are expensive in the fall of 2026. Everyone I know is looking for ways to make a little extra money, prowling around the side hustle subreddits. But I will say, if you're looking to sell something, to launch a store fast before the holiday rush, Shopify is the one-stop-shop platform for making a professional-looking store without touching a line of code. You can sell anything, and you can sell it anywhere that people shop online. You can have it done in minutes, and you can launch before Black Friday, that time of year when more people are already shopping and ready to buy.

• 8:38Nick Capodice?

  So if you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/civics to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/civics. Just go to Shopify.com/civics today to hear your first...

• 8:59Hannah McCarthy?

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• 9:44Hannah McCarthy?

  the fall pieces you will reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was Civics 101. It's a great way to support the show.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Make them remember you.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 10:28Speaker 08

  This seems to lean into some of these repeated false statements about widespread corruption and fraud in US elections. Seems to, again, be an effort to sow doubt in the credibility of our election processes. It also really doesn't seem to be grounded in reality.

• 10:45Hannah McCarthy?

  This is Sarah Cooper.

• 10:47Speaker 08

  I'm Sarah Cooper. I'm the Associate Director for Democracy at the Carter Center. I've been in that role for a little bit less than two years, and I sit on top of all of our work to provide nonpartisan oversight and commentary of elections in the United States.

• 11:04Nick Capodice?

  All right, we've talked with the Carter Center before.

• 11:06Hannah McCarthy?

  We have. Jason Carter helped us understand the non-problem of non-citizens voting. I recommend listening to the episode called "Fixing a Problem That Doesn't Exist" to understand that whole situation, as well as the details of the SAVE Act.

• 11:20Nick Capodice?

  And the Carter Center is the one that observes elections, right?

• 11:24Hannah McCarthy?

  Right, but observing elections in the United States is a new thing for the Carter Center. It used to be that they observed elections in other countries, only recently they decided that the United States may need a little bit of help as well.

• 11:37Speaker 08

  So as we pivoted to observing elections in the United States, we take a bit of a full-cycle approach to how that observation is done. We'll have individuals watching the process, starting with the testing of election equipment, things that are often happening weeks or months before Election Day, and all the way through to any post-election audit processes and the certification of results. It really is kind of a full-cycle that's important to watch and not just Election Day.

• 12:10Hannah McCarthy?

  And Sarah was super clear. It is not like the Carter Center is going in convinced there are bad actors in the election system. It's that, as with almost anything, when it comes to elections, there is always room for improvement.

• 12:26Speaker 08

  We talk about democracy as a constant work in progress, not a fixed point. And so by having observers make recommendations for ways that the process can improve and come back the next time to check and see where those recommendations implemented, it can contribute to better election administration over time as well.

• 12:44Hannah McCarthy?

  But the thing that needs to be improved in the United States is not, despite the reasoning behind the SAVE Act, voter fraud.

• 12:52Speaker 08

  So the justification behind the proposed act really comes from claims about there being a need to tighten who is and is not allowed to vote in the United States. And so it does rest fairly heavily on claims of noncitizen voting.

• 13:11Speaker 09

  To stop illegal aliens and others, who are unpermitted persons, from voting in our sacred American elections. The cheating is rampant in our elections. It's rampant.

• 13:25Speaker 09

  It's very simple.

• 13:27Speaker 08

  So there have been, over the years, a number of attempts by states and by national organizations, including groups like the Brennan Center on the left and the Heritage Foundation on the right, to look at whether noncitizen voting is actually a real concern in the United States. And what we've found is this is a pretty insignificant problem. It is a very rare occurrence, and when it does occur, mostly seems to be individuals who are unaware of the law, were accidentally allowed to register. But just to give you a couple of examples, in March of last year, the Iowa Secretary of State's office did a pretty comprehensive look at their voter rolls. They identified 277 potential noncitizen

• 14:10Speaker 08

  registered voters. That's roughly 100th of 1% of all of the registered voters in the state. And among these, they found that 35 cast ballots that were counted in the 2024 general election. They referred all of these individuals to the state attorney general for further investigation.

• 14:31Nick Capodice?

  And honestly, if you're a Civics 101 listener, or if you just read any fact-based news on this, you probably already know that noncitizen voting is not the problem, not even close to the problem. So Hannah, what is the reason for needing election observers in the United States?

• 14:50Hannah McCarthy?

  It's the same reason the Carter Center has been observing elections in other countries for decades.

• 14:55Speaker 08

  Part of the reason why election observers have been able to play such a really, really valuable role is that that's been a little bit part of the game, that when political parties and their candidates do well, parties and candidates come forth and say this is the best election ever. And when parties and candidates do poorly, they come forth and say that there was widespread fraud and we can't trust the results.

• 15:18Hannah McCarthy?

  This is an important point here, and I want to make sure we don't miss it. The Carter Center has observed situations wherein, when a party does well, they say the election is great. And when a party does poorly, they say the election was fraudulent and illegitimate. And this is something that has been associated with and observed in other countries, countries where perhaps corruption and despotism have to be overcome in order for a democratic system to survive and thrive.

• 15:48Hannah McCarthy?

  But this isn't just the problem of other countries anymore. It's something that's going on here as well.

• 15:55Speaker 08

  So even though this isn't kind of new globally, it is a bit of a novelty in the US context to see these claims of fraud that have been so widely debunked really repeated at the highest levels for so long. And it is concerning for the future health of our democracy.

• 16:14Nick Capodice?

  Hannah, you are familiar with the Heritage Foundation, right?

• 16:18Hannah McCarthy?

  Very familiar, a right wing think tank in Washington DC that very much supports the claims of voter fraud in the United States.

• 16:25Nick Capodice?

  So it's interesting that you started this episode by talking about election corruption in the 19th century, because that is exactly how the Heritage Foundation sets up its voter fraud claims as well. They say it has been a problem for US elections in the United States since the very beginning.

• 16:44Hannah McCarthy?

  Right. And as I mentioned, there was fraud in the 19th century, and it was pretty wacky. It was also not nearly as widespread as people said it was then, though, to be fair, those juicy stories still tend to win out today over the facts and the numbers when it comes to fraud and corruption in the 19th century election system. And either way, the problem with the Heritage Foundation's claim is that it kind of ignores the 20th century. Is it possible to find instances of voter fraud throughout our history? Absolutely. Does it make any sense to compare today's election system to this system that included election day riots, deaths, and the long arm of Tammany Hall?

• 17:28Hannah McCarthy?

  And by the way, if you don't know what Tammany Hall is, look it up or call Nick. And no, it does not make sense.

• 17:37Nick Capodice?

  Well, it does make sense if you want people to doubt election results and the system itself.

• 17:44Hannah McCarthy?

  Good point. And if you want to make big changes, potentially unconstitutional changes. And we'll get to that after a quick break.

• 17:53Nick Capodice?

  Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once, and they keep working in the background.

• 18:38Nick Capodice?

  You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code CIVICS at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.

• 19:00Nick Capodice?

  Holiday season is coming, and I don't think I have to tell you this might be a tough one because things are expensive in the fall of 2026. Everyone I know is looking for ways to make a little extra money, prowling around the side hustle subreddits. But I will say, if you're looking to sell something, to launch a store fast before the holiday rush, Shopify is the one-stop-shop platform for making a professional-looking store without touching a line of code. You can sell anything, and you can sell it anywhere that people shop online. You can have it done in minutes, and you can launch before Black Friday, that time of year when more people are already shopping and ready to buy.

• 19:44Nick Capodice?

  So if you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/civics to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/civics. Just go to Shopify.com/civics today to hear your first...

• 20:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  Make them remember you.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Hey, listen! Power up your play with Nintendo Switch 2 and experience Link's legendary adventure, now reborn in vibrant detail on our fastest and most powerful system yet.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  And harness the power of the Ocarina with the built-in microphone. Hmm hmm hmm, hmm hmm hmm.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. Game and system sold separately. Game rated everyone 10 and up.

• 20:51Nick Capodice?

  We're back. We are talking to Sarah Cooper from the Carter Center, a nonpartisan organization that, among other things, observes elections around the world in order to uphold democracy. And now they are trying to do it in the United States as well. And just before the break, Hannah, you said something about big changes?

• 21:10Hannah McCarthy?

  All right, well, I buried the lead a little bit on this episode. My initial reason for speaking with Sarah was to try to understand this phrase that has been everywhere lately, but doesn't seem to have a clear explanation.

• 21:23Speaker 10

  President Trump is now openly calling for the federal government to take over elections in more than a dozen states.

• 21:28Speaker 09

  The Republicans should say, "We want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting."

• 21:40Speaker 11

  Trump says Republicans should nationalize voting in the U.S.

• 21:43Speaker 12

  You heard him say Republicans should take over the elections in 15 places without giving specific details or naming those locations.

• 21:56Speaker 08

  And so it's a little bit unclear what's meant by that.

• 22:00Hannah McCarthy?

  Sarah Cooper again there. As you just heard, Donald Trump called on Republicans to, quote, "nationalize elections." This is one of those rare times, Nick, wherein I had to call on Merriam-Webster. The dictionary defines nationalization as "to invest control or ownership of in the national government."

• 22:20Nick Capodice?

  The dictionary needs a dictionary sometimes. You know, Hannah, why put it that way? Basically, nationalization means give the federal government control.

• 22:30Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, so right off the bat there, Nick, why might this raise some flags in these United States of America?

• 22:36Nick Capodice?

  Because of the Constitution.

• 22:38Speaker 08

  The Constitution vests authority for administering federal elections with states and with local authorities, subject to congressional legislation regulating the manner of elections.

• 22:49Nick Capodice?

  This one I do know. Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1.

• 22:53Hannah McCarthy?

  The times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.

• 23:01Speaker 08

  The US is actually a little bit of an outlier in terms of democracies. We have a very decentralized election system. We have more than 9,000 unique election jurisdictions. And that's actually one of the real strengths of the system. Each jurisdiction follows policies and procedures that are adapted to the local context, adapted to the local needs. And they do that within the bounds of national and state law, and that was very much by design. And having this constitutional division of power between states and the federal government has been a very important longstanding check on partisan influence in the election administration process. We can also think of it as a little bit of a safeguard against malign influence

• 23:42Speaker 08

  and cybersecurity threats. It would be hard to mount an attack at scale on our election systems because each jurisdiction is doing things a little bit differently within the bounds, again, of national and state law.

• 23:57Hannah McCarthy?

  Now, like Sarah said, the Constitution does give Congress, like the federal Congress, the ability to pass a law to make or change election regulation.

• 24:07Speaker 08

  There are three main grants of power to Congress that are relevant to elections in our Constitution. Congress has the power to enforce the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress has the power to enforce the ban on racial discrimination in the Fifteenth Amendment. Article One, Section Four of the Election Clause grants Congress power to regulate congressional, although not state and local, elections. And there have been a small, but noticeable, number of times when federal election legislation has gone through and has made significant changes to our election process.

• 24:43Hannah McCarthy?

  So in addition to the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments, Congress has passed the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. We won't go into the details of those here, but suffice it to say, they did not directly restrict voting in America. They were not explicitly designed to make it harder. And neither those constitutional amendments nor those laws constitute taking over or nationalizing elections, as President Trump called on Republicans to do.

• 25:13Speaker 08

  One thing that does immediately give me pause is that exact framing that Republicans ought to nationalize the voting, as we talked about up top. Going back to the founding of the United States and the drafting of our Constitution, our founders were very careful to put checks and balances into the system to ensure that there couldn't be partisan influence over federal elections. And so, any kind of talk, whether it would be Democrats should nationalize elections, Republicans should nationalize elections, automatically gives me a little bit of pause. To me, that implies having the federal government exercise more direct control over how elections

• 25:54Speaker 08

  would be administered and would fly in the face of hundreds of years of US election law and precedent. And so, it's a little bit of a question mark, but I think a question mark that gives some cause for concern.

• 26:11Hannah McCarthy?

  Okay. Now, after Trump made this statement, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said that what he meant was that Congress should pass the SAVE Act.

• 26:21Speaker 13

  What does President Trump mean when he says Republicans ought to nationalize voting? What does that look like in practice?

• 26:27Speaker 14

  What the President was referring to is the SAVE Act, which is a huge, common sense piece of legislation that Republicans have supported, that President Trump is committed to signing into law during his term. And he spoke with the Speaker directly about that yesterday, about the need to get that bill on the floor.

• 26:44Nick Capodice?

  Did Levitt address the, quote, "We should take over the voting in at least many 15 places," end quote?

• 26:50Hannah McCarthy?

  She did not. The SAVE Act does not specifically target any individual places, nor is it clear how the SAVE Act constitutes taking over, or nationalization, which, if we're just gonna go with the dictionary definition, does mean giving the federal government control.

• 27:08Nick Capodice?

  All right, I need to ask about another thing here, Hannah. Last year, Trump issued an executive order saying that ballots had to be cast and received on Election Day, and documentary proof of citizenship was required to vote. And the lawsuits followed, and the courts blocked this order, for the most part, and said that the President cannot bypass Congress and do this. But I have heard there is another potential executive order in the works.

• 27:40Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, several activists drafted an executive order that would declare a national emergency and ban mail-in voting and voting machines. Now, reports say it's circulating around the White House, but Trump says he's not planning on doing this.

• 27:56Speaker 13

  Are you considering a national emergency around the midterm election?

• 28:00Hannah McCarthy?

  Who told you that?

• 28:01Speaker 13

  There's been reporting that there's an executive order, proposed executive order about this. Are you looking at that? Are you considering that?

• 28:11Hannah McCarthy?

  On March 18th, Jerome Corus, the conservative commentator and conspiracy theorist, known in part for promoting the lie that former President Barack Obama was not a US citizen, claimed that the emergency declaration is, quote, "being prepared."

• 28:25Nick Capodice?

  So, big old grain of salt on that one, but I just have to ask, can Donald Trump do that? Can he declare a national emergency and just radically change elections?

• 28:41Hannah McCarthy?

  Let's start with one basic principle here.

• 28:44Speaker 08

  To put it very simply, the president has no significant power over election administration in the United States. And that is by design, and that's a really important check in the system to ensure that we don't see kind of high-profile partisan influence over our election process.

• 29:06Hannah McCarthy?

  Which is not to say that there have not been presidential actions related to voting in the past.

• 29:11Speaker 08

  So, there have been other presidents that have issued executive orders related to election administration, and that includes President Trump during his first term. But these orders have been very limited, and they've been reflective, again, of that extremely limited role that the executive branch can play in administering elections. So, for example, in 2013, President Obama signed an executive order to establish a Presidential Commission of Election Administration. President Trump in 2017 signed an executive order similarly to establish a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, and then terminated that commission through executive order in 2018.

• 29:54Speaker 08

  So, generally speaking, the executive branch has authority to commission executive agencies to draft reports. They can prioritize particular activities or ask executive agencies to prioritize particular activities. But the short answer to your question is no. The executive branch does not have authority to propose substantive changes to the voting process that would require state or federal legislation.

• 30:17Nick Capodice?

  All right, I hear that. But we also know that Trump has declared national emergencies to bypass Congress when it comes to border control and tariffs, even in the energy industry. National emergencies are a completely different ballgame. Could he use one of those to control elections?

• 30:36Hannah McCarthy?

  Sarah thinks it's pretty unlikely.

• 30:40Hannah McCarthy?

  And that if Trump were to try this, it would likely be contested in court. And just to be clear, the justification behind this potential declaration of a national emergency to control elections, it's rooted in something that, at this point, feels like it happened six lifetimes ago, China's interference in the 2020 election. And that justification has a fundamental flaw to it.

• 31:04Speaker 08

  There was this 2021 intelligence review that took place and concluded that China did not go through with efforts to influence the 2020 election.

• 31:13Nick Capodice?

  So Hannah, this really brings me back to what Sarah was saying earlier, that these false claims, at the highest level, erode trust in the system. And recently, Trump said that the only way Democrats could win in an upcoming election is if they cheat.

• 31:31Speaker 09

  They want to cheat, they have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat.

• 31:37Nick Capodice?

  I mean, imagine if a teacher said, "Look, I know that half of this class cannot pass the test without stealing the answers. So if anyone in this half of the class gets an A, you know they cheated."

• 31:51Hannah McCarthy?

  Right, well, that teacher would probably be fired, because that is patently absurd. But we are not talking about a teacher, we are talking about the President of the United States of America, who says that the election system, one of the fundamental bedrocks of a functioning American democracy, the thing that allows us to hire and fire the people who are in charge, doesn't work, and the people in charge need to take it over, even though the Constitution says the states, not the people in Washington, are the ones who are by and large in charge.

• 32:23Nick Capodice?

  AKA, the citizens are in charge.

• 32:26Hannah McCarthy?

  So what do the citizens do? It doesn't really make sense to ignore the people who you hired, right? You did hire them, you should definitely pay attention to them. And then you, the person who hired them, should check their work. If the chicken says the sky is falling, well, that is a really big deal. You should absolutely go outside, look up, and see if it's true.

• 32:53Hannah McCarthy?

  And the Carter Center has a proposal when it comes to what citizens can and perhaps should do when they have concerns.

• 33:01Speaker 08

  When the Carter Center observes elections, or when we talk about domestic election observers or nonpartisan election observation, it really is an individual who's looking out for all voters. They are providing oversight of whether elections are conducted in accordance with the rule of law, in accordance with internationally established standards, to ensure that elections are transparent, to ensure that they have these mechanisms for effective redress like we talked about, so that if something does go wrong in the process, there's a way to address that and correct that, making sure that elections are competitive. And they provide regular public commentary about the quality of the process to really

• 33:45Speaker 08

  help shape public perspective of how the elections are run.

• 33:48Nick Capodice?

  Is that the same thing as being a poll worker?

• 33:51Hannah McCarthy?

  No, election observers are a special thing. I should say, poll workers, the people who sign up to, as the name suggests, work the polls on election day, their job often includes making sure that everyone is following the law at the polls. But an election observer is monitoring the whole process.

• 34:09Speaker 08

  They're kind of off in the corner, not attracting attention. You know, it's a little bit like watching paint dry. They sit in a tabulation center, or they sit in the facility where machines are being tested, or they sit in a voting location and use a structured checklist that they've received, and that's being used kind of all across the jurisdiction where we're observing, to tick off the things that they see. And that way, we have a sense of how the election is being conducted at scope and scale.

• 34:39Nick Capodice?

  It's kind of like a health inspector for the election process.

• 34:43Hannah McCarthy?

  And like Sarah said, not all states have a process for this. But in some of those states that do, the Carter Center is rolling these programs out. And because we do have a decentralized election system, observers need different training depending on the state.

• 34:59Speaker 08

  So before the Carter Center mobilizes observers or works with partners to mobilize observers, they're required to go through a pretty detailed training about the stage of the election process that they're supposed to watch. That can be anywhere from four to eight hours. Again, for them to be familiar with all the different types of election equipment they might see, the different types of election workers they might encounter, what those safeguards that they should expect to see in the process are. And then, one of the ways that we ensure, and that I see is kind of a real value add to this methodology, we're asking observers not just to report when they see problems, but again, to kind of tick off, and it's a very long laundry list of questions,

• 35:42Speaker 08

  typically about 60 to 100 different things that they're looking at, depending on the stage of the process. And so by taking that very rigorous, structured approach, asking observers to report positive things as well as negative things, that really does give us kind of the database to validate when elections are well administered.

• 36:02Hannah McCarthy?

  And, you know, Sarah explained that that is what these observers are seeing in this country.

• 36:09Speaker 08

  From states where we had these pilot projects in 2024, and again, for local elections in 2025, overall, that's what the observers saw, that there may have been kind of isolated instances of human error, but at scope and scale and across the wide range of procedures that they were watching, election administrators were really doing their jobs well, and we could have a lot of trust in the election process.

• 36:35Nick Capodice?

  So now, I guess, the question is, what we decide to do?

• 36:43Nick Capodice?

  Do we trust the people in charge who are saying it's all messed up? Or do we trust each other, the regular people who are doing this and saying it's okay?

• 36:54Hannah McCarthy?

  I think there is an additional option, too. You don't actually have to take anyone's word for it if you're feeling unsure about our election system. You can take action. You can do something about it. This is a democracy, and you are allowed to play a role.

• 37:12Speaker 08

  I think the major thought I would want to leave listeners with is that whatever your kind of questions, concerns, fear around the election process, there is a role for you. It's really important, vitally important for you to get involved. We do have a lot of safeguards in our process. States' rights are a really important backstop this election cycle. States do have ultimate authority under the Constitution for how elections are run. And we just encourage folks, again, to take advantage of some of those great ways that they can get involved. It'll be a really rewarding experience.

• 37:52Hannah McCarthy?

  That does it for this episode. It was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice, and Marina Hanke, who is our producer. Rebecca LaVoy is our executive producer. Music in this episode is from Epidemic Sound. Lots of stuff came up in this episode that we did not get into the details of, but fortunately, we have a ton of details on our website in the form of hundreds of episodes of Civics 101. And that website is civics101podcast.org. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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• 39:09Speaker 00

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

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  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

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  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

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  Film for IMAX.

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  Make them remember you.

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  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Leaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

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  And harness the power of the Ocarina with the built-in microphone.

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  The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. Game and system sold separately. Game rated everyone 10 and up.