Brian Lehrer: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to day one of the Fall Pledge Drive edition of The Brian Lehrer Show. We hope you will stand up for independent journalism, news and talk, stand up for information and disinformation. We'll talk more about that when the time comes. We start where we left off yesterday in our lead segment in our 30 Issues election series, which is doing 10 straight days on democracy in peril. Monday was part one, when is election fraud actually a problem, and when is claiming it a fraud in itself? Yesterday was part two, how to achieve and then keep ballot access for all eligible voters.

Today, we come to part three, maybe the most important of all the 30 issues we're doing this year, how we count votes and certify elections is under attack. Our conversation about this will focus on four of the states that Donald Trump lost in 2020 but tried to flip to his column by any means necessary. All four of these states now have Republican candidates for governor who are not pro-democracy Republicans if we can use that label, but the kind who might help use their power to overturn elections that their party actually loses.

Our guest for this is a journalist who is devoted to this speech. She is Kira Lerner, democracy reporter for the States News Service, which as its name suggests covers state governments around the country. Kira's article that we'll be focusing on first appeared in the Arizona Mirror. It's called Kari Lake is one of 4 'Big Lie' swing state GOP guv candidates. They could upend the 2024 presidential election. It's about candidates for governor who are vocal 2020 election deniers and have indicated that they would be willing to take aim at election results they don't like. Kira, thanks so much for your reporting and for joining us for this. Welcome to WNYC.

Kira Lerner: Great. Thank you for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Can you start by just letting people know a little bit about the context of your work? You've covered democracy issues at the state level in multiple states, or how would you describe your beat?

Kira Lerner: States Newsroom has news outlets based in 28 different state capitals. I am a national democracy reporter, so I'm covering issues in the states and then also trends across the states [crosstalk] at states from a national perspective.

Brian Lehrer: That's great and so important right now. Your article about the Republican nominees for governor in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin is what we'll be talking about. Why those four states?

Kira Lerner: In the upcoming November midterm elections, more than half of governor races, so that's 19 of 36 races, actually have an election denier on the ballot. I'm paying particular attention to those four states that you mentioned, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because as we know these are critical swing states. These are states that are likely to help decide the 2024 election, and they're all states where the Republican nominee for governor is someone who does not believe that Joe Biden rightfully won the 2020 election and has said that they would not have certified the results.

Looking ahead to 2024, I think these four states have particularly dangerous Republican candidates and who could actually have a lot of power over elections if they are elected governor.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about that power a little bit because your article reminds us that the position of governor is relevant to who wins a presidential election because, for one thing, governors transmit the electoral votes to Congress. Would a Big Lie governor, your phrase, Big Lie governors, Big Lie governor have the power to sideline the real winning electors and appoint electors from their own party, even if their presidential candidate lost?

Kira Lerner: Yes, it's a little complicated. Governors are one of just three statewide offices that are in charge of making sure that our elections are free and fair. For that reason, they do have a significant amount of power. Governors can sign in veto legislation concerning the administration of elections. They control the budget and how much financial support counties and localities get to administer elections. They can do things like issue executive orders in emergency situations when it comes to voting, which we saw a lot of during the COVID pandemic.

In Pennsylvania, the governor actually appoints the Secretary of State, so electing an election denying governor would also mean that we would likely see a Secretary of State chosen that also denies elections. The actual role of the governor in the certification process depends on the state, but in all 50 states, the governors do have to transmit the electoral votes to Congress.

Brian Lehrer: They all transmit the presidential election results in terms of the electoral votes. As you say, and your article says, "State law from state to state determines whether governors play a part in the certification of the elections." What's the difference?

Kira Lerner: The actual certification is going through the votes and improving and making sure that the votes are ready to be transmitted. Then the transmitting to Congress is more of a constitutional formality, but we have heard a lot of these election denying candidates saying that they would try and get in the way of that process of actually sending the electoral votes to Congress, which we know happened in 2020. There are concerns that some of these Big Lie governors might refuse to send the certified results to Congress. Some election experts I've talked to say that there is a backstop, the courts will step in.

For the most part, entirely we saw in 2020 that the courts were not having any of Trump's nonsense. Courts require evidence when it comes to allegations of voter fraud, and the courts did not side with him when he tried to stop the certification of votes. There are still concerns that if election deniers are elected, they could work to erode those protections that we have in place now.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go through these four states and the candidates who you call Big Lie candidates for governor that your story focuses on. Let's start with Arizona, where you say Republican candidate, Kari Lake, has said she would not have certified Biden's victory in Arizona. What reason did she give for that?

Kira Lerner: Kari Lake claims that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election just like a lot of these other candidates do. Lake is actually a member of the America First Secretary of State Coalition, which is a group of mostly election denying Secretary of State candidates. A few governors are also members. Lake has made this a big focal point of her campaign. She likes to stand on stage at events with a sledgehammer and claim that vote tabulators are rigged and she would do away with them.

This coalition I mentioned wants to replace electronic tabulators with hand counting and do other things like eliminating vote by mail and early voting. She is definitely one of the candidates that said she will not accept. She has not guaranteed that she will accept the results of her own election and she said it's likely that if she does not win, she will not accept the results.

Brian Lehrer: Why is hand counting a threat if you think it is to an accurate election vote count?

Kira Lerner: Hand counting is extremely expensive. It's burdensome, it's time-consuming. I think the time-consuming part is the part that's really dangerous. We know that the period between an election day and when results are released is the most dangerous period of time for the spread of misinformation, and the longer that it takes for us to get results released, the more time there is for candidates to sow distrust in the election and to spread misinformation. Also, just local election officials don't have the time and resources to hand count ballots.

They're already strapped for time and money as it is, and adding to that burden by making them go through often lengthy ballots and go through a hand-counting process in a county that's not small is a really difficult task.

Brian Lehrer: Next is Pennsylvania where you write that Republican candidate Doug Mastriano is an extreme supporter of Trump's Big Lie, and in fact, Mastriano was caught on video crossing police lines himself on January 6th. In Pennsylvania, the governor appoints the Secretary of State who certifies elections, and he has said he would appoint someone who would dramatically reform elections. Do you know what kinds of reforms that could put democracy itself in peril in Pennsylvania?

Kira Lerner: Yes. One of the most dangerous things I think that Mastriano has called for is requiring everyone to re-register to vote. Now, it's likely that that would violate the National Voter Registration Act, but Mastriano believes that voter rolls are so riddled with inaccuracies and with people who aren't actually eligible to be on the list that it's best to start over. We know who this would impact. This would impact voters that are low-income, people of color, people who are less likely to have the documents required and the time and the knowledge to go and re-register. That's one voting change that Mastriano has called for. He also, like a lot of these other candidates, want to eliminate vote by mail and early voting and use just paper ballots.

Brian Lehrer: It's amazing how some of these things that are carefully crafted to sound neutral like, everybody just re-registered to vote, anybody who's genuinely registered can just register again, no problem, are actually voter suppression techniques. Right?

Kira Lerner: Exactly. Requiring someone to go through a registration process is already a hurdle. There's a number of hurdles that voters face from the point of registration to actually casting a ballot, and any additional barrier you place just makes it that much more likely that someone is going to be turned off from actually submitting a ballot.

Brian Lehrer: We're talking to Kira Lerner if you're just joining us, democracy reporter. That's her beat for the States News Service. She reports from and on various state capitals on what's going on with respect to democracy. One of her recent articles that we thought was worth inviting her on for was about elections taking place now in four states where the Republican candidate for governor is an election denier who might change how election votes are counted and elections are certified in ways that could lead to big lies of the future actually prevailing instead of the truthful election results.

We've talked about Pennsylvania and Arizona, two of the four states that she primarily writes about. Let's go on to Michigan. The Republican candidate there is Tudor Dixon who your report has said numerous times that she thinks fraud cost Trump the election and has criticized Michigan's Secretary of State for running the 2020 election "in a way that was rife for fraud." Does Dixon get specific about how or what she would change in how elections are run?

Kira Lerner: She hasn't gotten as specific as some of the other candidates as far as I've seen, but she's playing by the same playbook that these other candidates do. We know what a hotbed Michigan was for conspiracy theories after the 2020 election, and she puts a lot of the blame on Michigan's Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, without a lot of solutions. That's mostly what we've been seeing from Tudor Dixon.

Brian Lehrer: All right, then let's go next to Wisconsin. Remember, listeners, these are all swing states which is why it matters so much to 2024 if anti-democracy governors win there. Your article cites the gubernatorial candidate in Wisconsin saying he would consider signing legislation that comes to his desk from the GOP-controlled state assembly to decertify election results. Tell us that candidate's name and what that means or how that would work decertifying election results if the assembly passed the bill.

Kira Lerner: Tim Michels is the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin. He's a millionaire construction executive, and he has called for decertifying the 2020 results which is like many of these candidates he's fixated on 2020 still not willing to move on. He's gone back and forth a little bit more on how far he would go in actually pressing for decertification. He said he would need to see the details before making a full decision, but Biden did beat Trump in Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes. This was not a particularly close election and it's not likely that he has any evidence that would lead to any kind of court siding with him in any kind of dispute.

Brian Lehrer: Your article notes that there are other states where the Republican candidates for governor have indicated they would use their powers to overturn election results, but you focused on these four because these are states where candidates have a real shot at winning and that are likely swing states in 2024. Your article is about these four candidates, and that's what we chose to focus on for this segment. You also mentioned in the article that even as a governor, they would have less of a direct impact on elections than six election deniers who are running for Secretary of State in various states.

Do you remember off the top of your head if those are in the same four states plus two others, or how many states overall do you think we're looking at where these are swing states and actual election deniers might wind up in charge of elections?

Kira Lerner: There are a number of states where the entire ticket has candidates for the statewide candidates that are election deniers. Arizona is one of them. I don't have the full list off the top of my head, but I'm paying particular attention to Arizona because we do see Kari Lake running for governor, and then Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate for Secretary of State is one of the most vocal election deniers running for Secretary of State across the country.

I think it's particularly dangerous when the possibility that candidates like this might be elected and can work in tandem to erode elections and public trust in elections. It's one thing if just one of these candidates is elected that is dangerous in and of itself, but when we have multiple, the fact that they can work together I think is really something we have to keep an eye on.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, we're just about out of time, but could you just say one more thing about your beat before you go? Your job title with the States Newsroom is democracy reporter. Is that a new beat for them? I feel like until the last few years there were certainly always debates about the rules governing elections. We know that, but the context of democracy was a given. How new is your beat under that name?

Kira Lerner: Democracy is a new beat for States Newsroom. I have been covering voting rights and elections for over a decade, but this is my first position where my title is specifically democracy reporter, which I think says a lot about the state of our democracy. I don't know if that would be my title if our democracy was safe and secure. I've been encouraged by the number of newsrooms that are hiring reporters and editors to specifically focus on democracy. I think it's critically important heading into the midterm elections and heading into 2024, and so, yes, I will continue to keep an eye on election administration and voting and all kinds of issues related to our democracy.

Brian Lehrer: It's one of the things we're devoted to on this show, but being based here at a local radio station in New York, it's good to know that people like you are out there looking at many states and weaving it all together. I hope we talk again. Kira Lerner covers democracy for the States Newsroom. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Kira Lerner: Thanks so much for having me.

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