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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom filling in for Brian today. On today's show, we'll talk about several proposals Governor Hochul has been rolling out ahead of her State of the State speech, which is on Tuesday. She's got plans related to the cost of insulin, maternal and infant health, how schoolchildren are taught to read, and of course, housing. New York Times reporter Grace Ashford will join us to talk about how the legislature is sizing up these ideas.

Plus 2024 is not just a big election year here in the United States, there are more than 60 countries with national elections, and the state of democracy globally could look very different when all is said and done. Later in the show, we'll talk to a woman who is on a quest to visit every museum in New York City. There are more than 170 by her count, and she'll recommend some lesser-known museums to check out.

First, tomorrow is January 6th, and it marks three years since violent protesters stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC in an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Despite piles of evidence and convictions that show participants committed a variety of crimes, and related charges against former President Donald Trump, a new Washington Post University of Maryland poll found that Americans still have very different ways of looking at what happened during the attack on the Capitol.

The Washington Post article about the poll quotes an independent voter from Texas who said, "The people who went there to express their views to support Trump were peaceful. The government implants were the violent ones, the FBI, the police people that were put in there, the Antifa and the BLM hired by George Soros, everybody knows that." Now as we head into this pivotal election year, Donald Trump is, of course, the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president.

My next guests say there are many threats to our democracy to look for ahead of the election, including widespread election denial, and how that might play out in November and how Donald Trump could potentially use the Insurrection Act to tamp down dissent if he's reelected. We'll talk now about these threats to our democracy with the anniversary of January 6th, 2021, tomorrow.

Wendy Weiser is the vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. Our colleague, Joseph Nunn is counsel in the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program, Wendy and Joseph, welcome back to WNYC.

Wendy Weiser: Thank you for having us.

Joseph Nunn: Happy to be here. Thanks.

Brigid Bergin: Wendy and Joseph, there is really so so much to unpack here, but since tomorrow is January 6th, I'm wondering where your mind goes first today. Do you think about election security issues or the role of misinformation, the fact that Donald Trump is on the ballot again? Wendy, why don't you go ahead and start?

Wendy Weiser: I think that we are still living in the shadow of January 6th. I guess where my mind goes is that the election-- I will turn it over to Joseph for one moment, and then I will come back.

Joseph Nunn: What I'm thinking about is the Insurrection Act, which is relevant here because events like January 6th are partially why the Insurrection Act exists. It allows the president, in theory, to send in the military when civilian authorities, when the police are overwhelmed by an insurrection or rebellion, something like that, to help execute the law, to help prop up and support civilian government.

The problem with the Insurrection Act is there are no gurdrails, there are no safeguards to stop abuse, to prevent it from being used pretextually, or to prevent it from being used, perhaps, to tempt on an insurrection but then potentially an attempt to stop certification from continuing. An attempt wouldn't necessarily be legal, but it could be attempted.

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Wendy Weiser: I am back and I apologize for that disruption. I did want to add to what Joseph said, and I was saying that we're living in the shadow of January 6th in many ways, many of the factors, that toxic mix of factors that lead to January 6th are still with us and still threatening our election system. The hyper-polarized climate of disinformation, even weaponized disinformation, especially around elections. The growing distrust in our institutions and even willingness to abandon them or subvert them to win power.

A heightened climate of violence and as these threats have increased, we've done very little to increase the safeguards to protect our election systems against future attacks, against future conflagrations, and to build resilience against disinformation and against these threats. It is a somber moment because while there's been a lot of effort to lay out the facts and start taking important steps towards accountability for what the country went through on January 6th, we have not done enough to shore up the safeguards and clean up the vulnerabilities in our election system, political system that actually gave way to January 6th, and that were exposed by some of the tactics that were used.

Brigid Bergin: Wendy, on that point of accountability, I noticed that you shared a New York Times count of how many people who were present at the Capitol on January 6th have been charged, pleaded guilty, and convicted. By The Times count, more than 1200 people have been arrested so far, 170 people have been convicted, 2 have been acquitted, and more than 700 people have pleaded guilty.

I think it's interesting to note these numbers since people may have only heard of a few of the more high-profile cases against members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, but there really have been so many more prosecutions. What's your sense of how the justice system is working to hold these people accountable, and does it tell us anything about our post-January 6th world and maybe recovery for this country?

Wendy Weiser: What we went through on January 6th was not only unprecedented but was incredibly damaging to the country and our democracy. We do need accountability to restore our system and democracy on a stronger footing. The legal system moves at a slower pace than the political system. We need to have evidence built and due process provided.

It's been systematically-- as we see, there's been a lot of progress made in gathering and holding accountable many of the people who participated in the insurrection. Of course, the very biggest case of all, and the most important one that requires a public airing as soon as possible is the pending prosecution, the federal prosecution of former President Donald Trump that is currently on hold pending questions of immunity. That is really, I think, going to be the most critical piece as we head into the 2024 election to have a public airing of what really happened and to ensure a full path to recovery from that insurrection.

Brigid Bergin: Wendy, do you have any sense on when we might see movement on that particular case when some of those questions might be resolved, and we can see a full hearing of this trial?

Wendy Weiser: Well, just this coming week, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals is going to be hearing arguments on the former president's claim that he is absolutely immune from prosecution from any crimes committed while he was in office. I anticipate that that's going to be decided very quickly and that it will get right up to the US Supreme Court. There is a lot of pressure on the US Supreme Court also to act very quickly.

The trial is currently scheduled in that case to take place in early March. Hopefully, these subsidiary proceedings will be dealt with quickly so it doesn't impact the trial schedule or doesn't impact it too much. That's currently the schedule in that case. I should note that the criminal accountability cases are very important. There's also been a lot of accountability in civil trials as well, and I do want to hold up the recent ruling on behalf of two election officials of Georgia, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who are subject of a relentless campaign of lies against Rudy Giuliani. They won $148 million in defamation for all the damage that those lies about their alleged conduct in the 2020 election that has really upended their lives, and there've been a number of other matters like that. The other very big one was the one by Dominion, the voting machine company that won a $787 million defamation lawsuit as well.

Brigid Bergin: Wendy, it's so important what you're talking about there because, of course, the case in Georgia, we're talking about election workers. These are people who are often not paid a lot, are asked to do incredibly important vital work, and in that particular case, election workers who became targets of an unrelenting campaign and then a voting company, Dominion Voting.

You've also written extensively, both of you, about issues that support really what we think of as the fragility of our democracy, as I've heard people write and say. Wendy, in your piece last year, you wrote that election deniers have a playbook for 2024. I want to unpack some of what you listed there as some of their tactics, but what was your overall objective of that piece? Why was it so important to lay out the way people are trying to undermine our elections early in the cycle?

Wendy Weiser: Well, it was important for people to understand I thought that the threats to our elections didn't end on January 6th. The fact that the 2022 election actually proceeded without being completely subverted did not mean we were out of the woods heading into 2024 and did not mean that there still wasn't concerted efforts to undermine voting rights, weaken our electoral system, and make it more vulnerable to attempts to subvert outcomes.

We wanted to chronicle all of the factors that were going on maybe more below the radar, that were making our system more vulnerable, and that were building on all the tactics that were used in the lead-up to the 2020 election and in the aftermath. They're still present, and we still need to address them.

Brigid Bergin: We could have an entire show on the different tactics that you lay out on this report. There are 14 different elements that you focus on, but I want to talk about specifically one of the issues that you raise, the more than dozen or so-- excuse me, the candidates who are election deniers that have run for positions in power that are actually administering our elections. How successful have those candidates been, and are there places around the country that you're particularly concerned about?

Wendy Weiser: I do want to start with a positive note. In the 2022 election, all of the most prominent election deniers running for roles where they could run elections or have control over election administration in the battleground states lost those races. That was a very big win, showing that the public really does not want to have those kinds of shenanigans running their elections.

At the same time, we did see in many other places across the country election deniers actually did succeed in actually winning either statewide office or positions where they can run major county elections. We currently have 28 states that have election deniers and at least one state or local position. Six are running statewide-level elections, and 14 are in major local elections.

This is only one of the positions where election deniers have taken root in our government. Congress and state legislatures are another place where there are literally hundreds of people who were other public election deniers and many who also participated in the January 6th events, and attempt to overturn the election are still in positions of political power. I will say that at the same time, we are seeing because of the relentless attacks on election officials, and it's important to know that most election officials across the country are honorable public servants who are doing all of the important work of upholding and running our electoral [unintelligible 00:15:10] system and keeping together our democracy.

They have been facing relentless attacks, and those did not stop after 2020.

The story of Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss that we just talked about is an exemplary story, but it is not the only one. We have surveyed, and we work with election officials across the country and most of them fear for the safety of their colleagues. One in five reported in a survey we did that they feel being actually assaulted on the job. More than roughly a third that we've surveyed, the numbers are likely much more, have actually been threatened and harassed and had their families threatened and harassed for doing their jobs. This has been a very heightened and frightening environment for election officials.

We're seeing a huge turnover crisis among election officials. Many of these seasoned experienced professionals who've been running our elections have been leaving their jobs in droves. In some places, it's been really dramatic. Kansas, for example, some more than 75% turnover of their election officials since 2020. In North Carolina, election directors in 47 of 100 counties have left their jobs since [unintelligible 00:16:26].

It's a very significant leaching of expertise because of this threat of violence and climate of threats. It's in that context you see, in some cases, it's election deniers that are replacing those seasoned professionals and making our election systems more vulnerable to manipulation and threat.

Brigid Bergin: Well, Wendy, I'm glad you prefaced that answer with some of the good news, frontloading that because there is a lot of very, very serious news and very serious threats that we're facing across the system from people who administer those elections to, of course, voters and candidates. Listeners, we want you to be part of this conversation. It's been just about three years since the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.

How are you feeling about the state of our democracy? Do you have questions for our experts in this area, maybe about what's been done to strengthen some of the guardrails in some places of our democracy and what still worries you? The number 212-433 WNYC, that's 212-433-9692. Do you have thoughts about what should be done to make sure that the 2024 election is free and fair and to make sure something like January 6th doesn't ever happen again?

We want to hear from you. Give us a call. The number is 212-433-9692. Wendy, another question on that report. As I mentioned, you put together a pretty comprehensive look at some of the different tactics which could threaten our elections. What are some of the other ones that are being used by election deniers now, or maybe used in the upcoming election, that are particularly concerning to you?

Wendy Weiser: Well, one of the things that we've seen that's been new since 2020, we saw a real spike in legislation making it harder to vote. That has been going on for some time, even before 2020, but it really sharply increased since the 2020 election. At the same time, we saw this new species of law that we hadn't seen before, which is legislation that makes it easier for partisans to interfere in elections and in election administrations or election outcomes.

Those include laws that transfer powers and responsibilities away from election officials to partisan actors or criminalizing minor mistakes or pro-voter actions by election officials. Laws that remove checks on partisan actors like poll officers, even abusive ones, or creating legal mechanisms for partisans to call elections into doubt, or making it so that the-- undermining voting machines.

These are some of the new kinds of legislation that we've seen. At the same time, we've seen an increase in partisans actually trying to take advantage of maybe some of these vulnerabilities in our election system. One thing that we've seen a lot of are harassment of election workers and voters and an increasing mobilization of partisan poll watchers.

A whole raft of new laws across the country actually make it harder for election officials to manage polling places and remove disruptive or harassing poll watchers and polling places, which has been an important safeguard in our election system forever. In some cases, election officials will face criminal penalties now if they interfere with poll watchers.

That could create a real climate of harassment and even in some cases, more worrisome like even violence or disruption in polling places. That's one thing I'm worried about. I'm worried about the infiltration of election systems. We've seen in part fueled by these same conspiracy theories and disinformation, a lot of election deniers gaining unauthorized access to election equipment and election data often with the assistance of insiders who are now sympathetic to that cause or who are now increasingly from the ranks of the election deniers.

In a number of places, actually, we saw whole states or counties had to decommission voting machines because election deniers had gained unauthorized access to their code or to the machines or equipment in a way where their security could no longer be guaranteed. These kinds of making it easier to gain access to and threaten our elections, these are things that I've been worried about fueled by this disinformation and laws.

I guess another big worry I would say is artificial intelligence exacerbating all of these threats. The threats of disinformation, the security threats of our election systems, the threats of trust in our election institutions and in our political systems. That's another really significant threat I'm worried about heading into this election.

Brigid Bergin: One of the things that I thought was striking in the report is you towards the end, refer to an internal report from the National Republican Committee last year that suggested "Election-denying candidates will have a more coordinated and sophisticated election-denial campaign at their disposal in 2024." I think about some of the people who are in Congress now, there are 180 members in the house as the report noted who denied the results of the 2020 elections, 17 individuals in the Senate and those are not just folks from Red States here in New York.

We have several members including Representative Nicole Malliotakis here in the city, Elise Stefanik up in the north country who both refused to certify the 2020 presidential election results. Congresswoman Stefanik actually was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit here in New York to block the state's new early vote by mail law. It has not been successful so far. Is that kind of tactic using the courts to make it more difficult to vote something that you think we should be watching for here in New York and elsewhere?

Wendy Weise: Absolutely. That is actually another innovation in the lead-up to the 2020 election that the Trump campaign and the allies that were seeking to overturn the election results brought which is anti-voter lawsuits. A real raft of them, either lawsuits aimed at trying to overturn the elections or lawsuits aimed at trying to make it harder to vote or challenge measures that were facilitating voting in the states.

This was very unsuccessful in the lead-up to 2020 but it has continued throughout and we've seen literally hundreds of lawsuits across the country, not only challenging voter access laws like what we saw in New York but often ones that are actually trying to force election officials to take actions like be more aggressive in purging votes or to remove drop boxes. The courts are being used as a tool to try to accomplish these kinds of vote suppression or voting restrictions where the legislatures aren't acting. That has not achieved widespread success but it's achieved some success and it creates a lot of disruption and dislocation while it's going on.

That is definitely still an ongoing threat, and I expect it to increase as the election gets closer as we saw in the lead-up to the 2020 election. One of the other things that I will note as I talk about the coordinated plan is 2020, the attempts to overturn the election had a feeling of being somewhat improvised. I think there's been a little bit more of a systematic look of where were the points that actually thwarted those attempts to overturn the election or suppress votes. There have been systematic efforts to either replace officials who were in positions to thwart elections aversion efforts with people who are potentially more partisan, or less or more sympathetic to the election denial clause.

One example would be Georgia, where right after the election the state passed legislation that among other things actually removed the Secretary of State, the Republican Brad Raffensperger from the position of overseeing being the chair of the state election board to a non-voting member of that in part because of the very high profile action he took in refusing to find 12,000 votes for Donald Trump. We've seen other efforts like that where there have been efforts to remove authorities from election officials or positions that used those authorities to uphold the integrity of our elections.

Areas where there were attempts to suppress votes in 2020, attempts to try to throw out votes that were cast by mail were met by new laws that would actually make those votes illegal in future elections or that would not allow those votes to be counted. Areas where they were unable to mobilize enough people to be at the polls. There's been a several-year campaign to mobilize election deniers to try to be poll workers, poll watchers. There's a bigger army of people ready to take those positions now. 2024, absolutely I'm worried that these campaigns will be more coordinated and they'll be more ready to go in the event that there's a real concerted effort to try to [inaudible 00:27:17] the election.

Brigid Bergin: If you're just joining us listeners, I'm Brigid Bergin in for Brian Lehrer today. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back in a minute with my two guests from the Brennan Center. When we're back, we're going to talk more about the Insurrection Act, which many people say needs some urgent reform, especially if Donald Trump wins the presidency again. Stay with us.

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It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, in for Brian Lehrer today. My guests are Wendy Weiser, Vice President for Democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, and Joseph Nunn, counsel in the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program. Joseph, thank you for your patience. I want to bring you in to talk a little bit more about the Insurrection Act. You wrote a couple of months ago in Slate that reports have shown Donald Trump intends to use the Insurrection Act if he's reelected to quash dissent. Can you bring our listeners back to history class a little bit and remind people what the Insurrection Act is and when it became law?

Joseph Nunn: Sure. The Insurrection Act, at its core, what it's supposed to do is allow the president to use the military to support civilian authorities, the police, civilian government when they are overwhelmed by an insurrection, by rebellion, when the normal authorities are not able to enforce the law on their own. It's an extraordinarily old law. The earliest version was actually enacted in 1792. Some of the text from that version is still in the law today. It was amended a bit over the subsequent century, but the Insurrection Act hasn't been touched by Congress in any meaningful way in 150 years since 1874.

Brigid Bergin: How has Trump implied that he would use the Insurrection Act?

Joseph Nunn: As things stand, we have not heard a whole lot directly from Trump himself. It has been reported that close advisors to Trump are hoping for the president if he's reelected to invoke the Insurrection Act on day one to quash potential dissent, potential protests. The reason that's concerning is that there's very little that anyone could do to stop it from happening. The law as it's written would very likely allow that.

Brigid Bergin: Can you talk a little bit more about that. What the limitations of the law are, why Congress could not necessarily intervene, and how long something-- He says he would use it on day one, but is there anything to suggest that there is a time limit to how that power could be used?

Joseph Nunn: It's very easy to talk about the limitations because there aren't any. The way the Insurrection Act is written, it gives essentially unlimited discretion to the President to decide when and where to invoke it. There are no criteria in the Insurrection Act for whether a given situation warrants deploying troops. There's no definition of insurrection or rebellion. You add to that the breadth of the language and a very old Supreme Court decision from 1827 called Martin v. Mott, which said that the President's decision is conclusive on all of the persons. Essentially, an insurrection is whatever the President says is an insurrection. There is no role in the statute for the courts or for Congress.

There used to be. The earliest versions of the law actually required the President to go to a federal judge to certify that an insurrection existed. George Washington did that before he suppressed the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. There was also mechanisms that provided a role for Congress. All of those safeguards were stripped out over time, and they've never been added back yet.

Brigid Bergin: What are some-- Go ahead.

Joseph Nunn: No, please. Go ahead.

Brigid Bergin: I was wondering if you could talk about some of the more modern uses of the Insurrection Act. Given the way you've described it and the way it exists now, it feels like it's such a powerful tool that could be so dangerous. I'm curious if there had been efforts to reform it in the past, and then contrasting that with some of the ways it might have been used later than George Washington in our more modern history.

Joseph Nunn: Sure. The Insurrection Act has been used about 40 times over the course of US history. It hasn't been used since 1992 when it was used to suppress the riots in Los Angeles following the acquittal of the LAPD officers for the beating of a Black motorist, Rodney King. This is actually the longest the United States has ever gone without invoking the Insurrection Act since 1792. Probably the most famous uses of the Insurrection Act are today the use by Presidents Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy to compel desegregation in the South, to enforce federal court decisions desegregating schools.

That's how you ended up with paratroopers from the 101st Airborne escorting the Little Rock Nine to school in the 1950s. That's how the army ended up protecting James Meredith, the first Black student to enroll at Ole Miss in 1962. The insurrection, it's been used for what we might call appropriate purposes to enforce the law when, in those cases, local government is refusing to. It hasn't been used for civil rights enforcement since 1965.

Most of the modern uses, post-1965, it's been essentially used for riot control, usually in cities with large African-American populations that have been oppressed by systemic racism from local police. This is the 1967 Detroit riots, the Rodney King riots in 1992. That's how it's been used most recently.

Brigid Bergin: I see the Brennan Center has some ideas for how it should be reformed. What are some of those reforms that you're suggesting?

Joseph Nunn: There are really three key things that need to happen. First, there needs to be some clear and meaningful criteria for what situation justifies invoking the Insurrection Act, because there aren't any criteria right now. There needs to be some guidelines that will allow a court or anybody to assess, "Is this an appropriate use of the Insurrection Act?" Those criteria need to be added to the law. The second thing--

Brigid Bergin: Go ahead.

Joseph Nunn: The second thing that needs to happen is Congress and the courts need to be brought into the process. One of the best ways that could happen is through a time limit. Say the President invokes the Insurrection Act, that triggers a fairly short time limit, maybe seven or 10 days, that the President can use the Insurrection Act. Once that time limit's up, the authority to use the act would cease unless Congress acts to extend it. That would preserve the President's flexibility in a real crisis because emergencies happen in any society. That's why the Insurrection Act exists. It would mean that there would be something to stop automatically an abusive invocation of the act.

The third and final thing is there need to be some limits on what the military can do once deployed under the Insurrection Act. As things stand, there's nothing in the Insurrection Act that speaks to that. Historically, when using the Insurrection Act, the presidents have normally deployed people who you would expect, military police, sometimes paratroopers, people who can respond quickly. There's nothing in the Insurrection Act that says the President can't send tanks. You would want to add provisions like that. The only restriction that exists right now is that the Insurrection Act does not suspend other federal laws, and it doesn't suspend the Constitution.

Just because the President has invoked the Insurrection Act, that doesn't mean they can order the military to violate constitutional rights any more than the President can order federal law enforcement to violate constitutional rights.

Brigid Bergin: I'm going to go to--

Joseph Nunn: Go ahead.

Brigid Bergin: Sorry to cut you out, Joseph. We've had a bunch of callers calling in, and I want to thank our callers who I haven't been able to get into this because there is so much that both you and Wendy can tell us about both the threats and some of the proposed ways to address those threats in our elections. Vincent in Warren, New Jersey, has, I believe, a question specific to the Insurrection Act. Vincent, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling.

Vincent: Hi. Good morning. I am just incensed at this conversation because if this has been in place, it's been three years, why wasn't it used against the people who brought insurrection in plain sight? This gentleman should be in jail. Everybody knows it. It's ridiculous. If this is in place, and the gentleman speaking, I didn't catch his name, I'm sorry, I just turned it on. He said insurrection is whatever the President deems it to be. Why can't Biden just do what he needs to do and get this person out?

Brigid Bergin: Vincent, I'm sorry. Your line is breaking up a little bit, and I think it was hard for us to hear, but I think ultimately the question is, why couldn't Biden have used the Insurrection Act to quel what was the insurrection? Joseph, I don't know if you could make out what Vincent was saying there, but if you want to react to some of that and then talk possibly a little bit about, given that we are approaching the three-year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, why have we not seen a material change to this law? Is this yet another thing where a divided Congress may be holding things up?

Joseph Nunn: I have two thoughts. First, the Insurrection Act, the fact that it might be used for good doesn't overcome the problems with it. If the 2024 election was between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, I would still be here telling you that the Insurrection Act is a problem, that no one should have this much authority, that it's fundamentally undemocratic, that it's counter to core constitutional principles of free government and individual liberty to have this unlimited authority to use the military as a domestic police force. My second thought is that-- Sorry. I've lost my second thought.

Brigid Bergin: [crosstalk]

Wendy Weiser: If I can answer the caller's first question. Donald Trump was still President of the United States at the time of the January 6th insurrection, even if at that point, Joe Biden was the President-elect. In fact, that is one of the questions that are being considered by the courts right now is he's claiming because he was still President, he's absolutely immune from any criminal prosecution for anything he did at that time. I think the courts will rebuff that, but that's why that did not happen.

Brigid Bergin: I'll pick up also on the idea of the push to reform the Insurrection Act. My understanding is Congress would have to make these changes. I know that there was a New York Times op-ed published last week by Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, two law professors who chair a group called the Presidential Reform Project, that also called on Congress to make changes to the Insurrection Act. They say that, really both parties have good reason to want to tighten up this law. As I mentioned, we know that we are dealing with a very divided Congress that has a hard time agreeing and much of anything. How likely do either of you think that Congress will pass these changes?

Joseph Nunn: I think there's a chance. It's important to understand, and this is actually the second thing I was going to say before, that the lack of action is certainly part of this divided Congress we have, but it's important to understand that this is 150 years of congressional failure to address this law, that it's been a problem for a very, very long time. The good news is, the Brennan Center has put out a comprehensive reform proposal. We have given Congress a roadmap to fix this law.

Whether Congress will pick that up and follow that roadmap, while I can't say for sure, I hope that they will. I think there's a chance that it's possible because I think that Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer I think they're both right, that there are good reasons for both parties to want to reform this law. It goes beyond this election, it goes beyond Trump, it goes beyond whoever's President, that this law as it exists is inappropriate.

Wendy Weiser: To add one measure of hope. Despite the highly polarized environment and environment in Congress and environment around these issues, the Congress still passed, this Congress, passed the Electoral Count Reform Act in the wake of what happened on January 6th, and the attempt to overturn the election to clear up some of the ambiguities in that federal statute that govern counting Electoral College votes. That was on a bipartisan basis.

There are still some issues when the risks are so high that this Congress has managed to get together and get it over the finish line. I will say on these issues, and also on the issues of the need to actually shore up the safeguards for our election system, protect voting rights, out in the public, there's widespread bipartisan public support, supermajority support for these kinds of reforms. These are very popular reforms. People are worried about the state of our democracy and the insufficiency of our laws right now to meet the moment that we're in.

Brigid Bergin: Well, I think I want to leave it there for now, particularly since you've given us a little bit of hope about the potential for bipartisan at work on some of these issues. My guests have been Wendy Weiser, Vice President for Democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, and Joseph Nunn counsel in the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program. Wendy, Joseph, thank you so much for your work, and thanks so much for coming on the show.

Joseph Nunn: Thank you for having us.

Wendy Weiser: Thank you.

 

 

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