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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. The secretary of state of Montana is a man named Corey Stapleton. As secretary of state, Stapleton's job includes overseeing elections and monitoring for any voter fraud. This Republican secretary of state has now posted a message that says, "I have supported you Mr. President Donald Trump accomplish some incredible things during your time in office but that time is now over. Tip your heart, bite your lip, and congratulate Joe Biden." That's from the Republican secretary of state of Montana.

Republican Senator James Lankford, US Senator from Oklahoma said yesterday that he will intervene if the Trump administration doesn't start sharing the presidential daily brief on national security with Biden by the end of the week. That's a reliable Republican Senator James Lankford. There are some cracks in the wall of denial and authoritarian tactics of pretending to have won an election you lost or at very least have apparently lost to actually challenge those results. As you know would require proof of massive voter fraud in multiple states on a scale completely unprecedented in American history.

Nonetheless, the Trump campaign is in court in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere trying to have millions of ballots suppressed on what is so far the flimsiest of claims. The New York Times called officials in every state and found no evidence of voter fraud. The headline on that story was straightforward. The Times called the officials in every state, no evidence of voter fraud that said officials contacted by the time said there were no irregularities that affected the outcome.

We'll talk to one of the reporters on that story in a minute. Here's another story from The Times about how rumors of voter fraud based on nothing, take root in the land of alternative facts. The story says it started Monday evening with a tweet that pushed an unfounded rumor than a Michigan mother's vote had been stolen by an impersonator using her maiden name. The tweet came with a #MaidenGate.

Soon the claim that unauthorized people had cast votes under the maiden names of real voters, multiple voters, started trending online. From Monday to Wednesday morning more than 75,000 posts pushing #MaidenGate appeared on Twitter peaking at 2000 between 2:10 and 2:15 AM on Tuesday. According to data miner a tool for analyzing social media interactions, beyond Twitter, the maiden gate rumor spread to Facebook, YouTube, and groups associated with Stop the Steal which have promoted the false narrative that Democrats stole the election from President Trump.

No evidence was offered to support the maiden gate claim in the original tweet which was posted by a Twitter account with a profane name. The tweet included no details on the maiden name that supposedly had been stolen, so there was no way to verify the claim. Twitter has since suspended the account and the message is no longer visible, that from The New York Times the rumors spread anyway despite everything that was reported there. Joining us now Nick Corasaniti who covers politics around the US for The New York Times. Nick, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Nick Corasaniti: Thanks for having me.

Brian: People have been talking about that headline The Times Called Officials in Every State: No Evidence of Voter Fraud. Can you tell us how that reporting assignment went, how the story was reported leading to that sweeping conclusion?

Nick: We started with the thought of there've been all these allegations coming from the Trump campaign and Republican allies about widespread voter fraud and all of these irregularities that swung the election away from them. We started at first just contacting the specific allegations they had made in states and election officials from those states. We thought as we were doing that, the whole picture that had been painted by the president, his campaign, and his Republican allies from before the election dating a long time ago, has been that the United States electoral process is rife with fraud which is just not true.

We thought we will reach every state and talk to the top elections official in every state. Most of the time that the secretary of state occasionally there's election commission like in Wisconsin where there's top election administrator. We just ask them have you seen any evidence of fraud or any other regularities that would have played a role in the outcome of the presidential race whether it would have these impacts. We heard back directly from 45 of them and they all said no, there were varying degrees of saying absolutely not, this is ridiculous. They're just saying our election was smooth, we're proud of it.

Four that did not get back to us had already made statements saying as much. Then the only one that didn't ever directly respond to us was Texas. We contacted the top elections official in Harris County, the Harris County clerk, his office. Harris County is home to Houston and it's got a population of about 4.7 million which is bigger than about 25 states and they saw no evidence. That's how we went through everything to get to the conclusion that we drew.

Brian: By the way I think I said your last name wrong, it's Corasaniti?

Nick: Yes, it is.

Brian: I apologize. Nick Corasaniti from The New York Times is our guest. Let me stay on that aberration of Texas for a minute because you reported that the Republican lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, already infamous for saying old people should be prepared to die from the coronavirus so younger people can live normal lives, that's Dan Patrick. He has offered a $1 million reward fund for anyone, or I should say established a $1 million reward fund, I guess it wouldn't all go to one person, for anyone reporting voter fraud, but Trump won Texas. If his reward fund is intended to help Trump flip the results how does that help?

Nick: Exactly. It's not necessarily clear whether Lieutenant Governor Patrick's reward was just for Texas or whether it could be one of these-- like we're seeing a couple of funds pop up among right-aligned groups that are offering rewards for reports or affidavits of voter fraud. Looking beyond that, if we're talking about Texas and we're trying to say, "Did Texas experience any of these irregularities or anything?" Obviously from what we've heard, the prevailing answer is no, even though state officials never got back to us.

You'd wonder why Lieutenant Governor Patrick would feel the need to announce funds to reward reports if they already had a preponderance of evidence. He has been pretty vocal in making claims that without any evidence that there was widespread voter fraud in the past. It fits with what he has said throughout his career but it certainly doesn't necessarily instill any confidence, again, that there's any major evidence in Texas that you're offering money to reward reports of voter fraud.

Brian: Since Texas was still a red state in this presidential election, wouldn't it be funny if his million bucks turned up so much Republican voter fraud in his state that he wound up flipping it the other way. Of course, there doesn't seem to be evidence of widespread fraud on either side. I guess he's not worried about its political theater. In Michigan, home we now know of the debunked maiden gate rumor, you report Republican lawmakers on Saturday photo to issue subpoenas for documents in search of "election irregularities." This is the legal version. It seems to me of legal meaning the legal establishment legal process version of Dan Patrick's million-dollar reward fund. Did you talk to an elections official in Michigan for your story?

Nick: We did, yes. The official who actually has responded more directly to some of these machinations in the legislature has actually been the Attorney General of Michigan who is defending the state in some of these lawsuits. They said the move by the Republican lawmakers in Michigan follows a pattern that we've seen in both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The three blue wall states that are all controlled by Republicans in the statehouses and they've all announced some type of investigative body.

Now, I think in Wisconsin they're issuing subpoenas as they did in Michigan. Pennsylvania says they want an audit. Part of it it appears to just be fitting with the Republican theme of wanting to investigate everything claiming that they want every illegal ballot counted which, of course, I'm sure everyone does. Then part of it there's also a bit of a fear that this is a delay tactic and a stall tactic to just gum up the works, slow it down, possibly delay certification, which could lead to a whole host of other issues. Whether they're legally sound or not, who knows.

Even when you talk to the Attorney General of Michigan, they're also saying that these moves by Republican lawmakers are, again, extremely unlikely to turn up any evidence because in their work they haven't seen any widespread or any fraud or irregularities that would impact the results. I think I haven't checked this morning, but I'm pretty sure vice president Biden or president-elect Biden lead in Michigan has about 150,000 votes, which is a pretty significant lead for no matter what.

Brian: That's really big and by the standards of this election and by what we consider a swing state where Trump won by such a sliver, I think it was a few tens of thousands of votes in Michigan or 10,000 votes in Michigan, a fraction of 1% in 2016. This is a three percentage point win. I believe the number is for Biden as he leads there by the last number I saw was 146,000 votes. That's not going to get overturned by a recount.

The Republican legislators are on this fishing expedition there with no evidence that's triggering it, just the hope of finding something to let their team win when it looks like they lost. Sure they're allowed to turn over every rock to make sure why wouldn't somebody want to do that with so much at stake, but without any good leads to make them believe something is there. Is it clear to you what documents in search of election irregularities they are even issuing subpoenas for?

Nick: It's not, at least not in so far as what we've seen. The Trump campaign and Republican allies file like a new lawsuit every day it seems like and lawmakers in different States have slowly progressed in these committees or other investigatory efforts. There's been a lot of focus in social media from some of these lawmakers and Republican personalities about a focus on people who either voted illegally or dead people voting, meaning that someone impersonated or took a ballot that had been sent to someone who died. None of those have really held up the scrutiny. Oftentimes it's someone has the same name as their father or mother, and it was misentered by clerical error.

Other times there's a certain way to enter names in a poll book that just defaults to 1900 to save a place and then when it's updated, they put in the correct birth date, and sometimes there's just a clerical error there. A lot of what they've looked for and what they make big headlines about, I think Tucker Carlson made a huge deal about two different voters, one of which we already know was just the name of the son. They seem to be hunting for these specific anecdotes, but again, always fall apart to paint a broad picture when that broad picture doesn't necessarily exist.

Brian: By the way, my producer checked on the Michigan numbers from 2016, just for the record. Trump had 2,279,000 votes, to Clinton's 2,268,000 votes. In other words, Trump won by a little less than 11,000 votes in Michigan in 2016, that was out of 5 million votes cast that was three-tenths of 1%. If you look at it that way, Biden won by 10 times as much as Trump won comparing the two elections, but that's just one data point.

Listeners, if you have any questions about The New York Times reporting on the so far feudal search for election fraud in the 50 states in the presidential election, you can call up and talk to Nick Corasaniti at 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Before we go on to some other states and some big picture questions, I want to go back to something you said about the point in Michigan with the spread being as big as we were just describing.

You said they may not be looking to flip the results so much as to create a delay. This ties back, some of our listeners will know, to the ultimate Democrats paranoid theory, but paranoids really have enemies sometimes, that we've been talking about on the show the last few days. That is, that the goal is really to just cast enough doubt, create enough delay in the courts to pass the December 8th certification deadline, and let the Republican-led legislature have an excuse for taking the electors away from the people and appointing the electors themselves and appointing Trump electors instead of Biden electors to the electoral college. Do you see that as a realistic possibility in Michigan?

Nick: In realistic would probably be giving a little too much credence to it, I think. It seems to be what they're doing and the Attorney General Dana Nessel yesterday said exactly that, it looks like this legal strategy that the Trump campaign is bringing in Michigan isn't necessarily to find some, again, 146,000 votes to overturn, it's more to slow it up and make this play for our electors. A lot of legal experts that I've spoken to as we try to understand where this is are pretty dubious that it would actually work. A, would invoke a huge outcry, I think if you're trying to overturn the will of a lot of people but it's also a very big area. It's obviously never really been done.

There's a pretty prevailing legal argument that says even if you were to take this on its face and say, this is the plan that they're aiming for, this is what they want to do, from what some legal experts have told me, they would need to have tasked something to allow them to do this before the election. Once the election's already happened, it's too late. You can't say we're going to move in and name our own slate of electors. There's no constitutional authority for them to do that. That's one prevailing argument that I've heard from a lot of legal experts on both sides.

That said, there's some who still think it could be possible and as a Michigan Attorney General said, it does seem to be the Trump campaign strategy at least in Michigan where they're losing by so much compared to other States.

Brian: In Pennsylvania, another bull's-eye here, center of the action, you quote the office of Pennsylvania Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, who points out that no active lawsuit, even alleges or claims to have evidence of widespread fraud. Attorney General Shapiro is a Democrat who had actively supported Biden and predicted his win. People who watch MSNBC a lot see him popping up there, maybe CNN too. We could find examples like that on both sides around the country of partisan election officials.

I mentioned Texas' Republican governor and his voter fraud reward fund, but is there a problem with partisan oversight, or are there checks and balances in the state systems around the country for how votes are really counted or fraud if it were to occur, is really detected? Did we lose Nick or did I just ask him the hardest question in the world and stump him? I think we have lost Nick Corasaniti's line for a second. We'll get him back. We're calling him right back.

In the meantime, we'll take caller. Let's see. Vicki in Manhattan is calling to praise Nick, so we wait for Vicky until he's back on the line to hear it. Lisa in Forest Hill is here on WNYC. Hi, Lisa. Okay, I see what's going on. It's all our phones. It's not just Nick's line. I can't put you on the air right now callers, we'll get this straightened out in just a minute.

Meanwhile, I'll tell you that from Nick's article in The Times, they described the case of this postal worker in Erie, Pennsylvania, have you heard this one yet? The worker made allegations of impropriety at the local postal branch, based largely on a conversation that he said he just overheard. Well, on Tuesday the credibility of the affidavit that that postal worker filed came into question after the House oversight committee in Washington reported on Twitter that the worker recanted his story in discussions with the Postal Service's Office of Inspector General, but the worker later denied that he recanted in an online video.

That's a mess regarding the worker's story, that one's getting a lot of play on Fox News because they said he recanted and he really didn't recant, but it would still only indicate the tiniest amount of voter fraud that would certainly not overturn Pennsylvania's election. Georgia is the new main attraction in national politics as many of you already know, with both US Senate seats going to run off elections and control of the US Senate at stake.

Georgia alone will now decide if Mitch McConnell or Chuck Schumer is the next majority leader and gets to decide what bills they even take up in the Senate. State by state these things go on. Georgia in the presidential now has an official recount with Biden winning the original count by 14,000 votes. We know that historically, we can't change the totals by only a few hundred. I think we have Nick Corasaniti from The New York Times back with us. Nick you're there?

Nick: Yes, I'm back.

Brian: I apologize, that technical problem was from our end. I was asking you about Michigan and the possibility of delay, and whether they really going out for this extreme, I'll call it authoritarian strategy of seizing the electoral votes from the people with no evidence of enough voter fraud to flip the election in that state. Are they really going to try to do this after December 8th? Is that their goal?

Nick: Again, I can't get inside their heads but as I was saying, I think probably when my phone might have cut out there was that the Attorney General of Michigan yesterday, Dana Nessel, said exactly that but when you look at the cases that are being brought in Michigan, it doesn't look like, and again, given that the margin is 146,000 votes, it doesn't look like it's seeking or there's any way to move past that margin, instead it's to delay and possibly delay certification and get into that doomsday scenario.

When ultimately you look at some of the lawsuits brought in Michigan, one of the main ones have been about poll observers. Every campaign is allowed to have poll watchers inside. Now they're certified, they are only allowed to watch the process, make sure everything's fair, and keep an eye on things. The Trump campaign has been alleging that at the TFC Center in Detroit, their poll workers weren't allowed in but media reports or people who were there said that no, that's not true, there were actually 134 Republican observers inside the counting area, along with the similar number of Democratic observers inside.

Now, what happened was, a lot of supporters of the president gathered outside to create a big protest saying they want to get in and observe the valid counting when they might not have been registered, they might not have been properly trained, and obviously wouldn't be allowed in if there's already 134 Republican observers inside the counting area. Trying to make a big issue out of not having observers in place fits with that same like, well, we just need to question and we need to delay and how do we do this? It does lead as the Attorney General was saying yesterday that you do wonder what is the end goal here.

Brian: Vicki in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Oh, we can't use the callers yet? Okay, we've got Nick but we haven't fixed our system to put callers on the air yet, so Vicki and everybody else I apologize. When your line cut out, I was asking you if you think there's a problem with partisan oversight, like Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania who's the state Attorney General who technically oversees the elections but he's also a faithful Democrat who predicted Biden's win and he says that all stops at the office door when it comes to his actual job of overseeing the elections as officials in similar positions from both parties would always say.

Is there a problem in your reporting experience with partisan oversight? Or are there institutional checks and balances in the state systems around the country for how votes are really counted, or fraud, if that were to occur, is detected?

Nick: I think it's perhaps a little bit of both. I don't think that there's necessarily like Josh Shapiro hasn't done anything as Attorney General to cause any kind of concerns in any of the reporting we've done that he's acting in a partisan fashion. I haven't come across any Attorney Generals in this election in a similar way who have come from a partisan position to help their cause.

The problem there's, I guess, the issue there is just that in a hyperpolarized electorate, and where seemingly every charge, whether it's true or not, it's just luck, I think is the Washington secretary of state can whine and describe to us it's like throwing grass at a fence and seeing what sticks and obviously, grass rarely sticks to the fence. Just saying, "Oh well, the Democrats are in charge here so they must be working against us", and if you approach everything with that lens, and get your supporters to believe everything through that lens, then the trust is further eroded, and that's been at least from the president's mouthpiece, his goal is just continually eroding trust in this process.

Now, when it comes to having a Republican or a Democrat election official as the state's top election official, whether that has any impact on voting, oftentimes not directly, but sometimes when you see a policy come out of the secretary of state's office, knowing their leanings you can understand maybe what they're getting at. One example would be Brad Raffensperger in Georgia. Now, he greatly expanded voting by mail in this year for both coronavirus regions and just because that was what Georgia law allowed him to do.

At the same time he set up this ballot integrity task force that was trumpeted as full prosecutorial powers that if anyone tried to vote illegally, they would be sentenced and punished to the fullest extent of the law. They would bring the weight of the government down, and it was very heavy-handed in the way it was delivered. When you think how a voter views voting by mail for the first time, it could be scared, they might think that an error is going to lead to them being arrested. A lot of voting rights advocates, like common cause called that ballot task force creation, and the way it was announced as a partisan voter suppression effort.

Now, who knows whether it actually had that effect on anyone but sometimes when policies like that are rolled out and know the partisan leanings of an elected official, you can be viewed that way as what happened in Georgia, particularly from voting rights advocates point of view.

Brian: I'm glad you brought up that Georgia secretary of state story because I find it so bizarre and maybe you can explain it, that both of the Republican candidates in those runoff races for Georgia's US Senate Seats have called on the secretary of state of Georgia to resign. Brad Raffensperger, again, it's his name, as you say, and for you Pittsburgh Steeler fans know it's not Ben Roethlisberger, it's Brad Raffensperger.

The two Republican Senate candidates said, "The secretary of state has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections." That's their quote, but they didn't say how he allegedly failed to deliver honest and transparent elections. Was it just that he set up a vote by mail system to enable people in the year of coronavirus?

Nick: I mean, we don't even know if that's what they were saying, but it was a truly bizarre, as you said, statement and shocking to have two sitting senators call for the resignation of a secretary of state amid an election with no specific allegations and clearly no evidence. The secretary of state Raffensperger ever since Election Day has been sending out like nearly, it seems like hourly, my inbox is just flooded with updates for him about where they are in the vote count, what they've counted, what they've done, whether they've rejected any, whether any are reviewed.

It was at least from a proactive standpoint, it was among the most transparent slow counts that we saw after the election in a closed state and because he's a Republican, he's a fairly conservative person, the allegations are coming from the two senators and then also I don't think the governor has been as direct but he's also said that he has concerns about irregularities; again, no evidence, no specifics. It just was a very bizarre and the statement from Raffensperger responding to the two senators was pretty aggressive in fighting back.

I think he sees it as like an attack on election that he ran very smoothly as he says, and he calls at one point their allegations laughable. He perhaps a little poke at Senator Perdue. He says, "I'd be irritated if I was in a runoff." He also says that clearly both senators and I are all unhappy with the potential outcome for our president. He clearly says this is a political attack on him and it is just surprising that A, it came about, and then B, the lack of reasoning for why it came about so quickly.

Brian: Ben Roethlisberger and Brad Raffensperger are both having very good falls doing very well at their jobs and people are trying to tackle both of them constantly just so their team wins, I get it. Last thing, let's see, which should I make the last thing before we run out of time, Washington state or Arizona? I'm going to make it Washington state just because it's hilarious.

You mentioned it briefly a minute ago, Washington state not in the spotlight like Georgia and Pennsylvania and Michigan, Washington state. You report that the losing Republican candidate for Governor Loren Culp in this reliably blue state has disputed their Republican secretary of state's determination that the election there was free of fraud.

The secretary of state in this case is named Kim Wyman, who has in turn challenged, Mr. Culp's challenge of her. Culp's trailing your report by roughly 14% points in the result. It was Wyman who gave that quote that you cited a few minutes ago. It's just throwing grass at the fence at this point to see what sticks. What's amazing to me about that story is that Culp lost by 14 points. Maybe if he lost by one point like Trump in Pennsylvania, three points like Trump in Michigan, you can try to shake the trees for voter fraud even those are looking far-fetched, but he lost by 14 points. What's even his point?

Nick: It's hard to understand, but I think it speaks to what President Trump's continual questioning and baseless allegations about the electoral process, the impact it has had writ large on our elections. Is that Republican candidate for governor who is down by my quick math, I think by about a half a million votes, it's 2.27 million to 1.71 million, obviously there's no way that there could be some widespread fraud that could bring that backup.

Secretary Wyman is among the most experienced and trusted secretaries of state in the country. Washington has been one of the five states that has actually been a vote by mail state for years. They weren't someone like say Pennsylvania who had to ramp up their vote by mail process to meet unprecedented demand for the first time. This was pretty normal election for Washington.

To bring that allegation in a state that's done this for so long against the secretary of state who's done this for a while and it's looked to as a leader on vote by mail, just shows that people feel comfortable throwing the allegation of voter fraud around no matter the reality on the ground. It's just, okay, I've seen other people do this. The president has given the green light to do this. In a deeply blue state with a pretty popular governor, Jay Inslee, and a pretty established voting system in the state that wasn't specifically or really harshly challenged this year, they can still just bring up these baseless accusations of fraud.

Brian: Nick Corasaniti covers domestic politics for The New York Times. Thank you so much.

Nick: Thanks for having me.

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