Firing Line

-The radical-left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020, and we're not going to allow them to rig the presidential election in 2024.

We won't have a country left, right?

-We'll make sure every American has the ability to cast their ballot and have it counted.

-In a presidential campaign full of upheaval, one thing is certain.

The vote count in November will face intense scrutiny, especially after what happened four years ago... -I still hear the yelling, the banging, and feel that fear.

-...and what has happened since.

-There's so many conspiracies now about everything.

The trust factor in our political system is at an all-time low.

-But despite so much distrust... -Is there election fraud happening?

Of course.

-...voting experts agree U.S. elections are the most free, fair, and secure in the world.

-Counting 160 million ballots with dozens of races on them each.

It's actually remarkable how well election officials do this job.

-All right, come on in.

-Okay!

-So, this is our tabulation room.

-Tonight, we spotlight eight states, including six battlegrounds... -So, this would just have "Margaret Hoover" here, and it would have this bar code that links to your voter profile.

-...to see how they are preparing for November.

-We have seen a steady uptick in lawsuits to further a false narrative about our elections.

-Would you say the single-most important thing to bestow confidence from the electorate into the results of the election is the quick processing and counting of ballots?

-Yes.

That, plus the loser accepting the result.

That's kind of a big deal.

-Counting votes is not a Democratic value or a Republican value.

It's an American value.

-Politicians from both parties say democracy is on the ballot this November, though they frame the risks very differently.

Over the next hour, you'll meet officials and public servants who are working courageously to ensure the vote count on November 5th is safe, secure, and accurate.

It is fundamental to a representative democracy that the public has confidence in the voting process.

When there are doubts, everyone loses, as was evident in Florida during the presidential election of 2000, where we begin.

-We think it may be the closest election in 40 years.

-To say it's gone down to the wire, here, again, is the understatement of all time.

-Stand by, stand by.

CNN right now is moving our earlier declaration of Florida back to the too-close-to-call column.

-Take me back to election night 2000.

When was the moment you realized that your state was going to be the deciding state in the 2000 election?

You know, it was about 2:00 in the morning.

My brother got a call from Al Gore, conceding.

And then literally Gore called back and said, "I'm taking it back."

That's kind when I knew that we were in a new place.

-It all came down to Florida and its 25 electoral votes.

George W. Bush's lead over Al Gore was razor thin, triggering a recount.

-And then we kind of had a quick on-the-job training of our election system, and the whole state kind of learned what our election laws were.

-No, the whole country learned what your election laws were.

And what the whole country saw was a process for voting and counting votes that just didn't work very well.

It's the only thing that both sides could agree on.

-Anger is rising over a presidential ballot.

-Where someone doesn't clearly punch their ballot correctly, and there's a hanging chad on the back.

-A hanging chad was when you punched it, but it didn't punch all the way through.

A pregnant chad was a chad that, it didn't punch all the way through, but you could see that it was indented, right?

-Well, it was a perfect storm in Florida in 2000.

537 votes is an incredibly narrow margin in a state as big as Florida.

And that was a legitimate margin of victory to litigate over by both candidates.

-On behalf of Governor Bush and Secretary Cheney...

I was counselor to the campaign.

I had done a lot of recounts before, so I knew recounts.

-This is Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer who worked for the Bush campaign during the 2000 recount.

What else do you remember about 2000?

-Just the vividness of the whole argument and how crowded the courtroom was.

-Ultimately, the Supreme Court's decision to halt the recount secured the election for George W. Bush.

-Rather than say what a horrible decision, Supreme Court is politicized, this is ugly or whatever... Al Gore did an incredible thing.

He conceded.

-Good evening.

Just moments ago, I spoke with George W. Bush and congratulated him on becoming the 43rd president of the United States.

And I promised him that I wouldn't call him back this time.

-And he said, "We need to unite behind our new president."

That, you've got to give him credit for that.

-How are you?

-How do you reflect on that concession now?

-That it was extremely important for the good of the country, and it must have been personally excruciating for him, yet he did the right thing.

-Hey, guys.

-Twenty-four years later, what do you tell people who still doubt that results of that election?

-The first thing I'd say, and I'm not asked that anymore.

I tell them, "Get over it."

Was it a perfect election?

No.

There's never going to be a perfect election.

Having seen all this, to not standardize the ballot process, at a minimum, it's political malpractice in some ways.

And rather than do what now sadly happens more often than not in politics, which is we yap at each other and yell at each other and blame the other team, we reformed it in Florida in a bipartisan way, and I'm really proud of that.

-What happened in Florida following the 2000 election is not as well-remembered in history.

-Now, I can proudly say that we solved some of the problems that existed in a bipartisan way.

-It was resoundingly bipartisan.

Nobody was against it.

-This bill will create a law that will be the model for the rest of the nation.

We created a standard for the ballot, which made it easier to count the ballots.

We expanded early voting.

We expanded access to absentee ballots.

And then we did something that I think people really appreciate.

We count the ballots that have come in early when they come in.

And so by 9: 00, you know who won.

-All right, come on in.

-Okay!

-So, this is our tabulation room.

This is really where all the magic happens.

-Okay.

-So, these are our high-speed scanners.

These high speed scanners are primarily used for vote by mail, but also in a recount, they'll be used for all of the ballots during a recount.

-Back in 2000, Broward County, Florida, became synonymous with hanging chads.

I was recently given a tour of the election center by Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott.

-One of the biggest things that we do differently than other states that really made the difference in 2020 is the fact that here in Florida, the vote-by-mail ballots are run through these machines before the polls close so that we can get a quick response as close to 7:00 as we can on election night.

Part of our goal here is that speed of results to make people feel confident in the results.

-After those reforms were implemented, would you have called Florida a gold standard for election administration?

-Today I would call Florida a gold standard for election administration and results.

They get their votes accurately.

They get them all done and tabulated on election night.

And there are no allegations of irregularities or fraud that causes anyone to think that the results weren't accurate.

-Florida may have become the model for election administration, but that doesn't mean the rest of the country has followed suit.

-We run some of the most decentralized, complex elections in the world.

We don't run a single national election.

That's not what's going to happen on November 5th.

There's going to be about 10,000 little, local elections happening.

-Why do we have 10,000 jurisdictions for voting across the country?

Why does each state have a different way of voting?

-If the system were to be redesigned today, you would not design it like this.

But it's sprung up because of our innate belief that communities know best about how to run operations like this for themselves.

-It's also written into the Constitution, which grants each state, through its legislature, the authority to determine how its elections are run.

This makes our elections exceedingly complex and the counting process, at times, painstakingly slow.

-It's actually remarkable how well election officials do this job, counting 160 million ballots with dozens of races on them each, and doing it as accurately as they have, and having their work withstand scrutiny of dozens of court cases and multiple challenges every single time.

-Do you feel confident about the 2024 election?

-I do.

I mean, the process of counting the ballots and all that, I feel confident.

I worry about our country, though.

There's not a shared vision.

And because of that, all sorts of conspiracies crop up, and there's a lack of trust that people are doing the right thing.

And that concerns me.

-The 2020 election cycle was a perfect storm of a number of things, from the global pandemic to a sitting president who is determined to sow seeds of doubt about the integrity of our elections long before November has hit us.

And then also we had a series of new election laws, including the ability for citizens to vote from home.

-Before 2020, about a quarter of Americans were already voting by mail.

-Mail balloting has been around for a long time.

We've had it since at least the Civil War.

Over the last 20 to 25 years, a lot of states, predominantly Republican states in the West, started moving towards more and more mail voting.

-Deep-red Utah is one of eight states, plus the District of Columbia, to adopt 100% mail-in voting systems.

-This is the one of the tamper-proof seals.

It's got a serialized number on it.

-Amelia Powers Gardner is a Republican commissioner of Utah County.

How do you respond to Republicans who are skeptical about mail-in voting?

-This idea that vote by mail helps Democrats win, that's a misconception.

We had multiple House seats in Salt Lake County that were held by Democrats, that the vote-by-mail ballots flipped those to Republican.

Really what happens is when you have vote by mail, more people vote.

And if more of your population is Republican, then more Republicans are going to win.

And if more of your population is Democrat, then more Democrats are going to win.

The key, though, is that the people are more fairly represented.

-We have more mail voters voting in 2020 than ever before.

Rational campaigns would have recognized that, and actually encouraged their own voters to choose the options that they'd most feel comfortable with.

The Trump campaign did not do that, instead spreading lies about mail voting.

-Take a look at West Virginia, mailman selling the ballots.

They're being sold.

They're being dumped in rivers.

This is a horrible thing for our country.

-There is no evidence of that.

-This is not going to end well.

-So, for the first time in history, mail balloting skewed heavily Democratic.

-Days before the 2020 election, Trump's former strategist, Steve Bannon, revealed the plan.

On election night, as the same-day votes came in, Trump appeared to hold narrow leads in five of the seven most critical battleground states.

-We're winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes.

We're winning Michigan.

I tell you.

I looked at the numbers.

I said, "Whoa."

And we're winning Wisconsin.

We don't need all of them.

We want all voting to stop.

We don't want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list.

Okay?

-But the counting didn't stop.

-And there are many states left to be called, an awful lot of votes yet to be counted.

-And over the coming days, as the mail-in ballots were counted, Biden overtook Trump in four of those five swing states, where Trump had been leading in the count, a phenomenon that came to be known as the "Red Mirage."

-Election-day votes tend to be Republican.

Mail-in votes tended to be Democrat.

The Red Mirage was when Election Day results got tabulated first.

-Being ahead on election night is like saying you've got a jar full of jelly beans, and you take one handful out, and you have more red jelly beans than blue.

That doesn't tell you what's in the whole jar.

You've just done a partial count.

-The phenomenon of the Red Mirage provided an opening for the losing side to cast doubt on the electoral process, from false stories about overnight ballot dumps to baseless allegations of rigged voting machines.

-Voting by mail is a secure method of voting.

You can't just, like, print a ballot, put it in a drop box, and we'll count it.

But as that confidence eroded, and as people were told things that weren't true by someone they trusted, we saw more and more confidence go away.

-Ginsberg was alarmed by false claims of voter fraud in 2020, as he told the January 6th Committee.

-There was no credible evidence of fraud produced by the Trump campaign or his supporters.

In 2020, it was not really a close election, so that is categorically different in all major ways from what happened in 2000.

No presidential candidate, let alone a president of the United States, has ever said pre- and post-election that the system is inaccurate.

That's going to drive up Republican doubts about the election.

It is now at a truly harmful level for the health of the country.

-What do you think the chances are the court could play a role again in 2024?

-I hope they don't.

I'm sure the justices themselves hope they don't.

The reality is that this area has become so litigious that each case that's filed increases the chances that one of them makes it up here.

-I just think it was not a fair election.

-I think that Trump won, and they took it away from him.

-All the mail-in votes, the Covid, all that, and I just don't trust them.

I just don't.

-More than a third of Americans and more than two thirds of Republicans still believe Biden was elected because of voter fraud.

That's not true, according to the official assessment of former President Trump's own administration.

-The Department of Homeland Security under President Trump declared 2020 the most secure election in American history.

-It was the most transparent and verified presidential election, and 2024 is likely to be even better.

-One reason voting is so secure is because there has been a large-scale return to paper ballots across the United States over the past decade.

-About 95-plus percent of all Americans vote on paper ballots, including all of the voters in all of the battleground states.

Those paper ballots are the official ballot of record, and the paper is what gets counted.

-Using paper ballots guards against foreign interference and allows machine counts to be verified.

-We know that no votes have been changed because of audits.

So, if someone did infect a voting machine, it would be caught, and it would be corrected.

Forty-three states did full audits of their ballots in 2020.

That number is going to be higher in 2024.

-While our elections are already secure, there are things that can be done both to give people a better experience voting and make them feel more confident in the results, including paper ballots, online ballot tracking, and offering multiple ways to vote -- early in-person, absentee without an excuse, aka vote by mail, and on Election Day.

-So, there is widespread bipartisan consensus on best practices.

And if you talk to election officials, the perceived differences between the parties melt away.

-Voter-ID requirements, in the past a contentious issue, are now used in 36 states -- red, blue, and purple.

-Voter identification has overwhelming public support.

-We've never been opposed to identification, per se.

We've been opposed to very strict voter-ID proposals that we've seen in recent years.

-Getting accurate results out quickly for votes cast by all methods is an important part of fixing the perception problem.

-The failure to produce results on election night does provide an ability for people who want to sow distrust and doubt.

It is the Petri dish of the germ of election denial.

-Here's the thing about paper ballots.

They take time to count, especially when they arrive by mail.

So, why is Florida normally able to get out most results on election nights, while other states take days or longer?

The answer is deadlines and whether or not states allow something called "preprocessing," or precanvassing, meaning ballots are verified, opened, and scanned before Election Day.

-The goal is to get results on election night.

Preprocessing is an integral part of that.

There's really no reason for states not to preprocess the ballots, as long as they're not counted until Election Day.

On the back end of elections, a number of states allow absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day to come in way after Election Day, leading to not knowing results for weeks, even.

-In a state like California, where the margin is wide, slow vote counts often go unnoticed, but not the case when the race is tight.

-The Fox News Decision Desk can now project that former Vice President Joe Biden will win Pennsylvania, putting him over the 270 electoral votes he needs to become the 46th president of the United States.

-Our first stop in our tour, Pennsylvania.

A swing state, Pennsylvania does not have early voting.

In 2020, it offered every voter the opportunity to vote by mail for the first time.

But it didn't allow preprocessing, which led to delays in the count, a Red Mirage, and false claims of fraud.

-This is an order from a judge that allowed us access to this building, so our people can monitor what's taking place.

-There's no way of securing, you know, the integrity of the vote.

-Since then, voting reform has become a hot topic in the state.

-This is a monument to Octavius Catto, the first statue outside of City Hall for a black American.

And it represents our commitment to ensuring every single voter has the ability to have their voice heard.

Octavius Catto was killed on Election Day while trying to help black Americans vote.

-Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein is one of the last Republicans in Philadelphia's City Hall.

-We conducted multiple audits.

It is very clear that President Biden won Pennsylvania.

-You personally received death threats after Donald Trump's allies singled you out in 2020.

What was that like?

-When they mentioned my home address, where my wife, my 3-year old daughter, and my newborn son was, that's when I really got concerned.

I talked to my wife about it, and we ultimately came to the conclusion, this is why we're here.

Come hell or high water, we're going to defend the integrity of the work that we've done.

-What do we have here?

-Yeah, so this is our secure ballot-storage cage.

So, when ballots are returned to us, either by the mail or drop box, we run it through the sorters to make sure that we can get a date and a time stamp on every envelope.

-Bluestein explains why counting the ballots, especially mail ballots, is so slow.

-At that point, you have 300,000 to 400,000 folded pieces of paper that need to be unfolded and flattened, and then they can get scanned for tabulation.

And that entire process, when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper, takes a lot of time.

-Pennsylvania is the only state legislature in the country in which Democrats and Republicans each control one chamber.

So far, preprocessing legislation has stalled.

What's the holdup?

-It's a great question.

-State Senator Cris Dush is one of the key Republicans working on election legislation.

He is still not convinced that President Biden really won Pennsylvania in 2020.

-I don't know, and there's nobody in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania who could tell you.

-Dush doesn't like no-excuse absentee voting and believes preprocessing lacks transparency.

-We were able to when we were just hand-counting ballots, to get it done in one night.

Many hands make light work, and it also because it's at the precinct level, it's a whole lot easier when you've got people from both parties who know everybody.

It's much easier to catch whenever there's shenanigans going on.

-We have a good system in place, but now we're accusing fraud where there is none, which is absolutely ludicrous to even think that way.

-Pennsylvania Representative Scott Conklin is one of the key negotiators for the Democrats, who says preprocessing is transparent and efficient.

-When every ballot is opened, there will be a Republican and a Democrat representative at the table watching it be done.

When those ballots are put into the machine, there's a Republican and a Democrat sitting there who take the election very seriously and put into that machine.

-The impasse seems insurmountable.

In order for Republicans to agree to preprocessing, they want election-administration reform to include new voter-ID requirements, an idea Democrats have resisted.

-You don't want any type of voter ID that's going to impair the voting ability of those folks in certain areas of the state.

And that's where my fear comes in.

-Time is running out to allow for that really important bipartisan advantage of preprocessing ballots.

-It's extremely frustrating.

We've had conversations with members of the legislature, told them what we need to put more faith in the system.

They're just too bound up by politics to get it done.

-What does that mean for November?

-If the election is as close as it was in 2020 or 2016, it is unlikely we will know the final results in Pennsylvania on election night itself.

-Is it hard to see this as a Republican?

-I think it's hard to see as an American.

Counting votes is not a Democratic value or Republican value.

It's an American value.

-Our next stop, Wisconsin, another swing state, allowed no-excuse absentee voting prior to 2020, but the surge in mail-in ballots in the 2020 cycle, with no provision for preprocessing them, created a Red Mirage that fueled ballot-dumping conspiracy theories.

-There was so much contention, so much heartburn, and so much angst over something that should be easy, like an election.

-A Republican lawmaker, Representative Scott Krug, is doing something unusual -- working with Democrats on legislation that would allow absentee ballots to be processed the day before Election Day.

-Senator Spreitzer... 90% of our problem in Wisconsin, perception versus fraud.

That ballot-dump idea that people think happens late at night in Milwaukee, this creates so much mistrust that I think if we just fix that perception problem and process absentee ballots like 40 other states do, we wouldn't have had the snowball effect in 2020, and we sure wouldn't again in 2024.

-All of a sudden, we're coming up on the 2024 presidential primaries.

And so, hopefully we can get this done.

-Wisconsin State Senator Mark Spreitzer, a Democrat, is trying to hammer out a bipartisan deal.

-And then Tuesday night, when the polls close, we can actually get the results much faster, get them reported while people are still awake.

We all find out who won the election.

-What was being offered really wasn't drastic.

It shouldn't have been at all controversial, but it would have allowed us to squash those conspiracy theories and eliminate at least one avenue for a false narrative to continue.

-But the bipartisan legislation failed.

-There's no question, with the Covid pandemic going on, we had a mess and clerks making decisions.

So, there were certainly irregularities.

-Republican State Senator Dan Knodl blocked the new bill.

-Okay.

Very good.

Then we will move on to our next bill.

-And that killed it.

-To bring in a new process in a presidential cycle, it would open up the door to more questions and possible problems.

So, this is not the right time for it.

-Why are Republicans opposed to that measure?

-The Republicans in Wisconsin fear that there will be the premature release of election results that will succeed in building momentum for Democratic candidates.

-Is that a reasonable concern?

-Not in the least a reasonable concern.

It really comes down to just one or two senators in Wisconsin in powerful positions.

They should look to the state of Florida, which is as ruby red as it gets.

They preprocess ballots.

There's never been a premature leak of results.

-What worries me the most is that we might be in another situation where we're all waiting up late on election night to find out how the absentee votes turned out in Milwaukee.

I think that will give Donald Trump another opportunity to inject uncertainty and claims of conspiracies.

-You know, not seeing your number-one priority become good public policy signed into law, it's a struggle, and it hurts a little bit.

It means '24 is going to have some more contention than I'd like.

-Now to Michigan, where voting processes have been overhauled since 2020, adding early voting and preprocessing.

I still hear the noise in my head of the yelling, the banging, and feel that fear that we felt that night.

-On election night in 2020, Trump supporters arrived at Detroit's TCF Center while Trump was still leading in the votes counted so far.

But the 170,000-plus absentee ballots from Detroit were still being counted.

-CBS News projects that Joe Biden will win the state of Michigan when all votes are tallied.

-It was another Red Mirage.

The first big change came in the 2022 midterms... -In many ways, Michigan's election system is about to look very different.

-...when Michigan voters approved early in-person voting.

-This is a game-changer for our state.

Twenty or so other states have had early voting for a number of years.

But for Michigan voters, the idea that you could on a Sunday after church go to vote is novel and new.

-That same year, Democrats reclaimed control of state government for the first time in 40 years and approved preprocessing.

-Justin Roebuck, the Republican clerk for Michigan's Ottawa County, says preprocessing eliminates middle-of-the night vote counts.

-That makes a tremendous difference in the level of accuracy and the level of competence of our election staff.

But it's also transparent because it's a lot easier to get people to come in at 10:00 a.m. on a Monday morning than it is to try to get people to show up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, you know, in the middle of the night to try to watch a process occur.

-Michigan's vote will be counted quicker because of the law that they passed, and so that will help cut down on post-election turmoil.

-But in the state legislature, few Republicans saw it that way.

Only 2 out of 70 backed the change.

-I feel it's unnecessary.

This will open up many more opportunities for improprieties in our elections.

-The Republican legislature was very concerned about the security element.

And I was essentially making the argument that the security element would be stronger to actually tabulate ballots early.

But, you know, the whole process is very political.

-Michigan's 2020 experience spotlights another part of elections that are vulnerable to political pressures -- certification.

In Michigan, canvassers are supposed to play a ceremonial role in certifying presidential elections.

-Biden won the election just like John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon back in 1960 -- fraud.

-That's former Republican state canvasser Norm Shinkle, who claimed there were not enough Republicans working at Detroit's tabulation center and was sympathetic to Trump's claims of fraud.

He wanted more time to investigate.

-Generally speaking, my gut feeling is that there was fraud, but we can't prove it.

-In the end, Shinkle abstained from the vote to certify.

-I do not plan on voting for certification.

-But the other Republican and two Democrats certified Biden's win, averting a crisis.

In response, Michigan voters approved a law in 2022 that affirmed canvassing boards must certify election totals.

-This is a formality.

It is a ministerial act.

That is, in fact, the case in every state in the country.

But we've seen efforts to try to shake up that understanding, to try to change that, to justify shenanigans.

Michigan tightened that up.

-But my hope is that members of the boards of certification in Michigan and elsewhere will know it's a legal duty to certify the election results.

If there is not a certification, we'll go to court and compel that certification.

-Since 2020, there have been other efforts to block the certification of vote tallies.

This issue resurfaced in Michigan with a local race and in four other battleground states.

-That's a real problem in terms of further politicizing the process.

"I don't like the outcome, and, as a result, I'm going to object."

And that's just drastically anti-democratic.

-Although these efforts have failed, they raised concerns about the post-election period in 2024.

Courts may need to intervene.

-I think they will succeed in certifying their elections and having their electors meet, but -- -Because they can be forced?

-Because they can be forced through the law.

But you can imagine how that period of chaos could be ripe for spreading division and anger and inciting potential violence.

-No state attracted more attention in 2020 than Georgia.

Biden's narrow win was certified by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, despite death threats, lies, and a presidential pressure campaign.

Georgia allows early voting, no-excuse absentee voting, and, since 2020, has codified preprocessing.

-This is not like Washington, D.C. it's very collegial.

-How would you describe your politics?

-I'm a conservative Republican, actually.

-A conservative Republican who on January 2nd, 2021, got a call from President Trump.

-All I want to do is this.

I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.

-That call with former President Trump, you've written how it turned your life upside down in some ways.

You and your aides spent hours, days, weeks refuting the various conspiracy theories about voter fraud.

-Well, I think the real issue is that when people lose the race, I think they just really need to accept the loss and then come back four years later if they want to run again.

-Raffensperger's chief operating officer -- and another Republican -- Gabriel Sterling, also made a name for himself standing up to election lies.

-It has all gone too far.

It doesn't take a crystal ball to see if you use language of violence and threat, it's going to translate itself out.

It has to stop!

-Would you say the single-most important thing to bestow confidence from the electorate into the results of the election is the quick processing and counting of ballots?

-Yes.

That, plus the loser accepting the result.

That's kind of a big deal.

-After the 2020 election, Raffensperger oversaw three statewide recounts, including a full manual tally of all votes cast.

-And the results remain unchanged.

-Each time the recount confirmed a Democrat had won the state for the first time in nearly three decades.

-Dead people, lots of dead people, thousands, and some dead people actually requested an application.

That bothers me a bit.

-We found that there were four people that assumed the identity of someone who had already passed away.

-And in two cases, wasn't it family members... -It was family members.

-...who were voting for their deceased family members?

-Actually, two of them were actually Republicans, and two of them were the other side, you know.

So, it was bipartisan, you know?

-They canceled each other out.

-Canceled each other out.

-Shortly after 2020, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed an election bill along party lines.

Prominent Democrats said it disenfranchised black voters.

-Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things -- voter suppression and election subversion.

-There was the law that prevented handing out of water in line, which is likely to affect very, very few, voters.

But it was still counterproductive.

When legislators consider policy based on bullying tactics from election losers, they fail.

-But the bill also made changes election experts have praised, including mandating a second Saturday for early voting and writing the preprocessing of absentee ballots into the law.

-The new system, you can scan all that stuff in which we've now trained counties to put in their early votes and their absentee votes within the first half-hour of the polls closing.

-Georgia's SB 202 had some good things and some bad things in it.

Was SB 202 Jim Crow 2.0?

No, it was not.

-For the people who looked at SB 202 and called it Jim Crow 2.0, what gives?

-Well, we don't expect any apologies.

And so, we just continue to put our head down, and we just continue to make sure we have great elections for our fellow Georgians.

-But this past November, a reminder of the intense pressures faced by election officials when a letter laced with fentanyl arrived at a Fulton County, Georgia, elections office.

-I am worried about 2024.

I don't know what fully to be worried about yet, because I did not have -- in my bingo card was not fentanyl-laden letters.

That was not on my bingo card to start.

But now it is.

-This is a big development.

-Yeah.

-The Fox News Decision Desk is calling Arizona for Joe Biden.

That is a big get for the Biden campaign.

-Next, on to Arizona, where Biden beat Trump by a mere 10,457 votes in a battleground state only one other Democrat had won in 50 years.

That outcome catalyzed pervasive election denialism in Arizona's GOP.

When did you realize the job was going to be more than you signed up for?

-When it really dawned on me was election night 2020, so November 3rd, 2020.

Polls have closed.

This facility is tabulating results.

-We are stronger than ever.

[ Crowd cheers ] -Alex Jones is out in the parking lot with a whole bunch of people -- flags, guns, the whole nine yards.

-Alex Jones, the far-right radio host who advances conspiracy theories.

-The people see you stealing this election.

They see you suppressing the population.

-Stop the steal!

Stop the steal!

-And that was the beginning of now, a 3 1/2-year running rift between me and that element of the movement.

-Stephen Richer is the Republican recorder of Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and one of the country's largest voting jurisdictions.

Elected in 2020, Richer clashes with the Arizona GOP because he insists, correctly, that Biden won Arizona.

-There's, no joke, hundreds of thousands of people in this country who think I'm a criminal.

That's not a warm and fuzzy feeling.

So, yeah, there have been some dark moments.

-How close did we actually get to a situation where the results of the 2020 election in Arizona are overturned?

-I think, but for the courage of a few people like Rusty Bowers and a few others out there, I think quite close.

-Speaker Bowers, you're the speaker of the Arizona House and a self-described conservative Republican.

And is it your understanding that President Biden was the winner of the popular vote in Arizona in 2020?

-Yes, sir.

-Trump and his allies launched this effort to challenge the election results.

And on November 22nd, 2020, you received a call from President Trump and Rudy Giuliani.

-I did.

-What did they want?

-Well, I knew when I saw their phone call they weren't asking about the weather.

-Former Speaker Bowers, now retired from politics, rejected a pressure campaign to challenge the election results, then lost his primary election for the state Senate.

-I took an oath.

And that's deep to me.

When you say, "I have an oath on my honor," I would hope that I can keep that until the day I die.

-Do you still believe the 2020 election was stolen?

-Yes.

-Meet Abe Hamadeh, who lost his 2022 race to become Arizona's attorney general, has never conceded, and is now running for the United States Congress to represent Arizona's eighth district.

-I'm ashamed at what our country has become.

-Hamadeh is one of the Arizona Republicans at odds with GOP Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer.

-Well, he's an egomaniacal moron.

I mean, that's obvious.

-You tweeted that.

-Yeah.

And it's accurate.

-I feel like our rsums, I'd like to have them side by side, and I feel pretty good about that.

-They disagree on many issues, including the security of Arizona's mail-in ballot system.

-Is there election fraud happening?

Of course.

I mean, when I was serving overseas in the U.S. Army back in 2020 and 2021, I voted overseas.

And when I got back here in September of 2021, I had three mail-in ballots at my house that were not in my name.

And they're from people who maybe have lived in my house before.

So, you know, they're not doing a good job with these mail-in ballots.

-Okay.

So, what happens here?

-So, we are in the ballot-tabulation centers.

And so you'll see that security is of great importance to us.

-At the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center, Richer walks me through the safeguards in place, stopping people from casting multiple ballots and someone else's ballot.

I get this green return envelope assigned to me, and this is an image of the green return envelope?

-Right, so this would just have "Margaret Hoover" here, and this would have your address, and it would have this bar code that links to your voter profile.

-I see.

-Now, what's important about that barcode is it's what allows you to track your ballot.

Importantly, it's also what allows us to prevent you from voting twice.

So, if you sent that back, then we scan it in, and it loads a vote to your profile so that if you show up to vote in person, we would say, "Oh, you already have a vote on your profile."

-So, I sign here.

-So, you sign here.

-And then you verify my signature.

-And then we send it to humans.

And those humans have your three most recent signatures that we've received back.

They're all different political parties -- Republicans, Democrats, independents, libertarians, and otherwise.

-Though Arizona has early in-person voting and preprocesses absentee ballots, it still struggles with slow vote counting.

Why?

Because the state allows voters to drop off mail-in ballots at polling places as late as 7:00 p.m. on Election Day.

-And because we have exceptionally close margins, Arizona calls its races later than other states do.

-It takes you 13 days on average to finish the counting.

-Seems to me to be a really ripe place for bipartisan reform -- narrow Republican majorities in each house of the legislature, a Democratic governor.

-And yet the legislature got together, had a bipartisan bill this year that didn't touch it.

-Yes.

Gives you an indication of how poisonous the partisan atmosphere is today.

-Good morning, North Carolinians, and happy primary election day.

-Our sixth stop, North Carolina, is a battleground state Trump won in 2020.

-You did not hear Trump complain about North Carolina, where the margin was only 75,000 votes, because he won that election by 75,000 votes.

-North Carolina already had the best practices of early voting, no-excuse absentee voting, and preprocessing.

But in 2023, the new Republican supermajority in the state legislature passed an election-overhaul bill, adding restrictions and deadlines... -This bill is going to help make our elections more secure.

-...and overriding the veto of Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.

-Right now, legislative Republicans in North Carolina are pushing an all-out assault on the right to vote.

This attack has nothing to do with election security and everything to do with keeping and gaining power.

-In North Carolina, more than half of voters cast their vote during the in-person early-voting period.

-Really, for the life-span of early voting in North Carolina, we have been able to release those results from the in-person early-voting period at the close of polls on Election Day.

-But the new law says those votes now can't be counted until after the polls close on Election Day.

We visited the state on Super Tuesday, primary day.

-Traditionally, we would be doing this during the day, so we had to wait until the polls close at 7:30 to be able to tabulate the votes that happened from early voting.

-So, now there's a lot of folks who are questioning, "Why is this happening?"

You know, "Is there something nefarious going on?"

And there's not.

This is simply us administering the law as the law requires.

-North Carolina has also eliminated the 3-day grace period for absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day.

-What they run the risk of is ballots could come in later, after Election Day, be received by election officials, be otherwise valid, and have the number of those ballots exceed the margin of victory.

And if that happens, they are going to have a hot spotlight on the state of North Carolina that will remind us of Florida in 2000.

I don't know why a state would invite that.

North Carolina is very close.

-Sorry to interrupt.

NBC News is projecting Donald Trump will be the ultimate winner in Florida.

-Back to where we began -- Florida.

On election night 2020, the networks called Florida for Trump swiftly and without controversy.

-People are actually looking at Florida and asking the question, "Why can't these states be more like Florida?"

-So, after the election was over, our governor came out and said that we did everything and everything was great, that there wasn't any fraud or any problems that happened in Florida, right?

So, then immediately after that, we go to a legislative session the following spring, and they made dramatic changes to our voting laws here in the state of Florida.

-After 2020, the Republican-led legislature in Florida passed two bills changing election laws without any support from Democrats, signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

-What are you about to sign?

-I have what we think is the strongest election-integrity measures in the country.

I'm actually going to sign it right here.

It's going to take effect.

[ All cheering ] So... -There you go.

-The bill is signed.

-Governor Ron DeSantis this morning signed into law live on Fox News a restrictive voting bill.

-There will be additional identification requirements and restrictions on drop boxes.

-As election officials, we want to make the system more secure, and, by the end, all of the supervisors of elections in the state of Florida were basically against that proposal that they ended up passing.

-Among the various changes, the new legislation requires those who want to vote by mail to submit a new request each election.

-To just indiscriminately send them out is not a recipe for success.

-Yeah, well, I kind of like getting my absentee ballot where I don't have to remember to ask for it because it's a convenient way to vote.

-Is there a risk that making sweeping changes in the absence of a real proof of significant fraud actually helps gin up this narrative that there is a problem with the election?

-Well, it could make it more a partisan kind of deal.

-The irony is that there are people wanting to restrict absentee-ballot access.

The Florida Republican Party grew out of absentee ballots.

We dominated absentee ballots.

-Why?

-Because we were better organized.

-None of the changes to laws in the various states are being done on a bipartisan manner.

They are almost uniformly done in a very partisan fashion.

And in these fundamental ways, where you want people to trust the election system, it's really important to be able to have bipartisan solutions.

Unfortunately, neither side really seems to be looking for them.

-Other changes in Florida limit the activities of third-party voter-registration organizations and restrict access to drop boxes.

-Look, I'm not a fan of drop boxes at all, to be honest with you, but the legislature wanted to keep them.

But they need to be monitored.

-A lot of people do wait till the last minute.

A county this size, with 1.1 million voters, this is going to be the spot that almost all of them are going to come to.

And there's just going to be a line all around the corner of people coming and dropping off ballots.

It'll be a fiasco.

-Florida's new restrictions on drop boxes are part of Republican-led efforts passed in at least eight states to limit their use since 2020.

-It's never been clear to me in this discussion why a drop box is not secure, but a U.S. mailbox is secure.

They are sort of the same thing.

-Except for a drop box has a very limited chain of custody.

-Right.

So, the drop boxes have become a political issue more than a substantive issue in this whole battle to get the base vote excited.

-There's too many lawyers that are getting involved in it, maybe in a misguided attempt to protect the election process or to muck it up.

-In the legal system, the courts are experiencing a record number of challenges.

-Money earmarked for legal expenses by the major parties is up, like, 14 times.

There is this real investment in litigation as a political strategy in terms of which votes will count, whose vote will count.

-The Democratic National Committee has challenged new Republican election laws in a few cases and sought to dismiss Republican National Committee lawsuits.

The RNC says it's involved in some 90 cases, an unprecedented number.

-Look, what we're trying to do from the Republican Party is make sure that people trust our electoral process.

So, what we've done at the RNC is we have put together the most robust and aggressive election-integrity operation.

-Secretary Benson, you're the subject of at least three lawsuits by the RNC.

-We have seen a steady uptick in lawsuits designed not to enforce or clarify the law but instead to further a false narrative about our elections or the accuracy of our results.

-RNC lawsuits have targeted voter rolls in Nevada and Michigan... -Our voter-registration rolls are more accurate than ever before.

-...and concerns about noncitizens voting in Arizona.

-We can't say for sure that there are zero noncitizens voting in American elections, but it's pretty darn close to zero.

-The silver lining in these suits is that they can show that the lists are accurate.

-Other lawsuits in several states have targeted grace periods for absentee ballots.

-Many jurisdictions have that as a safeguard against mail delays or other problems that are not the voters' fault.

-They are attacking processes where the laws are very clear.

And I think when you get litigation like that, it appears to be designed more to set the stage for denying the outcome of an election after that election was over, rather than changing policy before an election.

-What goes around tends to come around in politics.

In fact, if Donald Trump wins, these lawsuits could be setting a precedent that a losing Democratic Party could employ to try and challenge Donald Trump's election.

It's through-the-looking-glass time.

-As November approaches, we continue to hear a familiar narrative.

-We had that horrible, horrible result.

They used Covid to cheat.

We're never going to let it happen again.

-If former President Trump loses, it will be why?

-It'll be why?

[ Scoffs ] Well, I'd say cheating.

-As a Republican and an election administrator, are you disturbed by the GOP's embrace in some factions of this election denialism?

-Well, of course.

I mean, we need to get back to the fact that we're all actually doing pretty good in this country.

Our system is the best in the world.

Our elections are the most secure in the world.

But people who don't want necessarily believe it can be easily exploited by those who can gain from it financially and politically.

-All public officials and all candidates, including Donald Trump, have an obligation to say that the way we count votes, which is the key to the peaceful transfer of power -- it is the bedrock principle of this country -- they have an obligation to either come up with real things that are wrong about a system, so they can be fixed, or to agree to accept the validity of our election process and the voice of the people.

-And, finally, what else do Americans need to know and be prepared for ahead of November?

-I think the main thing that Americans need to be prepared for is a deluge of misinformation, disinformation, lies, efforts to manipulate them about the election system.

It's going to be supercharged with the new AI tools.

So Americans are going to need to approach any news about election problems with skepticism.

-We don't want people to feel like, "Hey, it's a nightmare scenario out there.

It's easier for me to just stay home."

No, please go out.

Cast your ballot and participate.

-It doesn't matter to me who people vote for, where they vote, how early they vote.

I just want them to know that it's free, fair, and safe.

-I'm very confident that the legitimate winner of the election will have their hand on the Bible on January 20th, 2025.

What I am worried about is the period of time between November 5th and January 20th, where lies about the election could incite supporters of the loser, who've been told time and time again that the winner is a threat to democracy on either side.

And that could lead to violence in that 2 1/2-month period.

-You have really gone out of your way to be transparent with the press and the public about how this building works, how you process ballots.

What are you trying to show the residents of Maricopa County?

-I'm clinging on to the enlightenment belief that more knowledge and more information can drive out bad information and false theories.

-You think you can beat disinformation?

-I hope so.

-Through transparency.

-I hope so.

-Justin Heap ousting Stephen Richer in the primary 42% to 36%.

-In late July, Richer's bid for reelection ended when he lost the Republican primary.

Richer's opponent, who campaigned on election skepticism, will face the Democrat in November.

Richer remains on the job through this presidential election cycle.

-You know, in 2020, democracy prevailed because people have integrity on both sides of the aisle did their jobs even amidst threats and certified a valid election and an accurate election.

And we've continued to defend that in the years since.

And we've continued to prepare for 2024, even with all of the noise continuing to escalate.

-Our reporting from across the country and across the political spectrum points to this.

Transparency is key to dispelling myths of election fraud.

It is as important as the safeguards in place that ensure every vote counts.

If you still have questions, many local election centers offer tours and opportunities to volunteer during the upcoming election season.

As we heard tonight, counting the votes accurately is not a Republican or a Democratic value.

It's an American value.

I'm Margaret Hoover.

Thank you for watching.

You're watching PBS.