Ep. 11: Matt Weil, BPC Democracy Program Executive Director

The Ballot Box Briefing is a weekly segment on Sirius XM’s The Briefing, that examines the issues and storylines at the heart of running an efficient and accurate election. Guests include election administrators, local, state, and federal officials, cybersecurity experts, legal analysts, and members of BPC’s Democracy Program.

Episode 11. Matt Weil discussed the top concerns facing election officials this year, the need for reliable federal funding to help run elections, and the importance of verifiable paper ballots in ensuring accurate vote counts.

Transcript

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Steve Scully (SS): And welcome back a couple of months ago, my colleague here at the Bipartisan Policy Center, Matt Weil and I had a conversation about what we need to do to better educate you, the POTUS audience and the country about elections in America and Matt joins me in studio. He heads up [BPC’s Democracy Program]. And Matt, I think it’s safe to say that you have confidence in our election system, but you also have some concerns. What are the concerns?

Matt Weil (MW): I think the confidence—we want to lead with confidence, that’s the most important thing, but there’s always concerns when it when it comes to our highest turnout presidential elections. It’s the normal concerns, are we going to have enough poll workers to staff the polling places? Are we going to have ballot errors that result in misprints and ballots not going through tabulators? But for the most part, election officials have contingency plans for all of these things, and it won’t matter or won’t be determinative if it doesn’t happen in a very, very close election place.

SS: I’m going to ask you some fundamental questions. First of all, who runs the elections?

MW: Well, elections are very much a local activity. I think that’s important for people to realize. Certainly the federal government has a role. One of those is federal funding and. And testing and certification of voting systems. The States have a role. Typically in states, the Secretary of State sets policy, but the people who are actually counting the ballots, the people who are recruiting the elections workforce, those are all locals and usually county… they’re your neighbors. They’re literally the people working at the local government who are on the ground delivering democracy to you.

SS: There are federal dollars involved in this. Another what, $55 million in the latest spending plan that was approved at the last minute by Congress, signed into law by President Joe Biden. What’s the money for?

MW: So the money is for election security broadly, but it it’s not enough and it came way too late in this cycle. Better to have some money than none, but when you consider that the way these federal grants go to states and territories—and there are 55 states and territories that get this money—you’re talking about at most $1,000,000 per state. And that’s not going to be very helpful. Only a couple of years ago we were getting regularly in the range of about $400 million going annually, and that’s more the level that we think states can use to plan, both for security upgrades, physical security upgrades, cyber security upgrades, or they can use that money to kind of save and build for the big voting system replacements. Those are big capital costs that states are struggling to finance on their own. They use that federal money in addition to some state money to do those big replacements of voting systems.

SS: Well, thanks to you and your Rolodex of contacts, we’ve had secretaries of state from Maine, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Colorado, here on the program talking about these issues. When you talk to these Secretaries of State, what are they telling you about the 2024 elections? What are they worried about?

MW: Look again, they’re worried. But I think all of them, whether Democrats or Republicans, are devoted and dedicated to running a free and fair process, and they are very proud of their processes, which is funny, right? Because the processes are very different. The way Georgia votes is very different from how Arizona votes. But if you talk to Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, which you have, if you talk to Adrian Fontes in Arizona, which you have, they are both very proud of the system that their legislatures have independently developed. Both those states have been very active in BPC’s Task Force on Elections. They embody many of the best recommendations that we make, and they are very confident that what they are providing to voters on Election Day and throughout the election season is a good system for their constituencies and it’s secure.

SS: If you want more information, go to bipartisanpolicy.org. We’re talking to Matt Weil. Confidence means verification, so how is there verification to make sure when you cast your ballot for candidate “X” and there’s a question whether that ballot was counted that you can double check it or triple check it?

MW: I think that’s the most important change that’s happened over the past 20 years that I’ve been in the election policy space. You know, this election, about 95% of voters are going to be casting ballots on voter verifiable paper ballots. So why is that? Paper in 2024 might feel kind of outdated: it’s not. It’s really one of the most essential pieces of our secure election system because we can have those voters either using ballot marking devices which are touch screens that print out the ballot, or hand marking it like a kind of a Scantron test of 30-40 years ago. They put it into a scanner at the polling place. If they’ve made errors, the scanner will kick out the ballot. So they have a chance to verify it right there. The scanner is able to count that ballot, and if we have a close election, if we’re not sure of the results, we still have something to recount by hand. That’s a pretty essential change to how we used to vote. Even in the 2004, 2008 presidential elections, the majority of people were voting on electronic voting systems. That was kind of the change after 2000. The problem with that is they’re black boxes—we don’t know if they’re recording correctly, and there’s nothing to recount. So I think the fact that we’ve moved towards a paper based system that really embodies the ability to count by tabulator and then recheck if we need to by hand, that’s a security feature that is really important and I’m very happy that we made it to 95%.

SS: And you mentioned 2004, 2008. I have a little PTSD thinking about 2000. We all remember those hanging chads as they’re counting, you know, was that punch hole for George Bush or was it for Ralph Nader or was it for Al Gore? We have come a long way in the two plus decades.

MW: We have and look, the punch card systems were probably never great. I mean, that was never great. But the law that created the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in 2002 passed after 2000. It also banned the use of lever voting machines, which were also very popular across the country. Lever voting machines have this kind of romantic feel to them. People remember going into a big booth with a curtain behind them and they pulled a big lever and it felt really good. But again, just like an electronic voting system, the lever voting machines had about a million moving parts. We weren’t sure if they recorded votes accurately. You can’t recount anything. It’s just not a modern way of voting. And now that we know better ways of securing the vote and verifying the vote, most Americans should be more confident that our processes are very, very top of the line when you look across the world.

SS: I remember as a kid going into the voting booth and the lever was stuck and the curtain didn’t shut tightly, and I remember being what, 7-8 years old, still remember that vividly. Matt, final question—if there’s one thing that you wish people knew or better understood about elections in America, what would it be?

MW: Look, elections are very secure and then they’re accountable. And I think that’s important. There are multiple checks at various aspects and various times in the process. That’s to ensure that people are the right people who are voting, that they are eligible, and that they are voting once. And then, that their preferences are recorded accurately. So I encourage you, if you have concerns about the voting process—it’s very easy to say, well, I don’t trust the process—go in and learn how it works in your jurisdiction, in your state. Because I think if you were to become a poll worker, if you actually interacted with the process, you would change your mind. Because at this point, again 20 years, 24 years on from Florida 2000, we are a much more professionalized kind of system of voting in this country and I think Americans should really be proud of that. It’s a big change, it happened in a bipartisan way throughout the country and that is what I want people to understand about the election process.

SS: Matt Weil heads up the elections project here, the Bipartisan Policy Center and you actually came up with the name of Ballot Box Briefing, so we want to give you full credit.

MW: I’ll take it.