What Do We Make of 2020?

This podcast is part of the Democracy Group. Welcome to Another Way, the podcast of Equal Citizens. I'm Jason Harrow, the executive director and chief counsel of Equal Citizens and I'm pleased to be joined by by our campaigns manager, Adam Eigen. Hey, Adam.

Hey, Jason. How's it going?

It's going great. The year is coming to a close. We had a barrage of episodes and then we took a little break and a little rest and now we're back with a two part episode. Dear listeners, the two part episode is first the recap. We kind of wanna recap our activities and some of the year in democracy and voting and elections and in 2020. And then we want to have some fun. And we're going to bring back a fan favorite from last year, Adam, we're going to bring back the Democracy Awards. Last year we did the Democracy Awards. Mitch McConnell was a big winner slash loser, though there was also lots to celebrate. Spoiler alert, listeners. In part two, Mitch McConnell is going to return. He has a lot to say about the state of our democracy and why it persists in not improving as much as it could. But as with last year, the awards show is not all bad. There's a lot of optimism. There was a lot of progress in 2020 and a lot of things to be upset about and call out and we'll do both in the awards. The awards are sort of a combination of the Oscars and the Razzies. They've been described as. So that is still to come. But Adam, let's go for part one, which is the 2020 Year in Review. So where should we start?

Well, I mean, first I just want to say, you know, what a year it's been. I mean, it's quite remarkable to think the last time you know, we were recording this or the year end kind of dual episodes, we were actually together in Los Angeles at the time, at the end of or the beginning of December of 2019. And you know, so much has changed since then and as you said, some of it not so great. But there has been some silver linings. And so I think we should just start where our heads have been for the past month or more. Jason, which is the electoral College, you know, as our listeners know, we put together a 10 part series. We scrambled to put together the 10 part series of the partisan games that could be played on the back end of the electoral college. Fortunately, many of the worst case scenarios did not come to pass, but not necessarily for lack of effort on the Trump campaign. So, Jason, take us through a little bit about what has happened since voters went to the polls on Election Day? What kind of post election litigation partisan games have been played, and where do we stand now?

Yeah, so I think the headline for 2020 in the world of democracy is that the presidential election faced an unprecedented assault and it withstood it. Largely. Largely. Not completely, but largely. And we say that because, as we know, the president and members of his party and his allies began a very long time ago, indeed, once the pandemic started to lay a real assault on the integrity of mail in voting in particular, and the broader integrity of the elections. Arguably, the assault started, started even before the pandemic, as Trump was consistently down in the polls and indeed had cast doubts about whether he would support the peaceful transition of power if he lost, even way back into 2016. But it escalated several orders of magnitude with the pandemic, both because his handling of it meant that his approval rating was very, very unlikely to hit numbers where reelection looked like a good bet, and also because we did have this increase in mail in voting and lots of litigation and lots of rule changes, which created an environment of uncertainty that he really revels in. So going up into November 3rd, the state of play was that there was a lot of worry about what would happen to our creaky old system of selecting the president, which runs in a two step process where states hold their own elections for their slate of presidential electors. They then canvas the results, appoint a slate of electors, and then on December 14, the electors themselves vote. And then, I guess, as step 2B, Congress counts those votes in what is typically always a relatively uncontroversial session. This year, as folks know, the evening of the election itself, Trump immediately declared, without evidence, that there was massive fraud and that he was going to look into it and the results weren't final. But he declared that even without the final results, he was the victor. Of course, he was not. Several days later, after additional ballots came in, the news networks called the election for Joe Biden. And from there, it became very clear to everyone paying attention to the actual facts that Joe Biden was, was the winner by a substantial margin in the national popular vote. Indeed, he'll end up winning by about 7 million overall votes, over 4 percentage points, and that he was the victor, clearly, but relatively narrowly in the key swing states. Okay, that was the state of play, but we knew that there would be a failure to concede, which, as we record this, Adam, President Trump still has not conceded. And I should say there was a worry among some quarters that that itself would essentially lead to violence or uncertainty. And in particular, the Atlantic and writers there put forth a view that the concession is what really ends an election. That proved not to be true. Adam. I mean, I think really helpfully we found that the rule of law is what ends elections quite courts end elections, certifications end elections, secretaries of state, poll workers counting accurate votes end elections. And that is what has ended this election. So just to sort of take us again, we did a 10 part breakdown into all the ways that elections could go wrong. We've written pieces on our website, Equal Citizens US and explained them in videos and elsewhere. And I think people know now that the many challenges that Trump has brought and his increasingly bizarre legal arguments by he and his allies have failed. And the headline here is that that's because we had institutions that were not controllable by the president that did their job. They performed in some cases really admirably. The poll workers, the counters, the folks who safeguarded the machines, the folks who observed the polls. There was little violence, little disruption. They performed in some cases minimally, adequately. I would put in that category certain governors of red states like Georgia and Arizona who failed to really come to the the get the backs of the election workers in their states and make a full throated defense of the people have spoken and that is that and stop doing this. President Trump. Right. These are the same election machinery that elected you four years ago, that elected me the Republican governor of the state, and that now narrowly has selected Joe Biden. They did not give that full throat of defense, but nonetheless they gave, let's call them, minimally adequate defenses. And that was enough. Right. The Supreme Court has shown no interest in taking up any of the President's far fetched theories, nor have the federal or state courts. So this, that's where we are as we talk, Adam. The Electoral College has voted. Joe Biden has received 306 valid electoral votes of electors appointed by governors in their states according to legal authority. Congress will count those votes on January 6th. Mitch McConnell has told every Republican not to object that Joe Biden is the President elect and will become President on January 20th when President Trump's term expires. So that was, I think, the headline of 2020.

Jason, can you take us through a little bit about what kind of arguments the Trump campaign was making? And is it true that it was mostly about whether or not states could certify the elections? I mean, the whole goal in some respects was to appoint an alternative slate of electors, Right?

Yeah. So the president. Well, yes and no. Right. Because the thing about the president is he had the old legal saying that people know is when the laws on your side argue the law, when you don't have the law, argue the facts. When you don't have the facts, pound your fist on the table and yell and scream, and maybe I even got the order between the facts and the law wrong. But we know that those are the two things that matter. And then the fist pounding comes, and all we had was fist pounding here. So to say that there was a strategy or even that there were coherent legal claims, and I'm not saying saying this like to make fun of them, I'm saying this as a. Just evaluating the lawyering here. That is a generous statement. I didn't see a coherent legal strategy, and I didn't see, in some cases, even claims that I were sort of cognizable in any sense. Right. And so, yes, Adam, a few of the lawsuits brought by either Trump and his allies asked for the remarkable relief, what they call, in legal terms, relief. That is the thing that the plaintiffs are asking a court to do. What they wanted the court to do was invalidate essentially an entire election, and then, as if that weren't unprecedented enough, send the election to the state legislatures to use what they claim is this inherent authority in the Constitution to appoint presidential electors. That was the relief requested in a few. In a few cases. The judges who heard those cases pointed out that that was breathtaking and almost incomprehensible relief. And even judges appointed by President Trump or other Republicans said this is akin to a coup. Right. You are asking the federal court not to undertake what they did in Bush v. Gore, undertake a very close analysis of how ballots were being counted and ensure that they were being counted fairly and uniformly. No, no, no. They were saying that based on blank. And I say blank here because, you know, various cases put different things based on statistical analyses that were as stupid as I have ever seen statistical analyses filed in court. And we can talk about why, based on evidence of fraud that was withdrawn or unreliable or specifically found as not credible by trial judges, you know, based on those types of facts, we basically should say that this election we had on November 3rd wasn't a real election. And so, and then it should go to the state legislatures, and the state legislatures should do what? They should appoint their friends to be electors and appoint them for Trump. I mean, this is the kind of rank insanity that we saw. And that got literally no traction. Right? I mean, there are some outrageously conservative judges out there, Adam, and in the lead up to the election, we saw some decisions which we can talk about on this episode, and especially in our award show, that were remarkable in how restrictive they read legal and constitutional provisions relative to voting rights even in the middle of a pandemic. Even those judges, Adam, didn't give one positive word to this theory of the President.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You know, that doesn't necessarily mean that we were all at ease during this process. I think there were always, you know, the little hits in our stomach about when this would actually be over. But I think that the general consensus, at least among law professors and constitutional scholars, was that these cases were farcical. Now, that does bring up a point here, Jason, which is, you know, you wrote an op ed for Newsweek calling for sanctions on the lawyers who are participating in these in these cases. Do you still think that there should be some sanctions here?

I do. And indeed, some folks have made bar complaints about certain cases and about certain lawyers. I don't expect them to go very far, frankly. I think bar associations are. First of all, they don't take their responsibility, in my view, seriously enough here to police frivolous claims. But they also are particularly worried about being seen as being overly political. And I understand that. But that said, I mean, the Texas case is a case in point, right? This is the one that the President held his hat on and told the Supreme Court to have courage in here. There's a case brought by the Attorney General of Texas against four other states to claim that Texas as a state has been injured by Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan taking certain steps before the pandemic, mild and moderate steps, fully authorized by law to accommodate the pandemic, which, by the way, so too did Texas, though they didn't really mention that in their briefing, that somehow that infringed the rights of Texas as a state to have its vote count in the Electoral College. It was an absurd theory that was left out of the Supreme Court very quickly by all nine of the justices. It was noteworthy, Adam, that that lawsuit did not bear the signature. Did not bear the signature or the name of Texas's appointed Supreme Court lawyer. Right. Texas, as many states do, have a position called the Solicitor General. The Solicitor General is the chief appellate lawyer, usually the smartest, wonkiest, best constitutional lawyer in the state. There's a man named Kyle Hawkins who holds that position in Texas, and Texas has had fights in the Supreme Court, Adam. He's been a regular player. He's been very good. His name was conspicuously absent, as was the names of all of his staff. So the only People who were even willing to put their name on this insane legal brief were the Attorney General and this private lawyer who apparently took the case to the AG named Larry Joseph. Well, if even your Republican conservative political appointee is not willing to put your name on that drivel, then something is amiss. Right? That was a political document. That was a press release. That wasn't a real case. And I do think that folks should face consequences for that. Right.

So one more practical question and then we can move on from the Electoral College. But so what does happen if a member of the House and Senate contest the Electoral college vote on January 6? There is some talk, you know, and there are a couple members of the House and potentially a couple of Senators who might go against Mitch McConnell's request that nobody contest this those votes. But what, what then happens, Jason, and is it something that we should be worried about or is it a whole lot of nothing?

Don't worry. But something might happen in the sense that it will delay. And the reason is that what the law says is when a state's electoral votes are read, if the presiding officer of the Senate, who will be Mike Pence, receives a written objection from at least one member of the House and, and, and the. And is key, not or. And at least one member of the Senate, then the House is immediately adjourned separately and debate the issue for up to two hours and then take a vote about whether to accept or reject that electoral vote slate. It seems very likely that at least one member of the House will file written objections to slates in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Georgia. That's Mo Brooks of Alabama who's on the record as stating he'll do that. I believe he'll be joined by several other people. There is of course, no chance that the Democratic controlled House will support that objection or even because there's enough moderate Republicans and enough thoughtful people that they would reject that if and it gets to debate. The question with regard to whether it will get the debate is whether any objection will be lodged in the Senate. Mitch McConnell has said he is discouraging senators. Many senators have said they recognize that Joe Biden is the President elect. So even though the Republicans technically control the Senate, the objection will surely lose in that chamber. The question is whether we will have the show and the shenanigan of a formal written objection. The three main candidates that people thought would be the most likely senators to take this ridiculous step are Senator Rand Paul, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Ted Cruz. It seems like there have been some hints from Cruz And Johnson that while they are going to sort of continue to toe the line that there was some fraud, there was something was amiss. They know that it's pointless and they're not going to play that charade. Rand Paul seems to be the one who is on the fence right now. We'll see where the politics are on January 6th. We'll see whether people want to. I mean, it's silly. And the last time this happened. Adam, there's a long answer, I know, but the last and indeed the only time this has really happened in the modern era when a senator and a House member lodged an objection to an entire slate of electoral votes was, sadly, 2004, when John Kerry narrowly lost the election to George W. Bush. If he had won in Ohio, Kerry, he would have won the election even though he lost the popular vote. The election in Ohio was relatively close. Barbara Boxer joined a House objection, really without evidence. But Barbara Boxer did make a written objection to the Ohio electoral slate for George W. Bush. That required the Senate to go retire and the House and go vote. And the ultimate Senate vote was 74 to 1 to uphold the vote in Ohio. It was an embarrassing spectacle then. I think it will probably be an embarrassing spectacle today. I do expect more than one vote. I will say there's enough sycophantic support of the president to get more than one single vote if, say, Johnson or Cruz or Paul objects. I do think there'd be some handful of senators who just. Well, at that point, we're debating it. We're gonna lose anyway. Let's just show President Trump how much we love him. But it would still be a national embarrassment. So I hope it doesn't happen. Right.

And I guess, actually I apologize here because I want to ask one more follow up, which is when it's all said and done, are you happy that we brought the claim about faithless electors or the Hamilton electors?

I am. I am. So just to remind the listeners, you know, we had a case that was percolating for several years in the lower courts and then ultimately got a hearing in the Supreme Court this spring and a decision this summer about whether presidential electors can be tied to vote for specific candidates and people. And yes, I am glad we brought that for two reasons. The first is, you know, even though we lost, we thought at the time that the best reading of the Constitution was that presidential electors needed to have freedom, at least in certain cases, to vote for whomever they pleased. I think that a highlighting the way that the Electoral College worked forced the parties to take it seriously. And for the first time in a long time, when we needed it, we had a very orderly vote of the electors. There were no faithless electors. Everything really went off to a tee. And I hope that we helped that process. And the second is, and even our clients recognize this right, as much as we thought we were right as a matter of constitutional law, really what we wanted was to settle the question. And goodness knows that the amount of havoc that Trump has caused, relying on areas of uncertainty, like legislative appointment of electors, which is sort of undecided in some narrow respect by the court, he's gotten a lot of play out of that. And so we took one area of uncertainty off the table. And I'm pleased by that.

Yeah, I agree. I personally know that, you know, I was honored to be a part of the team. And I think that we did help close off one potential, even though it would have been a long shot avenue to create more chaos in this already chaotic post election period. So that's something, looking back, I feel very good that we did at equal citizens this year. So, Jason, what do you think the relations of the Republican Party pushing our presidential election system this year to the brink will be? What do you think that the impact of these false but widespread claims that there was voter fraud and election stealing, and also just the ramifications of one political party playing constitutional hardball with the back end of the electoral College, something that we've had for a very long time, but it's just not something that, because of the norms that we followed, that it's ever really been a question that people haven't really been pushing the system to the extreme. Like this year. What do you think the ramifications will be?

Well, tbd. Adam, this is, and I know you're asking me a question about the future, and so TBD is sort of always the answer, and that's a cop out. But I mean it in a really, I mean it in a really deep way. Right. Because I don't know that we've ever seen something like this where there was so much storm undrang, as the Germans say. Right. So much sound and fury. But will it signify nothing to get a little poetic, or will it really be meaningful? And the reason that's so unclear is twofold. Right. One is so much of it is related to Trump's particular personality and celebrity. Right. These are not real claims. Yes, the Republican Party, as we've talked about, has been engaged in, in an assault on certain aspects of our democracy, but they have not used the rhetoric that President Trump has, and they have not fundamentally tried to undermine the accuracy and integrity of the electoral system. And indeed, on some specific issues, the Republican Party has been at best agnostic or even pro, such as mail in voting. Right. And Trump has completely flipped that. So when he mercifully leaves office and loses the bully pulpit, I think we don't know what will happen because we have rarely seen a response that is this tied to a particular person in a particular personality. Right. I could have predicted the trend in the early 2000s when the Republican Party, Adam, started engaging in a serious effort to build up gerrymandering, started engaging in a serious effort to build up voter ID that was not tied to one person. And that continued. That continued past the administration of George W. Bush. That continued through Republican governors and through Republican politicians and Republican senators and Republican state legislatures and ALEC and the whole Republican apparatus. Right. This is not riddled through with the Republican apparatus. You know, the traditional sort of bulwarks of Republican thought, the Republican think tanks, Republican governors, alec, the Koch brothers and their network, Karl Rove at his network, they are not really invested in this narrative of a fraudulent election. So I don't know what it means when really one and only one person is pushing this line.

Yeah, I mean, it's really difficult because on one hand you have Trump that's kind of masks off, kind of getting rid of democracy or the Democratic, you know, or at least undermining the democratic process altogether. You have a hand, Republican senators and House members who are also engaging in that very explicitly anti Democratic rhetoric. And then you also have a big part of the Republican Party who is largely silent. I mean, you think of, like, Mike Pence, who has made some terrible statements about it, but has taken a lot of mysterious trips away and hasn't really been, you know, using his bully pulpit. So, you know, I agree with you. It's very difficult to say, but it's certainly very scary that we're even kind of staring into this abyss of explicitly anti Democratic rhetoric, kind of guising, undermining democracy as the preservation of republic. It's a level of double speak that it really hits hard for those of us who are fighting for the expansion of the democratic process.

Yeah, I think that's right. It does somehow sit, like, as a personal, you know, stitch in my craw or something like that. I mean, just check it. I occasionally deign to just go to twitter.com RealDonaldTrump just to, like, see what he's saying and what he's doing. And it's really Quite insane, right? I mean, we're in the middle of a pandemic, we have huge, huge problems, we're trying to get a vaccine out. And like, by far, most of what he does every day is just post insane things that are blatantly not true, that are flagged by Twitter as being now true about the election, right? And things that, and that's why I say I don't know, the long term rhetoric, because do people even buy this, Adam, I don't know how many Trump supporters you've talked to, but he says things like in the last several days, and indeed, since the election was one of his lines, one of his lines have been, we received 75 million votes, the most by an incumbent president in history. 75 million votes, right? So what? It must be a fraud, right? I mean, indeed, yesterday he tweeted, I got 60, you know, 3 million votes in 2016 and 75 million my vote went up. And yet I lost, right? And yet Obama's vote total went down from 2008 to 2012 and he won. So that logic is so poor, right? It's sort of like an athlete, it's sort of like baseball team saying, wait a second, I scored four runs and I won in yesterday's game, I scored six runs today. I must have won, right? Like any school child knows whether you won or lost has to do with your score and the other person's score, right? So the reason that logic doesn't hold in the baseball analogy is you could have won 4 to 3 yesterday and you lost 10 to 6 today, right? That, that is just clear. So, but, but does anybody think, Adam, that when he says I must have won because I reached this magic number of votes and ignore how many votes the other guy got, right? Just ignore that. It's like saying, ignore how many runs the other team scored, I got six, I must have won. Like, what is, what does that mean? What does that do to people? Is it serious enough to last or is it a joke? I tend to think it's a joke. Maybe I'm too generous to him and his supporters. But, and by joke, I don't mean that funny haha joke. I mean, it's just something you say to basically signal we're on this team, we're on Team Trump, right? I don't need logic, I don't need what we just say we won, we're winners, we won. I like winning. Here's something that sounds like a number here. You know what I mean? But see if you have a different view. I mean, do you have a different view?

I don't know, because in the one hand, I think it's, you know, the lawsuits were so poorly argued, they haven't found any fraud, you know, that the entire argument has been debunked just by fact. But we also know, you know, you look at the public polling about vote by mail, like vote by mail was relatively uncontroversial, enjoyed support of both parties. We saw at the beginning of the pandemic, the vast majority of Americans wanted to expand vote by mail. And it took Trump four months of just railing against vote by mail and having, you know, the media circuit echoing it. And all of a sudden you see this historic split in public opinion along partisan lines. And then you also see historic split in terms of how people voted. You know, Republicans voted in person and Democrats voted by mail. And so it does show that this kind of partisan queuing, when a party leader is kind of attacking a certain mode of voting or a certain democracy reform, it does run the risk of breaking the one thing that reformers, that democracy reformers, that we have to our benefit, which is that Americans of all political stripes want a more fair and just democracy. And so that's what I've been struggling with a lot, is that we know that we have widespread support on all of these issues to make our democracy function better. But what Trump did show is that maybe it's temporary and if that's the case, that's the best news. But he did show that party leaders can really hurt public support for democracy reforms. And if that's a long term effect, that's dangerous. If it's really tied to just Trump and now moving forward, if Trump kind of goes away and maybe the Republicans tone down this anti Democratic rhetoric, could support for vote by mail could increase again and reach that equilibrium of kind of, you know, both sides are grassroots level supporters on both sides support vote by mail or, you know, say automatic voter registration and all these issues, then I think that we have absolutely every chance to kind of fix our democracy and get a really nice cross partisan reform movement continuing to build. But that's just something that's been on my mind, Jason, is just like, what are the effects, at least for our work in trying to heal this democracy and take it to a place where it's never been in the context of a party leader, just so wildly delegitimizing, not just reform, but a way of voting, a long standing way of voting for over 100 years. This isn't new. Vote by mail is not new. But the fact that that partisan split appeared after four months of Trump's barrage is I haven't been able to shake the, again, that pit in my stomach that it doesn't bode well necessarily for the future of democracy.

But, yeah, they'll remember that things can turn relatively quickly because people need very, very little excuse to change their mind and believe they're still being consistent. Right. We could just say, oh, the pandemic's over, and voting by mail was just different in the pandemic. And you know what I mean, Trump and it's fine and now everything's normal. Or, yeah, okay, you know, we could say we got what we wanted in terms of signature verification. And now because candidly, it's all the studies show it's in the long term interest of both parties, which is why both parties largely supported it. It's in the long term interest of both parties to give people more options for voting because the easier it is for their people to vote, the more they will vote. That is just a supply demand issue. And, you know, all the studies show that. So, you know, that's the like, that's the, that's the fundamental problem is that there will be Republican leaders in key places who want to support vote by mail, and they will only need the barest of excuses, I think, to turn it around once again and we'll see if they can.

Yeah, And I think that's an optimistic take, and I think that I probably agree with that. I'm just saying that the partisan queuing effect of someone like Trump is just. I haven't been able to shake that in the past couple of months, but, yeah, I agree. Okay, so let's move through a couple more questions in terms of thinking about the last 12 months, but really the last nine months since the pandemic started, how well do you think that our elections held during the pandemic? Did we successfully hold a general election during a pandemic? When it's all said and done? I mean, I'm thinking back to, you know, some of the conversations we had in March and April and May on this podcast. I mean, I'm thinking about with Professor Richard Hassan. I'm thinking about, you know, the many episodes we did, you know, investigating what different states are doing. I think of the episode I did with Stephen Wolf of the Daily Coast. What do you think, Jason, now, now that we're kind of on the other side of the election, did states do enough?

Sure, sure, sure. And they didn't get a lot of bailout funding. And, you know, they, by all accounts, including the Trump administration's security people itself. It was a secure election. It was a remarkably high turnout election, probably in part because of all the voting options and in part because of just the fact that we're in a pandemic. And so politics are on people's mind. And, you know, they were more able to vote in a variety of ways, including in person. Right. Where there's less in person work, it's easier to vote in person. And so I think you'd have to give the overall system close to an A in terms of accuracy and administration, with the one asterisk being the key swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, especially Wisconsin, a little bit, you know, not permitting their vote counters to count mail ballots before election Day itself, which led to this massive delay, which was totally predictable. Adam, we talked about it before in our presidential election series, in the episode about the red shift or the blue shift and the red wave. We talked about it months ago. It was absolutely unjustifiable. It was done only to sow chaos and for no good reason.

It was willful. I mean, especially in Pennsylvania, the Republicans there, it was a willful decision not to allow for, for pre processing, which allowed for this chaos. So I definitely agree with that, but. So you'd give it an A?

I'd give it. I'd give it an A. Other than that, I mean, there are. Clearly there were some problems, but I'm giving it an A, measured by the degree of difficulty. And I think that American democracy really came through quite well.

Right. I think I would agree with that. You know, at worst, maybe an A minus. But again, we did have, what, the highest voter turnout in almost a century, you know, remarkable turnout across the country. And yeah, there weren't any major, major problems on election day. I mean, I remember, you know, you and I talked on election day. We were texting back and forth, and I think that we both were worried that we'd see extremely long lines, you know, like we did in April with the Wisconsin primary election. That was just an utter disaster, but we didn't see that. And so that is cause for celebrating that our democracy, for all of its flaws, was able to survive in the midst of the worst pandemic, certainly in our lifetimes, but in almost a century, more than a century. So that does speak to a certain level of resilience, that not only did we avoid the kind of post election, you know, for lack of a better expression, a coup, undermining of the very democratic process through the state legislatures or through the Supreme Court or Any federal court or state court. But we also were actually able to hold an election that people were able to vote early, vote by mail or in person, and go to the poll plate polling place on election day, have their ballots counted with. And I haven't seen anything to suggest otherwise, but with certainly less rejections on the vote by mail than I think I certainly was worried about. Yeah, there was a mass disenfranchisement on the back end that you send it, send in your mail, your mail in ballot, and then they reject it because of some reason. I haven't seen any evidence yet to suggest. I mean, there's always is, and it's always disproportionately young people and people of color. So the system's not perfect. It has so much room to be improved because there are people who were certainly disenfranchised this election cycle because of this. But all that being said, it was not the disaster in any respect. And in fact, people did turn out and voted and had their votes counted. And I agree, as bad as this year has been, Jason, that is a real reason to celebrate.

Yeah, agreed. Agreed.

That poses two questions then. The first one doesn't have an answer, but the second one leads into something we're going to be doing at equal citizens in 2021. The first question that this successful election poses is, so what are states going to do now? What is a state like Massachusetts, which is expanded vote by mail, but only through 2020, going to do moving forward? Are these states going to keep these expanded vote by mail laws? The answer should be yes, because it was remarkably successful across the board and led to higher turnout.

But.

But whether or not they will is an open question. And it's something that reformers will be facing in the states across the country to try and keep those gains made. Because as we talked about before the election, once people experience voting by mail for the first time, they like it and they'll likely want to keep it. I haven't seen any polls necessarily to validate that, but certainly from my conversations with reformers across the country, I think back to the podcast Pre Pandemic with Phil Keisling about vote by mail. Talk about oppression. Interview looking back, but you know, what he said is that voters overwhelmingly, once they experience vote by mail, want to keep it. So that's something to watch moving forward. How do states decide or, you know, decide to keep it or not keep it. But the second question is, okay, so despite everything, there is definitely room for improvement. There's room for standardizing election law. There's room for expanding, you know, some of these pro voter laws across the country. And the best way to do that is certainly on the national level. We know we've talked about it many times that there's this amazing omnibus legislation, HR1, introduced by the House Democrats. It was passed in the spring of 2019, this omnibus, amazing package. It was going to Joe Biden has said that democracy reform wants he wants it to be a top priority for him and for his administration. And the House Democrats have already said that their first act will in the 2021 session be to pass HR1 again to address democracy reform. But we know the biggest roadblock to reform is Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky, who is the majority leader of the Senate. And he's called HR1A capital D Democratic power grab and has said in no way, shape or form is he going to bring it up for a vote. And it looks now that the Senate could remain in the Republican control, meaning Mitch McConnell will still be the Senate majority leader. But and there's a big but here, Jason. There are still two races outstanding, both in Georgia, that will ultimately decide who controls the Senate. And so in equal citizens, we're making a relatively unprecedented decision to get involved in in that race because at its core, the fate of our democracy in some respects hangs in the balance. So, Jason, I want to turn it over to you. Why are we getting involved in these Georgia runoffs? What are the stakes? What are we doing about it?

Yeah, so the stakes are, as you laid out really nicely, Adam, just simple. It's whether Mitch McConnell stays as the Senate majority leader, and that is a straight line to whether the U.S. senate gets an up or down vote on legislation addressing many of the core problems with our democracy, including a bill that will end gerrymandering, make voter registration easier, close ethical loopholes and lobbyist loopholes and much more. And including likely, although we don't know what this version will have. This is a narrower Democratic majority, but likely and hopefully have at least some pilot program for public financing of campaigns, which is something very important to us and very important to many people to reduce the influence of big donors and big money donors on our political system. So those are key components of HR1 or of any related bill that comes out of the House. And the stakes are very simple. Will that get an up or down vote or not? All we're asking is for an up or down vote. I think it's very popular. Those reforms are very popular. I think those reforms will get the support of some Republican senators. The Lisa Murkowski of the world, the Mitt Romney's of the world. Again, depending on what comes out of the House. But I think broadly speaking, people are of both parties do recognize that at its extremes, I hope gerrymandering is a problem. Republicans have recognized this in the past. They do recognize that people want a clean, cleaner government that is less, that has fewer lobbying loopholes and ethical loopholes and the like, and that we need a little more money to safeguard our democracy and modernize the system and like the things that HR1 does. So I think it could even get a couple of Republican votes. Even if it can't, there are, there would be enough Democratic votes to pass it a moderate bill assuming that Mitch McConnell lets it come up or assuming that the whoever is controlling the Senate lets it come up for a vote. And that is either going to be most likely Chuck Schumer or most likely Mitch McConnell. And that itself, Adam, comes down to voters in one state and one state only, and that is Georgia. Because if the Democrats, again, we don't like to support or oppose political candidates, we're not doing this to support or oppose one political party. We're doing this to support or oppose one bill that is a bill that will improve our democracy and that can only go through if Mitch McConnell is not the majority leader. Right?

I think that's absolutely right. And so just to be very clear to our listeners, right now, The Senate is 50, 48 in Republican hands. So there are 50 Republican senators and 48 Democratic senators with two of those are independents but caucus with the Democrats and ultimately these two races. And it's by quirk usually there aren't two senators from the same state in one election cycle. But it's a, there's one normally scheduled election and there's one special election for a senator. And you know, as you said, Jason, the fate of our democracy does kind of rest in the balance here because Mitch McConnell, even if there's a Lisa Murkowski or Mitt Romney or a Republican who might support maybe a pared down version of what was introduced in the House, Mitch McConnell will not bring it up. He's made it very clear. It's a matter of whether or not they bring up that vote. And the only way that is going to be done is if Mitch McConnell is not the Senate majority leader.

That's right.

Therefore it has to be these two seats have to flip.

That's right.

And so I think you framed it really nicely. And so we created a website, Jason, called Give Joe a chance. It's giveJoeachance us. And there are a couple ways for you, the listener, to join the campaign. Jason, you want to name some of them?

Why don't you walk through? Adam, you're our campaigns manager. I want to leave this to you. Sure.

Okay. I will take that up. So there are a couple ways that you can participate here. You know, one, you know, one of the most important ways to join the campaign is, as a function, to reach out to your Facebook friends who may live in Georgia. This isn't an endorsement of Facebook, but we know that people use Facebook, and we also know that one of the most successful ways to get people to vote and to convince people to vote is to reach out to them one on one, and. And to people you already know. And so if you have people in Georgia that maybe are not aware that there's a Senate runoff going on or two Senate runoffs, we give you the ability to check your friend list. There's also a place for you to record a remix of a song. The descriptions on the website that we hope to release that will help spread the word about the runoff and maybe get some media attention. And we also link to some of the organizations on the ground doing the work to turn out voters. Because I will say, Jason, that our goal here is not to run a campaign for Senate. That's not our wheelhouse. But we wanted to create a landing page for those who are interested or might be convinced on democracy reform to then get plugged in to help join the effort. Because we're not turning out voters. We're not the campaign operatives, or at least campaign operatives, in the style of running a political campaign, an advocacy campaign. Absolutely. But we also want to just acknowledge that we're not in the business of superseding the work that folks like Fair Fight Georgia and others are doing. So we also provide links there for other things you can do with groups on the ground. But really what we see is this is a landing page where you can participate, reach out to your contacts in Georgia and just try and participate and spread the word as much as possible. So if you're interested in joining the campaign, it's all on our social platforms, on Twitter or Facebook. But you can also just go to Give Joe a chance us. And really, the message is just give Joe Biden a chance. He. He can't enact his agenda, most prominently on democracy reform, unless the Senate flips. It's just as simple as that. And so we hope this campaign will be useful. And we recognize, Jason, this is very much outside of Our normal wheelhouse. We really don't like doing partisan things like this. But Jason, as you said, it's not about partisanship. It's really just about one bill. It's really about making sure that we can go into this next decade without gerrymandering, dominating. Because without this, Jason, gerrymandering is going to get worse in the next decade.

Yeah, that's right. So it's really give. Give Joe a chance so that we give HR1 a chance. I guess that's a really long domain name.

I don't think that quite works as a domain name or a tagline. But that's essentially our goal here, Jason. So we hope you, the listener spreads the word, checks it out, and, and we can move forward together on this. And of course, if you have any questions, just shoot us an email@infoqualcitizens us. We're always open to critique or questions or ways that we can improve the website. Okay, so final thing, Jason, before we close is just what's the update on our super PAC case in Alaska? Because we haven't talked about that in a while. You've been hard at work on the brief. And so I just wanted to give you an opportunity to update our listeners that, hey, this case is still going on and still has merit.

Yeah. So speaking of money in politics, I mean, it would be a big moment if we passed HR1 next year and got public financing of elections. But in the meantime, we brought a case several years ago in Alaska, one of our favorite states, to litigate, saying that the courts should interpret existing federal law to allow for at least some limits on contributions to super PACs. We're not asking for Citizens United to be overturned. We're not asking for super PACs to be undone. But at very least, if states have existing limits on donations to them so that one person or one group can't put in millions and millions of dollars, then okay, those can be enforced. And we actually won that in a lower court. And it's been on appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court for a while now. We did complete the briefing in that this year. And the Alaska Supreme Court was going to hear our case as we record this, recording this on Thursday, December 17th. And the argument was going to be today or this week, I should say. The Supreme Court postponed it and said they wanted more time to prepare, interestingly, which is fine with us. You know, they should take all the time they need. This is an important issue that we want them to study. So we should have a zoom hearing, Adam, sometime in January and We'll let our followers know, of course, and we'll see. We'll make our case to a really interested court.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great place to end. I mean, who knows what will happen? But it's a really good case. Jason, you've done phenomenal work preparing the case. I mean, really for our listeners. There's a lot of work on the litigation that you guys don't see. But Jason and Larry have really been really been working hard. And, you know, I appreciate all the work you're doing, Jason, and I'm really excited for that argument and fingers crossed there because, you know, I will just say as a last thought about 2020, at least the general election is there was an unprecedented amount of grassroots donations, and candidates were able to raise a lot of money. But make no mistake, that money in politics is just as pernicious as ever, and it takes only certain kinds of candidates can raise that much money from the grassroots. And yeah, money in politics is just as much of a problem. And I'm going to be really excited to get the data about what the donor base looked like in 2020, because the small donor base may be more representative than it has been in the past, but I can almost assuredly promise you it's not fully representative of the American people, especially during this pandemic. A lot of Americans did not have the ability to donate to a political campaign this year, even though they would have, which just makes public financing all the more important.

Yeah.

So for our listeners, we'll keep you updated about this Alaska case that could potentially end super PACs. But with that, Jason, any final thoughts before we close this episode? And again, we'll be posting the part two of this episode where we will be giving out awards, both good and bad, for people in 2020.

But.

But before that, Jason, final thoughts?

No. Thanks for talking to me, Adam. Stay tuned for part two. That's my parting thought.

All right, well, this has been another episode of Another Way. We'll see you next time.